It was my birthday. I was given books. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Unsurprisingly, the author ruined what would have been a fantastic story by a failure of an ending. The story was intricate, the characters interesting. Dr Iannis died pointlessly, his tale left untold. Why the author chose to neglect that and write about the rather boring moaning of Pelagia for a third of the book is beyond me. Killing him like that was also…saddening. Iannis was much, much more interesting than his daughter protagonist, who spends most of the book lamenting the fact that every male on the island seems to want her. She is a blank, the book revolving around her, so maintaining the blank and killing off everyone else is illogical.

I also received a sketchbook. Not an off-the-shelf one—Bella actually stitched each page together by hand. It’s beautiful. There are few things I have been more proud to own, that make me happy to see and use. I must admit, my drawing skills are limited, but I still savour it. Presents are rarely as thoughtful as that.

Ndubz wrote a book. I had no idea he was literate…

I’m now using Last.fm to track my music habits. It’s beautiful, I must admit. I have been doing desktop wallpapers based on my favourite artists due to the amount of pictures they make available. Apparently I listen to Paramore a lot more than I thought. And I don’t know why Cobra Starship are on there. Cobra Starship are awful.

Joanna and I are still together, though why she settles is unknown to me. I find myself watching the Matrix (the third one, whatever it’s called). I’d forgotten how progressively bad the series got. This one is the merde du merde.

I’m rambling again. I’m too tired to care. Too. Much. Work.

Localize, Localise

The extension is rigidly American. I, as a UK citizen, could only look on in horror as my Google results pointed at results which have no relevance to me and my Amazon results came up in dollars! I went scouring through the localization page, which came up with one amusing command: amazonuk. What the hell is the point? Ubiquity’s main philosophy is the ability to use natural language—but here I am, using a weird command just to get results which are useful to ~61 million people? Hm, that seems a bit off, to me.

A better solution would be to put a simple radio button choice when you download it. All the change between US and UK people would be is a switch between .com and .co.uk. This way, you could completely modify the available commands for each country, and save people giving up when they see the hoops they have to jump through in order to get utility.

We Do Not All Run OS X

Another casuality of Mozilla’s apparent one-mindedness is the user interface of Ubiquity. It’s hard to miss the brushed-metal and engraved-text styles which are signatures of Apple—except really, really badly implemented. Yes, Apple designs beautifully. But I’m on Windows. I’m not going to change any time soon. What are you trying to tell me, Mozilla? Even Apple themselves have given up the vaguely traumatic UI of Safari in Safari 4 for Windows. Take the hint.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the other available theme, Simplicity, didn’t show so little information, though I do see that it’s pretty.

So please, Mozilla, écoutez-moi. We’re not all American Mac users. Open your minds.

I’m not just being mean, either. They admit it themselves. Firefox has gone far too long without an update to integrate itself into Windows in the same way that it’s integrated itself into our hearts. In fact, Windows 7 has just gone to RTM—equipment manufacturers are now able to get their hands on it—meaning that Mozilla has bypass an entire operating system.

What’s worse is that Firefox totally lacks any theming documentation. In all seriousness, it’s totally barren. And the type of person who can figure it out themselves is typically not the sort of person who can produce a tasteful theme (I do, though, realize there are a few notable exceptions.) So, I took the challenge.

With a proud heart and a wary mind, I can give you First Wave.

Screenshots

First Wave under Windows 7 open to a verified domain.

First Wave with 3 tabs open on a 4:3 monitor.

Installation Instructions & Requirements

1. You should be on a Windows PC, preferably running 7, Vista or XP. The theme will install itself under other OSes, but support isn’t provided and it’s likely to look quite odd.
2. You must have the Stylish extension installed.
3. Go to the theme page and hit “Install into Stylish”. Simple!

*finds none.*

Oh, alright. Well, English music is getting a bit stale. I mean, opening up iTunes now I get such fantastic artists such as Deadmau5, with “Random Album Title”. Try harder, Deadmau5. And spell your bloody name right whilst you’re at it.

