Tainted coffee and tainted software

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.