Where in the world is AlbertPacino?

Digg has a couple of celebs. The most well known is of course our dear friend Kevin, and his co-hort Alex. However there is one other user who is famed for his submission prowless, and his frontpage sucess rate.

AlbertPacino, is the name, and digging is his is game, or at least it was. I'm a mutual friend(only on digg sadly) of our dear friend albert, so sadly i don't have the answers, but i would like to know what happen to the guy. Sure we got guys like dirty fratboy, and snipehack who keep digg full of quality stories, but come on, Albert is the number one digger, even though he hasn't dugg or submitted a story in almost 4 months!!! Plus his Blog is just as empty as his profile.

He was the first real, well known digg user (after kevin and the digg crew of course). Asking for server logs isn't what i'm after, but i just wanna know that the guy is ok. 4 months is a long time, as a community i feel that digg( or at least some of it's members) ought to find out what made albert leave, at what was (and if you check the top users page) the height of his digging life. Finally is there anything we can do to help him out, we did it with pricerite photo...

Concerned Digg member

Veritech

I love Technology

Not to state the obvious, but it really is cool. Many of you may know of my love for google maps. Well microsoft has had a similar app out for a while, called windows live local. And from an image quality and variety point of view it wipes the floor with google, it's not as fast, but sure is amazing. In fact it's got hi-res imagery of hemel, and my old/new haunt southampton. Even more amazingly i was able to snap this picture.

Circled in red is the actual room where i lived when i was at uni.

Pretty cool, i also got a pic of where i work now, and almost got one of my house. What makes this thing really cool, is the fact that you can see an image with actual depth, rather than just one with the tops of buildings.

And in case anyone wondered, i didn't do a post code search, i found using landmarks from the towncenter ^_^

Anyways, it's like 1am and got things to do, like sleep.

CSS (sort of) rounded corners

Having seen a million rounded corner techniques, in the past. I used my minimal css knowledge to "create" my own.
Personally I love nifty corners, but when you want to use a background image, and not just a colour they just don't cut it.
Now if you look around my site, in anything other than IE, you will see it looks pretty crap, I've learned a lot about css in that time, and my skills nowadays are significantly better, honest.

So lets begin. This is my New websites header image, nice don't you think?
So I've round the corners on a photo in photoshop, not quite the whole story.
The green box on the left is part of the background image, but the right side is actually a floated div, containing a transparent png(gif's can also be used to allow it to work better with older browsers).



Now to achieve this I simply created a div that was located inside the "main" div where I have the background picture located. So the html looks like this

div class="header">
div class="header_curve">/div>
p>a href="#">Russian Space Station/a>/p>
p> /p>
/div>
Blogger wasn't rendering this right, so i remove the front of the tags to show you

The "header_curve", is used like a sliding scale, so it pushes against the right margin, and so expands and contracts with the parent element. To do that I used the following css

.header{
height:500px;
background:url(images/headerc.jpg) no-repeat;
}
.header_curve{
float:right;
height:300px;
width:20px;
background:url(images/curves.png) no-repeat;
}

The "header" class provides the height need to show the all of the image, and the image. While the latter class, contains the image we will use to cover up the right end of the image.

So what do the core images look like?
Well here's the background image

And here's the curve image

I've coloured it black, but you should make it what ever color your background is.

Ok, thats great, but there is one problem, the slider will slide right off the div and into who knows. To stop that we use "max-width" in the parent(or in the body tag like i have) element to limit the elements width, however our good friend ie6, doesn't support this property, but Opera & firefox do. I haven't tested it yet, but if fairly safe to assume safari and ie7 do. With a bit of JavaScript this issue could be solved.

Example time...
Now because of the way this blog's layout is designed, the content width is fixed, so anything I show you example wise will be static what ever :(, so blame me the bad designer, I had about 4 days worth of css knowledge when I built this...

So to show you here's a series of screenshots taken in opera, firefox, and ie6 to show what "my" technique does.



