Since first people started writing interactive websites, the issue of how to have a programme output HTML has been about.
Early CGI websites often just had bits of HTML embedded in the code. This, of course, worked, but it was a maintenance nightmare. So people started writing template engines of various quality, generally filling generated data into template slots. I wrote a few in Perl CGI years ago, all awful.
The next step seems to have been templates with basic control structures; examples include HTML::Template and clones, and the Python Cheetah thing.
And then came embedding code in HTML. An awful idea, you'd think, but very popular; PHP and old-fashioned ASP are the obvious examples, and in PHP and ASP sites the application code tends to be scattered about the HTML without rhyme or reason. Less extreme examples include PSP, a Python one (Python is possibly the least suitable language around for this sort of thing, and writing PSPs involves a great deal of fiddling with indentation, and blank comments to let the parser know a block has ended, and suchlike) and LSP, more or less the same thing for Lisp.
There are a few other approaches as well; the ASP.NET one seems to be a sort of template, but with very strange commands to make controls, and there are in-code HTML generators like CL-WHO for Common Lisp (I use this for my Lisp-based sites, and am quite happy with it).
Some particularly annoying web application frameworks will more or less require you to use one particular tool. Of course, you can also make poor choices on your own; I was foolish enough to use PSP for a number of sites, including PoliticsInIreland. It really is unpleasant.
So, why's any of this even remotely interesting? Well, one of the problems faced by many web developers is that while they are likely to be writing the application code, it's very likely that someone else will be doing the HTML front-end; it seems to be moderately rare for one person to be good at programming and visual design, as you can see from my websites (I am, of course, good at neither, but I'm particularly incompetent when it comes to visual design).
So, the designer will have to work with the templates, or, in the worst case, work with the embedded code things. I have worked on a PHP site where I was doing the application and someone else was doing the visual design, and, believe me, it is no fun at all. Of course, if the site is generated entirely in-code, then the visual designer won't really get a look in.
In addition, if application code has ended up embedded, or in the template, then producing, say, a WAP version of the site is going to be an absolute nightmare. Even at the best of times, it probably won't be much fun.
We really, really need a better way to do this sort of thing; I'm just not sure what it is.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Does Yahoo(!) WANT to Fail?
Remember Yahoo? Giant of the early consumer Internet, the site which for a long time had more users than many other, and buyer of Web2.0 startups. And now seemingly incapable of getting anything right.
They are, of course, competing against Google, mainly. And losing. Their search engine isn't a patch on Googles, and nor is their webmail. Their 'Groups' thing is truly horrendous; I was looking at a Yahoo Group used as a mailing list for gSOAP, and the difference between it and its Google equivalent is amazing. No proper search, no threads, cumbersome slow interface.
They have an advertising service pitched as an alternative to Google's AdSense, yet they only allow US residents to publish advertising, thereby cutting off a large market. Their sites are crammed with ugly Flash ads, some of which make noises as you navigate.
About the only good things they have are the various startups they've bought, notably del.icio.us and Flickr. And even then, they've missed obvious opportunities to incorporate those into their own services; Flickr, for example, would be an obvious replacement for the terrible existing Yahoo Groups photo thing.
Their websites are, I suppose, at least better than Microsoft's, though it's difficult to see how they could be much worse; Microsoft seems to have let the whole 'Internet' thing pass them by, more or less.
So, what's going on? While some of the deficiencies (Mail, Search) would be quite hard to fix, they should at least be able to produce a Groups tool of similar quality to Google's, for instance. It really seems that they are not bothering, which, considering their size and resources, is simply mad.
They are, of course, competing against Google, mainly. And losing. Their search engine isn't a patch on Googles, and nor is their webmail. Their 'Groups' thing is truly horrendous; I was looking at a Yahoo Group used as a mailing list for gSOAP, and the difference between it and its Google equivalent is amazing. No proper search, no threads, cumbersome slow interface.
They have an advertising service pitched as an alternative to Google's AdSense, yet they only allow US residents to publish advertising, thereby cutting off a large market. Their sites are crammed with ugly Flash ads, some of which make noises as you navigate.
About the only good things they have are the various startups they've bought, notably del.icio.us and Flickr. And even then, they've missed obvious opportunities to incorporate those into their own services; Flickr, for example, would be an obvious replacement for the terrible existing Yahoo Groups photo thing.
Their websites are, I suppose, at least better than Microsoft's, though it's difficult to see how they could be much worse; Microsoft seems to have let the whole 'Internet' thing pass them by, more or less.
So, what's going on? While some of the deficiencies (Mail, Search) would be quite hard to fix, they should at least be able to produce a Groups tool of similar quality to Google's, for instance. It really seems that they are not bothering, which, considering their size and resources, is simply mad.
My MSN Address has changed
Recently, a few people have given out to me for not answering emails. Why didn't I answer? Generally, because they sent the email to the address I use for MSN Instant Messenger; the address in question hasn't been in working order for about five years.
So, today, I changed my MSN address to rsynnott@gmail.com - my contacts SHOULD be transferred over, but apparently it's not always perfect; if you were on my old list, you might as well add rsynnott@gmail.com.
By the way, Microsoft's page for changing your MSN (now Windows Live) details is one of the worst I have ever seen. Yuk.
So, today, I changed my MSN address to rsynnott@gmail.com - my contacts SHOULD be transferred over, but apparently it's not always perfect; if you were on my old list, you might as well add rsynnott@gmail.com.
By the way, Microsoft's page for changing your MSN (now Windows Live) details is one of the worst I have ever seen. Yuk.
Common Lisp and SOAP - gSOAP?
As I've mentioned previously, I'm currently playing with Common Lisp as a web development language. Now, there are still many web services around implemented through SOAP. I personally think that this is unfortunate; SOAP is overly-large, poorly standardised and poorly documented. There's a (humorous, but true) critique here. However, it is a fact that if you want to develop websites using a given language, it is quite likely that you will, at some point, have to use some SOAP service, or even provide a SOAP service.
SOAP support varies a lot. Ruby has good SOAP libraries, as do Java and .NET. Perl and PHP seem to have passable ones. The big Python one (ZSI) was, when I used it, a bit buggy, however I hear than version 2 is far better.
Common Lisp, however, doesn't really have any SOAP support to speak of. There's CL-SOAP, which is very incomplete and largely aimed at interfacing with Google AdWords. There's also CL-XML, a large XML library which includes SOAP support, but which doesn't seem to support WSDL (SOAP service description standard which is now in almost universal use). CL-XML is also not entirely SBCL compatible. That's about it.
And then, there's gSOAP. gSOAP is a fast, generally standards compliant and iteroperable SOAP implementation for C and C++. It can take a WSDL file and generate C or C++ code for accessing the given service, or for implementing a server for the given service.
Most Common Lisp implementations provide a method for using external C code. Although this method is not standard across implementations, a library called CFFI works on most implementations and allows standard access to the implementation's foreign function interface.
So, gSOAP may be one solution to accessing and providing SOAP services using Common Lisp. A basic approach, which I have successfully tried, is generating a pure C implementation for a given service, writing a simple C wrapper for each SOAP method you wish to use, making the whole thing into a dynamic library, and then calling the functions from CFFI. This works, it's fast, and it provides your Common Lisp applications with access to most SOAP services you want to use. It should also be possible, though I haven't tried it yet, to write a SOAP service this way; have the functions meant to serve data for the web service call Common Lisp functions made visible to the C library through CFFI (note that not all implementations support callbacks in CFFI; the major ones seem to though).
If you want to do this, I'd recommend that you take a look at the examples in the samples directory that comes with gSOAP; gSOAP is somewhat fiddly to use, and the tutorial given on its website doesn't currently quite work. CFFI's C++ support is not good, so you should use gSOAP's pure C generation tools; the Google Web API sample is an ideal example.
It might be interesting to have a tool which parses the C header files produced by gSOAP and generates appropriate C and Lisp wrappers for each method; in this way you could easily integrate any given SOAP service into a Lisp programme without having to write C. When I get a chance, I'm going to have a go at writing such a thing; I certainly have more of a chance at writing something useful than I would at writing a pure Lisp SOAP library with WSDL support!
SOAP support varies a lot. Ruby has good SOAP libraries, as do Java and .NET. Perl and PHP seem to have passable ones. The big Python one (ZSI) was, when I used it, a bit buggy, however I hear than version 2 is far better.
Common Lisp, however, doesn't really have any SOAP support to speak of. There's CL-SOAP, which is very incomplete and largely aimed at interfacing with Google AdWords. There's also CL-XML, a large XML library which includes SOAP support, but which doesn't seem to support WSDL (SOAP service description standard which is now in almost universal use). CL-XML is also not entirely SBCL compatible. That's about it.
And then, there's gSOAP. gSOAP is a fast, generally standards compliant and iteroperable SOAP implementation for C and C++. It can take a WSDL file and generate C or C++ code for accessing the given service, or for implementing a server for the given service.
Most Common Lisp implementations provide a method for using external C code. Although this method is not standard across implementations, a library called CFFI works on most implementations and allows standard access to the implementation's foreign function interface.
So, gSOAP may be one solution to accessing and providing SOAP services using Common Lisp. A basic approach, which I have successfully tried, is generating a pure C implementation for a given service, writing a simple C wrapper for each SOAP method you wish to use, making the whole thing into a dynamic library, and then calling the functions from CFFI. This works, it's fast, and it provides your Common Lisp applications with access to most SOAP services you want to use. It should also be possible, though I haven't tried it yet, to write a SOAP service this way; have the functions meant to serve data for the web service call Common Lisp functions made visible to the C library through CFFI (note that not all implementations support callbacks in CFFI; the major ones seem to though).
If you want to do this, I'd recommend that you take a look at the examples in the samples directory that comes with gSOAP; gSOAP is somewhat fiddly to use, and the tutorial given on its website doesn't currently quite work. CFFI's C++ support is not good, so you should use gSOAP's pure C generation tools; the Google Web API sample is an ideal example.
It might be interesting to have a tool which parses the C header files produced by gSOAP and generates appropriate C and Lisp wrappers for each method; in this way you could easily integrate any given SOAP service into a Lisp programme without having to write C. When I get a chance, I'm going to have a go at writing such a thing; I certainly have more of a chance at writing something useful than I would at writing a pure Lisp SOAP library with WSDL support!
Friday, March 30, 2007
Small World
Someone I know vaguely added me on bebo today. I was shocked to discover that I also know about half of his friends at least vaguely. All the gays on bebo seem to have the same collection of tired homosexuals as their friends.
(I'm just bitter, really, 'cause they're all far prettier than me.)
(I'm just bitter, really, 'cause they're all far prettier than me.)
Video Nasties
In the 80s, Britain banned a number of films for excessive violent content. There's a list, with reviews, here. A few of them are still banned, or can be shown only in cut versions. Frankly, from the reviews, they needn't have bothered; they all seem a bit shit.
"Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler", however, sounds entertainingly silly. Please compare "Claudius Reincarnated as Gordon Brown".
Also, "Killer Nun", about Sister Gertrude,though the ban on killer nuns has apparently been lifted. Apparently, it is a 'nunsploitation' film. Surprisingly, there are quite a few of these; not sure whether Sister Act qualifies.
"Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler", however, sounds entertainingly silly. Please compare "Claudius Reincarnated as Gordon Brown".
Also, "Killer Nun", about Sister Gertrude,though the ban on killer nuns has apparently been lifted. Apparently, it is a 'nunsploitation' film. Surprisingly, there are quite a few of these; not sure whether Sister Act qualifies.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
SBCL with Threads on Intel Mac!
My Lisp implementation of choice, SBCL, did not until quite recently support threads on the Intel Mac (nor, as far as I know, did any other free Common Lisp implementation for the Mac; OpenMCL is not available for the Intel Mac). It still doesn't out of the box; happily, you can build your own one quite easily.
Just get the conventional binary, get the source, read the source's readme (it has an example of how to add threading support), and compile the source. You can then install as normal. I was expecting compiling it to be quite awkward, but it's actually pretty easy, if a bit slow.
