Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Easily the best advert on TV right now. Saw this for the first time tonight and loved it. It’s ads like this that stand out from the rest. It’s well thought out with a catchy tune and makes the viewer laugh. Couple all this with some retro puppet action and they’ve got a winning formula.

Cheers

I like the advert, firstly I like Phil Collins, secondly I think the Ad is well executed, but I found these two spoofs rather good too. They tickled me.

I really like the line in the second one, “No Coco, use your potty”

lol

I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve had a lot of other things on my plate. I’m here now though so that’s the important thing.

I read a wonderful tongue in cheek review of the upgrade benefits of Windows XP when compared to Vista.

To be honest there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft has really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly.

Have a read of the whole thing, I find it’s great, a little biased as one would expect but funny all the same.

Cheers

What the bloody hell is wrong with IE you may say, why would Mark, a seemingly nice guy, refer to IE in such a cruel way. Well my friends, this time it is down to IE’s poor handling of modern MIME types.

XHTML web pages should have their MIME types set to application/xhtml+xml instead of the far older text/html. Try using application/xhtml+xml with IE though and it simply does not know what to do. I asks the user if they want to download the file rather than render it like it’s supposed to.

the modern javascript MIME type is also not handled correctly. Instead of the old text/javascript type the newer application/javascript should be used, but instead of working like a modern browser IE simply doesn’t render any application/javascript elements, it just skips over them as though they were not there.

The thing is this is not the bleeding edge of MIME types. application/javascript was registered by an informational RFC in June 2005. application/xhtml+xml was registered by an RFC in January 2002. These are not new things, in January 2002 IE 6 SP1 had not even been released yet. Microsoft have had a lot of time to get things right with regards to standards.

I want to serve my MIME type correctly on my site. I want to use application/xhtml+xml, but I cant because IE doesn’t support it. So instead I’m having to sort some horrid backwards compatible script out to server text/html for all those Internet Exploder users out there. Please IE users, take this advice, switch browsers to something more standards compliant. Safari for Windows and Firefox are both excellent choices and work far better than IE for web standards compliance. Why should you care about standards? Because if nobody followed any standards on the net then simply put the Internet would cease to exist, fragmenting into incompatible sections where only people using one certain standard could view certain parts of the net. Imagine having to use one browser to read your e-mail, another to do online shopping and then another one to go to a different shopping website. Not nice, so please for the sake of the earth use something other than IE.

Cheers

The Pirate Bay has somehow managed to acquire the domain ifpi.com which used to belong to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the infamous anti-piracy agency. Quite how they acquired the domain is not quite clear but in an interview with torrent freak Pirate Bay admin Brokep simply said
“It’s not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it’s ours and we’re keeping it.”
He wants to use the site to spread pirate interests
“The International Federation of Pirate Interests (IFPI) is the new international federation we’re starting in order to get the word of piracy spread.”

So there you go, what happens next remains to be seen.

Cheers

Just testing to see if I can post correctly from my mobile phone to my blog while in a tent in north yorkshire. apparently I can Lol.

I seem to remember doing a nerd test some time back and scoring low 90’s out of 100.  So like a true nerd I thought I would see if I had leveled up over time.  And guess what?

I have

Bonus nerd points should be awarded for the use of the phrase “level up” in this post.

lol