I’ve just discovered (by accident) that if you visit the website “http://www.intranet.com/” and add a filename to the end that doesn’t exist, you get a very strange response.
You are immediately asked to download the file that you have requested. (Try it now – it’s perfectly safe! – http://www.intranet.com/arse.txt)
I’ve tried it and looked at the file you end up downloading. It’s a fairly standard 404 HTML error page (“Sorry, this file doesn’t exist”, that kind of thing).
It just seems that they have a problem with the MIME type setup on their server.
It’s just that it seems so sinister….
Mark Uncategorized Web
My pirate name is:
Iron Jack Flint
A pirate’s life isn’t easy; it takes a tough person. That’s okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.
Mark Uncategorized Fun, Web
OK, so some fun-loving-hippy has created “One Web Day” where everyone who uses the web can join in harmony, blah blah blah.
What’s funny, is they are suggesting that everyone make the same hand gesture on that day:you extend your middle three fingers and have your thumb and little finger touch in a circle.
That’s all well and dandy, and it’s quite easy to do…. as many people throughout the world will already know…. because it’s exactly the same as the Scout salute. As in Scouts and Guides, Eagle Scouts, Girl Scouts, or whatever it’s called in your country.
Stupid people.
Mark Uncategorized Humour, Opinion, Web
Right, I came across this article from some entrepreneur who is reviewing websites of major corporations and comparing them to the websites of smaller companies.
Hi conclusion is that having an “Amateur” website look is better for several reasons. I completely agree with his view-point, but disagree with his conclusions:
- The websites he mentions do not have an “Amateurish” look – To say that about PayPal or eBay is ridiculous. In short, they have a simplistic look. I would suggest that the look of these sites is very professional, when compared to other “home made” sites.
- There are more technical reasons than his conclusions state – He mentions the idea that websites need to be viewed on many different device now, and that people need information faster. These are both very valid points, but he misses a key reason – Cost. Simple websites are cheaper. The less data that is returned from a home page, the more requests you website can serve per hour meaning cheaper hardware is needed, and you can get the most out of your bandwidth. What is more, simpler websites cost less to develop initially
- User Interface – These sites are designed to let people move away from the homepage quickly, and to get them to where the money is to be made (either through purchases, advertising, etc). People don’t stay too long on homepages, they quickly move to their desired place, even though they will mainly type in the homepage URL. So, sites are designed to let people move easily and quickly from their first homepage request.
There is probably plenty of other things that I could say about his conclusions, but they escape me at present.
Mark Uncategorized Opinion, Web
Just been looking at the PHP documentation for the mysql_query function. I couldn’t possibly imagine the number of times I’ve used that function, and the number of queries that I have written.
I’ve just discovered this little bit in the documentationThe query string should not end with a semicolon.Wow! I’ve always insisted that it is present! It certainly works if it is present!
Now I’m thinking ‘Why not?’. I mean, it’s part of the SQL language to put a semi-colon on the end, so why shouldn’t I do it when I execute a perfectly valid query from with PHP?
Mark Uncategorized Computers, Software, Web
Thanks to reddit, I found a guide on when to use the correct image format for the web. Technically, the article is correct, and I agree with the cases the guy puts forward for each image type. It’s maybe the not the way I would go about describing the situation, but it’s not factually incorrect.
However, what really worried me was the end of the first paragraph:Yes, this does require a fair bit of reading and understanding, so if you aren’t going to be bothered close your browser now and save my bandwidth.Erm…. too late! It doesn’t make me feel like I’m going to appreciate the technical knowledge of this guy, when his first paragraph gives you a huge clue that the guy doesn’t know how web pages are delivered to browsers! Oh well.
Mark Uncategorized Computers, Opinion, Web
I think this has to be the ultimate in the “Open Source, Working Together” philosophy!
OpenStreetMap is a site that takes GPS data from users, and allows others to create road maps out of that data. In this respect, the work is free of all copyright, and should be correct as far as the data is available (i.e. no errors, and no fake roads added to ensure copyright status). For more information, follow the “Help/Wiki” link on the left of the homepage.
I don’t personally have a GPS receiver, so I’m probably going to have a go at joining up nodes and labelling roads!
Mark Uncategorized Computers, Software, Web
This must be the most amazing, and probably most lethal website I’ve ever come across. It’s simply entitled “UNWISE MICROWAVE OVEN EXPERIMENTS”. Do I need to explain more?
I’m currently trying to find a microwave…..
Mark Uncategorized Fun, Web
This page has some pretty useful animated pictures of various different types of engines working. It’s certainly helped me clear up a few questions over how precisely a Two-Stroke engine works!
Mark Uncategorized Car, Web
I’ve stumbled upon an interesting article this morning called “I hated php back when it was cool“, which kind of vocalises some of the gripes I recently developed with PHP.
Namely, the language has grown exponentially, but without a structure to tie the language together effectively. I just love the description quoted in the article:Aristotle Pagaltzis makes an interesting point when he says how PHP suffers from a lack of initial design. … Basically PHP seems to have started out as a pet project, and had its features battered on with a staple gun, rather than included in the design.. Everything is done with a series of functions, most of which have different patterns of behaviour or different parameters depending on what version of PHP your running. This makes coding effective sites an absolute nightmare!
My other chief gripe is classes. Despite the recent changes to the whole class handling system in PHP, it’s still rubbish, and most of the time, I can’t use the improvements that PHP 5 brings because no bugger supports it!
To me, when the PHP people get to writing version 6, they need to stop, and quite literally start again. I really mean that – it doesn’t matter if the “newer” PHP code is not backwards compatible – it isn’t very BC at the moment, and so they should take more time, consider their direction, and plan ahead.
Mark Uncategorized Computers, Programming, Software, Web