What else…oh, the Jonas Brothers. Eugh. God. I don’t even need words to express how distressing the fact that they’re still alive is.

So, yes, quite a dull scene. Where else is there to look, then, but to the French? Alright, alright, you’re right, it does sound just slightly obnoxious (but less so than the Jonas Brothers.) It does bring to mind quite archaic sounds, too. But, you know, some of it sounds really good.

Forgive me, then, when I say when I clicked on the most interesting song, I was enthralled. Well, perhaps that’s not the best word, but I can’t think of a better adjective right now. Silenced! Wait. Too late. Damn.

Have a listen to it. (L’effet papillon, by Bénabar)

That’s the funniest video I’ve seen in a while. His expression! Ah.

Next, Le dîner, by Bénabar. I adore this song mainly because it speaks of a situation that doubtless any man has been in. Well, I’m not so sure about some guys, but, you know…

Fruitful though that is, I assume we should get some feminine voices into the mix. Being slightly less shallow—but only slightly, because I picked this for the album cover and that only—I picked up on the rather interestingly named Amandie Bourgeois with her latest single L’homme de la situation.

You’ll have to turn your speakers up for that one (NB: I’m not trying to trick you into deafening yourself. Okay, a little bit.) I like the fluffy man. He’s funny. Okay, less superficial…ly (is that even a word?), she has a good voice and the chorus is damn catchy, even if she has the really, really unfortunate affliction of not being able to pronounce the word je, which means “I” in French, instead misrepresenting it as “j’aie”, meaning “I have.” That’s just wrong.

Having been intrigued by Cœur de pirate, a bloody stupid name at the best times, I played Comme des enfants. It was so not what I was expecting. It was sweet. I know, how can an artist with “pirate” anywhere near its name produce something…nice? Eugh, it confounds me!

Well, I guess it just teaches you: never trust an album by its cover. Pfft, like I’d stop doing that. If you haven’t put the effort in to be pretty, you ain’t getting my money.

Anyway, having not learnt my lesson, I chose Ariane Moffatt as my next…experience. It was colourful, as you’ll soon find out. (Je veux tout.)

It does sound a bit weird—okay, a lot weird—but it’s actually pretty good once you get into it. It’s also brilliant because the French is very easy, so if you’re a GCSE student or something and want to enjoy a song you can actually understand, this is the one.

Finally (the crusades are approaching their end!), we find Indochine. These lot I’m not as fond of, I must admit. They belong to a group I like to call “White Noise Musicians”; that is, they make good music to listen to in the background, but it’s dull as hell if you’re actually, really…listening. Last one, now. It’s called Little Dolls (I really hate it when they put English in, you know. Eugh.)

Enjoy the sweet loads, my merry lads.

However, the trip to India was long and arduous, and I grew bored. The garrison at Morocco had grown sufficiently strong to warrant itself a general and some combat experience. One of the terms of my alliance with Spain was unlimited military access to their lands, so my newly-founded army, which I had nicknamed Sabrina’s Soldiers (don’t ask), marched up through Gibraltar and into the middle of the Spainish frankly barren landscape.  From there, I launched an assault on the lightly-defended Lisbon. The Portuguese were taken completely unaware, and the lightly defended city capitulated quickly. I had yet to find a good, worthy fight, and my military technology was placing me above all others, especially the invention of grenadiers.

The grenade is an odd contraption. Supposedly originating from the Byzantine Empire in the 8th Century, it took the form of a small ceramic case filled with Greek fire. The actual composition of Greek fire is a mystery to us; it was a state-guarded secret, and a close one at that. What we do know is that the Byzantine army made extensive use of it, even pressurizing it and projecting it at enemies in the most literal sense of flamethrower. The term grenade originates from the la grenade, pomegranate in French, so-called because of the shrapnel reminding twisted soldiers of pomegranates. This term apparently arose during the Glorious Revolution, the overthrow of King James II of England, which resulted in William of Oranges, a Dutchman, claiming the throne. The first really favourable use of the grenade was during the First World War. Indeed, there is an image of French soldiers using a catapult to fling hand grenades into German trenches! But, certainly, it is unlikely that they were deployed during the 1700s, and, even if it were so, unlikely that whole regiments were assigned with the specific task of throwing them.