Apparently, the threading support is currently a bit dodgy. I found it fine for normal use, but was able to provoke nasty-looking memory errors by running Apache-bench against a Hunchentoot image (each concurrent request uses a separate thread). So probably not suitable for use as a webserver yet, but fine for development.
(Edit: I originally forgot to clarify that I was talking about free Lisp implementations.)
Just get the conventional binary, get the source, read the source's readme (it has an example of how to add threading support), and compile the source. You can then install as normal. I was expecting compiling it to be quite awkward, but it's actually pretty easy, if a bit slow.
Apparently, the threading support is currently a bit dodgy. I found it fine for normal use, but was able to provoke nasty-looking memory errors by running Apache-bench against a Hunchentoot image (each concurrent request uses a separate thread). So probably not suitable for use as a webserver yet, but fine for development.
(Edit: I originally forgot to clarify that I was talking about free Lisp implementations.)
Blogging, syndication and direct image embedding
I like to, occasionally, post photos to my blog. Nothing fancy, as I don't have a proper digital camera, just photos taken with my phone's (slightly dodgy) camera. Now, sometimes, people find these with Google image search; this is particularly the case for the photo of me as a fat sixteen year old which adorns my passport. They then proceed to image-link to them from forums, Myspace profiles, blogs and the like, pulling them off my server all the time.
In the old days there was a simple solution to this; just have the server not give a result (or give a rude message) to people downloading the image from a referrer other than my blog. These days, however, many websites, especially blogs, are syndicated with an RSS feed or similar. This means that people can read them using RSS readers, and that blog entries can be incorporated into aggregator pages. About 30 people read this site through web-based RSS readers, like Google Reader, and it's on a few aggregators. So the simple solution isn't an option.
Another solution, of course, is simply to ignore it. For sites like mine, where images are generally small and low-quality, this is a realistic option; in most cases, this image leeching doesn't have a huge effect on my transfer usage. The only time I ever really had to take action was when an apparently popular French-language forum used a large picture of an MIRV test from my blog; in that case I simply replaced the offending image with a picture of Maggie Thatcher from Spitting Image. After a couple of days with the amusing background, they stopped linking to it.
I can imagine, though, that this is a huge problem for people who routinely blog large high-quality photos; I suppose the obvious solution for them is just to have per-image policies, and prohibit hot-linking of old images.
In the old days there was a simple solution to this; just have the server not give a result (or give a rude message) to people downloading the image from a referrer other than my blog. These days, however, many websites, especially blogs, are syndicated with an RSS feed or similar. This means that people can read them using RSS readers, and that blog entries can be incorporated into aggregator pages. About 30 people read this site through web-based RSS readers, like Google Reader, and it's on a few aggregators. So the simple solution isn't an option.
Another solution, of course, is simply to ignore it. For sites like mine, where images are generally small and low-quality, this is a realistic option; in most cases, this image leeching doesn't have a huge effect on my transfer usage. The only time I ever really had to take action was when an apparently popular French-language forum used a large picture of an MIRV test from my blog; in that case I simply replaced the offending image with a picture of Maggie Thatcher from Spitting Image. After a couple of days with the amusing background, they stopped linking to it.
I can imagine, though, that this is a huge problem for people who routinely blog large high-quality photos; I suppose the obvious solution for them is just to have per-image policies, and prohibit hot-linking of old images.
Classy Citrus
A while back, the Trinity LGBT society had a party. Among other things, we had a fruit punch, for which it was necessary to purchase some fruit. This was the result.
Aren't they pretty? The black is a nice touch. I'd be tempted to say "This isn't just a lemon, it's a Marks and Spencer's lemon", but in fact, I think they were from Dunnes.
The limes, sadly were less impressively wrapped, and indeed one of them was mouldy. Just goes to show that it's better to buy quality.
Besides these, there were a couple of apples, which were pedestrian, and a grapefruit which was bought on the false premise that it was an orange.
I'm not sure what happened to the grapefruit, actually. It may still be lying about our room.
Aren't they pretty? The black is a nice touch. I'd be tempted to say "This isn't just a lemon, it's a Marks and Spencer's lemon", but in fact, I think they were from Dunnes.
The limes, sadly were less impressively wrapped, and indeed one of them was mouldy. Just goes to show that it's better to buy quality.Besides these, there were a couple of apples, which were pedestrian, and a grapefruit which was bought on the false premise that it was an orange.
I'm not sure what happened to the grapefruit, actually. It may still be lying about our room.
Potato-flavoured Ice-cream
From the pub out the back of Trinity:Children's menu: Soup of the day & Chicken nuggets & Fries with ice cream.
Delicious; fries with ice-cream - the perfect combination of saturated fat, sugar and salt. Possibly slightly soggy, but then so are those ice creams with biscuits in them.
Trinity Fire Safety
This is a fire safety notice in a computer lab in Trinity. Note that unlike the fire safety notices in NUIG, it is in English. :)First off, I suspect the author didn't really mean that the user should break the fire warning switch; that sounds less than productive.
You are allowed one quick attempt only at putting the fire out either if you have been trained or if you are trapped by fire. If trapped by fire and the initial attempt fails, please give up, and be burned to death. Thank you.
When you hear the alarm, you must collect your handbag, coat and etc. All students should carry a handbag and coat for just such an emergency.
Please close all of the imaginary windows.
Report to your assembly point, the railway car-park. As the railway car-park is currently occupied entirely by a nearly finished sports centre, you may need to break the glass in the doors and so on to get in.
While 'G. H. H. GILTRAP' looks like one of those mysterious academic acronyms, it is actually somebody's name, it seems.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Google Notebook Annoyance
Google have a nice little web-app called Google Notebook. Just a handy way to make notes to self, which can be accessed anywhere you have Internet access. It used to be available at http://notebook.google.com. For reasons utterly beyond me, that address no longer resolves at all; you must use http://google.com/notebook. Highly irritating; I thought that they were meant to be good at user interfaces?
(Edited: original said 'make notes to elf'. I doubt I'd want to do that; I can't even speak Tolkein's make-up languages.)
(Edited: original said 'make notes to elf'. I doubt I'd want to do that; I can't even speak Tolkein's make-up languages.)
Y Combinator and Arc
Y Combinator is a company which funds technology startups, an angel investor of sorts (angel investor does not, in this context, mean someone who owns a halo factory). It was founded by, among others, Paul Graham, famous for his books and essays on Lisp, for creating the first web application service provider company, and for work on Bayesian spam filters. Successful startups funded by Y Combinator include Reddit; it apparently has about a 50% success rate (and on one of its 'failures', the startup company came out a quarter of a million ahead), which is far higher
than that achieved by conventional VC firms.
Now, it isn't really surprising that it has been so successful; Graham already had, with his essays and so on, a large audience of skilled programmers. This meant that first, when he started the company, he could attract people who wanted to start startups, and also that when the startups were started, there was a ready-made audience for them (Reddit in particular seems to have started out with a large audience; it gained further interest because it was, at first, written in Common Lisp).
For some time now, Paul Graham has been working on a new programming language, a form of Lisp called Arc. What he's said about it so far looks promising. Now, he has written a sort of pseudo-Reddit in Arc; it's here. So it already, before release, has some web programming libraries. He appears to be targeting it as a web language, and it may well be that it ends up one of the better ones around; it will be quite fast, and my experiences using Common Lisp as a web development language indicate that it's one of the more suited languages out there; Arc, which will be a bit less baroque, might be perfect. The bar for being a good web programming language isn't really that high.
So, in a year or so, Arc will presumably be released to the public. It will initially, probably, gather initial interest from people who already programme Common Lisp or Scheme, and from Graham's readers. And, of course, from the people watching the Y Combinator news thing, and thus interested in starting startups. With the result that, if Arc turns out to actually be any good, just about everyone wanting to do a web-based startup using Arc will ask Y Combinator for funding first. That could only be a good thing for Y Combinator.
Possibly, of course, this is all a bit of a conspiracy theory. :)
than that achieved by conventional VC firms.
Now, it isn't really surprising that it has been so successful; Graham already had, with his essays and so on, a large audience of skilled programmers. This meant that first, when he started the company, he could attract people who wanted to start startups, and also that when the startups were started, there was a ready-made audience for them (Reddit in particular seems to have started out with a large audience; it gained further interest because it was, at first, written in Common Lisp).
For some time now, Paul Graham has been working on a new programming language, a form of Lisp called Arc. What he's said about it so far looks promising. Now, he has written a sort of pseudo-Reddit in Arc; it's here. So it already, before release, has some web programming libraries. He appears to be targeting it as a web language, and it may well be that it ends up one of the better ones around; it will be quite fast, and my experiences using Common Lisp as a web development language indicate that it's one of the more suited languages out there; Arc, which will be a bit less baroque, might be perfect. The bar for being a good web programming language isn't really that high.
So, in a year or so, Arc will presumably be released to the public. It will initially, probably, gather initial interest from people who already programme Common Lisp or Scheme, and from Graham's readers. And, of course, from the people watching the Y Combinator news thing, and thus interested in starting startups. With the result that, if Arc turns out to actually be any good, just about everyone wanting to do a web-based startup using Arc will ask Y Combinator for funding first. That could only be a good thing for Y Combinator.
Possibly, of course, this is all a bit of a conspiracy theory. :)
Care to opt-in?
No need to opt in! And why should there be? Well, when mobile phone networks have offers, they seem to quite often require you to send a text or go to a website or whatever to enable your cheap calls or texts or whatever. Sometimes you're allowed choose between a default charging scheme and an alternative which is better in all ways, for example. Why do they do this? I'm not quite sure.Amazon do something similar with their Associates (affiliate) programme. Originally, affiliates got a flat 5% of most items sold. After a number of changes, a scheme whereby the more stuff you sold the higher your percentage cut was came in; you started at say 5%, and could go up to 10%. Then they did something weird. They created two schemes; a default scheme and a 'performance' one. Initially, the default one would work better for people who only sold a few items per quarter. After a while, though, the 'performance' scheme was better in all ways. But it wasn't the default, and you would have to visit the site to change to it. This wasn't even made very clear on the site; you had to hunt around. At least for a while, it would reset to default at the end of each quarter. The whole thing was very strange.
So, why do they do it? Well, Amazon may have some incentive; it'll encourage affiliates to visit the site periodically, and see what new affiliate tools are available and so on, thus boosting earnings for Amazon. But I can't really see any reason that a phone company would do it, unless they want to appear to be giving out a great offer but know that only X% of their customers will bother to enable it.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Ann Coulter - Slow teenager, or just dim?
The Americans have a (right-wing) political commentator called Ann Coulter; her website is here. Read a few of her articles. Note that they read like a slightly dim teenager writing about how he admires Hitler on a message board. Whatever I may think about the opinions of that man who used to write the Irishman's Diary in the Times, at least he wrote well; this is trash.
I'm assuming that the idea is that stupid people will recognise one of their own, and vote Republican. These photos rather enforce that idea. She's one of these people who likes to scream about liberal bias; please compare Mr. Smith, the lecturer in business studies at Lowbrow University who compiled a report for the Adams-Hitler institute on BBC liberal bias (in Saturday Night Fry).
Oh, she also likes calling people 'faggot'; she called a presidential candidate that, for instance. No-one seems to be calling her 'dyke', though, possibly because lesbians are usually rather nicer. Possibly 'retard' would be more appropriate, if she's going to use playground slurs. Or 'witch'. She also appears to be enormously racist.
And what when the novelty of racism wears off? Why, it's then time for criminal libel!
One wonders whether the whole 'really stupid' thing is merely an act to further her agenda, or whether it is deadly serious.
A closing quote from the Coulter cretin: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." I mean, really! This is top-notch dim teenager web-forum stuff! (Note that even though she wants to repeat the Crusades, the Americans call her 'conservative'; the Americans define some words in an interesting way).
I'm assuming that the idea is that stupid people will recognise one of their own, and vote Republican. These photos rather enforce that idea. She's one of these people who likes to scream about liberal bias; please compare Mr. Smith, the lecturer in business studies at Lowbrow University who compiled a report for the Adams-Hitler institute on BBC liberal bias (in Saturday Night Fry).
