Because of that, I have a lot of paper work and Brighton is confusing things. I didn’t get the grades needed for Brighton, but meh, who likes the sea anyway? DMU is far less likely to flood. Anyway, instead of just releasing me straight away they seem to be taking their time so I can’t definitely get my place with DMU yet, since I’ve not gone into clearing, so can’t send my clearing passport.

I’m going through clearing, by the way, because they had to withdraw me from 2009 Computer sciences, and enter me into 2008 Computing (which I decided on). Less theory, more programming is the hope. Not that I mind theory, I just like programming.

Till Brighton reject me, UCAS won’t send my clearing passport, which I need to get a confirmed clearing space at DMU. I phoned Brighton and asked if they could reject me quickly, and they said “It’ll be sent electronically tonight, so UCAS will have it Monday.” “Why does it take that long to send an email?” “It’s not quite as simple as an email… Oh, wait. Computing student. Umm… Bureaucracy?”

I can send my bank application in now I have “confirmation” of my place. Yay, overdraft instead of £25 charges when something bounces…

I’m still ill. Damn you, Alex.

Basically, I went to meet my dad at his the house of a women he’s seeing. It turns out it’s Stella, my law tutor from college. I think it was somewhere in Wolverhampton, so I just road my bike to her house. When I get there, she asks me to talk the rubbish out and that she puts her bin on her neighbours house, across the street. I do that, and the neighbour is looking out of her window and waves; she was in the dream, but now I think about it she’s another IT teacher at college too.

Anyway, she invites me in and we chat for a little while. Then it turns out that she rents out two of her bedrooms, and staying in one of them is Kevin-Freaking-Rose! So, I meet him for about ten minutes, but then it’s like we’ve known each other for years and we’re really good friends.

At the back of the house, part of the kitchen has been converted into a ticket desk, and there’s a room that leads off into a “cinema”. It’s just a large room with rows of seats and a TV at the end. People are already filling up the seats to watch Shrek (someone yells “Can we watch Scream instead?” and the desk clerk - someone I don’t recognise, who has dark eyes and wrinkled skin - says back “I think that’s taken out.”) Apparently, they run a minicinema for students.

There’s nothing psychologoical about htat dream (dad because he woke me up slightly during the dream, college tutors because I’m worried about A Level results, Kevin Rose in the rented room because I know he’s moved into somewhere new, cinema because I was thinking of another business idea before I went to sleep and I’ve always wanted to open a cinema), it was just a fun dream to have.

Well, I’m excited.

I’m also excited about getting to 70. Shamess is currently 53, and I’ve gotten to that “ugh, do I really have to keep leveling you?” part of the game. I guess I’m a little bit bored of WoW for the moment. I’m sure if I have a break, I’ll be up for it again.

This idea is currently still in the alpha ideas stage, so some of this may change. It’s basically my hosted WordPress package but tailored for people who’ll want to be posting comics, instead of lots of text. Here’re the changes I’d make, I think.

• The current package gives 300MB of media space (that excludes databases storage and plugin files, etc - that’s unlimited). I’d drop that to 100MB of media space for video, audio, binaries, etc. However, They can have unlimited image file space; that makes sense because they’re going to be posting lots of images.
• Still unlimited bandwidth.
• Still full access to all the features (so, they can run the site as an image-heavy blog if they like).
• Still get help with anything they get confused about, including setting up and upgrading plugins, and options.
• A different default theme from the typical package, to give the best views for a web comic. All this stuff can be change if they like, this is just default.
  • Front page is static, as to not give any spoilers of the comic.
  • Show one “post” per page. Remember that each post is one strip
• Advertising options, where the user gets a majority cut from the revenues.
  • No advertisements at all.
  • Google AdSense: Autogenerated advertisements.
  • My own ad system: I find direct advertising clients; meaning higher turn prices, and more control.
• Cost around £5 a month (more than typical package due to increased hard drive space)

First three people that comment here about this service can use it free for three months (saving you £15), and you’ll most likely make money during that time. If you’re artistic, and have an idea for a webcomic, this service is perfect for you!

Kinda makes you start to believe in some sort of god a little more, ne?

I just write up my CV, which I just need to get someone to check (I’ll probably email Paul, and ask him to take a look at the online version). It’s a paragraph over a page, so I’m not sure what to do with that. I read a post somewhere that the requirement for CVs to be only a page is silly now, since people have more roles within their jobs than before, so they take up more space explaining.

I have a list of job openings that I’m perfect for all printed off and ready for me to sort out. They’re based sort of around the West Midlands, which means I’ll be able to move out. I’m very nervous, and don’t feel like I have enough confidence to have other people relying on me yet. I suppose the only way to get that confidence is to do it; fake it till you make it.

I might actually start writing up a plug in for WordPress, for the competition, though I’m not sure when the deadline is. Either way, a useful plug in would still generate traffic, and hopefully donations! More importantly, it’d be something good to put on my CV as actual work experience. At the moment, I’ve had to really talk up what experience I do have.

In Warcraft news, I really wanted to do Deadmines tonight, with Ratio, but my connection is being so stupid.

I went to the job center today! I felt crappy going in, like I failed at life or something… I know there’s nothing wrong with using the service, but I don’t feel like it fills its purpose since both my dad and mum have been going since… well, ever. I was pleasently surprised though; there are tonnes of jobs all listed on a touch screen computer and you can print off the details and stuff. I even though programming, PHP and HTML jobs. I printed a bunch off and I’ll start working on those Monday. I’ll probably start this weekend, but I doubt I can do anything (like phoning them up and stuff) till Monday.