Anyway, with Lisbon captured, my technology sped up even more. With a university already present in the land, I could switch a school to agricultural advances, in order to get my economy up. Finally, my fleet arrived in India. I landed in Mysore to be greeted by a large army. Unfortunately for them, it was a very undertrained army, consisting of levies and mêlée infantry (I included the diacritics for a reason there. It’s shocking how many people don’t know how to pronounce the word.) Pushing my infantry forward, using my two cavalry units to deal with the mêlée men, I slaughtered the opposition. I broke off three of my line infantry in order to deal with the reinforcements approaching from the region’s capital. Formated in a “basin of death”, with two one the side and one facing head on, they were all able to fire on the reinforcements as soon as they entered the battlefield without accidentally firing a volley into the back of their mates. With any trace of a standing army destroyed, The Purple Ones made quick work of the capital, the armed citizens defending it routing as soon as they came within range of my muskets.

Now, for the pictures!

With the tax coming in its thousands from my new colony, there was nothing barring me from taking a strong, major faction head-on. I quickly chose the Netherlands (not Holland; Holland refers to two provinces within the larger country of the Netherlands. Remember it!) My navy had to sail all around the coast of West Europe, and that took a while. Finally, I was able to take on the Oranges.

Quickly, I realized that my Puckle guns—an early predecessor to the machine gun—were not going to be of any use here. The map was set on two banks of the nearby river. Not realizing that the enemy could ford the river, I sent my riflemen and line infantry to the river, where I presumed they’d cross. Before long the main contingent of the Dutch force was coming the other way. Forced to improvise, I put my reserves in the “basin of death” formation again. It was just in time, too; the place was a killing ground.

Slaughtered by bayonets and musketfire, the blue Dutch lie dead.

 My troops at the bridge didn’t arrive fast enough to provide a decisive victory, however. The Dutch, realizing that my muskets would destroy them, quickly switched to charging my infantry with theirs. Faced with superior numbers, my experienced troops fought well, but I was forced to make them withdraw, lest I lose them completely.

The Thin Purple Line fell heavily. It is a sad day for the remenant of Sabrina's ones.

 Despite all this, a relief force arrived in time and pushed the Dutch back. Fuelled by revenge for their lost Sabrinians, they charged the positions at which the Dutch had dug themselves in. Smoke filled the battlefield as hundreds of muskets fired at once. At long last, the smoke cleared to reveal only violet movement.

With Amsterdam under Venetian control, I could focus on cleaning up the Dutch once and for all. However, Sabrina’s Soldiers weren’t in the state to deal with another threat, so it was The Purple Ones who were geared up and shipped to the New World.

Surprisingly, the Dutch had managed to maintain colonies in the New World. The Purples blitzed the region, stopping only once in the Leeward Islands to keep the former Pirate lands under control till some conscripts could be recruited to hold the line. The Dutch, now completely wiped off the map, were completely dealt with. However, I knew that my army wasn’t fit to deal with another conflict with a major nation. The East India Company had laid claim to Goa in exchange for some of their advanced naval technologies, and were trying to bargain with my for Mysore. No chance. A small contingent of my garrison dealt with Ceylon before the British could take it, being more than a match for the Marathan Rebels stationed there.

The Sabrinas, having recuperated from their close-victory, were ready for a new mission. Under a random whim, I wanted control of Iceland. And Iceland did I take. I recruited more mortar units to bolster my artillery power and landed just outside Reykjavík. The opposition was pathetic and unexciting, so no screenshots.

However, Copenhagen proved a larger challenge. The Sabrinas, having landed on one side of the tangle of islands which was Denmark—the former possessor of Iceland were faced with a choice: do they wait for reinforcements from Amsterdam and sit it out where they stood and take shelter in the port, or charge for Copenhagen, hoping for the best? Taking a risk, I went straight into the capital.

