Testing the font of all wisdom
I have been quite busy for the last few weeks.
It’s all to do with my little hosting business and websites and all that stuff.
Mainly I have been upgrading software across the board, replacing redundant stuff with more up to date stuff and speeding sites up a tad. My goal was to get every site to load in under three seconds – tough, as one of ’em used to take around five minutes. That is now achieved.
This morning I was browsing around Frank’s place when I came across the following comment –
I’ve noticed that I can’t visit Grandad’s headrambles site lately (Chrome, on Win XP)
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This site can’t provide a secure connectionheadrambles.com uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
Hide details
The client and server don’t support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite. This is likely to be caused when the server needs RC4, which is no longer considered secure.
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This is what I would consider to be a bugger-fuck moment. Shit! Bollox! Something’s wrong.
I designed the site on Firefox as that is my browser of choice, though I do run tests on other browsers. To be sure to be sure, I actually went into Windows [*spit*] and tested the site in Firefox there. I also tested in Chrome [having downloaded it especially [*double spit*]]. I even tested in Internet Explorer [*triple spit*]. The site works in all of them with no problems, though I did notice that the page title is somewhat different depending on how I view it –
Firefox in Linux
Firefox in Windows
Chrome [and Chromium] in Linux
Chrome in Windows
Internet Explorer in Windows
An interesting variation in fonts and font sizes?
The main thing though was that I didn’t get any errors or warnings. But then I am not everyone. So the question remain…. is there a problem? I did a little further research and the problem above is in fact a Windows problem [aren’t they all?] but nevertheless, there might still be something I’m not aware of.
I know I have asked this before, but if anyone knows of a problem, just drop me a line.
Though I suppose I won’t get any messages saying you can’t reach the site at all…
Viewing via Firefox in Windows. I must say I think it’s the nicest font of the lot. Since your tweak of a couple of months ago, I’ve had no problems at all. The page loads fast (even here in Thailand via my mobile > laptop), and has all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect.
Rather amusingly (O/T, sorry), the Daily Mail website is blocked here. It would seem they printed something a couple of years ago which the Thai government didn’t like, so it was curtains for the DM! (Internet censorship is alive and well here – you obviously haven’t come to their attention yet, GD). 😉
Ah! That looks like Comic Sans. It seems to be quite a lottery as to what people see.
“you obviously haven’t come to their attention yet” – give me time. Better yet, you have first hand experience… care to do a guest post? 😉 [though on second thoughts you’d never see the site again]
I’m hoping nisaki will take that remark about a ‘guest post’ seriously, the dude can write. He’s written me a couple of emails that could stand alone as blog posts almost.
Blocked Dwarf, I tried several times to thank you for your lovely piece about Semois, and it wouldn’t post. I’m hoping this one will.
Hooray, it’s worked this time.
Thank you, that pilgrimage was very special to me too. I desperately want to go again (and visit the other couple of tobacco makers left there as Arno from Dutchpipesmokers sent me some of the ‘tongue of the dog’ semois to try) but there are several things in my personal life atm preventing me…mainly the ongoing battle with the PIP.
I’m off to Kanchanaburi (Bridge over the River Kwai and all that) for four days in an hour or so and I’m leaving the laptop here at the hotel in Bangkok, but I may well take you up on the guest post when I get back, GD. I’ll have another five days in Bangkok before we return to Greece, so I quite possibly will be able to find the time to do a bit of two-finger pecking at the keyboard. I occasionally post comments from my phone, but I suffer from ‘fat-finger’ syndrome on those little touch keyboards, so tend to keep any comments as short as possible, and certainly wouldn’t attempt anything more ambitious from my (not very) smart phone.
@BD
You flatter me! 🙂 Thank you!
In China a few years ago I was able to access Grandad. Now back here in Ballywhere I can access him without any interference from Big Brother or his nebulous associates.
I take it you weren’t able in China? I thought you were. I thought the little Chinese flag that used to display on your comments added a little oriental flavour to the place.
Yes, ” a few years ago I was able to access Grandad.” Other sites using different systems were, are still, blocked in China. It was nice to see the little Chinese flag show up each time I posted. I wonder nowadays why no tricolour flag shows up on my posts from Ballywhere? It’s almost as if I am stateless. There is a thingy called FreeGate which I could use a few years ago to access some sites blocked by the Sino-Puritans.