Oh, she also likes calling people 'faggot'; she called a presidential candidate that, for instance. No-one seems to be calling her 'dyke', though, possibly because lesbians are usually rather nicer. Possibly 'retard' would be more appropriate, if she's going to use playground slurs. Or 'witch'. She also appears to be enormously racist.
And what when the novelty of racism wears off? Why, it's then time for criminal libel!
One wonders whether the whole 'really stupid' thing is merely an act to further her agenda, or whether it is deadly serious.
A closing quote from the Coulter cretin: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." I mean, really! This is top-notch dim teenager web-forum stuff! (Note that even though she wants to repeat the Crusades, the Americans call her 'conservative'; the Americans define some words in an interesting way).
GUIDs - Ooh-er
There's such a thing as a GUID. It's a very large number, generated at random. Here's one: "3F2504E0-4F89-11D3-9A0C-0305E82C3301". Isn't it pretty?
GUID stands for "Globally Unique Identifier". The idea being that that number will only ever be generated once. But, of course, it is random. It's just vanishingly improbable that it'll be generated more than once.
Now, you've probably seen these before. If you've ever looked at the Windows registry, it's full of them. A few, mostly ASP.NET, websites take them as parameters in URL queries (there's a blogging platform that does this); this is of course a great aid to that variety of web developer who believes in making dynamic URLs as long, incomprehensible and ugly as possible.
They're useful for all sorts of reasons. For example, you can merge two database tables with the same schema if their primary keys are GUIDs, say; after all, they're 'unique'. Because they're useful, they're increasingly used, especially in .NET land.
And yet, I wonder. Sure, it's incredibly unlikely that a collision will occur in any real-world system. But what would happen if it did? Might your parking ticket get turned into a regicide on your criminal record? Might your bank suddenly think that you owe the National Debt of South Africa? Might the local nuclear power plant next door suddenly load enough fuel rods for the next eight centuries? Are systems designed with GUIDs even prepared for this (remote) eventuality?
*shudders*
GUID stands for "Globally Unique Identifier". The idea being that that number will only ever be generated once. But, of course, it is random. It's just vanishingly improbable that it'll be generated more than once.
Now, you've probably seen these before. If you've ever looked at the Windows registry, it's full of them. A few, mostly ASP.NET, websites take them as parameters in URL queries (there's a blogging platform that does this); this is of course a great aid to that variety of web developer who believes in making dynamic URLs as long, incomprehensible and ugly as possible.
They're useful for all sorts of reasons. For example, you can merge two database tables with the same schema if their primary keys are GUIDs, say; after all, they're 'unique'. Because they're useful, they're increasingly used, especially in .NET land.
And yet, I wonder. Sure, it's incredibly unlikely that a collision will occur in any real-world system. But what would happen if it did? Might your parking ticket get turned into a regicide on your criminal record? Might your bank suddenly think that you owe the National Debt of South Africa? Might the local nuclear power plant next door suddenly load enough fuel rods for the next eight centuries? Are systems designed with GUIDs even prepared for this (remote) eventuality?
*shudders*
Monday, March 26, 2007
Web Design Done Wrong
I visited this website today. (It's about asynchronous servers, but that's largely irrelevant). The point is:
Note the double columns on the right hand site. What happens (at least on Safari) when you use the page down button? The furthest right one goes down, slightly. That is it. Most confusing. Worst use of iframes I've ever seen.
Note the double columns on the right hand site. What happens (at least on Safari) when you use the page down button? The furthest right one goes down, slightly. That is it. Most confusing. Worst use of iframes I've ever seen.Friday, March 23, 2007
New features for TwitterBuzz
I've added a new feature to TwitterBuzz; you can now see the most recent posts which contained a given link, by clicking on 'Details' beside said link.
Back using Hunchentoot now.
I'm quite amazed at how many people have visited since I set up a few days ago; 1,400 visitors with 2,600 page views, according to Google Analytics. About 50 people have added it to their del.icio.us, as well...
For more on TwitterBuzz see here.
Back using Hunchentoot now.
I'm quite amazed at how many people have visited since I set up a few days ago; 1,400 visitors with 2,600 page views, according to Google Analytics. About 50 people have added it to their del.icio.us, as well...
For more on TwitterBuzz see here.
Manhole in Motion
Outside the Hamilton building in Trinity, where it meets the O'Reilly building:
The grey bit in the background is the wall of the O'Reilly building; the manhole is on quite a steep slope. I assume that it wasn't put there like that, that the slope was caused by subsidence or similar. Bizarre, anyway. I wonder is there still anything under it?
The grey bit in the background is the wall of the O'Reilly building; the manhole is on quite a steep slope. I assume that it wasn't put there like that, that the slope was caused by subsidence or similar. Bizarre, anyway. I wonder is there still anything under it?Nuclear Ireland?
The ICTU has called for public debate on the nuclear energy issue. I suspect, realistically, that it is unlikely to happen in the near future; the government is far too scared of annoying the electorate.
Five Euro Jack Daniels and Coke
Every, I think, Wednesday, in the George, the big gay bar in Dublin, the resident raucous drag queen (Veda) announces the drinks offers, inevitably three euro Fosters and five euro Jack Daniels and Coke, every five minutes or so. Now, Jack Daniels is that whiskey advertised with black-and-white photos of rural Tennessee and little text snippets about their brewery. These two seem terribly incongruous, somehow. If nothing else, a drag queen from rural Tennessee would probably be called Mary Sue-Lee or something.
As for Fosters, well...
As for Fosters, well...
That's one heck of a nurse
I know I've already posted one Spitting Image thing today, but I couldn't resist; this is wonderful.
Dame Maggie Experience
This is possibly the most frightening Spitting Image sketch. It's Margaret Thatcher as Dame Edna. The voices are merged rather unnervingly. Go watch.
Europe plots to replace written language with numbers
I've just noticed this; the size label in my shoe says the following:
UK 11 - Made in Vietnam
MEX 29 - Mecho en Vietnam
EUR 45 - 6290/012/417185
It's obviously all part of their sinister plans; presumably it's a 'Plan B' to Esperanto.
UK 11 - Made in Vietnam
MEX 29 - Mecho en Vietnam
EUR 45 - 6290/012/417185
It's obviously all part of their sinister plans; presumably it's a 'Plan B' to Esperanto.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Thing people find this blog by Googling for
As is my occasional custom, I will now present a selection of the more interesting search terms used to find this blog over the last month. I'll even try to answer their questions!
First, perennial favourites: "fat person" and "ugly people". Yes, indeed, I can cater to all your fat and ugly person needs, or at least I could when I was 16.
Six people searched for "a big atom bomb". Why, I have no idea. There are, in any case, no atom bombs here.
Ditto for "cool vans". Not even a hip tractor.
Argh, they come seeking fanart: "gir comic", "shakespeare comics".
Who, now? "nude mimi rogers"
This sounds revolting: "cake made of marijuana".
I'm not sure about "halal gelatin big picture"; I don't think that charity magazines generally contain it at all.
For the emo soldier: "long military haircut".
As for "mega boobs", I fear not. Maybe back when I was fat.
For "older vans", there was a van version of the Robin Reliant, I believe. Would that suffice?
To "you are the breast", no I bloody am not.
As for "blowjob tutorial", I'm hardly qualified. I wonder does it involve a PowerPoint presentation?
Bloody genetic engineers: "cow made out of cheese".
Oxymoron: "fat people on dates".
To "cute gay guys", sorry, not here. Have you seen my photo? Honestly!
"homosexuality is good for you" - I couldn't possibly comment.
"nuclear cake" - on why it is vital to keep Einstein out of the kitchen.
"old gay" - How rude.
"the ugliness of being fat" - Is this an Importance of being Ernest parody?
"a graph to show how many people agree with animal testing" - How would you feel about a picture of a frowning person alongside a three-headed cat?
"awkward person" - Guilty as charged, I fear.
"balloons background images for websites" - Oh, dear, how very hideous.
"betty boop porn" - Google needs a feature to prevent people who routinely search for bizarre perversions like this from being able to find your site.
"characters that can not be stored in a mysql db" - The Wicked Witch of the West, and Jesus.
"debatable speech" - This sounds like something that Mugabe or the President of Poland or similar would call free speech, before sentencing you to a week of listening to their speeches as punishment.
"exploding inventions" - Bombs, pressure cookers, and occasionally fax machines.
"guy gay 6" - I hadn't realised that we had serial numbers. I wonder what mine is?
"looking for email contacts of all american lipton dealers 2007" - margaret@ilovetea.xxx
"pink piglets for sale" - Do farmers use the internet these days? Racist farmers, at that, it would seem.
"transgenic fish %2b comic" - That's just far too specific.
Wasn't that fun? Try it on your own blog!
First, perennial favourites: "fat person" and "ugly people". Yes, indeed, I can cater to all your fat and ugly person needs, or at least I could when I was 16.
Six people searched for "a big atom bomb". Why, I have no idea. There are, in any case, no atom bombs here.
Ditto for "cool vans". Not even a hip tractor.
Argh, they come seeking fanart: "gir comic", "shakespeare comics".
Who, now? "nude mimi rogers"
This sounds revolting: "cake made of marijuana".
I'm not sure about "halal gelatin big picture"; I don't think that charity magazines generally contain it at all.
For the emo soldier: "long military haircut".
As for "mega boobs", I fear not. Maybe back when I was fat.
For "older vans", there was a van version of the Robin Reliant, I believe. Would that suffice?
To "you are the breast", no I bloody am not.
As for "blowjob tutorial", I'm hardly qualified. I wonder does it involve a PowerPoint presentation?
Bloody genetic engineers: "cow made out of cheese".
Oxymoron: "fat people on dates".
To "cute gay guys", sorry, not here. Have you seen my photo? Honestly!
"homosexuality is good for you" - I couldn't possibly comment.
"nuclear cake" - on why it is vital to keep Einstein out of the kitchen.
"old gay" - How rude.
"the ugliness of being fat" - Is this an Importance of being Ernest parody?
"a graph to show how many people agree with animal testing" - How would you feel about a picture of a frowning person alongside a three-headed cat?
"awkward person" - Guilty as charged, I fear.
"balloons background images for websites" - Oh, dear, how very hideous.
"betty boop porn" - Google needs a feature to prevent people who routinely search for bizarre perversions like this from being able to find your site.
"characters that can not be stored in a mysql db" - The Wicked Witch of the West, and Jesus.
"debatable speech" - This sounds like something that Mugabe or the President of Poland or similar would call free speech, before sentencing you to a week of listening to their speeches as punishment.
"exploding inventions" - Bombs, pressure cookers, and occasionally fax machines.
"guy gay 6" - I hadn't realised that we had serial numbers. I wonder what mine is?
"looking for email contacts of all american lipton dealers 2007" - margaret@ilovetea.xxx
"pink piglets for sale" - Do farmers use the internet these days? Racist farmers, at that, it would seem.
"transgenic fish %2b comic" - That's just far too specific.
Wasn't that fun? Try it on your own blog!
EMACS part of evil Jewish conspiracy
See here. Hilarious. Also, vim supports Ugandan children. Are there no text editors safe for an uncharitable anti-semite?
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
cl-xmpp - Jabber for Common Lisp
Was just playing with cl-xmpp, a Jabber client for Common Lisp. Great fun, and very easy to use compared with other Jabber clients I've played with. What am I doing with it? Well, I'm planning some clever Jabber things for TwitterBuzz.
For whatever reason, the .tar.gz on the page, which is also the one linked to from CLiki and thus used by asdf-install, isn't the most recent version. If you're using a vaguely recent XML library, you'll need the most recent version (of cl-xmpp); fortunately, you can get it by CVS. CVS location is on the web page. Then, you can just put it in a .tar.gz file and use asdf-install on it, if you like.
For whatever reason, the .tar.gz on the page, which is also the one linked to from CLiki and thus used by asdf-install, isn't the most recent version. If you're using a vaguely recent XML library, you'll need the most recent version (of cl-xmpp); fortunately, you can get it by CVS. CVS location is on the web page. Then, you can just put it in a .tar.gz file and use asdf-install on it, if you like.