The ensuing battle was a bit of a mess. The Danish Stupid-Hats managed to flank me and eliminate half of my mortars before my cavalry reserve pushed them back. The main body was easily dealt with, but I lost more men than I wished because of inadequate artillery support. Again, my grenadiers showed that they were worth their cost.

Having blown away the center part of the Danish defenders, the flagbearer finds it appropriate to wave the Venetian flag. Artillery rains down in the background.

Mêlée combat was intense, with bayonet clashing with bayonet,  drummers stabbing drummers; But the Danish simply couldn’t cope with the superior flanking movements and retreated, taking their stupid hats with them.

My treasury could now afford to maintain a new army. The Violet Stars were born in Rome. Equipped with the latest 24? howitzer artillery, socket bayonets and heavy cavalry, they were the most advanced European force of the day. I ferried them to Sweden. I knew their army was pathetic, and Stockholm would be a pushover.

The Swedish army set out to meet them. It was a bloodbath.

The effectiveness of my infantry was...unsettling.

Smoke rose up gently from the Italian lines whilst the howitzers decimated the approaching Swedes with quicklime. I can’t have lost more than twenty soldiers. The fatigued Swedes took shelter in the city’s houses, but I switched the artillery to explosives and brought the buildings down, whilst the Violets stormed those out of the cannons’ reach.

Fatigued and depleted, the Swedish army could do nothing more than enact guerilla warfare. I split the Violets up and tracked and destroyed each fragment.

“Sshh! Maybe if we hide behind here and keep quiet they won't—ARGH! MY ARM!”

With the whole of the former Swedish Empire under my belt, I could focus on my long-standing enemy: the Barbary States.

The Barbary Pirates were slavers, capturing European and, later, American ships and crew with great success from the 11th Century all the way till the 19th. Most at risk were the countries of the Mediterranean, abandoning sea-side villages completely lest they be captured, but other countries were also targeted: Iceland, Ireland and North America to name a few. Operating mostly out of Algeria, though also from Libya and Tunisia, they captured around a million Europeans to sell in the slave markets. The main factor allowing their continued existence was the lack of co-operation between the strong European nations. The Venetian fleets were asked to be constantly on high alert and policed the seas. When the French captured Algeria in 1830, though, all activities effectively came to an end.

I got there first.

The Barbary corsairs, though fearsome at sea, was controlled by a pathetic force of buccaneers and camel-mounted nomads. The Purples, outfitted with the same 24-inchers as the Violets and loaded with percussion shells, made short work of them.

“Run! Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!”

The Mediterranean was now the safest trading route in the world, guarded by my navy. With the exemption of the Ottomans and Spaniards, there was no other nation trading on this route.

The Ottomans won’t last long.

With this in mind, when I picked up Empire: Total War, I wanted to play them. At first, I had a go with Prussia, then France. And, to be honest, they’re a bit…easy. It doesn’t take a genius to create an empire from a nation which has, historically, one of the most advanced militaries in the world, nor one from a country which already had an empire. So, with the aid of a helpful mod, I unlocked all the so-called “minor factions”, nations which were considered to be too small to warrant a full-scale, unmodified campaign, as playable. To be honest, the choices weren’t that exciting; the only really cool ones were Georgia, the Italian States, the Barbary States and the Pirates. Exciting though taking over the world as a pirate is, I daresay it is kind of hard to charge a European regiment with their bayonets levelled against you with a raggle of sailors armed with nothing but a short, curved knife. So I picked Venice. Why Venice? If you said that it had everything to do with the fact that the infantry is dressed in deep purple overcoats and spoke Italian, there would be nothing I could do to deny it. With that style of thinking in mind, let’s move onto the conquests.

