There has been much written about the problems with transparency and IE6, and thanks to a vast number of fixes, and the release of IE7 that issue has almost been sorted. Instead I’m going to talk about another problem that PNG users face, which I had not run into until recently.

A client recently emailed me to let me know that there was ‘grey boxes’ appearing around some of the images. Thinking this was our old friend IE6 PNG transparency (non)support, I happily told them to refresh their cache and look again (this was a test on the server, and not 100% completed at the time). But Alas, the boxes remained in Internet Explorer PC, and most worryingly, on Safari on the Mac too, but appeared fine on Firefox on PC. It soon dawned on me that the images in question were PNGs, but not ones that I had applied any transparency to.

This was a different problem. After much confusion, and a bit of screen-shotting I realised that the different browsers were displaying actual different colours. According to this it’s because of gamma correction, and how different browsers correct the colours differently

The easy solution is to use a GIF in it’s place (this is what I opted for), but it is a pity to be forced away from the usually smaller PNG file. Apparantly there are other ways to fix it and continue using PNGs, or alternatively you could use a PNG background image, but obviously this isnt always ideal

It wasnt until I reinstalled my Operating System, and was going through (the excellent) Tweak Guide for Windows XP, was it that I came across Microsoft Cleartype and ta-daa, once turned on for my laptops LCD screen (aparrantly its only LCDs that need it) made Firefox render text beautifully. Phew, I can rest easy now…

Highlights for me were Shitmat (I’ve seen him previously, but never really enjoyed a set by him as much as I did this time), DJ Scotch Egg - mental as usual, even at 6am! Mala’s set was great too, and µ-ziq was fantastic - little moments of genius, also the weather deserves a mention, especially because we were right beside the seaside.

Lowlights: Venetian Snares was atrocious, I think he was quite drunk when he played or something, he started off his set with some obscure tracks, but after losing the (somewhat young) crowd a bit, starting banging out the classics which picked the crowd up a bit, but then he started (trying) to mix, but was appallingly off beat every time he did. When he started playing one of my favourite Vsnares tracks - the Doormouse Megamix I recall turning to my friend in the crowd and saying ‘if he fucks this one up theres no hope for him’ and mere seconds later he did. Bah. Aaron Spectre was a bit of a let down too, it seemed odd that everyone was using decks, especially for mr Spectre, as he usually has his mp3 collection plus MIDI controllers at the ready. He was still pretty good, but not a patch on the other times I’ve seen him. MAJOR LOWLIGHT: Missing Bogdan! AAAAGGHH! Us stupid fucks standing downstairs waiting for him to come on while he was playing upsatirs. D’oh! Major downer.

Anyways here’s the rest of the weekend in video form:

Now go find a christian to burn

As an added bonus, laugh at the crap acting, bad dialogue, and violence against women of the 2006 remake of the Wicker Man starring Nicholas “I’m all Shuck Up” Cage:

An cautionary/instructional rap to rival the likes of White Lines, or maybe even the Wendy’s training rap

Does this mean CSS/XHTML is now street? Or does it mean that Hip Hop is finally dead? A pivotal moment in music history no doubt…

Check out Bjork’s new video for ‘Wanderlust’ by Encyclopedia Pictura. Best Bjork video in a long time Imho!

Apparently There will be a 3D version out to buy at some point in the near future