davenash.com

I can't stay silent any longer, after years of putting up with wading through crap and needing to double check my work; I need to blow off a little steam... Microsoft Internet Explorer is shit!

I've been using IE since 1998 from version 3 and it has to be the worst designed browser on the planet, I mean what does Microsoft think it's doing? They develop a non standards browser that essentially puts two fingers up to the Internet establishment, who are trying to implement a range of standards that all browsers should follow, in the misguided view that most people use IE therefore everyone should adapt to them. I'm sick of it! I managed to wean myself away from Microsoft completely in July of this year after enduring a long history of system instability, but before then I was making liberal use of the [Mozilla Firefox] browser. Since moving over to using a Mac I find myself needing to boot up one of our Windows boxes every time I need to check the HTML+CSS I've written will work on IE. Before the changeover it was slightly annoying but wasn't too much of a problem; I used to open IE and check there weren't any nasty surprises waiting for me, courtesy of IE's flawed/crippled ability to format pages and after a few tweaks I'd be finished. Since the changeover however I'm always needing to login to the Windows box which, in most cases is always off as a) we hate using it b) it's fucking noisy and c) I detest the idea of having it about to eliminate all the nasty bugs that IE is responsible for.

It just stinks that Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, thinks it's OK to piss around with standards and pay nothing but lip service to the droves of web developers who look forward to the day they can write HTML and CSS markup without needing to include a tonne of hacks! I warmly welcomed the news that Microsoft was to stop supporting IE for the Mac in the New Year and was even happier to hear that Mac OS 10.4 Tiger was released with no installation of IE. It seems that Microsoft have finally loosened their grip on Mac users, but I hold little hope that they'll relinquish such control over the masses of Windows users who should have the choice and not be forced to use IE with every new Windows installation.

There is however a silver lining to the general crapness of Microsoft's software. People are getting wise to the poorly written code and are fast becoming tired of system crashes and are beginning to look for alternatives. 2005 was the best year so far for people converting to the stable and standards compliant Mac platform and with excellent products such as the [Mac Mini] and faster, cheaper and cooler processors due to be used in new Mac equipment that figure of Mac converts can only grow in 2006!

...Is my new name for BT (for those of you not in the know, that's the illustrious telecoms provider British Telecom). In case you were wondering why I had been so quiet over the past weeks it's due to not being able to get on the Internet with a reliable connection. BT decided to cut my ADSL connection off due to a complete balls-up at their end and someone not doing their job properly, so after a lot of phone calls and a period of temporary insanity brought on from lack of Internet I finally have my beloved broadband connection back! Believe it or not it's the best Christmas present I could have got this year; it kinda makes you wonder how we survived before the internet came along.

I've become so dependant on the Internet, it's almost worrying! I mean, whenever I need to find out something or talk to someone, my first reaction is to sit in front of my computer and open Safari. I sometimes wonder how we found anything out, I've never been one to go to libraries to lookup facts as I always find that the books are out of date and I need to trawl through several books before I find something which is remotely related to what I'm looking for. Stupidly there have been times that I've been looking for something in a book and have the momentary thought of looking for the search dialog so I can find what I'm looking for with ease, before remembering that I'm using a book and books don't have that facility!

So you Bullshitting Tossers; take my Internet connection away again and suffer some very gruesome consequences!

All I can say is WOW!!! I've just seen the official website for Civilisation IV which, in my humble opinion, has got to be the finest strategy game ever conceived. I became a fan of Sid Meier's original Civilisation game completely by accident way back in 1997 when I owned a Commodore Amiga; I had bought a copy of Worms but for some reason it wouldn't work on my computer so I exchanged it for Civilisation as the shop keeper wouldn't give me a refund. I was having quite a blond day when I chose Civilisation because oddly I thought it cost the same as Worms but after handing over yet another £5, cripes things were cheap back then, I walked out with probably the one and only game I would love more than any other.

