If you’re nerdy enough to check the source code of this site you will have noticed some changes in the last few days. This warrants proper explanation, and I’ll provide that over the next few days. In the meantime, if you notice any ‘funny stuff’ on the site, let me know .

Spotted at For the Masses:

The RSS feed is back - it doesn’t validate and it’s a bit crap but it works for the Firefox live bookmark. It works much better in FeedReader than in FeedDemon so I’m happy. I will get the issues sorted in the near future….

This new Domino server I’ve just moved to is amazing. It is sooooo fast - like a real web server. Things are looking up.

I think that I’ve swapped over to the new server with no issues (well, apart from rather stupidly overwriting the last two months of my email - dick). ‘Sweet as’ as kiwis in London say every two minutes. If you notice anything odd, be a sport and drop me a line .

OK - this could get messy - I’ve changed servers so some visitors to the site won’t see this unless I replicate. Frankly, I’m too drunk to do that at the moment, so we’ll all just have to deal with it.

By the way, the corporate web design (nope, I won’t post a link here) is going OK. It was ’signed off’ by the CEO, and so we’re full steam ahead for premature launch sometime next week. It works in IE6, nearly is OK in IE5.5, but is rubbish in IE below that. As for Mozilla et al.: no comment. But given a few days it will hopefully be bearable in minority browsers. I’ll keep you posted.

Long ago I promised I would put a photo of Wellington’s Bucket Fountain on the site:

This is what I’m thinking of doing with the redesign. Andy commented that he quite likes the current design. Alright! I like it too, but it is time for a change. I will definitely keep a copy on the server for old times sake after I redecorate.

A few months ago I noticed that my coffee plunger was producing rancid cups of foulness instead of coffee. I put this down to having not cleaned the plunger one day, and then leaving it for about three weeks. In due course the contents went mouldy and smelt bad. One day I cleaned the plunger, made some coffee, drank a sip and nearly threw up. It was the worst tasting coffee I had ever had. Rather than clean the plunger thoroughly, I rinsed it out and gave up making my own coffee.

This morning I had to have a cup of coffee and used the plunger again. The first cup was fine, but the second resembled in flavour the very urine of satan himself. The plunger must still be tainted. I decided to search the net to see if this was a common phenomenon. Coffee makers can become tainted, but in my case it might be the jug I use to boil the water, or the plunger, or is it my lucky cup, which also goes mouldy periodically?

I got caught in a rain shower yesterday and took shelter in a bookshop. I ended up buying one of those “Teach Yourself in 24 hours” books on PHP, MySQL and Apache.
Hour 1, install MySQL. Easy.
Hour 2, install Apache. No sweat.
Hour 3, install PHP and get it to play with Apache. Hmmm.
After about 4 hours of trying all sorts of things I discovered that the version of Apache (2.0.43) and PHP (4.2.3) provided on the CD that comes with the book are incompatible. AY? php.net finally provided me with the answer:

Apache 2.0 SAPI-support started with PHP 4.2.0. PHP 4.2.3 works with Apache 2.0.39, don’t use any other version of Apache with PHP 4.2.3.

I downloaded and installed a different version of PHP and it worked first time and with no problems. I wrote to the publisher and told them it was a ‘poor show’. It would have sucked even more if I’d been a real newbie and never done any kind of development.

But it all works now and I’m happy. Now hopefully I’m gonna get to the bottom of this coffee conundrum.

I’m planning my new site layout and being pulled in many different directions. To achieve what I want I have realised that I’m limited to quite a plain layout. I’m aware that CSS has a number of limitations at the moment, and it is frustrating when you encounter them. Some are not related so much to the spec but as to how IE interprets it. Other browsers are better of course, but only a relatively small group of enlightened surfers use them. I could just sod my principles and get the layout I want. At least I know that nearly anything will be better the current bodge job.

Good news for me - when I searched google today ol’ bucketfountain came up second. I had thought google had forsaken me.