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On This Day In 2006

Jul 31

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | No Comments

Looking Back

On this day in 2006 I’d just come to the end of a long weekend of coding and socialising. The code project was, of course, Three Rings, and Bryn and Gareth were helping out with the big push to make the initial release Three Rings 2 a success.

Three Rings is, of course, a project to streamline the administration of helpline services (like  Samaritans) by making it easier for them to manage their rota and volunteer resources. I kicked the project off back in 2002 (based on an idea that Kit and I had discussed as early as 2000), initially only for Aberystwyth Nightline – with whom I was then a volunteer – but it quickly spread and within a few years had become the de facto system for Nightlines everywhere. Later, my work with expanding and enhancing Three Rings comprised a part of my University dissertation.

Among the problems with that early version of Three Rings, though, was that it had never been designed to scale, and so eventually the time came to throw it out and develop a new one, from scratch, in the then up-and-coming Ruby on Rails framework. Gareth was a huge help in the early development, and Bryn got burdened with the task of coming up with a means to convert the data between the old system and the new system, migrating our users across: a horrendous task, because the two systems used completely incompatible data storage mechanisms, and the old system was riddled with quirks and workarounds. This weekend, back in 2006, was the cumulation of that work: Bryn hacking away on his Project: Rosetta system, a stack of Perl programs to translate the data… while Gareth and I made progress on redeveloping features for the new system.

It wasn’t all work, though: we also all took a trip up to nearby Ynyslas, a little way North of Aberystwyth, for a barbeque on the sweeping sand dunes there. As my blog post for that weekend reveals, this involved a fantastic prank in which Claire and I “hid” Jimmy by burying him under the sand, covering his face with an upturned cardboard box, and then frightening the shit out of Gareth when he – having been told that Jimmy hadn’t come – lifted the box to find Jimmy’s disembodied head staring back at him.

Looking Forward

Since that day, Three Rings has continued to grow and expand – it’s now used by a number of charities nationwide, and exists as a company in it’s own right. Gareth and Bryn are no longer directly involved with the project, but parts of their code live on in the system, ticking away in the background.

Ruth now plays a major part in the development of the system, and it actually formed part of her dissertation, too, meaning that my dissertation (which Bryn still has, after he borrowed it to help him write Rosetta) was actually cited as a reference in another document: something which pleased me inordinately.

Claire and Jimmy got together a year and a bit ago, and they’re now living together, still in Aberystwyth (not that you’d know from reading either of their blogs, slackers that they are).

And we haven’t had a barbeque yet since moving to Earth, but weather-permitting, the plan is to do so this week!

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

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Updating WHOIS Records With Easily

Jul 29

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 2 Comments

I’ve recently undergone an ordeal with Easily, with whom a number of my domain names are registered, that involved a process so painful and convoluted that I couldn’t help but share it with you. All I wanted to do was to change the WHOIS data on some of my domains, because they were horribly out of date. Here’s the process that seems to be standard at Easily:

  1. I log in to the Easily web site to change my WHOIS information. If this were any of the other domain name registrars I deal with, this would be the only step in the process, but Easily don’t seem to think that their customers want this functionality, and so they don’t provide it.
  2. I use the contact form to send requests that they change the WHOIS information, providing all of the information necessary to facilitate the change.
  3. Easily e-mail me, informing me that requests have to be made by fax or postal mail. Muttering under my breath about this being a little like the dark ages, I send them a letter spelling out my request. The letter also includes three characters from my password, which apparently is all it takes to impress upon them that I am who I claim to be.
  4. Easily e-mail me, thanking me for my fax (it was a letter), and informing me that a change of ownership of a domain requires that a £15 fee is paid. I reply to point out that no change of ownership has occurred; although my name and my address have changed, and I can supply proof of both if required.
  5. Proof of these things isn’t required: my word as a gentleman is good enough, it seems. Easily change the WHOIS information, but mis-spell the name of my street.
  6. I e-mail Easily to inform them of their mistake. Several days later, they e-mail me back to say that they’ve corrected the typo, along with a terse apology.
  7. It turns out that they’ve corrected the typo, but somehow managed to introduce an even more significant one: now the house number is incorrect. I double-check my letter and all of my e-mails so far to ensure that this mistake couldn’t possibly be my fault, and it’s not. I e-mail Easily back and request that they have another go at typing my address correctly).
  8. A week passes. With no response, I wonder if I shall have to write another letter. Don’t forget that this is an Internet-based company selling Internet services. I send another e-mail, asking whether the previous e-mail is going to be handled any time soon.
  9. Easily reply, with no apology this time, stating that the typo has been corrected. I check the WHOIS records: it turns out that they’ve only corrected their (second) typo on one of my domain names, and not on all of them. I write back to ask when they’re planning to correct the others, and list them.

