Title Switcher – Revisited
Posted: Fri 11 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 2 Comments »Well, I liked the title-switcher working and changing each day – that was kind of fun. However, I’ve decided I’m going to go one stage further and go for a random title line each time the page is reloaded. Yes, I’m bored – what on earth gave it away?
The changes may not take place today – but then again, it’s equally likely that they will. We’ll see.
Additional Technical
Posted: Thu 10 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 4 Comments »I’m actually wondering at the moment whether I should come up with some fixes on d4d™’s styling within wordpress, and build my own template. Currently the hack I’m using to get round the templating issue is fine, but it’s leading to problems in other areas.
The archives thing is still being a twat, and I’ve no idea why. And Quelle surprise the WordPress support forums are still as helpful as a kick in the conkers. Also on the comments pop-up, I’ve got something wrong where once a comment has been posted, it tries to reload the entire d4d™ page into the comments box. Pain in the ass.
There’s one or two other little bits that annoy too, so I’ll possibly work on splitting down the bits of d4d™ into that templating system that WP foisted on to version 1.5. Goody, that’ll be fun.
Joins, Selects, and VPNage
Posted: Wed 9 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »Sometimes I just feel entirely out of my depth, and wonder whether IT is really the field for me. Today (and yesterday, if I’m honest) have been some of those times.
The bane of the last two days have been SQL joins. Not difficult stuff by any means – it’s just that at the moment I don’t understand the concept, or how to tell an inner left join from an outer right one. I know that once it clicks, I’ll look back and think “how the hell did I ever get confused by those?” but for now the logic of them simply isn’t there, and I can’t find a way to get it there, no matter how many of the keffing things I do.
Other than that, setting up Windows XP remotely and sorting out VPNs, server-based antivirus, along with working out why the Windows Firewall kept on restarting have proved to be a day of which I’ve had enough.
co-proxamol 2
Posted: Tue 8 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »Hey, scary – after last week’s post about Co-proxamol (or coproxamol if you prefer) I’m currently number 2 in google.co.uk for ‘co-proxamol’. I must still be doing something right after all…
Safer Internet
Posted: Tue 8 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News Leave a comment »According to The Register and Insafe, today is officially Safer Internet Day. Which is likely to mean absolutely keff-all to anyone who’s actually interested, or cares.
The day will see the launch of several new online safety websites – including a new Insafe portal and a site for Finnish kids to air their views about the web – internet literacy programmes fro schools, and a storytelling competition, open to 19 countries. In the UK, there will also be a full day’s conference on young people’s use of mobile technology.
Of course, I’d be more impressed if the new ‘Safe’ portal that’s supposed to launch today had actually done so. But hey, no-one’s perfect…
I’m sure I’ll rant more about this one later.
Title Switcher
Posted: Thu 3 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »Since writing the little piece of code the other day for it, I’m pleased to see that the title switcher seems to be working fine. I know, it wasn’t complicated to do, and really it was only about ten or fifteen minutes to write it, test it, and make sure all was well. It’s nowt fancy, it’s not going off a database of title tags at random, or anything particularly funky like that (although hmmm, maybe for version 2…) but still, I always like seeing a bit of code that works properly first time…
Day
Posted: Wed 2 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, General Leave a comment »It’s definitely been one of those days today. Half the team at work are off sick, and someone in the other department managed to destroy knacker their laptop hard-drive to the extent that the heads have impacted with the disc platters. Now, this is something I’ve never seen happen without the application of a fair amount of force (i.e. thumping) or gravity (i.e. dropping) – it takes an impact of some sort to do this.l
However, on this occasion we’re dealing with the miraculous. The disk heads have somehow magically impacted with the platters without any application of force whatsoever. In fact, the laptop has never even left the person’s desk. That’s quite impressive.
The other downside (having already bought a new laptop drive) is that it’s a Compaq laptop (hey, don’t blame me, I only work here) and as such the drive cage is – shall we say – a cunt. Two of the four screws are fine and standard, the other two have a weird head on them, which is going to require the application of force and brutality a star-head screwdriver. Thanks Compaq for making life SO much more simple…