Recently, my bank‘s online banking section finally took a turn for the better, and made use of a lot of accessibility and usability recommendations. Halle-fucking-lujah, I hear you cry – about time one of ‘em did.

Last Friday I upgraded my installation of Firefox up to the latest 1.5 beta release, which in many ways is utterly stonking, and great to use.

Today I went to the online banking and got back the same message I used to get…

The Internet browser you are using is not supported by Digital Banking. Use the link below to see the complete list of browsers we support.

• Microsoft® Internet Explorer version 5 and 6
• Netscapeâ„¢ Navigatorâ„¢ version 7.1 and up
• Mozilla 1.5 and up
• AOL 8.0 and up (AOL subscribers only)
• Firefox 1.0

For fuck’s sake – so it’ll work on 1.0, but not on 1.5? Useless bastards…

Yesterday I drove over to the Parent’s place, and took them to see Wallace & Gromit – Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I’d already seen it once, and loved it, so had no problem seeing it again.

As it is, I’d sent them a message when we’d seen it, telling them that they really should go. However, I know my parents, and while they’re normally horrifically busy, it’s still somehow a struggle to get them to go and see stuff at the cinema or whatever. Strange, but true. So I gave them a couple of week’s grace, then ended up just getting it organised for a free afternoon, driving over to their place, and dragging them to the cinema.

Ye Gods, Aylesbury is still an ungodly cackhole. It’s never been on my list of favourite places – although it’s frequently been seen on the list of “places to avoid at all costs, and reject any jobs that happen to be in the vicinity”. Yeah, sure, it’s been redeveloped over the last few years, but that just moves it from “irredeemable shithole” to “redeveloped, but still a shithole”.

Actually, though, the time around Halloween is probably the best time to visit the place. This way the vacant stares, shambling walk, and slight drool from the mouths of the inhabitants just seems topical, and you can (almost) write it off as bad make-up. If George A Romero ever wanted to remake “Town of the Dead”, Aylesbury would be the venue of choice.

As for the film, it’s just as good on a second viewing, and the parents loved it.

Then we made our escape.

However, on the way out it did strike me that it was somewhat ironic. Most adults there were taking their children to see the film. However, I was the child taking my parents to see it. And thus goes the process of *ahem* “growing up”.

Apologies about d4d™’s lack of availability yesterday – apparently the server at 34sp had some major problems with its power supply, so everything went tits-up ’til they moved the server’s hard-drives over to a spare machine.

Still, apparently all is well again today, so that’s good news. It did have a pretty major effect on the stats though – I think yesterday d4d™ got a whole 60 readers, instead of the normal 150 or so.

Finally, over the weekend, we got the water stuff sorted in the kitchen. Thanks to our Very Nice Plumber, who is – it has to be said – an absolute godsend. Heaven only knows what he thinks of us, but he’s been very handy to know. And reasonably priced, which is always a good thing too.

So now it’s just tiling and painting to do, and the kitchen will be completed. At last. Herself did a huge amount of the tiling yesterday while I was out, and it looks fan-bloody-tastic.

Yes, I’ve now got the digital SLR I was aiming for – the Canon EOS 20D. I managed (after some struggle) to get the package that included both the Canon 18-55mm Lens and the Sigma 55-200mm lens – and all for less than the RRP of the body on its own. Camera pricing is weird.

Of course, the learning curve on this thing is going to be enormous. I’ve actually taken the radical step of reading the instruction manual – that’s how steep the curve’s going to be. I’m over the moon with it, and looking forward even more now to being away next weekend.

Yes, we’re off again next weekend – well, a) it’s my birthday on the 5th, and b) it should hopefully reduce Hound’s anxiety about fireworks. We’re going to be in the backside of nowhere in Somerset, roughly where we went earlier in the year.

I got some fantastic stuff last time we were down there, several shots from which have been printed up to A4 size, framed, and now populate some of our walls. So it’ll be interesting to see what I can get with the 20D…

Hmm, I can honestly say that combining left-over veggie curry with chinese Special Fried Rice can produce some *ahem* interesting gastric side-effects.

It all tasted pretty good at the time – and was definitely filling – but it appears to have combined into some kind of substance that would’ve been logged as a chemical weapon in some countries.