Binary Loves You Too - Personal Blog and Portfolio

The cake is a lie.

That’s the headline of an article published on the Guardian website yesterday. At first I was confused. Aren’t all games already rated? I’m pretty sure my shiny new PS3 game boxes have ratings on the front and back. Clearly this needed some research as I wasn’t up to speed with the gaming rules.

As always Google comes to the rescue. Under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 all films released for sale must be classified by the British Board of Film Classification. Video games are exempt from classification unless they depict some extreme activities, such as criminal behaviour likely to encourage real life crime, and extreme sex and violence. In such cases a game will be rated 15 or 18 just like a film would be, and by law retailers cannot sell the product to underage children, just like with films. Publishers may volunteer their games for classification. Guitar Hero 3 has a BBFC rating of 12. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops + has a BBFC rating of 12. Zoo Hospital has a BBFC rating of U.

So just to reiterate so that we’re all on the same page – Games have been subject to legally enforceable classification by the BBFC since 1985.

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A short while ago I wrote my own Javascript social bookmarking toolbar (like you see on the BBC news pages - current random example). It is pretty much a total rip off of the AddThis bookmarking system, with one pretty important exception. You host the scripts and images on your own site. On the plus side it means you can do whatever you want with the script, but on the downside it means that updates are not automatic. Once you install it that is it, unless you come back here and download an updated version. Maybe one day I'll offer it as a hosted solution. But for now you guys get scripts and nothing else!

I like how it works, so I thought I would make it available to the masses.

You've got two options:

1. Download a default example version here and then play about with the scripts, or;
2. Customise your script below and copy and paste the code onto your pages as instructed.

Up to you!

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I just started doing some work on one of my sites and an annoying problem cropped up which I had (thankfully) forgotten all about. Whenever I selected any text at all, regardless of length, language, or any other criteria, in code view Dreamweaver would freeze and XP would prompt me to kill the program. Fortunately this problem seemed to be restricted to one specific include file in one site. Problem now is I have quite a bit of work to do in this file, and I don't fancy using Notepad. I like code colouring, alright?

Renaming the file, copying it, or saving it elsewhere using Notepad did sod all to fix it. There's nothing wrong with the code, because I'm amazing and don't write broken code. Dreamweaver is just being plain balls.

Google to the rescue! Maybe I was being a little bit hopeful with my search for "dreamweaver 9 crash", but I guess luck was on my side today. Result number 2 - Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 crashes when selecting text in code view ...

Swish! A quick read, some quick clicks, and my problem fixed! Here's a short copy and paste of what to do to fix the issue:

The crux of it was deleting the winfilecachexxxxx.dat file - Once doing this, it was plain sailing and hasn't crashed since.

On Windows Xp, the file is at:-

[drive]:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver
9\Configuration

On Windows Vista, you can find it in:-

[drive]:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration
or accessible via windows explorer in
Desktop\[username]\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration

My Dreamweaver is back to it's awesome self now, running like sex. Thank you very much Martin Parry for being at the top of Google! I hope you don't mind me ripping off and linking your junk.

Just a short entry to announce that my new design for Mediaid Training Services LTD has been added to the portfolio section of the site.

Completely rewritten in PHP the new version of the Mediaid site makes use of dynamic database driven content and compliant XHTML and CSS, on top of looking super sexy and smart. The content has all been rewritten with SEO in mind to improve the site's Google rankings.