To wrap up, there a few things I should point out
This technique is best used with graphical headers, and not content(in my opinion at least)
If this is old, it's news to me, as far as I'm concerned I've never seen it anywhere else.
I don't consider my self a css whiz kid, I'm just a (big)kid
This isn't the best tutorial in the world, but I'm too busy to spend time making a real nice one, besides, my site sucks currently i'm better off spending time fixing it.

---

Finally if you have any questions leave a comment, and I'll try and get back to you.
Also if your wondering who the hell am I, I go as Veritech on Digg, and practically everywhere else on the web, I'm a 19 year old aspiring/professional web developer/programmer and a law dropout. I currently maintain some of the intranet sites for the one of the largest electrical retail companies in the UK, and that's me pretty much.

Gizmondo - the UK gaming firm that wasted £160 million in 18 months

In the words of Paul Davis of Begbies Traynor, one of the firms appointed as liquidators of Gizmondo: \"No matter how much you spend on cars, watches and directors perks, you just cant get through a sum as big as this quite as quickly as Gizmondo did.\"\r\n\r\nAnd here was i thinking setting a tech business was easy and cheap

read more | digg story

First Photos of MIT\'s $100 Laptop

The photos in the Flickr set are the first available pictures of the working prototype of the $100 laptop from MIT.\r\n\r\nHopefully this kinda of thing will eventually mean more geeks ^_^

read more | digg story

Good night

Evening

As i gaff i'm walking home from seeing my new favourite indie band play.
Underview as they are known is formed of Mark, James, G-man, & Chris. I must say they are pretty good.

I had a good time, and i very much look forward to doing it again.

While i was there dan, had a gripe at me about the famed reunion, i need to find out when that wild bird aka Vicky gets back. otherwise lt is still very much on.

Anyways its 2 am, and sadly i'm ngt at uni so the nite is very much old.
till another time

New Site

For my three and a half visitors, the new site cometh, and it's gonna look sweet, so much to do and see

Flickr integration, Digg integration, Even a little google action, plus smooth corners, and it's optimized for firefox, and compliant with all 3 major browsers (anyone actually care about a safari?)

Coming soon... As is my bed

I got a D in ICT at A level

So some of you may remember, that i got a D at AS level in ICT of all things, well Mr. D made his first Application today, it's called Hold on, the story of how it came to be can be found here.

The app it's self can be downloaded here.

Sadly it's a palm only app, that solves a palm only problem, it's version 0.01, so think extreme beta!

Sorry windows mobile suckers...

Garnet for life, or at least till the end of this year,

oh and before i forget, heres what it looks like



As i'm an Open kinda guy, the source code, all 14+ lines of it will be coming soon. I'm kinda of tired, now, and i got a contract extension too, so i'll be showing my 1337 css skills soon, (and no this site isn't an example of that)

Quote of the Day

Me "Damn all of that for nothing"

I was saying that until i actually tested the app ^_^ i love coding

New Look

As promised i'm working on a new design for the blog, this one will feature some cool css techniques, it's not only my personal page, but my CV in action, so expect some AJAX(cause you all know what that is), Flickr integration(yeah i got one), and maybe even some more cool stuff. I've only spent about 4 hours on the site so far, but it looks nice, but it's far from finished.

I'm kinda waiting to complete my 38" desk space... (i should order it tomorrow ^_^), anyways i took some web dev tests. Nothing special just a few quizs on w3schools
Html: 19/20
xhtml:18/20
Css:18/20
Javascript:16/20

About fair, also i just got a brainwave, along with flickr and digg, i want to add some bookmark integration into my site, something that can be imported into firefox.... I'll get back to you on that one.

Until another time

Quote of the Day

"I hate people who sell the BiG issue"

So obviously paul from the apprentice, is real big on the homeless

Do before i die...

Everyones got that list of things, that they want to do before they die, right?

Well in recent times mines increased somewhat

First up on the list, i want to do the London Marthon, 26 miles of pure joy. I've penciled this one in for next year. Everyone will know by christmas whether i'm running walking or not. It will be hard on my body, but i think it's do-able.

Next up, i want to go to Hong Kong, this one is very easy, i just need 500 big ones, someone to go with and week off work/uni. The only thing stopping me at the moment, is the other travelling party, my mum can only go holiday time, by bro's getting married, and david isall you guys are busy buying new cars, or massive out of this world computer setups...

