I use GlimmerBlocker and Click To Flash for ad blocking on the Mac.

Annoyingly, GlimmerBlocker doesn’t seem to block Facebook sidebar ads by default.

However, that’s easy to fix.

Add a new rule. Set

• Action: Whitelist URL
• Host is: “www.facebook.com”

Click the css tab at the top.

Enter the following CSS:

Click “Save”, and try loading a Facebook page.

It worked for me… your mileage may vary…

Well my notice period is finished finally, and as of today, I am no longer working for Sports Interactive.

Instead, Elegant Chaos is fully back up and running, and I am planning to create and publish my own iPhone, iPad and Macintosh software.

I have a number of product ideas, ranging from the tiniest of utilities to some fairly large applications which may end up being long-term projects. Currently I’m aiming at the utility / general-purpose application market, and not at games. This isn’t through any great bias one way or the other, but because I’ve always been a believer in making software that you need yourself, and right now there are lots of utility applications that I need. That said, I do have at least 3 game ideas which may see the light of day eventually. I’d love to work on games, but I think that they’ll generally take longer and require more people, which isn’t practical for me at this moment.

I am well aware, incidentally, that making a living as an indy application developer is hard, and I’m definitely going into this with my eyes open. You need good ideas, good execution, and probably a fair bit of luck too if you want to make proper money. Only time will tell if I can tick any of those boxes, let alone all of them at once. A few people have applications that are runaway successes, but the vast majority sell only a small number of copies, probably not even enough to cover the development costs.

So there’s a possibility that I might not be able to do this full time, and might also have to spend some time contracting.

That’s fine by me - I enjoy working with other people so a bit of contracting would actually be welcome anyway.

I want to give this indy thing a go first though - have some fun, learn some new things, and unwind a bit after years and years getting frustrated having to make things to other people’s specifications!

It’s a risk, of course, but every now and then, you have to take a chance. So wish me luck, and watch this space!

I’ve got a lot to do, and fairly high on the list is sorting out this website.

As part of that, I’m toying with the idea of splitting my blog and more personal stuff off onto a separate site.

The blog has always nominally been called “born sleepy”, which is why there’s a link of that name at the top of the site.

If I do move the blog, it will probably get its own url: http://bornsleepy.elegantchaos.com. If this happens, the link to that at the top of the Elegant Chaos site will change accordingly.

I’ll also try to make sure that links to old articles continue to do the right thing - though whether I’ll move them and redirect, or just leave them where they are, is undecided at this stage.

The BBC report for the QPR match last night said “there were plenty of positives for Paul Hart to take from this game”.

I’m not sure what match they were watching, but the only positive that I could think of was that he’ll probably not be in the job long enough to have to worry too much about what’s going wrong.

Not that it is entirely his fault - the situation off the pitch at QPR is a complete joke - but unfortunately one has to say that Hart has had no discernible positive impact since coming in, and in fact we seem to be going backwards.

The progression of the team over this season might be described as follows:

Under Magilton:

• first: playing nice football but losing
• next: playing amazing football and winning by lots
• then: playing nice football but often failing to win

Under Hart:

• playing unattractive percentage football, and losing badly

Under Magilton we appeared to have the basis of a plan. We were distributing the ball from keeper to fullbacks, to midfield. We were generally solid and well marshalled at the back (until Fitz Hall got fit and returned to the side, at which point everything went tits up). Our holding midfielders did a good job of protecting the back four. Our main downfall was Faurlin’s over-eager passing (he has a bad tendency to hit blind first-time passes), plus a large dose of over-elaboration by our creative players. That was serious, but could have been fixed with some coaching.

Now, the keeper and defenders are back to hoofing the ball up front, and look to be playing to no plan at all. The central midfield seem to have lost their composure, and the creative players are either not getting picked, not getting the ball, or appear to have lost their touch (or possibly the will to live).

Dire stuff.

The last link I gave for my QPR calendar was a bit wonky.

If you want to subscribe to the calendar with iCal, choose “Subscribe…” from the “Calendar” menu and enter the following URL:

Don’t just follow this link in your browser. Doing that would download the calendar events and import them into your iCal calendar. That’s not as good as subscribing, as you won’t automatically receive any updates.

You can also view it on the web here.