Twitter Trouble
Twitter appears to be down or more or less down. Again. Seems to happen a few times a day. Presumably recent growth has been greater than expected... Twittersearch etc. was down earlier, with a big nasty proxy error. And my own TwitterBuzz was down on and off yesterday, though generally only for a few minutes at a time, due to a memory leak of sorts. When down, it also honoured the user with a (slightly different) proxy error. Seems to have to grab what uptime there is...
I wonder are they regretting their decision to use the nice but rather slow Ruby on Rails now?
I wonder are they regretting their decision to use the nice but rather slow Ruby on Rails now?
And while we're on the subject of mad politicians
This man, a Texas Representative, believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth and that the conventional understanding of how this sort of thing works is a Jewish plot. Really. And people voted for this guy. He may be even worse than the Polish twat.
From the Polish President comes genius!
The president of Poland (a country which appears to have gone from being overrun with Communists to overrun with Catholics, an only marginal improvement) was recently in Dublin. You'll probably all have heard about his remarks on gay people, but one in particular was rather fascinating. Apparently, if the gay menace isn't stopped, humanity will die out. Which is interesting. Are we to suppose, I wonder, that if only it was 'moral' and he could ignore the alleged devastating effects on the world's population, Lech Kaczynski would be signing up for Gaydar? Does everyone, even people who aren't Polish presidents, deep down, really want to be gay? Somehow, I doubt it.
Poland, incidentally, is looking at bringing in a Section 28 analogue. Wonderful. Ireland is well and truly knocked off its perch as most annoyingly Catholic nation in Europe!
Of course, possibly he's just a bit dim. But the idea that if homosexuality was socially acceptable everyone would be gay is a fascinating one, and I'm inclined to hope that that's what he meant.
As an aside, it is apparently illegal to insult the head of state in Poland; they clearly learned something from the Nazis. Happily, I don't plan on visiting, so can more or less say what I like about their cretinous president.
Poland, incidentally, is looking at bringing in a Section 28 analogue. Wonderful. Ireland is well and truly knocked off its perch as most annoyingly Catholic nation in Europe!
Of course, possibly he's just a bit dim. But the idea that if homosexuality was socially acceptable everyone would be gay is a fascinating one, and I'm inclined to hope that that's what he meant.
As an aside, it is apparently illegal to insult the head of state in Poland; they clearly learned something from the Nazis. Happily, I don't plan on visiting, so can more or less say what I like about their cretinous president.
Twitterers Choose Firefox
By the way, 78% of TwitterBuzz users use Firefox. 78! Internet Explorer is actually the third browser, after Safari.
TwitterBuzz Enhancements
A few minor enhancements to Twitterbuzz; links to URL-shortening services like tinyurl.com are now resolved, and titles for target pages are now shown. More features, including a per-user view, coming shortly.
The site was down a lot today for various reasons; I had a memory leak of sorts, and there was also a small Unicode problem. All is well, now, though. This is just as well; Robert Scoble, noted ex-Microsoft person and having more followers than anyone else on Twitter, just mentioned it, so there may be a renewed surge of interest.
The Twitter developers, incidentally, seem to be producing and enhancing APIs far faster than I have time to use them. Well done them! It's nice to see them actually addressing peoples' issues.
The site was down a lot today for various reasons; I had a memory leak of sorts, and there was also a small Unicode problem. All is well, now, though. This is just as well; Robert Scoble, noted ex-Microsoft person and having more followers than anyone else on Twitter, just mentioned it, so there may be a renewed surge of interest.
The Twitter developers, incidentally, seem to be producing and enhancing APIs far faster than I have time to use them. Well done them! It's nice to see them actually addressing peoples' issues.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Visited by China
A new site I've just put up (the TwitterBuzz thing) was just visited by a Yahoo! spider. A special Yahoo! China spider, apparently. I had never heard of them having spiders for separate countries before. Possibly it's to aid Communist Oppression. I hope they don't launch a missile at me...
Twitterbuzz - what are people linking to from Twitter
As previously mentioned, I was playing with Twitter lately; my profile is here. Now, Twitter has a quite easy-to-use API, so I decided to play with it. The result is TwitterBuzz, a site which shows what sites people are currently linking to most in their Twitter posts. It's a bit like Alexa's SiteRank thing for Twitter; the results are of course generally quite different. Give it a go!
I plan to add a few more features, like link popularity over time, at some point.
I plan to add a few more features, like link popularity over time, at some point.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Twitter Twitter
Friday, March 16, 2007
The correct response to happening upon a dead spy
The correct response on happening upon a dead Russian spy:
"Thanks, Thalium. Thalium."
PS. Before you write to complain, I realise that the accepted method of murdering naughty Russian ex-spies is with Polonium, not Thalium. And rightly so! Causes far more panic. I would never consider accusing the Russian 'security' services of using an inferior substance. However, "Tholonium" doesn't work as well.
PPS. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, go watch the second episode of "Look Around You" right now. Pay particular attention to the ants.
"Thanks, Thalium. Thalium."
PS. Before you write to complain, I realise that the accepted method of murdering naughty Russian ex-spies is with Polonium, not Thalium. And rightly so! Causes far more panic. I would never consider accusing the Russian 'security' services of using an inferior substance. However, "Tholonium" doesn't work as well.
PPS. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, go watch the second episode of "Look Around You" right now. Pay particular attention to the ants.
The Real WTF is...
The Daily WTF is a blog of embarrassing and unfortunate pieces of computer code. "WTF" used to mean "What The Fuck" but now, apparently, means "Worse Than Failure"; I think I prefer the old definition.
Now, that's all well and good. The problem comes when people start commenting. You see, most of the people leaving comments, well, aren't the smartest. Worryingly, in comments on this article, most of them don't seem to know what a hash table is. This is pretty basic stuff, for someone who works as a programmer, and it is not reassuring to know that there are this many clueless people about. Even better, really, is the self-righteousness with which they air their very, very wrong ideas about what a hash table is.
The software that the site runs on, incidentally, is another "WTF". It uses a horrific forum tool called Community Server, written in .NET. It isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but for a couple of years, attempting to make a post using anything but IE 6 would cause catastrophe.
Now, that's all well and good. The problem comes when people start commenting. You see, most of the people leaving comments, well, aren't the smartest. Worryingly, in comments on this article, most of them don't seem to know what a hash table is. This is pretty basic stuff, for someone who works as a programmer, and it is not reassuring to know that there are this many clueless people about. Even better, really, is the self-righteousness with which they air their very, very wrong ideas about what a hash table is.
The software that the site runs on, incidentally, is another "WTF". It uses a horrific forum tool called Community Server, written in .NET. It isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but for a couple of years, attempting to make a post using anything but IE 6 would cause catastrophe.
Better Podcast
Here's a better podcast, with actual content. I decided to ignore the opinion of Anonymous, who commented on the last post, for the time being. This one addresses the difficulty many of us have listening to our own voice, bandwidth requirements of podcasts, and the cigarette delivery man.
As before, there's a feed for this and future podcasts here. You can subscribe in iTunes by clicking here.
As before, there's a feed for this and future podcasts here. You can subscribe in iTunes by clicking here.
Mini Podcast
Here's a little Podcast. It's my first go at one, so be gentle. It's really just an introduction. I have just remembered that I hate hearing recordings of myself...
There's a feed for this and future podcasts here. You can subscribe in iTunes by clicking here.
There's a feed for this and future podcasts here. You can subscribe in iTunes by clicking here.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Mac people scare me sometimes
In the comments on a post about Apple's intent to include a new version of Ruby and Ruby on Rails with MacOS 10.5:
Very Gaius Marius of them, altogether.
Long live Steve Jobs!!and
Long live MAC!
Very Gaius Marius of them, altogether.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Terrifying Advert
Arrrrghhh! I'm not entirely sure what the message is supposed to be, but I know I don't like it.These train station-only ads don't tend to be the best; I suppose it is not economical to employ good (or in this case sane) artists for them.
A little under nine months of equality left
According to the European Union, this is the Year of Equal Opportunities for All. The women will be re-chained to their kitchen sinks on the first of January 2008, at New Years parties across the continent.SUVs - A Modest (Medical) Proposal
In these days of global warming and fuel shortage panic, we hear a lot about how much energy things like Ethernet are using (really), and how this could be resolved. For some reason, though, there is a huge tendency to shy away from confronting the really large energy consumers, like aircraft and cars.
Now, if people want to spend a fortune buying and fueling a car, that is, I suppose, their own business. With something like a Ferrari, the car is at least quite attractive; while I don't think that this makes up for the waste involved, it is something.
But what, then, of SUVs? SUVs are large, incredibly ugly, very fuel-inefficient, and dangerous, especially to other road users. SUVs are a Soviet's vision of a luxury car. And yet they sell like mad! People line up to buy them, most especially in America, but even here. In all but a few cases, the people in question will never drive in any situation which requires a 4x4 in their lives. And yet still they buy them. Undoubtedly, if they stopped, and bought more sensible cars, a great deal of fuel could be saved. So, what is the attraction?
Well, we all know why men buy SUVs. And happily, while in the past there really was no solution, there are now effective penis enlargement operations! Medically approved, moderately safe, and cheaper in the long run than the glorified pick-up truck, especially taking economies of scale into account.
Why do women buy SUVs? This one appears to be a little more complicated. According to women extolling their virtues, it appears to be largely for a feeling of safety. Which would be fine, except that SUVs aren't safe, and aren't even as safe as the cheap, efficient cars spurned in their favour. Clearly, these women are chronically deranged. Fortunately, we have medical solutions for that, too, to an extent; some sort of anti-depressant would no doubt work wonders.
So there it is! The solution to the SUV menace! The Department of Health merely has to establish clinics disguised as SUV showrooms. Patrons could be split into two streams, male and female; the males would get Viagra prescriptions or penis enlargement operations, while the ladies would get Prozac and Valium. Would save the country millions in the long run. Mary Harney, I hope that you are paying attention. Why, the nation might even vote you a cake of thanks!
Now, if people want to spend a fortune buying and fueling a car, that is, I suppose, their own business. With something like a Ferrari, the car is at least quite attractive; while I don't think that this makes up for the waste involved, it is something.
But what, then, of SUVs? SUVs are large, incredibly ugly, very fuel-inefficient, and dangerous, especially to other road users. SUVs are a Soviet's vision of a luxury car. And yet they sell like mad! People line up to buy them, most especially in America, but even here. In all but a few cases, the people in question will never drive in any situation which requires a 4x4 in their lives. And yet still they buy them. Undoubtedly, if they stopped, and bought more sensible cars, a great deal of fuel could be saved. So, what is the attraction?
Well, we all know why men buy SUVs. And happily, while in the past there really was no solution, there are now effective penis enlargement operations! Medically approved, moderately safe, and cheaper in the long run than the glorified pick-up truck, especially taking economies of scale into account.
Why do women buy SUVs? This one appears to be a little more complicated. According to women extolling their virtues, it appears to be largely for a feeling of safety. Which would be fine, except that SUVs aren't safe, and aren't even as safe as the cheap, efficient cars spurned in their favour. Clearly, these women are chronically deranged. Fortunately, we have medical solutions for that, too, to an extent; some sort of anti-depressant would no doubt work wonders.
So there it is! The solution to the SUV menace! The Department of Health merely has to establish clinics disguised as SUV showrooms. Patrons could be split into two streams, male and female; the males would get Viagra prescriptions or penis enlargement operations, while the ladies would get Prozac and Valium. Would save the country millions in the long run. Mary Harney, I hope that you are paying attention. Why, the nation might even vote you a cake of thanks!
Short Shameful Confession
Until recently, I thought that Kylie Minogue's song "Your Disco" went "nabisco, nabisco, nabisco needs you"(!)
Nabisco, is, of course, the National Biscuit Company (or Corporation, or Conglomerate, or one of those terrible words), an American confectionery manufacturer. It was apparently founded before acronyms were invented. Exactly who Nabisco might need is unclear; fat people, possibly.