On the subject of cars, My final one, is drive the Gumball Rally 3000. Thats reasonable i hear you say. Well my ideas of style and comfort aren't. In case you didn't know it's a 40K , (and thats not monopoly paper) just to enter! This includes private air travel for you and your car (i'll get to that bit in a minute), plus 7 over night stays in 5 star hotels, and loads of parties.
So what would i drive... A C2, Golf, think a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. So now your wondering, a. jon's nuts, and b. that costs like a zillion quid. Well actually i did my research, It's only £174,700 On the Road, inclusive of VAT, bargin, oh and i forgot to add in my special extras (24's, 100 cd disk changer, built-in mac-book pro docking station, wi-fi ...) So lets call it 190 after a visit to west coast customs.
Oh, and i have to get 2.1 million quids worth of crash insurance cover, the devils in the deets peeps.

So by my rough calculations, i need to be earning appoximately 200 to 250k (after tax of course) at least. With that amount i can get the car on finance,(18 monthly payments £10000 ^_^).
I got it all planned out...


Quote of the Day

George "Jon, can mass produce chip and pin cards"
Me "Like i said, only in quanities of 10"

I can't really, but i can make pretty good fake ID's

Jon's gone legal(sort of)

Evening, coming at ya from the T|X, and my dining room.
Some of you may know i refuse to pirate music Unless you dump it on my pc. As a result my collection is a little bit on the cheap sideold side. Don't get me wrong 11+ GB of music is sweet, but it's not all that fantastic.
Enter All of Mp3. Although its legality is questioned almost as much as much as my sexuality once was, it is the only place to get charted popular Non-DRM'd music at high qualities. Plus the prices are ridiculously cheap. I bought 2 Albums for $3! both Mos Def.

Check it out you pirates

Incase you wondered,wyes i still torrent tv shows, but very very rarely movies. Hopefully a legal-ish solution cometh.

Now if you excuse me i got apply for my student loan, again.

Quote of the Day

Steve "You wanna watch it on my Powerbook?"
Me "Umm, Yes you never have to ask me to play with a powerbook"

I love those things, now if only there was a l2"...

Blast from the past

Some may remember I'm packing 0.4 TB of storage in the Blu-ray. Well most of that is filled with copies of various things. While browsing through it I found the following gem. It dates back to my "I'm gonna be a rapper phase" which lasted a little while. I still have the 3 tracks I recorded cleverly hidden in my music folder, if you ask nicely I may trade for stamps, and milk. Any way here it is, it's a parody of the So solid crew song, 21 Seconds, entitled Party Political Broadcast. So without further ado...

Party Political Broadcast by Jonathan Dalrymple

Ha, ha, ha who ya voting for?

Lord Jeffery Archer:-
Megacon up first
21 years, no sh*t
I ain't got no time to campaign now
Hold this, yo g
Go by in a blacked out prison v
Archer can get two convictions easy
Seen my book in stores, other prisoners wanna jack me, stab me
Say come step to me,
That was the last thing that I saw, switch
I said mpÂ’s wanna see nigga, get rich
But niggas don't really want see MpÂ’s get rich
so niggas wanna see mp, get bitched
But mps don't really wanna be ditched

Charles Kennedy:-
C KÂ’s never fading
Second in term In office, sing while i'm bathin
L -D to the K's never phasing
I wanna tell my enemies that weÂ’re racing
So Lib dems, weÂ’reamazing
In a few g's we're bound to be over taken
Addicted to this life that I wanna be tasting
You blame me for the time thatÂ’s the parties been wasting?
Your hating, constituents, there's money to be making
Actor Mp never statin
Smokin weed as if I was Jamaican
So when you lookin at us you start hating
You need to be reinstating

Michael Howard:-
Thug of the tory, who could I be?
M wit the I to the C that's me
Thug of the tory, who could I be?
M wit the I to the C that's me
M-I-C still thuggin
Wanna shoot tony blair while hes clubbin
Ladies come around and leave cause IÂ’m buggin
Make g's like if Iwas robbin
tory haters they are
Watching an they're plottin an they're watchin my views
Watching an they're plottin an they're watchin my chews
Watching an they're plottin an they're waiting for my cues
Never gonna stop
Never gonna stop

