So this is Christmas. We get to celebrate it a day early as we celebrate 24th not the morning 25th. Njah njah njah 
Everyone have a merry Christmas!!
I installed Spam Karma so let me know if there’s a problem. I’ll test it out on this post, too. [edit] or not… all my evil comments are getting through — oh well, I just gotta wait and see [/edit]
[edit: Dec 29] Oooh, it works beautifully. [/edit]
The wind outside is unbelievable. The chimney makes a lot of noise and I bet Amadeus is freaking out. Earlier today I walked to the post office thinking that as long as the wind doesn’t stop me from walking, it’s not too bad. 
I mailed a Xmas gift to Katrina, Australia. Late as usual but I can’t break the tradition now can I? I also fetched a package for Dad which contained a present for his (and Mum’s) godson — one of them, the youngest of them. “Hyttynen” (mosquito). Yup. One of those.
Yesterday I went to see the baby of a high school friend of mine with another high school friend of mine with whom I’ve been in touch after HS though. The one with the baby boy I hadn’t. The baby (will be christened in Jan, name a secret for now) was soooooo beautiful!! Or should I say handsome We, excluding the baby, talked for 4 whole hours about all that had happened after high school. That was nice. I’m waiting for a message in Jan telling me the name
The other day, probably on my way to meet the high school friend, I started thinking about a proper blog topic and I remember being excited about it. Not having had my notebook nor any other paper-y thing to write on, all I can remember now is “Alkaseltzer”. And reminiscing on that doesn’t bring ANYTHING back from what I was thinking… Actually, *what* was I thinking?!
So, Xmas is coming. Feels weird, as if the year has gone by really really fast this time. I didn’t even buy me a Christmas calendar this year — first time. I’m happy that I didn’t have awfully hard time finding presents this year. Well, I cheated a little: I asked some people what they wanted.
Anyway, I can’t wait for Xmas eve (yup, we weird Finns celebrate it on the eve). Carrot casserole, sweet potato casserole. Oh, and presents I know we’re only getting a couple this year (we’re getting old… I know) but still, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see which game I get!!!
Guess who has a terminology project due the end of the year. Wa-hey. 
I installed MtDewVirus’s Comments posted elsewhere plugin but I can’t seem to get it working. I’m not sure if the problem is in my blog and trackbacks (there have been problems but I tested trackbacks when I changed servers and it worked). Anyway, testing trackbacks here.
OK, trackbacks work. But I haven’t figured out why the stand-alone trackback tool doesn’t seem to be getting a trackback through.
While browsing Idiot on a Stick which I found yesterday, I stumbled across a nice CSS snippet at the IOAS forums. It’s a transparency effect that works on more browsers than just IE (it has the alpha filter):
filter: alpha(opacity=50);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=50);
-moz-opacity: .5;
-khtml-opacity: .5;
opacity: .5;
I tried it on the menu here but noticed it slows down the scrolling noticeably. So, I’m not implementing it here but on the up-coming site about Amadeus
I also found a way (which was adapted from this) to make rounded corners in pure CSS, without images. Can’t remember if it was also via IOAS…
It’s nice to see (no use clicking that link; the site just upgraded WP and apparently the old posts aren’t coming back) that I’m not the only “girl” playing Half-Lives and Painkillers and Dooms and what not. I would’ve left a happy comment on the post but the form was closed so I’ll trackback it
I’m itching to get back to Painkiller but a) my eyes are tired so I probably wouldn’t dare push my luck, b) my sister’s still online and I don’t want to overload poor Simon who’s acting as a Master to that little slave over there.
I was going to trackback the Comment text plugin page, but I noticed the plugin author had noticed the missing quote problem and corrected it. I, however, hacked it together myself. It just needed some complexity to the code that builds the comment links:
<!-- First link, to get a custom text, around line 50 -->
echo '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '#comments' . '">' ."$text ($number)" . '</a>';
<!-- Second link, to get default text, around line 54 -->
echo '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '#comments' . '">Comments'. "($number)</a>";
Another thing, I’m making a site for Amadeus
Ehm… what was I thinking: “serene”? I’ve been playing Painkiller which is quite a hectic game. I’ve slaughtered hell’s boogers that attack me in hordes. Not even close to serene! Oh, and while I was making the header image + design for the Ami site, the computer suddenly shut down and I found out that a safety fuse had blown out. The fridge and oven in our kitchen were without electricity as well as our neighbour’s kitchen. Oh, and don’t forget our computers.
Despite the boogers (I know booger is the stuff that comes out of one’s nose, so?), or because of them, Painkiller is a very nice game. Somber. Nicely gruesome. I was a bit worried how it’d play on Simon because the minimum specs was 1,5 Ghz and I have 1,4. The game runs like a charm, however, and I didn’t even have to lower the performance settings. The graphics are amazing! A starry sky at the cemetary is very beautiful — until the skeletons attack.
The game is so hectic that I can’t play it for long without starting to feel a bit of motion sickness or something. Maybe I should lower the head bob setting.
I got 3 hours of sleep last night.
That’s right. I went happily to bed at 0:15 thinking “well, it’s going to be a short night but not too much”. Then, with Cockburn’s (pronounced ‘coburn’) triggers and goals and actors and scopes and variations swirling around in my head, I was still staring helplessly at the clock at 3:15.
At 6:15 I got up, a bit dizzy, feeling as if I’d just gotten my eyes closed. Mug of coffee, cereals and off I went to the train station.
All things considered (like the sloppy 1-2 hour studying the night before), the Introduction to Application Design exam went alright (I think so at least). I always get crazy ideas when I’m tired, at least more creative than when I’m my dull and well-rested (*cough cough*) self, so I drew use case diagrams and sequence diagrams on making coffee (and related).
After the exam I decided to run around in shops a little. I got my godson one of these from DinSko, in kids’ size, of course. 
(Looked better when the theme had a purple background…)
I hope he has enough sense of humour for those — I believe he does. That’s all I could find but I re-hit the shops with a friend of mine. Couldn’t find much then either but at least I know where NOT to look.
But, NO COFFEE today. Not after breakfast. My sister ought to be proud.
Hold on, does Caffe Latte ice cream count?
The network connection on my work computer didn’t work this morning. Linux wouldn’t start because it couldn’t find my home directory. On Windows, everything worked, except the connection and the stuff I’m doing on Protege kind of needs a connection (and I can’t google offline). So, the configurations were being updated which took half an hour but still there were problems with the connection. So I went to the student area where there are 4-5 computers. Not a place of peace and quiet. Next to me sat a man who mumbled to himself all the time, and you know how a low-pitch mumble is very very audible (like a darn bass boom).
Now I’m finally back in my own room (not without a roommate, alas) and the connection works. Too bad I have to get going in half an hour. (Last terminology lecture, and last lecture ALL YEAR — there’s an exam on Application Design on Thursday, though)
I’m browsing some manuals for terms to put in the ontology. In one printer manual there read:
For optimum performance, use the printer at elevations below 2,500 m (8,200 ft.). Performance may diminish at elevations between 2,500 m (8,200 ft.) and 3,000 m (9,840 ft.). Use at elevations above 3,000 m (9,840 ft.) exceeds operability limits.
Shoot, I can’t take the 82 kg printer with me on a mountain hike.
I’m trying out — once again — Alex King’s Since Last Visit hack which should show how many new posts and comments there are since your last visit. I never got it working properly before, and the Javascript code never appeared in my source code, but now I nicked the code off another site using the hack and pasted it straight into the index page. Hopefully it’ll start working now.
@ 23:06
Ah, this is even better, a non-JavaScript version of the hack!!