VMing

The last few days I have been trying to update my photo website to use 'responsive design' so that it will display better on phones. So far I have only updated one page. It already used a fluid design, but I worked on hiding / streamlining a few elements that aren't so important when the screen is small, so there's more room for the important content.

I also changed part of the design from using js to using CSS media queries. But I didn't realise that IE8 has no media query support. At the moment I think I'm not going to bother with 'supporting' IE8. So long as the site looks reasonably okay and is usable, IE users should be catered for.

When I tried testing the site in IE9, I found that the virtual machine was really slow and kept crashing. So I am currently downloading a VMWare player IE9 image, which I hope will be compatible with VMWare Server 2, since I have that but not VMWare player.

After installing VMWare player (which had to uninstall VMWare Server 2 - apparently they can't co-exist), I tried starting the IE9 VMWare image, but got a checksum error. So I then downloaded FCIV, and ran this on the partial rar downloads of the IE9 VMWare image, to calcultae their md5 sums. I then checked these against those given for each of the parts on the Modern.ie website (where the IE9 image comes from). They all checked out okay.

So then I checked the sha1 sum of the extracted IE9 image, and this was indeed different to the sha1 sum given in the manifest file. So I re-extracted the image from the rar(s), and then calculated the checksum using FCIV again, and this time it was correct. I added the image to VMWare player, and it started up and worked okay.

Likely the image would have worked in VMWare Server 2, it was just that the extracted image was corrupted but VMWare Server 2 doesn't check the checksum of the VM image against the manifest file, so you don't get a warning that the image is corrupted.

I saw an ad on a site about linking your AmEx card with Trip advisor. So I clicked through for more info: TripAdvisor + AMEX. However, it seems there are actually no benefits to linking your card with Trip advisor at all. The only benefit listed is:

Get a £50 statement credit when you use your connected Card to book a Hilton Hotel in the UK directly with Hilton, and make a single purchase of £250 or more on your checkout charge. Valid until 31 May 2014. Offer is limited to the first 15,000 Cards.*

First, that is a special offer, not a general benefit of having your card linked to Trip Advisor. Secondly, for me at least, it is very rare for me to book a hotel in the UK, so I wouldn't be able to take advantage of this offer anyway.