Being annoyed

I got up this morning at 6.50am. The sunrise was at 7.21am, but I didn't see it because I wasn't out in the field where it's visible from. I'm pretty sure there was a visible sunrise though because after my shower I looked out my bedroom window and saw a slight hint of red on the underbelly of a cloud. I looked out my window again later (at 8.30am I think, although maybe earlier), and the sky was now covered in cloud. But now (10.15am) the sky is mostly blue with a few clouds and the sun is shining.

This morning I tried to find how to solve the 'IE6 png alpha transparency filter makes form elements disappear' problem. Last time I found that changing the id of the element using js would fix it. But this means the the element looses its CSS styling as I had set the CSS via the element id. So I added the new ids that I was setting to the CSS styling for the username and password inputs, which were the ones being affected by the problem. But now the fix no longer worked. So I removed the new ids from the CSS and created a CSS class with the same settings. But this still meant the fix no longer worked.

So I set the style of the elements with changed ids directly through javascript, starting with setting the width. This worked, so I copied all the other style settings and set them using javascript. Now the fix didn't work again. So I removed the javascript line setting 'postion: relative', and it worked again. Next I changed the javascript so it didn't do anything about the inputs (didn't change their ids or set any css properties), and commented out the line setting 'postion: relative' in the CSS and it worked. So I uncommented the line in the CSS and in the IE6 specific CSS sheet I set 'position: auto'. But this didn't work. So it seems that setting the CSS position of the form elements, even if you're just setting the position to 'auto', which it is anyway, will break it. I have just deleted the CSS line setting the position of those form elements and it is now working fine. I will have to check whether the form still looks okay in other browsers, but I think it should still look the same.

I noticed another problem in IE6 that appeared after quite a bit of the above testing. When you click a lightbox image the screen should be darkened, this is done by a div that covers the whole screen, and is coloured black with an opacity filter. But at the end of my testing I found that the opacity filter wasn't working for it, and it was just rendering as solid black, which isn't that great. I closed IE6 and then opened it again and the problem was gone. So I don't think there is anything I can do about this bug. I would guess that the problem is that IE6 ran out of memory to apply the filter or sumat, this would explain why closing and opening it again fixed it anyway. The test virtual machine is XP SP3 with 128MB Ram, 16GB HD with 14GB free, and Core2Duo 6700 processor (the defaults).

After that I checked ebay, and I'd been outbid for the Lowepro toploader bag I was watching, yesterday evening (before I bid for it) it was £5 with no bidders, but it ended up £6.23 with 4 bidders. It ended at 8.30am in the morning as well, so I guess 3 people must have bid for it early this morning.

I started checking my email, went and put the washing out, and then had a quick look round the back garden. The 2 bushes near the fence seem to have lost all their leaves really quickly. I was also surprised that the Willow bush had lost most of its leaves since I last saw it (which I think was probably just a couple of days ago). I carried on checking my email (I had a lot of email, about 80 messages), then it was lunch.

After lunch I checked my email a bit more then went out on a walk with Rad. The weather was very nice, warm (color temperature and actual temperature) sunlight with clouds in the sky that would sometimes block out the sun but didn't most of the time. I got quite hot so I took my jumper off and attached it to the back of my bag with a clip, but later on found my jumper wasn't on the bag any more. So I had to run back quite a bit and found it a field a and a bit away (so could have been much worse). That made me totally worn out. I think whenever I attach a jumper to the back of the bag I will have to make the clip as tight as it will go, or otherwise try and stuff my jumper inside the bag.

When we got back home I copied all the pics to my comp, tagged them with the lens and filters used and then processed them to jpegs/tiffs as I thought appropriate. While I was waiting for them to copy over and process I finished off checking my emails.

Annoyingly I got outbid at the last second for some Lowepro lens cases on ebay. I bid about a minute before the auction since often ebay doesn't put your bid through if you bid too near the end of the auction. I guess people who outbid you at the last second must use one of those ebay sniping tools. Probably I should have bid a bit more for them, I was thinking of how much I wanted to spend on them, rather than how much it would cost me to buy the cases seperately. I had a look on ebay and froogle after the auction had ended, and the same deal would cost me probably at least £60, while the auction ended at £37 in total.

After dinner I watched the Extras Christmas Special with Maccy.

Food
Breakfast: Coco pops; Bacon (with Tom Ketch) butty; orange juice.
Lunch: Mature cheddar cheese sandwich; cherry tomato; white grapes; slice of iced lemon madeira layer cake; mince pie; chocolate digestive biscuit bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken; mixed veg; potatoes; gravy. Pudding was strawberry creamy yoghurt.