I don’t know what my hosting company has done recently but my access to phpMyAdmin has been a lot, lot quicker. Which is good.

I use the MySQL Query Browser wherever possible, but as that’s dependant on the table having a unique key before you can edit it, it’s restrictive. And I can’t use it at work.

Oh, and since changing my ISP to Zen, my FTP has been a helluvalot (I know it’s not a word) speedier as well.

Anyway, today, I’ve turned my attention to the BMTG website. I’ve been trawling through the style sheets and making a matrix of the colours I’m using. From that I could work out where I was being inconsistent with colouring. I’ve also had a play with some as well and made very improvements here and there. The Color Palette Generator was useful as well.

I think it’s about time I introduced you to a friend. A bloody frustrating friend, I’ll admit. Yes, it’s my PC.

Built by my own fair hands (or rather assembled).

Within an Alpine EZ-Cool case, the PC was designed for quietness. The aluminium case is vented (and filtered) on all sides. Two case fans are installed - an 80mm HiPer fan on the front (lowered in speed via a Zalman Fanmate) and a rear 120mm (the make of which I can’t remember, but it was picked for its lower dB rating). This rear fan is controlled by the motherboard software, as is the Nexus fan on the processor. Both fans sit on Acoustifan gel gaskets.

The motherboard is an Abit AX8 3rd Eye, running an AMD Athlon 64bit 3200+ processor. 1GB of Crucial PC3200 DDR memory is installed.

Power is provided by a HiPer Type R 480w PSU.

A Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB hard drive is installed, along with a Lite-on CD-RW and an LG Dual-layer DVD-RW.

Graphics are powered by a Sapphire ATI Radeon X300SE.

The whole thing runs quite hot, as the fans are running at low speeds, but it’s incredibly quiet.

Anyway, I’ve recently been looking at possible upgrades, after having problems with my cordless mouse. Other than just giving it a bit of a refresh, it’s probably prudent to make it ready for the powerhouse that will be Windows Vista (I’ll end up with it one day - it’s bound to happen).

So, other than a new keyboard and mouse combo (the Logitech S510 looks cool), I’d probably look to upgrade my processor to a 3800+, double the memory to 2GB and improve the graphics with an ATI Radeon X1300 (which is certified to run Vista’s Aero interface).

Having said that I might hold back on the processor. You see, I keep having problems with my PC (hence the frustration) which I suspect is motherboard related. As I have an oem copy of XP, if I upgrade my motherboard then it’s likely to break it (as in, any major changes to your system and XP thinks it’s been installed on another machine. If you have a non-oem copy of XP, a quick phone call to Microsoft and they’ll allow it. If you oem, you’re on your own).

So it probably makes more sense to wait until I’m due to upgrade my OS to Vista and then get a new motherboard along with that.

Of course, my problems may also be PSU related, so a change of that may be in order first.

Hmmm… something to think about for a while. I think I’ll indulge in a SatNav system first, though.

Tab Mix Plus is a fine add-on for Firefox but a bit of overkill for what I wanted. So I uninstalled it. Unfortunately, after that, Firefox’s built in session restore no longer worked.

It seems the TMP turns it off during the install (as TMP has its own session restore feature) but doesn’t restore it when uninstalled.

Correcting this is a case of running about:config in the address bar (this displays a list of Firefox configuration settings) and then finding the one named “browser.sessionstore.enabled”. This will be set to False. Right click on this and select “Toggle”. This will change False to True.

Voila session restore is, erm, restored.

Our plans are already well under way, but the next milestone are the invitations. Gold and cream to match the general colour scheme for the wedding, they have been designed and hand made by Judy Zatonski who counts author Jilly Cooper amongst her customers.

Most of the money that Judy makes goes towards Greyhound charities.

The design can, exclusively, be seen here - I’ve not even put this on the website yet.

I’ve also printed all the inserts that go inside - these differentiate the cards between being reception and evening invites. This was done on some matching cream paper, but I’ve yet to cut them out and stick them into the cards.

The final, big hurdle is to produce some matching address labels - I’ve already brought some transparent Avery ones. I just need to get all the address together and design a suitable label.

Fingers crossed, the cards should be out by the end of the year.

Oh, and on Saturday I head into Nottingham with my best man to find some suits…. I hope I don’t end up with a cravat!

As much as I love some of the new features of Firefox 2, is it me or is it slow? Or rather, it seems to hang when pages are loading. Ordinarily, I’d blame the slow network at work, but it does the same at home as well. Pre version 2, if a page was loading you could still scroll around and generally use the browser. Now, everything seems to just lock up. Very, very frustrating.

I’m not selling it, am I?

Well, I have to say I’d be sorely tempted to return to IE, if I could get IE7 to run at work. Sadly, we don’t have Service Pack 2 installed so that’s a non-starter.

An alternative would be to use IE7 at home and Firefox at work. If I could share bookmarks. But I can’t.

Oh well, I just hope the Firefox 2 issues are resolved.