We’re coming up on one month since this ordeal started. For reference, when I used GoDaddy to do the same operation, I had it done within five minutes, and I could do it all online.

Easily have really, really gone down in my estimation.

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SuperGenPass In MicroB On The Nokia N900/Maemo

Jan 27

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | Comments off

In the unlikely event that I’m not the only person who uses SuperGenPass to manage my passwords and MicroB on Maemo on my Nokia N900, here’s a few tips that I thought I’d share (they’re also valid on the N800 and N810 and “hacker edition” N770s, too, I expect):

  • You don’t have a Bookmarks Toolbar (where would you put it on a 3½ inch screen?), so once you’ve customised your SuperGenPass bookmarklet, you’ll need to click-and-hold on the generated link, and then select “Add bookmark” to save it to your bookmarks).
  • Use it as normal: either fill your master password into the form and click your Bookmarks menu and select the bookmarklet, or select the bookmarklet and give it your master password. Don’t forget when using complex forms or changing passwords that Maemo provides a full clipboard so you can copy/paste passwords around where the need arises (thankfully quite rarely).
  • If you’re irritated by the “You have requested an encrypted page that contains some unencrypted information” warnings that you see when logging into SSL-secured websites (and the fact that unlike desktop Firefox, you can’t turn it off from the settings), here’s how you disable it:
    • Enter the web address – about:config
    • Agree to the warning page, if you’re presented with one
    • Type “security.warn_viewing_mixed” into the search box, or browse the properties list for that option
    • Select it by clicking on it, and tap the Enter key to toggle it from true to false.
  • I don’t yet know the reason for the fleeting “Maximum number of characters reached” message, but it doesn’t seem to impact on functionality of SuperGenPass. Does anybody else know what it’s about or how it can be suppressed?

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Internet Explorer 8 More Popular Than 6

Jul 3

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Today is a good day for the web. Internet Explorer 8, which actually has reasonably good standards support, is now more widely-used than Internet Explorer 6, which is horrific to code for (Internet Explorer 7 isn’t much better).

It’s always been hard to write good quality web sites that work in Internet Explorer 7 and below: generally, I’ve always taken the approach of writing sites to comply with the standards and then to put in hacks specifically to address the problems introduced by IE6 and IE7. The sooner that we can disregard these browsers, the better.

Despite the stupid marketing campaigns Microsoft’s been pursuing to try to increase adoption of IE8, I’m at least a little thankful that they’re apparently working. I’ll be so glad the next time I can launch a site and not even have to think about using <!–[if IE 6]> conditional comments.

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The Latest Stupidity From The Internet Explorer Team

Jun 18

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Have you seen the latest stupidity that the Windows Internet Explorer team have come up with? Ten Grand Is Buried Here.

The idea is that they encourage you to give up whatever browser you’re using (assuming it’s not Internet Explorer 8), calling it names (like “old Firefox” if you’re using Firefox, “boring Safari” if you’re using Safari, “tarnished Chrome” if you’re using Chrome, and… “that browser” if you’re using Opera) and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, and they’ll be giving out clues on their Twitter feed about some secret website that’ll only work in IE8 at which you can register and win $10,000AUS (yes, this is an Australian competition).

After looking at the site in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera, I thought I’d give it a go in Internet Explorer 8. But it didn’t work – it mis-detected my installation of IE8 as being IE7 (no, I didn’t have Compatability Mode on).

In the end, though, I just used User Agent Switcher to make my copy of Firefox pretend to be Internet Explorer 8. Then it worked. So basically, all that I’ve learned is that Firefox does a better job of everything that Internet Explorer does, including viewing websites designed to only work in Internet Explorer. Good work, Microsoft. Have a slow clap.

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Firefox 3 “Download Day”

Jun 18

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 10 Comments

Download Day 2008

Downloaded your copy of Mozilla Firefox 3 yet to help them make the world record? I’ve been using Firefox 3 since the early betas and I’ve got no qualms about recommending it wholeheartedly. The awsomebar is simply that: awesome, the speed and memory usage have become far better than the previous version, and the care and attention that have gone into the little things – like the fact that it now asks you if you want to save passwords after you’ve seen if they were correct, not before – really do make this the best web browser I’ve ever used.

Go download it already.

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