Sweary Filter

Regarding yesterday’s post about a sweary filter, Iain asks :

how will scunthorpe, sparse, saturday, spatchcock, titter, swank, and the other words that contain naughty ones be handled?

The simple answer is : Badly.

While not ideal, I’ll probably do a replace on ” *swearyword* ” (i.e. with spaces either side) which will alleviate a lot of the problems of being contained in other words. The other search/replace would be for ” *certain sweary words*ing” for those that need it. Other than that, keff it. Also, a lot of the more advanced website filters now cater for words like Scunthorpe, Essex, etc., and that’ll be their own look-out.

Of course, any ideas would be happily ignored received of how it could be done better. But bear in mind, I don’t want ultra-complex functions that slow down the rendering of the page too much. (Although if I have a particularly sweary week, it might take some time anyway)

Development

Well, it’s getting there. The “redesign” now has a working colour-switcher, which seems to be working fine, except for one piece of idiot-proofing I need to figure out. I’m sure it’s just an != instead of an == somewhere, but I’d like to have it sussed out.

The other new bit is a sweary-filter. Mike over at Troubled Diva pointed out a while back that d4d™ is likely to be blocked from a lot of places because of it’s rather higher-than-average sweary count. Last week I was working my brain over this while thinking about WordPress and the like, and found myself thinking that actually PHP was just about ideal for this kind of thing, as it meant that I could process the text in each entry before it even got to a web-filter. Therefore, if the “non-sweary” cookie is set, the plan is that the page will come through with substitutions for sweary-words.

In theory this shouldn’t be difficult – as with most things PHP-related, I’ve pretty much got the code sorted in my head, I just haven’t written the function yet. What I’d really like, though, is rather than just having “****ing ****”, which gets boring, having a “Mid-80’s BBC dubbing” over the swearwords, á la Harry Enfield’s “Fun you, you Muddy Funster”. So – what words would my faithful readers suggest for pure comedy value instead of swearies?

Accounts

I’ve decided that of all the people it’s worth holding a particular loathing in one’s heart for, it’s fucking beancounters accountants. And Accounts departments in general. Today has been a case in point.

As most people know, I’m an IT contractor. The agency I’m currently working through prefers timesheets and invoices to be submitted either weekly or fortnightly – which suits me fine. Two weeks ago (and having looked back I’m amazed I didn’t write about this at the time) they didn’t pay me, because I’d managed to fail basic maths, and added up the time-sheet incorrectly. The total was right, and the invoice matched the total hours. But the daily hours added up to a ¼hour more than I’d invoiced for. Yes, I was doing myself out of money – money that, I should point out, came to less than £5 even including VAT – but they pulled the entire amount until it was checked/altered. Petty, but there we go.

At the time I was annoyed by the fact that the accounts department didn’t actually bother saying anything until I called them to find out why I hadn’t been paid – but then they paid the amount by CHAPS on the same working day, so all was unfucked sorted. However, because accounts systems are shite, they then tried paying me for the same invoice last week, as well as the week I’d validly worked. Then they realised what they’d done, and pulled the entire payment – not just the one they’d chuffed, but the one they hadn’t as well. (Which, in fairness, is normal – you can’t pull back half a BACS payment) And then didn’t repay the half that was valid.

I’ve just spent two hours arguing with the agency, because their initial call-centre contacts insisted I’d been paid, until we finally got the name of the person who’d actually pulled the BACS payment – and when contacted, his response of “Oh, Shit” communicated clearly the fact that he’d pulled the payment, and forgotten to re-do the proper payment.

It’s sorted now (well, it’s in the process of being sorted) but the accounts department are definitely high on the “useless bastards” list at the moment. The frustrating part has been their utter inability to communicate with anyone. When I spoke to my contact at the agency, she knew absolutely keff all about it, which is never good when there’s a potential to be on the sharp end of someone going ballistic because they haven’t been paid. Fortunately, on this occasion I wasn’t ballistic, because I knew they’d screwed it up. (Plus I find that it’s healthier to be nice to the people who are paying me.) But if it had been someone else, it could’ve been a lot nastier…

Blogroll

It’s not much, but a couple of links have either moved or been deleted from the blogroll, and a couple more have been added in.

Sarah (Not You, The Other One) is off to Greece ’til November, so NYTOO is on hiatus ’til then. Hope all goes well, and that you have a good time.

New-ish additions are The Report Card, by Mr Teacher, and Never A Toss, who have both migrated from bookmarks to blogrolls.

Fothermucker

It’s just occurred to me – if I’m doing the colour-switching stuff (for which I’ve currently said Arseholes to it, and just done multiple stylesheets) then I’m going to have to alter the comments css to reflect that as well, aren’t I? Bugger.

UPDATED : Actually, something else has just occurred : I’m going to be using WordPress, and that’s got its own comments system, so I shouldn’t actually have to re-do it for Haloscan. Yay me!

Fluntcaps

Grrr, just when the re-design idea was going so well, I’ve hit a wall. I’m sure it’s something simple, but my brain’s just going “Wibble” at it.

It’s this flummin’ colour switcher – see the hassles I go through for you people? Gah. What I want, in an ideal situation, is one CSS file, which then pulls the colour from a PHP variable. Doesn’t sound too complex, does it?

However, CSS files don’t appear to like PHP variables. And doing the CSS file as a .php doesn’t seem to be happy either. Am I missing something hugely relevant?

Wakey Wakey

Coming home last night (delayed train, blah blah, still whacked, and can’t be arsed to rant about it – although cellphone coverage is another story and may well be rantable about in the very near future) I actually found myself scared by a taxi driver. Yeah, some of them can be pretty bloody dodgy in the first place, but that doesn’t worry me – however, this one was something else.

I’d told him where I wanted to go, we set off, and he ‘drove’ straight past the normal junction.

Fair enough, it’s had some issues with a burning warehouse in the last couple of weeks, it’s a Sunday, they could be diverting traffic while pulling it down or whatever. The next junction connects to the required road too… Oh, we’ve zoomed past that too. And wasn’t that traffic light on red?

Then I looked at the driver. He was asleep. Cue that fear-reaction of the slightly loosened sphincter.

I yelled at him, he woke up, realised he’d been sleeping, took me back to Piccadilly (it wasn’t far), didn’t charge me, and I got a different cab home. But chuff me, for a couple of moments there, I was almost liable for a cleaning fee for that cab…