HTML Special Characters

This document used to live on one of my websites however it doesn't really fit in there any more. I still need it though, so I've moved it here.

For the benefit of those who don't know, HTML special character codes are codes that you can use when writing HTML content and the exist for a number of reasons:

1. Some characters don't appear on the keyboard. Special character codes provide a means of entering them.


2. Some characters, the greater-than character for example, have a special meaning in HTML. If you want a browser to display those character rather than trying to interpret them as the part of an HTML tag, you need to use the special character code.


3. Some characters are language and/or character set dependent (currency symbols being a good example). You need a way to force the viewers browser to display the correct character. Special character codes provide a way of doing this.
   

The list below is far from complete. There are many more codes to define all kinds of symbols and foreign characters with accents, umlauts and the like. The following list however shows the codes that I use the most frequently.

Code	Character	Description
&	&	ampersand
&lt;	<	less-than sign
&gt;	>	greater-than sign
&nbsp;		nonbreaking space
&pound;	£	pound sterling
&euro;	€	euro
&copy;	©	copyright
&trade;	™	trademark sign
&reg;	®	registered trademark
&deg;	°	degree sign
&plusmn;	±	plus or minus
&sup2;	²	superscript two
&sup3;	³	superscript three
&frac14;	¼	one-quarter
&frac12;	½	one-half
&frac34;	¾	three-quarters
&times;	×	multiplication sign
&divide;	÷	division sign

A Brief Safari

I used Safari briefly when I first got my MacBook and also had a dabble with Camino. However I was used to Firefox from my PC days and, more importantly, had been finding FireFTP (an FTP plug-in for Firefox) very useful so I switched back to Firefox. In recent times however I've been using Webmin when I need to upload/download files to/from my servers and haven't used FireFTP in quite a long time. In fact I've shut down the FTP service on my servers as mentioned previously. I've also noticed lately that of the various pieces of software that I use, Firefox is the one that's most likely to lock up such that I have to force it to quit. (Audacity comes in second - but I don't use it nearly as much - and GIMP just bombs out occasionally when I'm rotating images). Given that Apple also claims that Safari 3 is faster than the fox I thought that maybe it was time to give it another try.

Issue number 1 was how to move all my bookmarks from Firefox to Safari but this turns out to be relatively simple. Safari's File menu has an Import Bookmarks option and although I had to search around a bit to find this out, all you need to do is navigate to Firefox's bookmarks file at
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html
and the job is pretty much done. At the same time I deleted most of the US biased crap that Safari had loaded by default. Grrr.

Issue number 2 was the lack of a "New Tab" button. Apple-T works as a short-cut but when I'm browsing then my hands are more likely to be on the mouse than the keyboard so the lack of a button is, to my mind, a real oversight on Apple's part.

Issue number 3: If you click on a link then under 'normal' circumstances it will open in the current window/tab. You can configure Safari such that holding down the Apple key when you click will open it as a new tab. However if the web site's author has set the link to open in a new 'window' using the target tag, that's exactly what Safari will do: open a new window. Firefox gives you the ability to force such links to open as a new tab. Safari doesn't so unless you happened to be pressing the Apple key at the same time, you end up with a new window. Grrr.

Issue number 4 is the Google search box up there on the toolbar. Now while Firefox merely defaults to Google.com but allows you to use other search engines, Safari doesn't give you any choice at all! According to what I've read on the web, this is all about money. It hadn't occurred to me before but it's fairly obvious when you think about it that sooner or later, anybody manufacturing a half decent browser with access to several search engines is going to be offered a few quid by one of them to have theirs at the top of the list.

Now while whatever arrangement Apple and Google have come to is, I'm sure, all very nice for them, it's a bit of a bummer for us. As a matter of fact I do use Google most of the time but I like to use Google.CO.UK not Google.COM and the current set up won't even let me change that. I also use Wikipedia fairly regularly and while it generally comes up with a high rank on most Google searches, that isn't really the point. Putting Google.co.uk and Wikipedia links on the bookmarks bar is probably the easiest option however, as the Customise Toolbar option presents the URL box and Search mechanism as a single entity you're pretty much forced to leave it there as a constant reminder that it's there for Google's benefit and bollocks to the rest of us. Grr.

I began to look for other options and found details of a couple of hacks (which may or may not work with version 3) for changing the search engine, and also for converting the New Bookmark button into a New Tab option, however both involved messing with the Safari code in ways that didn't appeal. Over on macupdate I found AcidSearch 0.7b4 and Safari Enhancer 3.3.1 which looked promising. The latter even offers a new tab button but on closer inspection I realised that neither of them supports version 3 of Safari. Doh!