(chorus)

John Snow?:-
I got 21 seconds to flow,
I got 21 programs to go,
Cause f yo like me let me know
Let me in the bbc studio
N give me 21 months before I got to go
Did you see me on the news, oh no
Did you see me on the news, oh no
So if you like me let me know
Let me in the itv studio
I got 21 broadcasts before I got to go
Did you see me on the news, oh no
Did you see me on the news, oh no
So if you like me let me know
Let me in the channel 5 studio
I got 21 broadcasts before I got to go

21 viewings, t-t-t
21 occassions, t-t-t
21 programs, t-t-t
21 times, t-t-t

*David blunketts mistress?:-
you got 21 seconds to pass the mic
I got 15 seconds to say what I got to say
i won't hesitate
DavidÂ’s not here to stay
We're gonna take it top
Cause I, a-a-a-a, twenty
Cause I, a-a-a-a, twenty
Cause I, only got 15 seconds fame to go

Gordon Brown:-
Some a them slippin a
Some a them a grudge me a
such a solid chancellora
Seen me on the telly a
Face getting popular
Ha, what?
Someone chatin crapin a
No disrespect tory policies are crapin a
Raise up the case
Worship the blairs
Red is my best colour
So labour, we are all players, instigators
Gimmie a rumour an make it famous
I send it back to you, and still get in the papers
21 months to sign papers

Kilroy Slik:-
Who wants to set your mind free
Cause I got the key
Turm em off an all my plan ukip can set you free
Trendsetter change like the weather her
21 secs, UkipÂ’s still better
I,you,don't know
You,you,don't know
So I had to have a show
An if you don't know please lemme know
Please lemme know
The papers had to snitch
Sad buggers had to go to the feds to get rich
I got spilt on my back
An insert the bit
An get paid all day long

(Chorus)

Tony Blair:-
Every war I start
Every bribe I take
Every union I make
Every single mistake
Every promise I break
There's always a snake
Wanna get in no. 10, way
Through the tunnel
After 21 months and IÂ’m still in trouble
Iraq needs to reform on the double
Wanna double my cash
Wanna double my term
After 21 months, my moneyÂ’s still gonna flow
An if you step on my toe
Is Labour still gonna grow
When there on a high
When there on a low
Whether I'm on a rave
Or sheriÂ’s on a roll
sex it up
Wooh

John Prescott:-
big up the waist line
I got 21 inches inside leg this time
First of all I'm gonna big up the kitchen ladies
chopping slender an fine
Mmmmmmm, mine
Don't gimmie no deadline
Gimmie some more time
Gimmie 29, months to lose this weight
Other Mp's wait in line
Talk to all the brighton fans,
I got 29 years till my diets done
2 multiplied by 14, plus 1
PrescottÂ’s done.

Comment as you like

Quote of the Day

nameless :"I wanna be Genesis"
Me "Genesis isn't a character in the bible"
nameless :"Well i wanna be Hebrews then"
Me "How about your Void instead, better yet how about you be Darkness"
nameless "There not in the bible!"
Me "ever read Genesis Chapter 1 verse 2, you know, the first page"

Walk before you can run....

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:2

Funny Way to Park a Plane.

"A Varig airlines cargo plane from Brazil sits parked at the Mexico City airport with its nose up in the air after the cargo was unevenly distributed on Wednesday April 12, 2006." - Yahoo Photo.

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12 30-inch flatscreens mounted!

When friend of QJ.NET "Crazy Jon" called us and told us about a project this project, we didn't believe it. Then we got to his house, sure enough -- twelve 30-inch Dell flatscreen monitors are sitting in his office, and he's grinning from ear to ear. Also among the pile of goodies are six NVidia GeForce 7900 GTX 512mb video cards!