I do like the name 'Nabisco' as a company name, by the way. Stand by for my feature on silly company names, coming soon to an RSS feed near you (or this RSS feed, in fact, unless you un-subscribe in disgust at the sheer silliness of this article).
Nabisco, is, of course, the National Biscuit Company (or Corporation, or Conglomerate, or one of those terrible words), an American confectionery manufacturer. It was apparently founded before acronyms were invented. Exactly who Nabisco might need is unclear; fat people, possibly.
I do like the name 'Nabisco' as a company name, by the way. Stand by for my feature on silly company names, coming soon to an RSS feed near you (or this RSS feed, in fact, unless you un-subscribe in disgust at the sheer silliness of this article).
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
We all have our vices
I just realised that I enjoy reading through the IMDB reviews of films I like, looking for reviews expressing 'moral outrage' at the content. I enjoy this, because it makes it very clear that the authors of the reviews are very much more stupid than me.
Is this wrong? Oh, no, I don't think so.
Try it yourself! Just read the reviews section for any film which has homosexuals, pre-marital sex, vegetarians, people of different races so much as holding hands, or anything else which is inclined to upset our true moral guardians (a bunch of rather dim Americans, mostly, it would seem).
Even better is a website which reviews TV shows and films for suitability according to an utterly insane religious code (with hints of the National Socialist, too; interracial relationships buy a show bad marks); unfortunately, I don't recall the URL, though.
Is this wrong? Oh, no, I don't think so.
Try it yourself! Just read the reviews section for any film which has homosexuals, pre-marital sex, vegetarians, people of different races so much as holding hands, or anything else which is inclined to upset our true moral guardians (a bunch of rather dim Americans, mostly, it would seem).
Even better is a website which reviews TV shows and films for suitability according to an utterly insane religious code (with hints of the National Socialist, too; interracial relationships buy a show bad marks); unfortunately, I don't recall the URL, though.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Media Continues to Fear Large Numbers
Here's a Times article on an alleged terrorist plot to blow up Telehouse, a very large London data centre and LINX peering point. Fine, fine. Note that apparently, Telehouse houses dozens of servers. Dozens! Imagine! I would assume that the real number is in the thousands to tens of thousands, at least.
Recently, the Irish Times mentioned that Gaydar, an extremely popular English gay dating website, received 'hundreds' of visitors a day. Or, in the real world, hundreds of thousands.
Really, what is this shyness of large numbers when discussing the Internet about? The Irish Times likes to boast of its circulation, which is in the hundreds of thousands; by their own metrics, it should be roughly 6, I suspect.
The BBC is the only conventional news source which seems prone to use realistic numbers, but then it has an enormously popular website itself, so presumably has some idea.
Recently, the Irish Times mentioned that Gaydar, an extremely popular English gay dating website, received 'hundreds' of visitors a day. Or, in the real world, hundreds of thousands.
Really, what is this shyness of large numbers when discussing the Internet about? The Irish Times likes to boast of its circulation, which is in the hundreds of thousands; by their own metrics, it should be roughly 6, I suspect.
The BBC is the only conventional news source which seems prone to use realistic numbers, but then it has an enormously popular website itself, so presumably has some idea.
The Contextual Ads of the Beast
I just checked my Google AdSense earnings for the day so far (the AdSense day ends at about 9 in the morning, for some reason) now. And found them at $16.66. Delightful.
I may need to perform an exorcism; if nothing else, it should be higher than that at this time of day.
I may need to perform an exorcism; if nothing else, it should be higher than that at this time of day.
Holimeter
Where would the modern world be without scientific instrumentation? The voltmeter, the thermometer, the Geiger radiation counter, the Lady Margaret cat counter... All essential in everyday life.
Everywhere you look, it is important to be able to measure things. Take an ordinary domestic fax machine, such as you probably have in your kitchen or bathroom. How viscous is it? Well, what a ridiculous question, you might think; it would never occur to you that this could be an issue.
When the fax machine was invented by Heron of Alexandria in 42 AD, though, it was a very different story. Peoples' fingers would go through the keypads all the time when dialing numbers (of which there were three, at the time) and the machines would get stuck to things. The invention of the Smith-Smythe-Smith fax machine viscouometer in 1932 changed all this, though, by allowing economical detection of problem machines on the production line, and helped push the fax machine into common use, though the really great advance in fax machine acceptability came when the solid, as opposed to liquid, fax machine was introduced.
But, what of this holimeter? Well, it is apparently the case that one can dilute holy water to up to a half without impairing its holiness; any further and it becomes non-holy water. This leads to an obvious issue; how do you know that the holy water you're getting is actually holy?
Currently, the accepted method for checking this is to throw a sample on your local homosexual, harlot or fat person. If they burst into flames, then the water is clearly holy. If they simply melt, then they are a witch, and so the test is inconclusive. Remember that with the recent invention of the heavy-lift broom stick, even fat people can be witches! Now, this is all well and good, but as people become more and more concerned about consumer issues, more people will want to check that the water they're getting is really holy, and demand for test subjects may outstrip supply. In addition, the fat people are beginning to resist.
The old method also leaves questions unanswered. Does the holiness of the water go straight from holy to not holy, or are there degrees of holiness? Research theologians have been trying to determine this for millennia, but the most recent studies, typically involving the participation of an escort agency and large quantities of asbestos, are still inconclusive.
So, the holimeter. Take an ordinary domestic 7.29 volt battery, and attach one terminal to a piece of the True Cross. Connect a consecrated (transubstantiated, gluten-free) communion wafer in parallel with the True Cross, and place a small quantity of the tears of a miraculous weeping statue in a beaker, wired in series to the previously-mentioned apparatus. Place the sample to be tested in a Bessemer plate connected to the tears and the other terminal of the battery, and wire a galvanometer in parallel to it. The device may be calibrated using ordinary water, goat's blood from a Satanic rite, and Pope urine. The latter is available from all good pharmacies.
And there you have it! Cheap, efficient, accurate holy water measurement. But that's not all! Think of the other applications! Concerned that your bishop may not be a real bishop? Simply dissolve in acid and check! Fun for all the family.
(This is exactly why I shouldn't use the Internet while tired.)
Everywhere you look, it is important to be able to measure things. Take an ordinary domestic fax machine, such as you probably have in your kitchen or bathroom. How viscous is it? Well, what a ridiculous question, you might think; it would never occur to you that this could be an issue.
When the fax machine was invented by Heron of Alexandria in 42 AD, though, it was a very different story. Peoples' fingers would go through the keypads all the time when dialing numbers (of which there were three, at the time) and the machines would get stuck to things. The invention of the Smith-Smythe-Smith fax machine viscouometer in 1932 changed all this, though, by allowing economical detection of problem machines on the production line, and helped push the fax machine into common use, though the really great advance in fax machine acceptability came when the solid, as opposed to liquid, fax machine was introduced.
But, what of this holimeter? Well, it is apparently the case that one can dilute holy water to up to a half without impairing its holiness; any further and it becomes non-holy water. This leads to an obvious issue; how do you know that the holy water you're getting is actually holy?
Currently, the accepted method for checking this is to throw a sample on your local homosexual, harlot or fat person. If they burst into flames, then the water is clearly holy. If they simply melt, then they are a witch, and so the test is inconclusive. Remember that with the recent invention of the heavy-lift broom stick, even fat people can be witches! Now, this is all well and good, but as people become more and more concerned about consumer issues, more people will want to check that the water they're getting is really holy, and demand for test subjects may outstrip supply. In addition, the fat people are beginning to resist.
The old method also leaves questions unanswered. Does the holiness of the water go straight from holy to not holy, or are there degrees of holiness? Research theologians have been trying to determine this for millennia, but the most recent studies, typically involving the participation of an escort agency and large quantities of asbestos, are still inconclusive.
So, the holimeter. Take an ordinary domestic 7.29 volt battery, and attach one terminal to a piece of the True Cross. Connect a consecrated (transubstantiated, gluten-free) communion wafer in parallel with the True Cross, and place a small quantity of the tears of a miraculous weeping statue in a beaker, wired in series to the previously-mentioned apparatus. Place the sample to be tested in a Bessemer plate connected to the tears and the other terminal of the battery, and wire a galvanometer in parallel to it. The device may be calibrated using ordinary water, goat's blood from a Satanic rite, and Pope urine. The latter is available from all good pharmacies.
And there you have it! Cheap, efficient, accurate holy water measurement. But that's not all! Think of the other applications! Concerned that your bishop may not be a real bishop? Simply dissolve in acid and check! Fun for all the family.
(This is exactly why I shouldn't use the Internet while tired.)
Shilling Made Easy!
Look at this service. It's basically a system where you pay to have bloggers claim to have reviewed your product or service. 'PayPerPost' is, at least, I suppose, an honest name for it. Hilariously, you can choose whether to allow only positive testimonials or positive and negative. Bloggers are now required to disclose that they're being bribed, though they don't have to do so on each post and they didn't have to when the programme started.
Rather absurdly, the founder says that it is ethically equivalent to having banner ads.
Lots of coverage here.
I really hope this sort of thing doesn't become common; right now, blogs are a relatively decent place to get book reviews and things.
Rather absurdly, the founder says that it is ethically equivalent to having banner ads.
Lots of coverage here.
I really hope this sort of thing doesn't become common; right now, blogs are a relatively decent place to get book reviews and things.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Wodehousian Aunt Generator update
A while back, I announced the glorious launch of my Wodehousian Aunt Generator, a tool for generating a name and personality for for a Wodehouse/Wilde-style aunt. How useful!
Anyway, since then I have made a few fun little enhancements. First off, there are more names and hobbies, mostly courtesy of Mark and Ronan.
But that pales to insignificance beside... the calling card generator!
Every aunt generated now gets a lovely calling card like the one above (the name "Robert Synnott" was used to generate that one), complete with HTML code to put the card on your blog or MySpace or whatever, if you are sufficiently weird to do such a thing. Have fun!
The card generator, by the way, uses CL-GD by Edi Weitz, a Common Lisp interface for the GD graphics library. My main purpose in writing it was to try out CL-GD, but it's fun as well!
Anyway, since then I have made a few fun little enhancements. First off, there are more names and hobbies, mostly courtesy of Mark and Ronan.
But that pales to insignificance beside... the calling card generator!
Every aunt generated now gets a lovely calling card like the one above (the name "Robert Synnott" was used to generate that one), complete with HTML code to put the card on your blog or MySpace or whatever, if you are sufficiently weird to do such a thing. Have fun!
The card generator, by the way, uses CL-GD by Edi Weitz, a Common Lisp interface for the GD graphics library. My main purpose in writing it was to try out CL-GD, but it's fun as well!
Subscriber Number Jump
Notice that my subscriber count suddenly jumped upwards? It's not because of any surge of interest, rather it is because the Google robot which collects feeds for Google Reader and other services has just started reporting subscriber counts; before, it registered as a single hit no matter how many people were reading.
This can be seen rather more impressively on Damien Mulley's blog, which just jumped to showing almost 600 subscribers.
This can be seen rather more impressively on Damien Mulley's blog, which just jumped to showing almost 600 subscribers.
Internet Pseudo-Celebrity!
I was at a gay club night ("Queer & Alternative") in Temple Bar Music Centre last night with friends. Verdict on the night? Ludicrously expensive was the main thing I noticed. A lot of annoyingly pretty people.
Anyway, the point is, I was wandering around looking for the people I was there at at some point when someone said "Robert?" I looked over. "You have a blog, right?"
Argh. I don't tend to believe that actual real people I didn't know read this thing. I also have no idea how anyone could recognise me off it. He was nice enough to say that it was funny (the blog), though he may have just been being polite. Oh, feel free to comment if you like, person who said hi.
When you think of it, though, running into someone who reads my blog is wildly unlikely; there are over a million people in Dublin, and my blog has about fifty subscribers and about the same number of people reading it regularly without the benefit of an RSS feed. Bizarre.
Anyway, the point is, I was wandering around looking for the people I was there at at some point when someone said "Robert?" I looked over. "You have a blog, right?"