Apparently, I’m entitled to job seeker’s allowance, but I really don’t feel like I’m entitled to it. I mean, I am seeking, but I’ve not given the government any money at the moment, so I feel like I’d just be 100% selfishly using other people’s tax money to fund my non-productive lifestyle…

As soon as I get £10 availiable I’ll start an AdWords campaign, which would be fun to try out, since I’ve only ever played with the sandbox before. If I pick keywords well I should get a ROI pretty fast. It’s not really like I can lose money, unless lots of people come and don’t buy.

It could be awkward doing business on the same domain that I’m using personally though… Well, at least they’ll read that I’m excited about helping them, and commited.

Oh, yeah. Also, I was going to say that I’ve emailed the WordPress theme place to see if I can get registration there to upload Eventide. That should increase traffic here, hopefully, which may send traffic to my WordPress hosting. If not, at least people will stop using Beccary’s broken version.

I’m not at all worried about getting into university though. The way I see it is that I’m likely to get into DMU. If I miss that, it really won’t be by much, in which case I can fight my way through clearing. If all fails miserably, I’ve still got all of next year to reapply. I can even resit an A Level unit or two if I really have to, not getting into university won’t push my timetable back at all.

The problem of this being my last exam though is that I’m actually unemployed once it’s over. Dad’s nagging me that my child support money will stop in September so I’ll have to get a job to pay him the money he’s losing out on. What I think he meant though was that I needed to get a job in order to pay him board money. Which is really a dumb thing to say, since I’m hoping to have moved out of this house long before September anyway. I just have to start looking for a job now; I’m not really sure where to start though. I’ll make an appointment at the Job Centre tomorrow, I guess.

Meanwhile though, I’ve bought shamess.info and I’m using part of that to advertise freelance, hosting and SEO services I can start offering. That’s something I wanted to do before, but never really had time in between World of Warcraft and college. Now it’s just World of Warcraft I can start focusing on that full time, till I get a job, then I can focus on it full time.

Side note: I’ll start to move this blog over to shamess.info too soon (probably tonight) so things may get a bit confusing, since I’ve never migrated a WordPress blog before. I figure I won’t touch the files, and just change the ServerName. Hopefully, most people won’t even notice the URL change, if I set it up right.

Oh, also, I’m going to start updating DebianTips again. It still gets okay traffic for a neglected blog. I need to touch up some of the older posts with stuff I’ve learnt new though, before I start doing more stuff.

At first, I got it working when the XML was just:

<error status="0001">Received no information.</error>

That was easy. That was really just a test, thing. Then I needed to add other information, like this:

<error status="0001">Received no information.</error>
<waiting>0</waiting>

But that’s where my Javascript broke. I think that’s because there needs to be one root tag, so I decided to add <feedback> around all of it. Now, my DOM travelling is confusing…

I get the DOM map (right word?) from XHR’s responseXML, from server.php, and put it in returnedXML. So returnedXML now looks like:

<feedback>
<error status="0001">Received no information.</error>
<waiting>0</waiting>
</feedback>

This is kinda where I get confused. Now I would expect that returnedXML.length would return 1, since it’s just counting the one <response>. It actually returns “undefined”. So, I think that returnedXML is actually just referring to the entire object, so it wouldn’t have a length.

(I’m trying stuff as I’m writing this, by the way.)

With that logic, I figured I’d try returnedXML.firstChild.length, but that too returns “undefined”. returnedXML.childNodes.length returns one though!  Oh! returnedXML.childNodes[0].nodeName returns “feedback”, which is good.

Oh, I’m confused again. returnedXML.childNodes[0].childNodes.length returns five… I expected two… Lets loop through each of the nodeNames. I get this:

• #text
• error
• #text
• waiting
• #text

So, error and waiting are clearly the nodeNames which I expected. Oh, right, so #text just means a text node. Where is that first text node coming from though? nodeValue returns null if it’s not a text node. So, I looped through the nodeValues and got this:

• nothing at all
• null
• nothing at all
• null
• nothing at all

That’s weird too… I didn’t know what to expect for the first one, then null is right, but then the third and last ones I expected to be “Received no information.” and “0″.

Fixed!

I just had to remove the \n’s in the XML. Apparently, you’re XML should be all on one line. I’m not sure why that is, since I certainly have never done that with RSS, but yeah.

I was just about to come and do an update saying that today is the end of the holidays, and so I’m going to start hardcore revising again. No one can start their start-of-hardcore-revision without a start-of-harcore-revision-cup-of-tea, so I went to get one.

Dad’s still in bed, at five to nine of the morning and had the audacity to say “Isn’t it about time you got a part-time job yet?” Unfortunately, he said it so off the cuff that I had to respond quick fire and we all know there’s a sort of speed/politeness relationship.

I ended up saying “Bite me. You’ve been looking for a job for seventeen years, I haven’t started looking yet and I’m closer.” It’s true though; how dare he question my employment state - I’m a student. I’m not even expected to have a job. My primary aim at the moment is to pass my exams - when he hasn’t had a job in so damn long when he has a family to support. It’s just freaking… rude!

Also, he said part time job. Part time!? If I was going to get a job it’d be a little more than part time, you ass.

Anyway. I’m going to watch Diggnation. Revision after this.

There’s this “events and event handlers” page. It gets to the ‘The Event object’ section which is brilliant! But then doesn’t say how you access it. I was using this “event accessing” page first, but it turns out that’s all wrong. It doesn’t work on my Firefox (3RC1).

So, I’m still lost.

Oh, and LiveJournal was no help. One person just told me to cheat and use a prewritten Javascript object and someone wanted me to write hundreds of lines…