By this point I was getting a little cheesed off with the whole thing and had pretty much decided that I was going to switch back to Firefox. Along the way however I had noticed Inquisitor 3. I hadn't paid much attention as it describes itself as "Spotlight for the Web", thus making it sound far in excess of what I was looking for. However I had already begun to draft this blog entry (so that in 6 weeks time I could remind myself why I was still using Firefox), and I figured I'd give Inquisitor a quick try for the sake of completeness.

My initial impressions of were good and if the search is your only major gripe about Safari then I suggest you check it out. However it still isn't as quick 'n' easy as the one on Firefox.

Additionally:

1. I like the error console on Firefox which has proved extremely useful on a number of occasions for solving problems with Javascript (Safari doesn't appear to have one).

2. The "View Source" option on Firefox has a nicer display. Not something I use a lot but it comes in handy.

3. I also like the Firefox option to switch off styling and get some idea of what a page looks like to a bot or a text reader.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a bit petty now, but add those niggles to my earlier gripes and it probably won't come as any great surprise when I tell you that the Safari icon is no longer in my dock and that I'm finishing off this post in Firefox.

I guess I could try Internet Explorer instead.

Ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Nobody (A Halloween Story)

A slight detour from my usual subject matter today because The Goldfish has cajoled me into writing a 'spooky' story for JackP's Halloween Story Collection. So, if you are seated comfortably, we shall begin:


It came as no surprise to Alan that nobody met him at the school gate. For a short while after mummy went to live with the angels, daddy had come instead. But life had to go on they said and he was a big boy now. Daddy had to go back to work and Grandpa John lived only just around the corner. Too far for his old legs, but near enough for a big boy like Alan to walk there on his own.

So nobody took Alan's hand at the gates and enquired about his day in school. Alan forgot to count the cedar trees at the side of the road and recalled the day's events while walking to the place where it was safe to cross. Nobody watched over him as he looked right and left, and right again, before going straight across the road.

Just a little further along, and around the corner, and there was Grandpa John looking our from the window of his house. The door was open before Alan had opened the gate and run up the garden path, and as Grandpa John welcomed him in Alan turned and waved good bye.

"See you tomorrow" he shouted.

Grandpa John looked out to the empty street. "Who are you calling to?" he asked.

"Oh, nobody" Alan replied.

Starter Motor Bush Puller

I remember my friend Tex commenting that my father "wasn't a bodger". An odd thing to say and while it wasn't a compliment, it wasn't an insult either. Merely an observation.

You see my father, in his capacity as a bench joiner had amassed an extensive collection of tools. Some of them sat in cupboards and drawers for years on end between uses however when they were used, having the right tool for the job made a world of difference. Not having the right tool, on the very rare occasions that it happened, was an intense source of frustration to him.

Tex on the other hand, though also a joiner, made his living going out and about fixing things. His need to be mobile meant that he could only carry a relatively small number of tools and he often found himself having to use things for purposes other than the one for which they were strictly intended, and having to implement less than perfect solutions in order to just get the job done - or "bodging" as he called it.

The reason this comment, which was made some 15 years ago, came to mind is that I have just installed a new starter motor in my Bay, and while the removal of the various nuts and bolts went a lot easier than I expected, the bush seemed determined to stay firmly in the clutch housing.

Not wanting to damage anything, I abandoned the job overnight in order to post on VZi asking how to remove it. Moby5153 came to my assistance as he has done before and pointed out that there's a special tool available for the job, or that I could tap into it with an M12 tap.

I didn't have an M12 tap but as the bush is copper, a high tensile M12 bolt did the job quite nicely, tapping into it and then pushing the bush out as the bolt made contact with the clutch housing. The new starter motor is now in place and all seems well.

Now, while this might be the first starter motor bush I've ever had to deal with, I dare say it won't be my last so I'm looking at that special tool in the VW Heritage catalogue and thinking that perhaps I should add the 40 quid item to my shopping list. Thus I find myself with miniature versions of my father and Tex sitting on my shoulders like angel and demon (although I'm not sure which is which), with my father reassuring me that it'll be 40 quid well spent, and Tex shaking his head in despair.

Red 9 Design EZRider - Shocks

It's taken me a couple of days longer to post this than I expected. Damned CFS. However:

In my previous post I explained my reasons for purchasing Red 9 Design's EZRider kit and my thoughts regarding the safety concerns expressed by some. In this post I'll describe what I've installed so far, namely the shocks/dampers (which I will refer to as "shocks" from here on).