Argh. I don't tend to believe that actual real people I didn't know read this thing. I also have no idea how anyone could recognise me off it. He was nice enough to say that it was funny (the blog), though he may have just been being polite. Oh, feel free to comment if you like, person who said hi.
When you think of it, though, running into someone who reads my blog is wildly unlikely; there are over a million people in Dublin, and my blog has about fifty subscribers and about the same number of people reading it regularly without the benefit of an RSS feed. Bizarre.
Windows Vista and Trinity College - Trouble Brewing
Trinity College Dublin, where I go to college, allows students to connect their computers to the network. It's a common complaint that if you're running Windows, you must have Windows XP Professional, not Windows XP Home. This is because XP Home isn't able to join a domain; Windows computers have to join a domain on the College network, even though Macs and Linux computers don't, for some hideously tedious sysadmin reason which I don't recall.
Right now, Information Systems Services in College don't support Vista at all. Since most new computers seem to be coming with it, though, they'll have to add support soonish, probably at the beginning of the next academic year. And therein lies the problem.
You see, Windows Vista comes in about five or six different flavours. There are Home Basic and Premium, Business, Ultimate, and one or two others. The Home ones have multimedia features, while the Business ones have, erm, business-y features. Ultimate has everything.
Most consumer laptops are likely to ship with one or other Vista Home, because consumer users will want the multimedia features. But neither Home Basic nor Premium are able to join domains! Students are unlikely to want to 'upgrade' to Business (if it is even available as an on-the-shelf product) because they'd lose multimedia. So that only leaves Ultimate, which support joining domains. And which costs 600 euro. Yes, really.
So, yes, expecting chaos next year. I would really not like to work in Information Systems Services. I wonder was this deliberate on Microsoft's part? I hear that requiring student laptops to be able to join domains is pretty much standard practice in universities; it must surely be a use-case they'd look at.
Right now, Information Systems Services in College don't support Vista at all. Since most new computers seem to be coming with it, though, they'll have to add support soonish, probably at the beginning of the next academic year. And therein lies the problem.
You see, Windows Vista comes in about five or six different flavours. There are Home Basic and Premium, Business, Ultimate, and one or two others. The Home ones have multimedia features, while the Business ones have, erm, business-y features. Ultimate has everything.
Most consumer laptops are likely to ship with one or other Vista Home, because consumer users will want the multimedia features. But neither Home Basic nor Premium are able to join domains! Students are unlikely to want to 'upgrade' to Business (if it is even available as an on-the-shelf product) because they'd lose multimedia. So that only leaves Ultimate, which support joining domains. And which costs 600 euro. Yes, really.
So, yes, expecting chaos next year. I would really not like to work in Information Systems Services. I wonder was this deliberate on Microsoft's part? I hear that requiring student laptops to be able to join domains is pretty much standard practice in universities; it must surely be a use-case they'd look at.
Sites which really should be faster than they are - Adobe and MSDN
A few weeks ago, I thought it might be fun to play with Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash, source of endless ugly unusable websites. So, I went to the website to download the trial.
Now, Adobe is a company which makes various creative software with a large user-base in the web design industry. Through its Macromedia takeover, it now also produces Flash, server-side language ColdFusion, and a few other bits and pieces.
Anyway, try visiting the site. Try to download the trial version. Note that each page takes a few minutes to load, and that occasionally it will just fail entirely with error messages in English and what I think may be Japanese.
Well, maybe their Internet connection isn't all it could be? Not so; when I FINALLY got through all the signup pages and so on, the software downloaded at about two megabytes per second.
So there is one obvious culprit left. Adobe's site is written in their proprietary server-side scripting language, ColdFusion. I've never liked the idea of ColdFusion; it's strange and unstructured. But even if I did like it, I'd be very, very cautious of any product whose manufacturer is unable to sensibly implement their own website in it.
And then there's MSDN. MSDN is Microsoft's support and documentation site for third party developers, who, remember, are more or less entirely responsible for the success of Windows and thus Microsoft. Getting a page for any random Windows API function seems to take 10 to 20 seconds. Really. In this day and age. The search appears to be entirely useless (in fact, a look round the Internet indicates that the generally preferred method of searching MSDN is with Google).
Remember that Microsoft also has a server-side language (ASP.NET) and that they have a search engine with which they would like to compete with Google.
I really can't understand the thinking behind these sites. For a company who produces tools to make websites to have a website which is un-usably slow can surely not be a good idea. Microsoft's neglect of its developers seems particularly surprising; they really are enormously dependent on them, after all, and a lot more development nowadays is done in situations where the target platform doesn't really matter (web applications and so on); if another system is cheaper to develop for because programmers have to wait 20 seconds for each page load on MSDN, while the other system has working online documentation, people may start to choose it.
Now, Adobe is a company which makes various creative software with a large user-base in the web design industry. Through its Macromedia takeover, it now also produces Flash, server-side language ColdFusion, and a few other bits and pieces.
Anyway, try visiting the site. Try to download the trial version. Note that each page takes a few minutes to load, and that occasionally it will just fail entirely with error messages in English and what I think may be Japanese.
Well, maybe their Internet connection isn't all it could be? Not so; when I FINALLY got through all the signup pages and so on, the software downloaded at about two megabytes per second.
So there is one obvious culprit left. Adobe's site is written in their proprietary server-side scripting language, ColdFusion. I've never liked the idea of ColdFusion; it's strange and unstructured. But even if I did like it, I'd be very, very cautious of any product whose manufacturer is unable to sensibly implement their own website in it.
And then there's MSDN. MSDN is Microsoft's support and documentation site for third party developers, who, remember, are more or less entirely responsible for the success of Windows and thus Microsoft. Getting a page for any random Windows API function seems to take 10 to 20 seconds. Really. In this day and age. The search appears to be entirely useless (in fact, a look round the Internet indicates that the generally preferred method of searching MSDN is with Google).
Remember that Microsoft also has a server-side language (ASP.NET) and that they have a search engine with which they would like to compete with Google.
I really can't understand the thinking behind these sites. For a company who produces tools to make websites to have a website which is un-usably slow can surely not be a good idea. Microsoft's neglect of its developers seems particularly surprising; they really are enormously dependent on them, after all, and a lot more development nowadays is done in situations where the target platform doesn't really matter (web applications and so on); if another system is cheaper to develop for because programmers have to wait 20 seconds for each page load on MSDN, while the other system has working online documentation, people may start to choose it.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Copyright for Search Engines
Yahoo is currently embarrassed over having stolen some recipes for their India portal from this blog. Bad, naughty Yahoo. You'd imagine that at this stage they could afford to license them; I hear they've actually started making profits, after a decade or so!
The big search engines do seem to live in their own little world as far as copyright is concerned; look at Google's Youtube, for another example.
The big search engines do seem to live in their own little world as far as copyright is concerned; look at Google's Youtube, for another example.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
But who IS Art?
The following sign graced House 6 in Trinity today:
But who is Art, and why has he a block? Only the organisers of the Masquerade Ball know the answer, it would seem.
But who is Art, and why has he a block? Only the organisers of the Masquerade Ball know the answer, it would seem.
The Register - Fun New Column, and Verity Doubts
The Register is a fun English tech news site, with a developers' section. Of late, this has picked up columns by the wonderful Verity Stob, formerly of Dr. Dobbs. They're wonderful fun; you can see an archive here.
Now, Verity's new article generally shows up every month about now, so I went on in a flurry of nervous anticipation. Only to find no article. Oh, I was most disappointed! I hope this is simply a bit of a delay, and not a sign that the series has been dropped; it is such fun!
On the plus side, a new column has been added a few months back which I quite like; you can see it here. Recent topics include Cocoa (the Mac GUI thing, not the cow juice with bean distillate). and those damn silly Windows applications which make you restart for no obvious reason. These applications and their ilk, incidentally, are all part of Satan's plan to annoy Human Interface engineers in the world to come. "You may be able to design ergonomic slaughterhouses and Braille-operable nuclear power plants, but at the end of it all lies a copy of Windows Vista with a host of dodgy shareware apps" seems to be the approximate tone.
Now, Verity's new article generally shows up every month about now, so I went on in a flurry of nervous anticipation. Only to find no article. Oh, I was most disappointed! I hope this is simply a bit of a delay, and not a sign that the series has been dropped; it is such fun!
On the plus side, a new column has been added a few months back which I quite like; you can see it here. Recent topics include Cocoa (the Mac GUI thing, not the cow juice with bean distillate). and those damn silly Windows applications which make you restart for no obvious reason. These applications and their ilk, incidentally, are all part of Satan's plan to annoy Human Interface engineers in the world to come. "You may be able to design ergonomic slaughterhouses and Braille-operable nuclear power plants, but at the end of it all lies a copy of Windows Vista with a host of dodgy shareware apps" seems to be the approximate tone.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
What do Enda Kenny and Colonic Irrigation have in common?
Only Google knows the answer:
(Note that this post has received the same ad; as it has 'colonic irrigation' in the title, though, this isn't nearly so surprising)
(Note that this post has received the same ad; as it has 'colonic irrigation' in the title, though, this isn't nearly so surprising)
Blog Migration Mistake - Feeds
After migrating to Blogger, I noticed that FeedBurner's count of subscribers to my blog, which normally hovers around the 50 mark, had fallen to 20 or so. At first, I was concerned that people had taken offence to my decision to move away from Wordpress, or were hurt by my unkind portrayal of NUIG's fabulous inventions.
Then, it occurred to me that many users were reaching my feed through automatic redirects from Wordpress's own feeds. With Wordpress largely disabled, these were no longer active. A few lines in a .htaccess file later, all is well, and users are now being redirected to FeedBurner.
So, if this blog has seemed unusually static for the past few days, that's why.
Then, it occurred to me that many users were reaching my feed through automatic redirects from Wordpress's own feeds. With Wordpress largely disabled, these were no longer active. A few lines in a .htaccess file later, all is well, and users are now being redirected to FeedBurner.
So, if this blog has seemed unusually static for the past few days, that's why.
Go Dilbert-imon!
Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, mentions on his blog that he is now monitoring the Internet for the keywords "Scott Adams Dilbert", using Google's Alert service. This will presumably allow him to be summoned to conversations, Kibo-like, by anyone who feels like it.
(James "Kibo" Parry was a minor Internet celebrity in the early years of USENet, largely famous for turning up whenever his name was mentioned, and also in any conversation involving bacon, typefaces, or quack physics. He still lurks on alt.religion.kibology today).
As Google's alert service sends you an email whenever a new result is found for your query, the poor man will no doubt be horribly spammed over the next few days. And this post may feature in the spam! Yay!
(James "Kibo" Parry was a minor Internet celebrity in the early years of USENet, largely famous for turning up whenever his name was mentioned, and also in any conversation involving bacon, typefaces, or quack physics. He still lurks on alt.religion.kibology today).
As Google's alert service sends you an email whenever a new result is found for your query, the poor man will no doubt be horribly spammed over the next few days. And this post may feature in the spam! Yay!
Vista Fetishists
It has probably not escaped your notice that purveyor of operating systems Microsoft has recently come out with a new one, some years later than planned. Windows Vista is a triumph as a Microsoft operating system, with surely more features ripped off from MacOS than in any release since Windows 95!
Anyway, that's not really the point. What interests me is how very, very hyped up some people get about it. Wanting to be first to get it, setting up websites to speculate about it, and then, when it finally comes out, desperate to be told how to crack it.
Windows XP, you see, while requiring 'product activation', was rather easy for the determined user to crack. Vista, so far, doesn't seem to be. So there is a lot of talk on the Internet about potential approaches.
So, when someone unveiled an alleged key generation tool, there was much excitement. Now, the release included a summary of how the tool was meant to work; basically, randomly generating 25-letter keys until one worked. This was clearly madness - there are so many potential combinations that the chances of alighting on a working one are negligible, even if Microsoft had provided one for everyone on Earth. And yet the story was taken up and published by major news sources.
The next day, the same person reports that, actually, it was a joke. Many users refuse to believe him, with some even mocking up videos purporting to be the tool in action, and some saying that he has been silenced by Microsoft or similar. Others boast of how they have their own secret methods for cracking Vista, while still others make a big deal over this.
