Aquarionics

Okay, so whilst January 1^st is the date Aquarionics celebrates its birthday, The date of my first Blogger entry is the 7^th April 2000 this makes it exactly one week until the 4^th anniversary of me getting a Blogger account.

Tenuous? Indeed, but I didn’t think about this for the actual anniversaries (I started the diary in January 2000) so I’m doing it now.

There are actual prizes to be won, even. Real, actual, “Things I have to post you” prizes. Or Prize, anyway. You could win the very first, the only, the as-yet-non-existent Aquarionics Mug!

It’s a coffee mug, with an Aquarionics logo on it (I say “An” because the official logo changes in two weeks, and I may end up putting the circle-wibble logo, or possibly the new text logo, or something on it. I haven’t decided yet). Either way, this will be a two off (Not a one off, since I want one too). The only other person in the entire universe with a mug like this will be me. Isn’t that neat? Isn’t it cool? Doesn’t it make you just go ‘Oooh’?

Good.

“How”, I can hear you say, “Do we win such a splendid and very worthwhile gift?”
“Easy” I proclaim, with a swirl of my black cloak, “Write me an About page”.

It’s that easy. The current About page has so many additions and deletions it’s beginning to look silly, and with four years of archives (Although only the last year, maybe two, have been worthwhile) you probably know me better than I do, so write an about page.

Best one wins. Closing date is Midnight on April 11^th.

And if I get a single entry, I’ll be amazed. I’ve got (as of 16:21) a single entry. I’m amazed

Send your entries to: “aquarion at gkhs dot net” enclosing a Stamped, Address Albatro… no, hang on. Just send them (If your mailer supports it, I’d recommend setting a “receipt requested” flag on the mail, just to make sure it gets to me).

So, Free stuff available, pass it on.

[15:07] {Mandorallen} bored
[15:22] {Aquarion} Have a tap.
[15:22] {Aquarion} And a potato
[15:24] {Aquarion} Now you can be chip-bored and water-bored.
[15:24] {Stephen} DIE!
[15:24] {Aquarion} no :-)

[15:31] * Khendon chops Mandorallen in half
[15:32] {Mandorallen} Oi!
[15:33] {Mandorallen} whyfor?
[15:33] {Khendon} So you won’t be providing lunch
[15:33] * Khendon puts Mandorallen back together and multiplies him by twenty
[15:33] {Mandorallen} eh?
[15:34] {Khendon} I was running with Aquarion’s joke
[15:34] {Mandorallen} oh
[15:35] {Aquarion} half board
[15:35] {Khendon} Yeah. And…?
[15:35] {Khendon} The second one is less obscure, really
[15:36] {Aquarion} Can’t see the second one at all
[15:36] {Khendon} “Scoreboard”
[15:36] {Aquarion} Ahh

[15:35] {Aquarion} Could be worse, could have sent him around a running track
[15:37] {Khendon} Lapboard? I’m not sure what one of those is, but it probably exists.
[15:37] {Aquarion} Circuit Board.
[15:38] {Khendon} Ahhh

[15:42] * Khendon moves him to the right-hand side
[15:42] {Aquarion} rightboard?
[15:42] {Khendon} Starboard!
[15:42] {Aquarion} Ahh
[15:43] * Mandorallen cries
[15:43] {Khendon} He ought to be invoiced for all these puns
[15:43] * Aquarion folds him into a paper plane, and throws him though the window
[15:44] {Khendon} (billboard!)
[15:44] {Khendon} No, can’t get that one :-)
[15:45] {Khendon} Flyboard?
[15:45] {Khendon} Isn’t “board” a funny looking word?
[15:45] {Aquarion} (Dart-bored and out-bored)
[15:46] {Khendon} Ahh, clever

[15:46] * Khendon dresses him up in women’s clothing and hits him with a whip
[15:47] {Khendon} Hm, the first one there isn’t quite right
[15:47] {Khendon} (“Skirting board”)
[15:47] {Aquarion} Ahh
[15:48] {Aquarion} I’d have put him in a kilt for that :-)
[15:48] {Khendon} Better, yeah :-)
[15:48] {Khendon} The second was switchboard, btw
[15:48] {Aquarion} Heh :)
[15:50] {Aquarion} I think I’ve run out. Last one I could think of is “peg board” or possibly painting him green and launching him into the sky, but both are scraping the barrel slightly
[15:50] {Aquarion} (Thunderbored two, obviously)