The EZ Rider kit consists of 2 elements:

The first is a pair of metal bars that replace the torsion bars. These are metal rods with the necessary dimples machined into them and swivelling ends that will allow the trailing arms to pivot freely.

The second element is a pair of Spax coil over shocks.

In order to lower a van from stock height you need the rods in place or the torsion bars will continue to determine it's height, however as my intention was to raise a van that had been lowered too far it occurred to me that the shocks alone might do it. Given that they were going to be easier to fit than the rods I decided to try them on their own first and see what happened.

The only problem I encountered in fitting the shocks was that the bushes in the lower end of the dampers wouldn't go onto the spindles. I didn't measure it but we're talking about maybe a thousandth of an inch too tight, two at most. Given that this was an issue with the shocks I decided to phone Spax as opposed to Red 9 Design and they suggested, given that it was such a small amount, that I check there was no rubber fouling things and if there wasn't then maybe making the hole in the bushes a little bigger. There was no problem with rubber and I found that a 12mm drill went snugly thought the bushes. Running the drill backwards and forwards a few time removed a tiny amount of metal after which they went snugly onto the spindles. Everything was easy after that and it was unnecessary to compress the springs.

Before moving on to the results I'd just like to mention an interesting aspect of the phone call to Spax: while talking to them I found out that these shocks are made especially for Red 9, to their specification. Given that I was wanting to raise my van and was speculating that the shocks alone may be enough to do, I had wondered whether the purchase of a pair of coil over shocks alone might be enough. Indeed I asked VWHeritage about using their GAZ coil over shocks for this purpose however they doubted that their springs would be powerful enough to actually raise the van. I didn't fancy gambling 200 quid on something that might not work. Better I thought to pay 320 for something that WILL work even if it turns out that I don't need the entire kit.

So how about the results?

Here she is before:



and after the shocks were fitted:



As you can see she's now about 2.5" higher at the front than she was before; which is just what I wanted because I now have about 4.5" inches of ground clearance under the low points on the beam.

She still has low profile tyres on the front and although I'll leave them in place for now I'll change them to something bigger when they need changing. That'll take her up about another half an inch however at that point I might use the adjustments on the coils to bring her down half an inch, maybe a full inch.

She is actually about an inch higher at the front than she is at the back now but I'd like to take her up an inch at the back. At the moment you have to deflate the tyres to get them out from under the rear arches. Going up an inch will remove that hassle.

As for the ride, I can't really say at the moment. To be honest it doesn't feel much different but:

1. I haven't driven her much since doing it.

2. I haven't fitted the torsion bar replacements.

3. I haven't touched the adjustment screws on the shocks.

I'll report back on the ride in a few weeks time. By then I'll have done a few more journeys and will have Dee's opinion too. Up until now she's been complaining that if I couldn't improve it she'd have to invest in some sports bras so we'll have to see how the ol' bounceometers rate it now. I may also have twiddled with the adjusters (on the shocks, not on the bounceometers).

What I do about the torsion bars is another issue. As I said before, if I were lowering the van I'd have to swap them but given what I'm doing I can't really see much point. As I understand it, it can't improve my ride as her height is already being governed by the springs on the shocks i.e. the torsion bars ain't doin' nuffin' guv. The rubber seals on the ball joints are fubar (torn up, I've been told, as a consequence of her being lowered to much) so maybe I'll swap the bars when I deal with those rubbers. Maybe not. I haven't decided yet. At the moment I'm just chuffed that I don't have to worry about scraping the beam on every little bump in the road.

Raisin' Up The Van

My van is too low. The previous owner lowered it as much as he could and even put low profile tyres on the front. I guess there must be no bumps in the road where he lives because I managed to scrape the low points of the front beam on the ground within my first week of ownership, and not on an obviously bumpy road either.

Raising her up a bit should have been simple given that there are adjusters on the beam however when I tried to move them, they wouldn't budge. I posted about it on earlybay.com and took her to a local-ish VW garage. The conclusion is that the installation of the adjusters was probably botched such that the internal collar has been locked in place by excessive weld penetration. The garage said they could fix it by removing them and fitting new ones at a cost of 250 quid.

At about this time, somebody posted on earlybay.com asking if anybody had any experience of the EZRider kit from Red 9 Design, thereby bringing the product to my attention. This is essentially a system for lowering a bus or bug by effectively doing away with the torsion bars and installing coil over shocks. It occurred to me that if the torsion bars were made redundant then my stuck adjusters would no longer be an issue and although the kit was 320 quid, Red 9 reckon that their kit gives a much better ride than a standard lowering job.