So what, at the end of the day, is the big deal? It's only a rather unremarkable MacOS ripoff, after all. People really get far too excited about these things.
Anyway, that's not really the point. What interests me is how very, very hyped up some people get about it. Wanting to be first to get it, setting up websites to speculate about it, and then, when it finally comes out, desperate to be told how to crack it.
Windows XP, you see, while requiring 'product activation', was rather easy for the determined user to crack. Vista, so far, doesn't seem to be. So there is a lot of talk on the Internet about potential approaches.
So, when someone unveiled an alleged key generation tool, there was much excitement. Now, the release included a summary of how the tool was meant to work; basically, randomly generating 25-letter keys until one worked. This was clearly madness - there are so many potential combinations that the chances of alighting on a working one are negligible, even if Microsoft had provided one for everyone on Earth. And yet the story was taken up and published by major news sources.
The next day, the same person reports that, actually, it was a joke. Many users refuse to believe him, with some even mocking up videos purporting to be the tool in action, and some saying that he has been silenced by Microsoft or similar. Others boast of how they have their own secret methods for cracking Vista, while still others make a big deal over this.
So what, at the end of the day, is the big deal? It's only a rather unremarkable MacOS ripoff, after all. People really get far too excited about these things.
And how many products can make that claim, after all?
From the exotic Google Ads department:
"You'll never be bitten again"..... Are there any dearer words to a parrot-lover's heart?
(The site in question is a purveyor of free videos on how to discipline your feathered friends, it would seem).
"You'll never be bitten again"..... Are there any dearer words to a parrot-lover's heart?(The site in question is a purveyor of free videos on how to discipline your feathered friends, it would seem).
Monday, March 5, 2007
Posts Migrated
Okay, I've now migrated all my old posts from my old blog to here. I did this with the help of this tool, which I modified to use a MySQL database (my blog's database) as a source, instead of my blog's XML-RPC interface. So that copied across all old posts. Currently, comments aren't copied over; I plan to write a similar little tool to do this at some point.
People arriving at pages on my old site are redirected to here. This is done through the use of a .htaccess redirect on the old site to a Python CGI script. The script figures out what the new name of the page it was asked for should be, and redirects the user. The problem with this is that Blogger is occasionally clever about post names, leaving out the word 'an', say, if the name is long. So some pages redirect to nothingness. I will take a look at the 404 errors I'm getting and see if I can put together a solution.
But I'm very, very glad to be rid of Wordpress.
People arriving at pages on my old site are redirected to here. This is done through the use of a .htaccess redirect on the old site to a Python CGI script. The script figures out what the new name of the page it was asked for should be, and redirects the user. The problem with this is that Blogger is occasionally clever about post names, leaving out the word 'an', say, if the name is long. So some pages redirect to nothingness. I will take a look at the 404 errors I'm getting and see if I can put together a solution.
But I'm very, very glad to be rid of Wordpress.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Enda Kelly - A little bit dim, or just courting the racist vote?
Enda Kelly, that slightly odd-looking creature who heads up Fine Gael, recently made the comment that immigrants should realise that Ireland is "Christian and Celtic". What, really? Well, first of all, what does he mean by Celtic? Hardly the culture; it has largely been erased over the centuries. So, does he mean, perhaps, not to put too fine a point on it, the race? Hmm.
As for Christian, really, how silly! What percentage of the population are practising Christians? I'd guess less than 50%, and falling.
Kelly's vision of Ireland may have been correct when he was a child, but it is hopelessly irrelevant now.
As for Christian, really, how silly! What percentage of the population are practising Christians? I'd guess less than 50%, and falling.
Kelly's vision of Ireland may have been correct when he was a child, but it is hopelessly irrelevant now.
Other Galway Oddities
My previous articles on art, technology and geriatric homosexuals in Galway were all very well, but rather specialised. Here are a few more general things.
You can't see it clearly in this picture, but the statue of Mary is about to drop the baby Jesus. But that's how it should be! After all, this the the Basilica of Careless Mary, or the Blessed Virgin of Negligent Infanticide.
Here, we see the Cathedral about to teleport back to Transsexual in the Galaxy of Transylvania. That's where God lives.
As you can see, lesbians are ghettoised in Galway. As it should be. Dyke Road has a higher population of cats than some countries, and consumes 43% of national tweed production.
This woman was nude sunbathing one day, when a semi-molten slab of copper fell on her. Thanks to European regulation, this could never happen today; the copper would have been at a higher temperature, and she would have been incinerated.
This bin is from an alternate universe. Probably something to do with Careless Mary's.
This was the receipt from our breakfast on Sunday. 'And Cheese'. What does it mean? Who knows! Possibly the coffee had homoeopathic cheese, to prevent mouse infestation.
You can't see it clearly in this picture, but the statue of Mary is about to drop the baby Jesus. But that's how it should be! After all, this the the Basilica of Careless Mary, or the Blessed Virgin of Negligent Infanticide.
Here, we see the Cathedral about to teleport back to Transsexual in the Galaxy of Transylvania. That's where God lives.
As you can see, lesbians are ghettoised in Galway. As it should be. Dyke Road has a higher population of cats than some countries, and consumes 43% of national tweed production.
This woman was nude sunbathing one day, when a semi-molten slab of copper fell on her. Thanks to European regulation, this could never happen today; the copper would have been at a higher temperature, and she would have been incinerated.
This bin is from an alternate universe. Probably something to do with Careless Mary's.
This was the receipt from our breakfast on Sunday. 'And Cheese'. What does it mean? Who knows! Possibly the coffee had homoeopathic cheese, to prevent mouse infestation.Important Galway Technologies
As promised, and because people have been pestering me about it, here is a follow-up to my previous post about Galway.
In the lobby of the building where we attended talks, there were some fascinating inventions on display! I believe that they offer a sneak peek into humanity's future. So, on with the inventions!
This is a device for disciplining unruly eggs. It will see front-line use in the pending War on Swans.
A second mirror is essential when adapting a car to be used by people with more than the regulation number of eyes.
Modern computers like this can double up as lasers with this simple clip-on lens!
Carpet! For hands! To annoy asthmatics.
Wheelchair racing is all the rage.
This putty is intended to restrain workers in major newspapers' Sudoku Sweatshops, where thousands slave night and day to makes sure that the problems in each newspaper are soluble. After finishing a problem, the worker covers their answers in correction fluid, and the paper is ready to go to the shop. By preventing activities such as bathroom use and text-messaging, Sudoku Putty has raised productivity by almost 6%.
The worry that increasingly advanced household devices will eventually revolt against their masters is one which is never far from behind. Here, a trained professional is using an anti-marmalade device. The microchip built into the lid of this jar was encouraging the growth of botulism in its cargo, and as such it must be destroyed as a public health risk.
And the war on domestic objects continues! This ironing board was a Communist.
This is a medical device, intended for use by people who are allergic to torches.
This door handle is a danger to society, and must be restrained.
This is an evil chair. In our Godless society it is all too easy for everyday household items, such as chairs, fax machines and children, to become imbued with the spirit of Satan, and turn on humanity.
This is an automatic potato peeler. Note the control console; in the future, potatoes will be that complicated.
This is an automatic oven tray. In the future, peoples' hectic lifestyles will require that the roast they have prepared be catapulted across the room and onto the table once it has finished cooking, automatically. This is called fast food.
This is Mary. She has just finished baking a bowl in her oven; in the future ordinary ovens will double as pottery kilns, meaning that that currently essential device can be eliminated from the kitchen, saving space. As you can see, the automatic oven tray device is primed; in seconds, the bowl will sail across the room and shatter against the wall, probably killing Mary. These, you understand, are the sacrifices we must make for progress.
This is a next-generation liquid-butter-cooled nuclear reactor. As you can see, heat is exchanged between the reactor chamber and the water-filled 'dish' by liquid butter. Electricity produced in this manner is not suitable for Vegans or people with lactose intolerances.
Another Evil Appliance, safely contained in a glass box. This device is less dangerous than the marmalade jar pictured above; its chief dangerous trait is that it makes people question their sanity.
That concludes this week's round-up of advanced futuristic technology. I think you will agree that it has been most enlightening, and I'm sure that you're looking forward just as much as I am to a future where roast chickens leap across the room, and power is too high in cholesterol to meter.
In the lobby of the building where we attended talks, there were some fascinating inventions on display! I believe that they offer a sneak peek into humanity's future. So, on with the inventions!
This is a device for disciplining unruly eggs. It will see front-line use in the pending War on Swans.
A second mirror is essential when adapting a car to be used by people with more than the regulation number of eyes.
Modern computers like this can double up as lasers with this simple clip-on lens!
Carpet! For hands! To annoy asthmatics.
Wheelchair racing is all the rage.
This putty is intended to restrain workers in major newspapers' Sudoku Sweatshops, where thousands slave night and day to makes sure that the problems in each newspaper are soluble. After finishing a problem, the worker covers their answers in correction fluid, and the paper is ready to go to the shop. By preventing activities such as bathroom use and text-messaging, Sudoku Putty has raised productivity by almost 6%.
The worry that increasingly advanced household devices will eventually revolt against their masters is one which is never far from behind. Here, a trained professional is using an anti-marmalade device. The microchip built into the lid of this jar was encouraging the growth of botulism in its cargo, and as such it must be destroyed as a public health risk.
And the war on domestic objects continues! This ironing board was a Communist.
This is a medical device, intended for use by people who are allergic to torches.
This door handle is a danger to society, and must be restrained.
This is an evil chair. In our Godless society it is all too easy for everyday household items, such as chairs, fax machines and children, to become imbued with the spirit of Satan, and turn on humanity.
This is an automatic potato peeler. Note the control console; in the future, potatoes will be that complicated.
This is an automatic oven tray. In the future, peoples' hectic lifestyles will require that the roast they have prepared be catapulted across the room and onto the table once it has finished cooking, automatically. This is called fast food.
This is Mary. She has just finished baking a bowl in her oven; in the future ordinary ovens will double as pottery kilns, meaning that that currently essential device can be eliminated from the kitchen, saving space. As you can see, the automatic oven tray device is primed; in seconds, the bowl will sail across the room and shatter against the wall, probably killing Mary. These, you understand, are the sacrifices we must make for progress.
This is a next-generation liquid-butter-cooled nuclear reactor. As you can see, heat is exchanged between the reactor chamber and the water-filled 'dish' by liquid butter. Electricity produced in this manner is not suitable for Vegans or people with lactose intolerances.
Another Evil Appliance, safely contained in a glass box. This device is less dangerous than the marmalade jar pictured above; its chief dangerous trait is that it makes people question their sanity.That concludes this week's round-up of advanced futuristic technology. I think you will agree that it has been most enlightening, and I'm sure that you're looking forward just as much as I am to a future where roast chickens leap across the room, and power is too high in cholesterol to meter.
Money Slows Computers
Have you ever noticed how terribly, terribly slow and inconvenient any website dealing with money is? Logging onto AIB's Banking Online app is a task which should only be undertaken if you feel like going and making a cup of coffee between entering your password and actually being extended the privilege of being able to get lost in its baroque passages of nasty little forms. Amazon's Associates web-page, where those of us who shamelessly send our beloved readers off to buy dreadful books can monitor our ill-gotten gains, takes its time, too, and is hideously unintuitive once you get in. Even Google, generally purveyor of fast, intuitive web-apps, fall down badly on Google AdSense, which takes absolute weeks to load and is quite confusing (and getting moreso. Set up a custom-coloured ad unit in a new channel in less than five minutes and without the browser having a hissy fit at the weird Javascript, and you probably win some sort of award). As for the small-scale Internet advertisers, well, it's amazing that the sites are usable at all.
Payment sites seem to have similar issues. PayPal is painful, and those credit-card processors not only take an unreasonably long time, but add insult to injury by popping up little boxes asking you about absurd new security measures involving passwords which have to be reset every single time they're used, and what was your credit limit at the last solar eclipse, and so on.
