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…

Spitting Image

Apparently, it’s possible that Spitting Image will make a return to TV screens. It would take a fair amount of money to get the show back (“a seven figure investment would be needed”) as all the puppets would have to be re-made and so on – but I know I’d love to see the show come back.

And I can only dream of what they’d make of Blair, Prescott, Brown et al.

Blogrolling Redux

Further to what I was saying on Saturday about Blogrolling being a bit up it, I’ve just read their News section, and it turns out that yes, there was a whacking big crash, and an upgrade that happened about a week earlier than it should’ve done.

Fair play to them, and it seems to be back up and running OK again.

Redesign Questions

OK, I’ve got a fair amount of the basics done for a redesign of d4d™. It’s not too radical (hey, I’m sad, and still like the basic *cough* “design” of the site) at first sight, but there’s a lot of new stuff in the background.

But now comes the techie part – concentrate! Further to various comments (you know who you are) while I’m used to the yellow, it’s still offensive (and non-work-subtle) for many people, so I’m going to bite the bullet and create a colour-switcher. There are two options for it.

One : Use a cookie-based system. While this won’t hold any personal data (and in fact is likely to just hold a value for a PHP variable name) what I need to know is how many people would be OK with accepting cookies, whether more people have them turned off than on, that kind of thing.

Two :The second option is somewhat subtler, but in concept perhaps slightly more intrusive. I’m thinking of using a database, listing the IP address, and any colour choice listed against that IP. This is well geeky, and I’m currently on theory-only concept, but it would mean that people reading d4d™ from work wouldn’t need to worry about cookies. Again, no further personal data would be held – it would purely be “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx : Blue”, but how do people feel about that as a concept?

And given the choice, which would you prefer?

Berkshire

Ah, that was a grand weekend. Meeting people I’ve wanted to for quite a while, coupled with beer, a garden, Trivial Pursuit, barbeque, and loads of sun. Oh, and some idiot banter, and a couple of epic faux pas, for which I’ve apologised already. (Bless you, my child) Everyone was great, and it’s been an utter pleasure to meet them.

And then today was more sun and garden, then meeting up with one of my oldest friends (old as in “duration of friendship”, not as in “years”) for lunch and general putting the world to rights. Of course, the four-plus hour train-ride home wasn’t much fun, but I still got some stuff done, and now I’m home and utterly knackered.