[15:52] {Khendon} We could make him run quickly
[15:53] {Aquarion} Sprintboard?
[15:53] {Khendon} Dashboard
[15:53] {Khendon} Ooh, or make him indecisively between two countries (more complex, this one)
[15:53] {itagne} Make him do what indecisively? :)
[15:54] {Aquarion} immigration bored?
[15:54] {Khendon} make him be indecisively between two countries
[15:54] {Senji} Diplomacy board?
[15:54] {Khendon} “Board, err”
[15:54] {Aquarion} Argh
[15:54] {itagne} Euw. :)
[15:54] * Senji throws rotted fruit at Khendon

[15:54] {Aquarion} Or we could give him complete control over a market
[15:54] {Khendon} Monopoly board
[15:55] {itagne} Or make him write a book comparing small boarding-houses.
[15:56] {Khendon} ?
[15:56] {itagne} Pensions review board. :)
[15:57] {Khendon} Put him in an underwater boat!
[15:57] {Khendon} (Getting very tenuous now :-)
[15:57] {itagne} No, don’t see it. :)
[15:57] {itagne} Man overboard? :p
[15:57] {Khendon} In-sub-bored-inate
[15:57] {itagne} Oh dear. :)

• Hits Ever: 146,968
• Uniques Ever: 8370 (User Agent + IP)

• Bandwidth Ever: 1508.32675171 (MB)

  (Ever, in this context, is two weeks)

  Who are you people?

  What do want from me?

  Why do you read this drivel?

Google have just released into beta testing the new ‘Personalize’ interface. From mucking around with it this evening, I have to say that it rocks, but most of the time when I’m using Google, it’s though the Search box in Firefox, so here is how to make that use Google personalisation:

1. Download this file
2. Save it into the searchplugins directory of your Firefox install directory.
3. (Optional) Copy the “google.gif” file that is in the same directory to be called “google-personalisation.gif” (You don’t have to do this, but you get the google icon for it instead of the default magnifying glass)

1. Restart Firefox

   (As far as I know, this also works with Firebird and anything else that has the Mycroft extension installed)

Got stuff done.

In this case, the stuff was of a many and varied nature and involved:

• Sorting out bank accounts
• Joining Blockbuster
• Joining Library

• Posting Stuff

  But also:

• Resolving that I will never again begin a personal project written in PHP.

  Yesterday, you see, I managed to get PHP5 working on Atoll, my local server. It works fine, from a technical standpoint, it installed straight into the right place, it works, it access the databases and everything.

  Epistula, however, doesn’t. Neither did AqWiki, Aquaintances, Klind or Pareidol. Why?

  Because somewhere in the PHP5 development process, somebody wrote a function to return the contents of a directory back as an array, and called it scandir() which, co-incidentally, is the name of my stock function for returning the contents of a directory as an array. It means that, as of PHP5’s full release, my code is broken. This is, in fact, wrong.

  One of the great benefits of PHP is it’s integration. Everything available was in the manual, which was searchable and contained the wit and wisdom of several years of PHP developers who had been where you are before you were there.

  The greatest flaw PHP has is it’s integration. Functions have been added haphazardly over the five major revisions to the point where, given a two word function, it’s equal odds to be firstSecond() as first_second() depending on who coded it when. Also, the willingness of the development team to break every previous PHP tutorial in a minor revision (Witness the whole REGISTER GLOBALS debacle), Perl – the language with the most established collection of modules on the market – has a namespace system for added on functionality which works so well even Python copied it. PHP, however, is no longer a stable platform to develop releasable code on, since your code may stop working at any point. Worst, this will manifest itself as a PHP syntax error, and you cannot guard against new internal functions unless you check the existence of every function before you use it.

  So, PHP, it’s been nice using you, but until you stop fucking around with the namespaces, it’s time to try something new.

  Suggestions, anyone?