The blokes over at Creative Assembly start the city-state with the territory of Morea in the south-western Greece. It was not in the most brilliant region to have under one’s control; the biggest thing to its credit was a couple of farms. Venetia itself possessed some vines and a cotton weaver’s cottage in Verona. I knew immediately that early expansion and trade would be the key to success, knocking out the smaller, neighbouring nations before they had a chance to build up their armies and to secure myself from the Austrians. I knocked down the cotton cottage at Verona, replacing it with a school in order to gain an early advantage in terms of military technology over my soon to be enemies. Having secured an alliance with Spain, I built up a small army of line infantry. With a measly unit of artillery which was provided to me at the beginning tagging along, we marched straight into Rome. After a short battle (alas, I don’t have screenshots for this period of time, but there will be some of my later campaigns), Rome was mine and all of Italy, barring Naples, which was historically under Spanish control, was under the Purple Banner.  As an afterthought, I took on Malta.

At this time, the island of Malta was controlled by the Knights Hospitaller, referred to as the Knights of St John in-game, and also known as the Order of St John, was a Christian organization established as a hospital in Jerusalem, serving pilgrims who became sick during their visit to the Holy Land. During the First Crusade it became a military order, providing the pilgrims with an armed escort in addition to the infirmaries. Along with the Knights Templar, they became a powerful religious order, answering only to the Pope. Eventually, Islamic soldiers kicked them out of the Holy Land, and the Knights retreated to the island of Cyprus. Subject to the politics of the region, the Knights claimed sovereignity over Rhodes, conquering it and constructing a stronghold. Here, the newly-branded Knights of Rhodes fought with the Barbary States, also represented in-game, the Ottomans and Egypt. Finally, a 200,000 strong Ottoman army near-wiped out the Knights. The remains of the Order were allowed to retreat to Sicily, whose Viceroy—subject to the King of Spain—gave them Malta and Tripoli, in exchange for the delivery of a Maltese falcon each year.

Compared to their historic stand against the Ottomans in later years, they fell hard as the assortment of militia charged my line infantry, coming up against cold steel instead of the crude clubs they were using their rifles as. Malta proved difficult to settle. The lack of entertainment buildings meant that the populace was incredibly unhappy. Coupled with resistance to my occupying armies, and the tax I was forced to impose on them due to a decisive lack of income, the Maltese were dangerously close to rebellion.

With the immediate danger gone, and my trading ports starting to roll in the stock, I set my sights on India; in particular, Mysore. However, as my fleet was crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, I was blocked by the navies of Morocco, three of them, no less! Needless to say, I was pissed, so I landed my soldiers and took the capital. I bolstered the garrison with reinforcements from Rome whilst taking my main army—which I had named The Purple Ones—onwards towards India.

Oh well, at least I’ve come across a musician who can a) actually play and b) is quite nice to listen to as she does it, too. I used to post music up, but apparently I’m not allowed to do that anymore. YouTube to the rescue! It’s such a pity they removed music videos in the UK, though. What a way to lose market share. Bastards. Anyway, the lovely Lisa Mitchell is the one whom I speak about, and here is she with Neopolitan Dreams.

It’s still stuck in my head.

I have discovered RentACoder. I can well and truly say that I hate it. How could anyone undervalue their profession like that? $5 for a piece of coding? Come on, that’s awful! After their extortionate fee, that’s £3. THREE POUNDS. I could find that much money on the street! It makes you think, doesn’t it, about what the point is to learning this type of skill to a professional level if it’s going to be undervalued by a cheap, foreign “programmer” who outputs more invalid code than a monkey who’s handed a copy of Microsoft Word and a keyboard. Eugh. No wonder we’re in a crisis.

I’ve been thinking about words a lot. I happened across a book of Macbeth (with its title set in Helvetica, of course) and started thinking about how the English language seems to be out to get us. It doesn’t care who gets taken down in the process, either.

One of the strangest words I’ve seen is prophesy. It means to give a prophecy? Yep. Looks like prophecy, right? Of course. So it should be pronounced the same? Wrong!

Prophesy is a hard word to justify, since its very meaning has been usurped by the highly ambitious prophesize, but the mentality behind it isn’t that stupid. Well, for the bedraggled collection of words which we call English, in any case.