The idea of making an improvement rather than just a fix appealed to me however opinions about the kit seem to vary. The aforementioned thread on earlybay.com quickly turned into a discussion about safety rather than ride quality. A number of posters, and some mechanics that I've asked about it, point out that the damper mountings were not designed for this purpose. On the other hand, Red 9 Design have been making these items for several years now and there don't seem to have ever been any problems. I checked with my insurance company (Adrian Flux) and they had no concerns or warnings about it and all of the doubters on the forums seemed to be simply that i.e. doubters. I could not find, and I checked several forums, a single instance of anybody having had a problem with the Red 9 kit.

The main concern regarding safety seemed to be what would happen if the mounting failed however Red 9 are also able to supply lowered bump stops at an additional 47.50 per pair. I figure that having them in place is a reasonable safety precaution and added them to my shopping list. As a matter of fact I received the kit a few days ago and I fitted some of the kit today. I'll describe what I did, and report on the effect it's had, in my next post.

Fireflex Installation (Bay)

Apparently old VW engines have a tendency to catch fire!

I don't know if there's something about the design that makes them more prone to this than other vehicles or whether it's just an age thing. Whatever the reason, regular checks to make sure that the fuel lines are in good condition and carrying an extinguisher should be considered mandatory. I've already been doing both since day one, however today I took things a stage further and fitted an automatic extinguisher into the engine compartment of my Bay.

Automatic extinguishers consist of a pressurised bottle of gas, foam, or powder to which is attached a length of 'hose'. In a nutshell, you clip the hose around the engine bay and, in the event of a fire, the hose ruptures spraying the contents of the bottle all over the fire.

There are a number of decisions to be made before you buy:

1. Gas, foam or powder.

2. 0.5kg or 1.0kg bottle.

3. Horizontal or Vertical mounting for the bottle.

I initially purchased a 0.5kg upright gas bottle from VW Heritage but after seeing it for real I decided to use that one in my Bug (where I can easily mount it to the firewall) and bought a horizontal version for my Bay. In both cases I went for the 0.5kg bottle because I've been assured that it's plenty for use in the confines of the engine compartment in a Bug or a Bay. I went for gas because I liked the idea that there would be no additional clean up required as a result of it being activated. We discussed this on earlybay.com where some folks suggested that foam would also be a relatively easy clean up and less prone to dissipation. Their argument was that gas would disperse after putting out the fire which could then reignite. The counter argument is that the vehicle would have stopped by then and although there may still be fuel present, the source of ignition would have been removed (the heat of the engine is insufficient to cause petrol vapour to auto-ignite - it needs a spark).

Having made my choice the next job was to fit it. As I said, I originally purchased a vertical bottle but although there is plenty of space in the Bay's engine compartment there are not many suitable vertical mounting points. On the other hand there are plenty or opportunites for horizontal mounting, including the roof of the compartment.

The roof is covered with hardboard, which has holes in it, and glass fibre insulation behind above that. The hardboard is fixed to an arrangement of beams which support the metal floor of the luggage compartment above.

Now I have seen bays with the hardboard and glass fibre removed and although I don't like the idea of hardboard in the engine bay, I figure that it's been doing it's job of keeping noise and heat out of the interior for the last 36 years so why remove it now?

My reason for mentioning it at all is that I figured that one of the beams to which the hardboard is attached would make a good mounting for the extinguisher bottle. You can tell where the beams are by looking at the fixing points for the hardboard and if you look at the floor of the luggage area you'll also see where they are spot welded.

The image below shows the roof of my engine compartment with a pencil line drawn between two of the fixings in preparation for drilling holes for the extinguisher bracket.



Holes were drilled and self tapping screws used to fix the bracket in place. Then, after clipping the cylinder in place and tightening the large cable tie (supplied) I moved on to the job of fixing the hose.

I'm not the first person to write on the web about installing one of these things and if you look around you'll find that everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY, who has ever done so says that there are not enough cable ties supplied with the kit. Why the manufacturer has not taken notice and put a few more into the kit I can't imagine. I can't accept that doubling the number included would seriously affect their profitability however, forewarned is forearmed: get some more cable ties because you will need them.

As far as the installation in my Bay was concerned that hardboard ceiling with it's pattern of holes was a blessing because it gave me loads of places to attach the ties without having to drill holes or attach sticky pads. Given that I'd made sure I had extra ties available it was no big deal when I decided that some were in the wrong place. I also made a point of attaching them loosely at first so I could slide the hose around until I was completely happy with the layout. As you can see from the final picture I spiralled the hose over the engine i.e. around the area where a fire is most likely to break out.