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 __  __ _2001-12-28   _ _____ _  __
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                  "If you publish next Friday you need help."
                   - MARC INGRAM, personal correspondence, 2001-12-21

                                >> YEAR END COMPO <<
                          going out with style sheets

         How very right you are, Mr Ingram. Given our failed
         Newtonmas taunting of The Register by a public-school style
         "detagging": http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/31/23511.html ,
         the abandoned midair destruction of Perl eurohacker Leon Brocard:
         http://use.perl.org/journal.pl?op=display&uid=189&id=1787
         and recent misspellings of both Kieren McCarthy *and* Dmitry
         Sklyarov in dispatches, we could do with a break. We'll be
         back from the retraining exercise at Minas Morgul on
         2002-01-11.

         Meanwhile, we do indeed "need help". Acting from orders from
         readers who believe non-proportional fonts to be Ye Devile's
         Scrawl, we've revamped the NTK frontpage. It still appears
         exactly the same (of course!), but a closer look at the HTML
         will show that we've now parsed the newsletter more tightly,
         and slung some SPAN tags into the mix. Now all it needs to
         be turned into something that even a designer could love is
         a slinky CSS stylesheet. Which brings us to our problem:

         One of Santa's naughty pixies sneaked into our brains over
         Christmas and made us too lazy and untalented to write
         decent CSS2. The best we could do is this near-monstrosity:
         http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?style=http://www.ntk.net/ntk.css
         ... which sucks, but gives you the general idea. Change that
         "style" parameter to any URI, and you'll see NTK through
         your own CSS choices. Send your homegrown CSS2 stylesheet to
         us, and you could see your code garland the official "fancy"
         alternative NTK Webpage. Also, you'll get an NTK shirt of
         some kind. Prizes will be awarded for best real stylesheet
         that we can use, and funniest alternative. Code has to look
         good on Mozilla, Opera, and IE6, no prizes for cross-site
         script hacking, you naughty monkeys. If you need extra tags,
         let us know and we'll see what we can do. Not much, we fear.
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1730000/1730523.stm
                       - doomed even when we roped in Craig from Big Brother
         http://www.webstandards.org/
- we're the kiss of death to the Web Standards Project though, thank god

         [ Just to reassure all those scared-stiff correspondents: 
		   we're not planning to switch from Courier. The stylesheet 
		   stuff will remain a heavily-concealed option. We're flexible,
		   but we're not Zeldman-level *crazies*.                       ]  


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> it's the battle of the inadvertent Elite t-shirt product
         placements, with reader Alex "nuttyxander.com" Ingram and
         NTK's own "Dave Green" predicting appearances on the redhead
         bit of today's ROYAL INSTITUTION CHRISTMAS LECTURES (12noon,
         Fri; 4am, Thu, C4), and the BBC's BUSINESS BREAKFAST (from
         6am, Sat?, BBC2) respectively... Tamzin "Eastenders" Outhwaite
         plays a no-nonsense army sysadmin hunting down a cabal of
         renegade Debian users in RED CAP (9pm, Fri, BBC1)... and
         "Despite Warnings, Stubborn Mayor Refuses To Cancel Local
         Festivities" once again in JAWS (10.55pm, Fri, BBC1) - last
         shown Nov 2000... yes, THE ENGLISH PATIENT (9pm, Sat, BBC2)
         has more nudity, but "The Terminator" is a "more satisfying
         love story": http://www.sweetbomb.com/cameron/love.htm ...
         given the title, THE 100 GREATEST TV TREATS OF THE YEAR
         (9.15pm, Sat, C4) seem unlikely to include 2001's most heavily
         repeated footage of planes crashing into buildings... and
         who'd have thought it, but Mark Kermode is a fan of cult Brit
         handicrafts horror THE WICKER MAN (12.20am, Sat; 11.40pm, Mon,
         C4)... THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (7.35pm, Sun, BBC2) isn't that
         great, but still an improvement over similar high-concept
         conformo-parables THE TRUMAN SHOW (9pm, Sun, BBC1) and
         PLEASANTVILLE (10pm, Mon, BBC2)... young Superman Roswell-
         alike SMALLVILLE (4.45pm, Mon, C4) *is* broadly consistent
         with the new non-Superboy DC continuity ... SHAKESPEARE IN
         LOVE (9.30pm, Tue, BBC1) is handily balanced by a look at the
         making of 1982's "The Number Of The Beast" album in ROCK
         CLASSICS: IRON MAIDEN (11.45pm, Tue, C5)... as a patchy
         selection of horror and sci-fi sees you into the New Year, in
         the form of post-modern "Scream" prequel WES CRAVEN'S NEW
         NIGHTMARE (12.05am, Wed, C4), dire comic-book comedy MEN IN
         BLACK (8pm, Thu, BBC1), above-average SNL-spinoff CONEHEADS
         (12.35am, Thu, BBC1), and Cronenberg's atypically entertaining
         SCANNERS (12.15am, Thu, C4)...

         FILM>> not much new at the cinema so, as ever, we've tried to
         assemble a "Best Of 2001" list consisting of films which
         preferably don't appear on anyone else's "Best Of" lists or,
         where possible, appear on their "Worst Of" lists instead.
         ("Shrek" eventually won out over "Final Fantasy: The Spirits
         Within", though, for being more convincingly animated.) And
         the winners are: 10. SHREK, 9. STARTUP.COM, 8. DRIVEN, 7. A
         KNIGHT'S TALE, 6. BEST IN SHOW, 5. THE DISH, 4. ZOOLANDER, 3.
         ALMOST FAMOUS, and 2. SWORDFISH, making NTK's no.1 Film Of The
         Year Tom Green's rawly personal "transgressive masterpiece"
         FREDDY GOT FINGERED. History - and the video release - will
         prove us right... which means our "Worst Of" list can focus on
         ones that everyone else claimed were really good, or that were
         just wildly disappointing for some other reason. Namely (in no
         particular order): PLANET OF THE APES, GHOST WORLD, THE FAST
         AND THE FURIOUS, EVOLUTION, ANTITRUST, AI, HANNIBAL, AMELIE,
         CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, TRAFFIC and, for scintillating
         underachievement even by videogame movie standards, TOMB
         RAIDER. You have been warned, Hollywood - dare you disappoint
         us again?...

                               >> SMALL PRINT <<

       Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
         happened last week or might happen next week. You can read it
       on Friday afternoon or print it out then take it home if you have
     nothing better to do. It is compiled by NTK from stuff they get sent.
                       Registered at the Post Office as
             "c'mon, even 'The Face' managed to get our URL right"
    ("Seven Wonders Of The Web" runners-up, Guardian Online, Thu 2001-12-27)

                                 NEED TO KNOW
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