So, why? Well, the inconvenience is obvious enough. People are getting Free Money from AdSense and Amazon and so on, and are thus willing to put up with anything. It's a little-known fact that most user interface designers are sadists; this, of course, explains things like Windows Vista's wonderful, wonderful shut-down menu. As such, they'll take any opportunity to design something really, really nasty.
And as for banks, well, the only alternatives customers have are to actually go into a branch (even if you are free for the half an hour a day your local branch is actually open, this is not a good idea; the staff are probably incompetent or insane) or to use a hideous telephone-based menu system. They could, of course, move to a new bank, but all the banks are much the same, and in any case recent legislation requires anyone wishing to petition for a bank account to present seven sorts of ID, fifteen official letters addressed to them at home, all less than three hours old, and have a form signed in quadruplicate by the Pope.
But, why the slowness? It's not as if most of the companies in question don't have far more heavily trafficked sites, and they generally seem to perform well enough. It must, so, obviously be the fact, the the presence of money slows computers. This can trivially be demonstrated in the following way:
The conclusion? All money must be banned from high-performance computing centers, to prevent waste. Real-time computers should also be placed on the watch-list. The bit of the credit-card processing box you find in your local shop should be placed as far away as possible from the computer-y bit, possibly in the next county. Those really incredibly slow new ATMs some banks have introduced (the ones which say 'Starting Application' for a few minutes after you insert your card) clearly contain too much money, and should have their load reduced.
Payment sites seem to have similar issues. PayPal is painful, and those credit-card processors not only take an unreasonably long time, but add insult to injury by popping up little boxes asking you about absurd new security measures involving passwords which have to be reset every single time they're used, and what was your credit limit at the last solar eclipse, and so on.
So, why? Well, the inconvenience is obvious enough. People are getting Free Money from AdSense and Amazon and so on, and are thus willing to put up with anything. It's a little-known fact that most user interface designers are sadists; this, of course, explains things like Windows Vista's wonderful, wonderful shut-down menu. As such, they'll take any opportunity to design something really, really nasty.
And as for banks, well, the only alternatives customers have are to actually go into a branch (even if you are free for the half an hour a day your local branch is actually open, this is not a good idea; the staff are probably incompetent or insane) or to use a hideous telephone-based menu system. They could, of course, move to a new bank, but all the banks are much the same, and in any case recent legislation requires anyone wishing to petition for a bank account to present seven sorts of ID, fifteen official letters addressed to them at home, all less than three hours old, and have a form signed in quadruplicate by the Pope.
But, why the slowness? It's not as if most of the companies in question don't have far more heavily trafficked sites, and they generally seem to perform well enough. It must, so, obviously be the fact, the the presence of money slows computers. This can trivially be demonstrated in the following way:
- Place a five euro note atop your computer.
- Launch one of those large, complex GUI-based applications written in Java or similar (Eclipse is ideal).
- Remove the note to a safe distance.
- Relaunch the application
The conclusion? All money must be banned from high-performance computing centers, to prevent waste. Real-time computers should also be placed on the watch-list. The bit of the credit-card processing box you find in your local shop should be placed as far away as possible from the computer-y bit, possibly in the next county. Those really incredibly slow new ATMs some banks have introduced (the ones which say 'Starting Application' for a few minutes after you insert your card) clearly contain too much money, and should have their load reduced.
Why Move from Wordpress to Blogger
Okay, so I've moved from Wordpress, a popular PHP-based blogging tool which one hosts oneself, to Blogger, Google's blogging tool, where hosting can be provided either by Google, or posts can be uploaded by FTP or SFTP to one's own site.
Now, you hear of people going the opposite way all the time, but rarely this way. Wordpress is widely-used, and has many devotees. So what was wrong with it?
Firstly, Wordpress is resource-hungry. On each page-view, the page must be loaded from the database, along with sidebars and so on, and displayed. PHP isn't the fastest, especially not for largeish applications like a blog, and so this takes time.
Secondly, Wordpress is a lot of work. New versions, often with essential security hole plugs, are launched all the time, and updating is no fun. On update, you may have to replace or discard various plugins that you may be using; they're often rather version-specific. All this takes time and effort that I just don't want to put in to blogging.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the spam issue. Wordpress, is, these days, pretty spam-prone. Now, you can use various tools which compare spam to a pre-existing list, or which require an image captcha to post comments.
The first option is all very well, but what happens if a hundred spam-bots hit your site at one time? The site attempts to contact the rather slow remote service one hundred times, possibly leading to a scenario where no-one else can access any other sites being hosted by your Apache instance. For a server which hosts multiple sites, like this one, this is a very bad thing, and leads to people failing to get to those sites. You can increase the number of Apache processes permissible, but that increases memory usage and puts pressure on the database.
Captchas are hardly perfect either; spam-bots can deal with the simpler ones, and they generally require messing with templates and in some cases with the Wordpress code itself. They are also quite expensive to make in terms of resources.
Blogger, on the other hand, deals with all this on Google's servers, either by requiring Captchas, or by requiring people making comments to be registered Google users, or various other user-selectable methods. Right now, for this site, if you are not a registered Google user, you will have to fill in a Captcha.
I have various other gripes with Wordpress, but those are the big ones. It's my firmly-held belief that Blogger is easier for the average blogger, and that unless you have special needs there is no need to have a Wordpress blog. I only wish I had realised this when I started blogging some years ago; migration is rather difficult. At the time, however, Wordpress was the in thing, and the thought of having my whole blog locally was a nice one. For the moment, I only have a few old posts here; you can get a full archive here.
Now, you hear of people going the opposite way all the time, but rarely this way. Wordpress is widely-used, and has many devotees. So what was wrong with it?
Firstly, Wordpress is resource-hungry. On each page-view, the page must be loaded from the database, along with sidebars and so on, and displayed. PHP isn't the fastest, especially not for largeish applications like a blog, and so this takes time.
Secondly, Wordpress is a lot of work. New versions, often with essential security hole plugs, are launched all the time, and updating is no fun. On update, you may have to replace or discard various plugins that you may be using; they're often rather version-specific. All this takes time and effort that I just don't want to put in to blogging.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the spam issue. Wordpress, is, these days, pretty spam-prone. Now, you can use various tools which compare spam to a pre-existing list, or which require an image captcha to post comments.
The first option is all very well, but what happens if a hundred spam-bots hit your site at one time? The site attempts to contact the rather slow remote service one hundred times, possibly leading to a scenario where no-one else can access any other sites being hosted by your Apache instance. For a server which hosts multiple sites, like this one, this is a very bad thing, and leads to people failing to get to those sites. You can increase the number of Apache processes permissible, but that increases memory usage and puts pressure on the database.
Captchas are hardly perfect either; spam-bots can deal with the simpler ones, and they generally require messing with templates and in some cases with the Wordpress code itself. They are also quite expensive to make in terms of resources.
Blogger, on the other hand, deals with all this on Google's servers, either by requiring Captchas, or by requiring people making comments to be registered Google users, or various other user-selectable methods. Right now, for this site, if you are not a registered Google user, you will have to fill in a Captcha.
I have various other gripes with Wordpress, but those are the big ones. It's my firmly-held belief that Blogger is easier for the average blogger, and that unless you have special needs there is no need to have a Wordpress blog. I only wish I had realised this when I started blogging some years ago; migration is rather difficult. At the time, however, Wordpress was the in thing, and the thought of having my whole blog locally was a nice one. For the moment, I only have a few old posts here; you can get a full archive here.
moving-to-blogger
Moving to Blogger
After about two years using Wordpress, I am finally heartily sick of it. So my new blog is here. It has copies of the last few articles from here, and all further posting will be to it. If you're subscribed to this blog, you won't have to change your subscription; FeedBurner will send you to the new one automatically.New Blog
This blog replaces an old WordPress one I used to use; archives for the old one are here. I've moved to Blogger because WordPress was beginning to drive me mad. So far, Blogger is much nicer, and it even lets me host my blog on my own server! (It uploads via SFTP).
As you can see, the last few posts from the old blog are here.
As you can see, the last few posts from the old blog are here.
paedophile-ring-becomes-lying
Paedophile Ring becomes Lying 14 Year Old
Yesterday, the big story in Ireland was that some woman down the country had found various sexually explicit text messages from men on her 14 year old son's phone, and that he had been involved with a ring of paedophiles, from the Internet. Much panic and throwing hands up to heaven.The truth was rather more prosaic; he had pretended to be a 19 year old on Gaydar, a popular gay, erm, dating, site (which the newspaper today rather charmingly refers to as being visited by 'hundreds of men a week'; the print media seems to have issues with the true scale of the Internet), where he said that he was looking for casual sex with older men.
Now, could a 14 year old really be taken for a 19 year old? Well, yes, probably. People often think I'm well under 18; until last year the guy at the DART station used to give me a schoolchild ticket (for under 16 year olds) whenever I asked for a student ticket, and I always get ID'd doing anything I could conceivably need to be ID'd for (including going to the cinema, once). I am actually 21. I assume this can work in reverse quite happily.
So, in any case, he actually had sex with two of the men he contacted (one, rather worryingly, a teacher). Whether these two knew he was under 17 isn't made clear. (They've committed a crime whether they did or not, though). He just talked to the others, who generally backed away if they figured out he was lying about his age.
The point is, really, that papers should probably be a bit more careful reporting this sort of thing. As it is, they made false claims and caused far more panic than the situation warrants, and in particular probably caused a lot of panic for the people in the 'paedophile ring' whose only crime was to be contacted by someone who was lying about his age.
Friday, March 2, 2007
server-prices-rise-with-elect
Server prices rise with electricity costs
I just got an email from the company who I rent a server from, informing me that the price would be going up ten euro (about thirty percent) due to electricity price rises. They even have a lovely graph to this effect.Grr. Silly electricity.
oh-dear-the-horror
Oh, dear, the horror
I found something utterly hideous. Really. Argh, my eyes. I don't know why this exists.handy-tools-aunt-generator-an
Handy Tools - Aunt Generator and BMI for Fat People!
I have put together a couple of simple web tools which solve vital problems which face us in everyday life; a lying BMI calculator and a Wodehousian Aunt Generator. How many times have you found yourself writing a Wodehouse or Wilde parody and needed a silly name and personality for an Aunt? How many times have you sat over-eating and needed a pseudo-medical device to lie about it being good for you? If you're like me, then the answer to both is hundreds. Well, now there is a solution available!I've launched a little site for this sort of vitally important tool. It's written in Common Lisp using Hunchentoot. These two tools are just the starting, or 'anchor' tools; soon to come may or may not include a system for detecting swans and a handy utility for calculating the correct control rod positions to use your atom-powered cigarette lighter for cigars, as a weapon of mass destruction, or even for cigarillos! (To include a handy guide to getting liquid sodium out of the carpet).
The idea of highly misleading BMI calculators courtesy of some dreadful conglomeration of US food manufacturers whose name is too boring to remember. The concept of humorous aunts is by PG Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry et. al. The concept of doing silly things with nuclear energy is by General Atomic, Isaac Asimov, the Soviet Union et. al. Swan paranoia courtesy of Galway.
galway-dirty-old-man-situatio
Galway Dirty Old Man Situation
One thing I forgot to mention about my weekend in Galway is the dirty old man situation there. You see, dirty old men are the plague of us all, or at least all of us who are gay men or straight women; I don't think straight men and lesbians have too much trouble with them. And they do get so bloody self-righteous about being rejected on the grounds of their being a half a century older than you; I fully expect them to be next in line for equality legislation protection, after the fat people.Anyway, dirty old men in Galway seem to be different. You see, if a dirty old man in Dublin takes a fancy to you in a gay bar, he will probably grab your crotch, or similar. REALLY. Whereas in Galway, they apparently get their friends to ask if you like them! I was approached in Eden by a pensioner asking if I fancied his similarly past-his-sell-by-date friend; I regrettably had to decline, due to a false teeth allergy, but they were far more polite about the whole thing than their contemporaries here in Dublin. Most refreshing.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
television-tiff
Television Tiff
Virgin Media (formerly NTL), have just stopped broadcasting Sky One. NTL Ireland is unaffected.There are already message-boards full of enraged crazy people; it's great.
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