There have been times in the past that I've needed to stop myself from starting a game of Civilisation because I know that once I start playing I won't be able to stop, and when you run your own business that can be a very dangerous thing. I don't know what it is about Civilisation that gets me to play for so long; there are other games out there that although good just don't match it's superb game play and it's ability to lose you in your own conquests against all your foes. One feature in the game I especially like is when your cultural influence grows other cities defect and join you, I usually waste no time at all in renaming those cities to something that's more in-keeping with my own Civilisation i.e. Shanghai to Sheffield etc.

I currently own version three and even though you can spend hours playing it, it can take months or even years to master it - something which, due to my busy schedule, I've not yet been able to do. If I wasn't needing to move house over the Christmas period, and save all my money, I'd buy a copy of version four for myself; so without wanting to sound like a mercenary I'd like you all to get acquainted with my [Amazon Wishlist], I hope Father Christmas knows I'm moving house soon.

I've wanted to write something more on my blog since my last post but can't think of anything to say, each day for me is pretty much the same as the last at the moment - Wake up, start work, have lunch, do more work, have dinner, do more work then go to bed. All I seem to be doing right now is working; I have a list as long as my arm of things that need to be completed by Christmas and it always seems like it's that time of the year where the vast majority of the population can't see past. It's strange that so many time constraints are placed around Christmas, as if Christmas Day is doomsday.

What I find funny is the realisation and in most cases anticlimax to the whole Christmas affair. Shops usually start peddling their Christmas wares in the middle of September and as soon as that happens we have three months of it; I'm sure if it were possible to overdose on Christmas then Intensive Care wards across the country would be filled to capacity. Then the blessed day arrives and after the presents have been unwrapped and the Turkey has been devoured, a vast majority of us pass out in front of the Telly to watch a sickly mix of Televisual feasts ranging from Song's of Praise to the usual range of unexceptional films that have been saved up by the TV people to pull in those important Christmas viewing figures.

What I also find extremely funny, on the ever increasing run up to Christmas, is that we begin to hear people saying "I don't have enough time" as if Christmas has suddenly been announced by the government and is due to happen in a fortnight. I really don't want to sound like I'm having a downer on the whole Christmas thing but when you strip away the jolly feeling and the tinsel it winds up being just another day where, we all just sit about like over-indulged kitties being bored to death by television that could induce a Diabetic seizure.

With all that being said, I'm not blaming the masses of people who look forward to and enjoy Christmas but rather the advertising, marketing and media people who've turned Christmas from a very quiet, understated event into a giant, overbearing, sugar-coated mess. It's impossible to sell anything to anyone at Christmas, unless it's something that you can tie a bow around and peddle as 'This Years greatest kids toy', so to those Kings and Queens of 'Bastardisation' couldn't you just tone it down a bit? We all love Christmas the same way we all love Cake, but we don't like it being violently shoved down our throats.

What does "david able bmw", "a little conclusion about the romans" and "sell your daughters" all have in common? Absolutely nothing it seems but without these little oddities, that I'm sure make perfect sense to the people who wrote them, my website would remain very much undiscovered. The only problem is of course is that I doubt the people entering "what if rome hadn't fallen" and "cake microbe" into [Google] would have found my ramblings to be of much help to them, I mean there you are looking for the meaning of life and all you kind find is my take on car dealerships and computers. So to all those hapless internet users who are just trying to find some pearl of wisdom either to swot up for a pub quiz or find a pre-written Thesis/Essay on the subject of Cartesian Dualism, I apologise unreservedly and point them to the fountain of knowledge that is [wikipedia.org].

On non-search related news I've been trawling iTunes for some yet unheard song I might like and came across the Prodigy - You'll Be Under My Wheels and to my delight found it's the soundtrack used in a very good BMW 1 series advert last year, so that's certainly a song I would be uploading to my iPod (if I had one). Perhaps it's just my years spent in the media sector or my early fascination with adverts on the telly that drives me to watch really good adverts over and over again, but I absolutely love it! My favourite for some years now has to be the Agent Provocateur cinema ad featuring Kylie sitting on a bucking-bronco, not for it's gratuitous display of almost naked Miss Minogue but it's simplicity and effectiveness; I was lucky enough to speak to a cinema advertising executive some years ago, and despite what you may have heard, the ad was not pulled for indecency but in-fact it had been so successful the manufacturer couldn't keep up with demand!