For a while now I’ve been looking for some art to liven up the walls of my new flat and now that all the furniture has been acquired I’ve run out of excuses.

I trotted round a few local galleries and shops to little avail. As you might well imagine living on a small island you don’t really get much of a choice in anything let alone art. Once more, I found myself on the Internet looking for things to buy and was about to give up when GrinGod pointed me to DeviantArt.

Currently “hot news” is the fact that Firefox, Mozilla and Safari browsers have been demonstrated as susceptible to a new form of phishing attack.

Basically all these browsers support International Domain Names (IDN) that let you use the full Unicode set of foreign characters and symbols, and some of these foreign characters while technically different from the Latin ones look identical. In the case demonstrated they have used the Arabic aa to replace a Latin aa in “PayPal” to get another site. This isn’t really anything new, even the original RFC commented on how this would be a problem and the IETF issued guidelines that would have limited their scope if only Verisign actually implemented them. (Specifically the guideline for preventing mixing of languages within a domain name would reduce the scope for attack considerably).

I’m sure you’ve read all about Apple's latest Mac Mini, a stripped-down machine for those wanting to try Mac OS X (according to Steve Jobs in his recent keynote). It also appears to be a good way to get mum-and-dad off your back with it’s practically non-existent rate of viruses and spyware. It even makes a reasonable server being that it comes with Apache, a firewall and can share your Internet connection – even wirelessly.

It’s already been pointed out that the Mac Mini is based on PowerBook technology however there appears to be one significant change (apart from the obvious transition from laptop to desktop) and that’s the graphics processor.

One of the less-touted features of Windows XP is it’s ability to theme the user interface. Not to be confused with Windows 98 Plus pack’s themes, this support includes ‘Visual Styles’ which allows the actual appearance of the windows, buttons and various controls to take on a whole new look providing the application has been marked as being compatible with themes using a manifest (most recent applications have).

This concept is not a new idea having been seen in everything from Amiga OS (MUI) to Linux (Gnome and KDE) but it’s a good addition. WindowBlinds has been letting users do this for years on everything from Windows 98 to XP/2003 and Kaleidoscope before that on the original Mac OS (Apple also had some lovely themes in MacOS 8 Copland but pulled them before release). Max OS X users get similar functionality with ShapeShifter and some wonderful themes.

I’ve been promising something .NET related for a while… here’s something!

There exists a ‘gotcha’ in .NET (and other programming environment) whereby an object has subscribed to another objects published event will not be garbage collected when you expect because the environment itself holds a reference to the subscriber inside the event notification system.

Just got back from a week skiing and boarding in Flaine. On our last visit we were wading knee-deep in powder just to get on the lifts however this time the god of snow had wandered off leaving Helios in charge. We soon unimaginatively tagged the runs that were open ‘Ice world’, ‘Rock world’ and ‘Walk world’ – no guesses as to why.

We finally found fresh powder off-piste near a big drop and had a lot of fun… Until one of my skis disconnected and smashed into my shin. Damn the French guy at the rental shop, I told him I wanted them tighttight – there again I also asked him to put stickers on the underneath of Em’s board saying “If you can read this please phone my mum”. He did neither.

I’ve just been to see this little ditty at the local cinema (well, 20 seats in front of something a little bigger than a plasma screen that’s a story unto itself).

So, to the film… The visual style is very slick and Burton-esq, the cast are well chosen and the details fantastic (an old style car with remote central locking and a tape-reel audio system….) but ultimately let down a little by the script.

Christmas came and went and now once again the end of year looms menacingly just a day away.

My Amazon wish-list saved me from the tedious “What do you want?” “I don’t know” exchanges that seem to plague this time of year. I had a similar experience with a rather gorgeous Swiss woman before eventually surprising her with a lovely piece of original artwork depicting a sailing yacht. She also became the first person I’ve subjected to my Christmas family dinner which actually turned out rather well.

As some of my friends know I’m currently studying with the Open University for my computing degree.

This year my exam results, along with a number of fellow students were delayed… Until 3 days before Christmas where they promptly announced with lots of students wondering exactly what happened. It appears many of us got distinction grade (85%+) coursework… and grade 3 quality exam results (60%+). Some people with very good coursework grades have failed entirely.

So the ball went very well indeed. We are lots of food, met lots of people and drank my own body-weight in alcohol. At some point my friend Wazzy acquired the world’s fattest cigar while I attempted to redo my bow-tie without a mirror or fine motor skills.

Tonight was the party for the place I’m currently contracting and although the food was fine I ended up feeling very hot and dizzy in some pubs afterwards and had to head home rather abruptly to the annoyance of friends. I should really be in bed but I still feel icky.