Neither of these sites report any problems:
https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html#hostname=https://headrambles.com/
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=headrambles.com
And I’m running Palemoon (a fork of Firefox) on Win7.
I haven’t come across Palemoon before. Just installed it. Interestingly it renders the same as Chrome rather than Firefox with a Serif font rather than a Sans Serif. Such are the vagaries of the Interwebs…
Thanks for those links. A handy resource to add to my list.
Although it started as a fork of Firefox, it’s now diverging to become a browser in its own right. They are using a different rendering engine – “Goanna” – so that may explain things your end?
It’s all just down to the fonts that various systems can handle. Gone are the days of Verdana, Ariel or Times New Roman and now just about anything goes.
Verdana? Ariel? They sound like Hollywood/Dreamworks films. Real men still pine for ‘Courier’…and I take it as a personal affront that gmail only offers ‘New Courier’ among it’s fonts. Bloody “progress”. Daisy wheel needle printed courier did everything just fine, there was no need to get all ‘artistic’ and curly.
Can’t add anything helpful , way out of my league. But -and probably it’s only me- I find images/photos viewed in whatever flavour of ‘nix to be the most appealing. So much so that I enjoy the odd occasions when i have to use Mint (Ubuntu but works) because some laptop/windows has died on me. About the only thing ‘nix does do better IMNSHO. I was quite heavily into linux et al for a while, even learning to work with Vi or whatever it’s called (I can think of better names, all of them obscene) which must be the only editor ever made for aliens with three digits….cos it sure as hell wasn’t made for humans.
Oh and there was a distro called ‘Blag Blag Blag’ which was sexy…but of course it died the death of a thousand joints…coming from Brixton as it did.
For those who [*cough*] dislike Vi, there is a neat little alternative I use – Gvim – same coding but a slightly more friendly interface. Having delved very briefly back into Windows earlier, I can safely say that nothing would entice me to linger there more than was absolutely essential. Mint is yer only man.
I got into Linux (and few other OSs no one will have heard of like Qnix) back in the dark Win Ce-Me-NT era. Having a 1mb broadband connection I ended up downloading and burning to CD (or was it floppy…something antiquated anyways) hundreds of copies of various distros and mailing them (at my own expense- I had money back then) around the world to people who wanted to try ‘nix but only had dial up-which at that time seemed to be most of the US. Yep I was a Linux FanDad-oid
Until I got sick of never being able to just plug and play, of being able to run the software I wanted/needed and by that time Windows XP had reached Win2K levels of solidness….
I had Puppy for ages as a back up but that distro just went weird and could never detect any wifi modem of any laptop and forget connecting to a smart phone. Since a few years back I tend to have a copy of Mint lying around on a stix…great as back up, don’t think I’d want to use it all the time though. Which reminds me; I had to reuse the backup stix for something important like photos of Granddaughters1&2 a while back, must download Mint again and redo…I sleep better knowing it’s to hand should I need it….and if anyone finds all my USB stix that have mysteriously vanished over the years I would be grateful….
Ah, Brixton! When I first got back from India in ’69, I didn’t have a fucking clue where to score, but I figured Brixton would be a good place to start. My instinct proved correct, and The Atlantic pub was fertile ground for my endeavours. Amazingly ,I never got ripped off there, either. Eight quid an ounce for excellent black. Always close to the right weight, always good quality.
Works fine on Mac Safari and Chrome (Safari is shit anyways)
Also fine on Kindle/Android/Silk
Wouldn’t worry about if I were you. As an ex pro tester, you can’t test everything.
The reason I am asking is that people have problems but I don’t get to hear about them. I have made some fairly major changes in the background, so to be honest, I’m surprised that things work at all.
Well, the Department of Education and Science has still blocked you from schools no matter what browser. You must be doing something right!
Brilliant! I am a Category 3 risk apparently [1 is the highest and 6 is the lowest]. I wonder how either I could get myself ranked at 2 or 1? Or maybe how I could get myself through their filtering system altogether? It’s nice to be more seditious than YouTube anyway…
Simple , change your banner for a picture of you and Savile together wearing “I <3 ISIS” tee shirts and speedos. If you really wanted to reach Cat1+ then you should both be smoking cigars….suggestively…monica-ly…
Try alerting a few schoolchildren you know to the existence of the FreeGate app . Then they can work their school computers around the educational blocking of headrambles. It’s Sino-proof, so it should also be edu-proof.
https://freegate.en.softonic.com/