To put it simply, words which, as a noun, use a C, usually turn this into an S in the verb form. The most prominent example of this is advice, which changes to to advise in the verb. There is another, albeit little-known, example: practice goes to to practise.

Another example of the constant vindication is the divide between affect and effect. The noun of both is effect. Why? The world hates you. Yes, the two verbs have subtly different meanings, but for what reason? Could you just not use a different word, for goodness’ sake?

Spelling hates you and me, apparently. How rude.

Mime Types and the Internet

Officially Internet media type nowadays, the Mime type originated as a way of signifying additional files on email served via SMTP. Mime types are made up of two pieces of information: a type and then a subtype. Additionally, a charset parameter may inform of the character set of the file.

You will have used these before: when writing a HTML document, you’ve always written something like this:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
  content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

The Mime type is the text/html bit.

Usually, when a web author links to a favicon on his page, he might define it as image/x-icon.

<link rel="shortcut icon"
  href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"/>

While this is strictly correct HTML, it is telling the browser that it is linking to a nonstandard, ICO image.

The problem is that ICO images have been standardized and registered with the IANA for 6 years, and you really have to start paying them their dues.

The correct Mime type for ICO images is image/vnd.microsoft.icon. Thus, a fully correct rendition of a link to a favicon would be something like this:

<link rel="shortcut icon"
  href="/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon"/>

Respect to the Mimes, people!

The police system took a massive U-turn, and instead of the standard wanted-stars-which-never-go-away formula, they’ve mixed it up with inclusion of a search area. Sounds good? It’s not. It seems that the difficulty curve swerves massively up after three stars as pretty much all the police cars in Liberty screech after you. Even when you’re at a petty one the Random Placement Monster wants your blood more than a deranged rabbit, randomly spawning on-foot policemen and absolutely refusing to label these on the radar so the damn area is reset.

Driving’s also taken a turn for the worse in IV. All the cars—and I mean all of them—have terrible steering, and that just doesn’t work when the city has more sharp corners than a Rubik’s Cube which has been attacked by ninjas. Whenever you go somewhere whilst vaguely breaking the speed limit the gameplay pauses and steps aside to let the physics engine piss all over your face whilst you furiously mash the controls.

Now, understand me when I say that the game is truly amazing. The storyline is as immersive as a warm duvet and has a bit more depth than the comparatively shallow American-cheerleader stuff we’re used to. You’ll hear about your missions after a bit on the radio and can read about them on the Internet. The same dark sense of humour is there, right down to the logo of the bowling alley and the name of the drink vendors. The game still has some of the pin-ups of its predecessors: you can, for example, have fun with a prostitute and then step outside, gun her down and take back your money. Even the Pay ’n’ Spray is still there, although it is of dubious use unless you want to skip ahead a few hours in the game, which wouldn’t be necessary if the game didn’t decide to be a bitch and opening hours on the missions. The whore.

The combat system has been majorly revamped for the better, now emphasizing a duck-and-cover system. There are a couple of problems with it: Niko, the protagonist of arbitrary name, has a terrible tendency to take cover on the wrong side, allowing him to be riddled with more holes than a female cheese. That doesn’t subtract from the slightly sick fun of blasting people with a shotgun or watching them slowly burn when you litter the area with Molotov cocktails. The rocket launcher maintains its position as most destructive weapon, and I find myself subconsciously reaching for it because the explosions are so damn pretty. That’s right. They’re pretty. It’s beautiful watching drivers being cremated in their former vehicles. God, I need to get out more.

I haven’t yet found my ideal radio station in Liberty, but they make a comeback. Lazlow is back, and, although he’s a lot more obnoxious than he was in III, so he’s lost some of his appeal, but it is fun watching him toss around the term “Web 2.0”, which as is irritating and commonplace in the game as it is online.

Okay, I’m being a bit harsh. I love GTA IV, and not without reason. The immersion, wit and simple brilliance pretty much counteracts anything I could throw at it (apart from the driving: that will always suck.) I’m going to play on it a bit more. It’s amazing.

Keep your lives, though, lads.