And phil thought his setup was sweet

read more | digg story

Good things come to those who work

In the last couple of days it's been like christmas, I got my precious Abit AN7 and overclocked to 200mhz nivarna, A palm wireless keyboard, to go with my T|X. I'm actually typing this post on it. It's a full size keyboard that folds up into a little package about the size of your hand. Very cool, and not too bad.
I've just finished ordering a new 250GB hard drive for my PC, and i've got my next computer all lined up already.

Something tells me that i just might be a geek, who fails to live up to his need to blog post, and lusts after highend mac's and sony ericsson phones.
Apart from that latest shopping wave all is pretty much average in my life, nothing really amazing, and nothing terribly bad niether. If i'm honest thats how i like it to be, plain...

Quote of the Day

I know i need to tell you something, but i can't remember what.

My memory is the best

Google Earth April Fools Joke

The folks at Google Earth have added some "visitors" as an April Fools Joke. Check it out before they decide to leave...

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All things work together for good

Today, another one of work colleges left the office for the last time. I had only known him for a week, but he was a nice guy. (If he googled my name, like I did his welcome.) Anyways, as I was saying he left today, I don't know why and it's none of my business anyhow.

To protect his identity I will call him DSGi no.1, Before he left he explained to me how he came to work in our department, and it's one of the best stories I've ever heard.

After finishing uni he found himself at working at a branch of currys. As time went along he saw that the the staff in general hated the stores management. So instead of doing all this whispering in-store, he created an on-line forum where the staff could vent their feelings far from the ears of the looming management.
He designed fliers, and posters, and helped organize the site, and all was well...

However the management eventually found out, and had his rear on a platter. He given an ol'skool dressing down in front of several regional big wigs, and admitted that he actually cried.

After this, he was told to go to head office, to meet another more senior member of management. While at head office, he was introduced to my/our boss, who told him of a position that had opened up in our department. He applied and two weeks later he was hired.

Great story don't you think. Put a smile on my face at least.

Quote of the Day

Ari Gold "When your girlfriend worked in the mail room, she offered to blow me, True story"

Entourage, Only on HBOAnd Bittorrent, and limewire, and kazaa, and..., on the funniest series ever

Me, My job and Resolution

Hey everybody, just wanted to say i'm loving my new job, and i'm not only saying that cause this site is in the top ten, when you google my name (hi mr. boss man), but cause i love writting code if your using firefox ignore that last line
In other news, to match my nice 6800, T|X and my current 19" beauty, i'm getting another 19" beauty. 38" of Screen real estate, 2560 * 1024, and it's all so i can work comfortably. Seriously, it is, Honest.

It's a pitty i can't afford a new PC, but one a year is pushing it a little. In other news i visited our local night club, which i might add is pretty ... theres a word for it, ... tame... lackluster, ummm you get the point.

Finally although i'm very busy coding for the "man"(and a very nice man at that), please don't hesitate to call me up and invite me out,Please, i need to go out. I'm in town full time, and i can be funny everyother weekend.

Enough rambling for one day, i gotta go and do some work.

Navy Exchanges Fire With Suspected Pirates

Get this, the us navy sent 2 Ticonderoga Class Guided missile cruisers to hunt for pirates in 30 foot boats. Now if your not a geek and have no idea what a Ticonderoga Class cruiser is, here you go


Does it look big to you, cause it's huge! 10000 tons! It's expensive too, about half a billion if memory serves me right. These things where made to protect aircraft carriers, and hunt down soviet bombers and nuclear missles! Not pirates!

Let me put it another way, it was built to intercept multiple warhead equipped intercontinental Ballastic missiles travelling at mach 3 @ 100 000 feet, not to hunt down domestic pirates!


read more | digg story

I got hired! (again)

It's your favourite neighbourhood programmer. I got employed! I start on Monday, working for DSG aka Dixons, as a "Website Adminstraitor". I'm getting paid what i consider big bucks. It's only for a couple of months, but the pays kinda sweet. Should tide me over nicely till university comes a knocking in september. So you may see me suited and booted on my way too and from the locale. Might even do a little shopping. W810 anyone?

Quote of the Day

Agency rep."They will be paying you 8 pounds an hour, are you happy with that?"
"Yeah, thats fine"

When i do stuff i like, i really don't need to be paid.