Unreliable information since 1972
Linked up as an example of the old cyberpunk maxim “the street finds its own uses for things”. Put the info out there, let people use it how they want. Even if it is to wipe their arses with.
Explaining why there’s a gap to be jumped in current CGI technology – there’s a point at the near-human end of the curve where something is just off enough to put people right off their breakfast.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
I’ve half written several LJ entries and ditched them over the last few weeks, trying to do my usual annual job of working out where my head is at after another year. And today, on the tube home, I read the best summation I can think of of why I have:
“I think it’s time for me to ditch all that surface dialogue stuff and have a dark night of the soul instead. I resolve to write down what I really think and feel. Work out in words what it is to be me and once that is done my works that detail the deeply personal will illuminate the universal. But now that I’ve tried to think about what I really think I realise that not only will nobody else give a toss about what I think or feel, but I don’t give a fuck either.
We get tired. We get down. We get happy. We get hungry. We want love. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to think that there is more than there is. We want to make the world a better place. We want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” – Bill Drummond, The Wild Highway
In these troubled times we are living in, I feel that it is important to say, as loudly and clearly as one can: “Fuck you, Disney.“
Just a note to self. Vague unformed ideas, and possible plans. Ignore me.
An interesting anti-piracy experiment, and Soderbergh has some solid and sensible points about the need for better rights/copyright law.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
I was at the whisky society with burge tonight. She drank this whisky. It was fucking fantastic, and I wanted some. I especially wanted some for myself, because I think it would have gone fucking brilliantly with a good cigar.
They’re sold out.
I’m going to crawl into a corner and cry, now.
(Anyone fancy drinking a few good whiskies in the next week or two?)
Here’s one for the PHP webnerds out there:
PHP/SQL7. At the start of every script, I include db.php which contains this:
$db = mssql_connect(‘devbox’,’foo’,’bar’);
mssql_select_db(‘[devsitedb]’, $db) or die (“Couldn’t open database connection”);
And then I pass that connection into the various classes and functions on the site. Fine and dandy.
However, in the course of one fo the scripts for this site, I need to hook into a second database temporarily, so I do this at the appropriate point:
$second_db = mssql_connect(‘devbox’,’jim’,’bob’);
mssql_select_db(‘[anothersitedb]’, $second_db) or die (“Couldn’t open second database connection”);
Then do what I need to with that connection and close it with mssql_close($second_db);
Here’s the problem, though: despite the fact that the two connections are clearly different, the second one is overwriting the first, so that when I come back to doing things with the first connection, it now can’t find any of the stored procedures i needs. This is true at any point after $second_db is opened, and it make no difference whether or not I close $second_db. The conenction is just being over-written.
At the point of opening, print_r($db) returns “Resource id #2”. And that holds true for the second connection as well – print_r($second_db) also returns “Resource id #2”.
mssql.max_links is set to -1, so there should be no problem with the number of connections that I’m making…
Obviously, I would like it if this didn’t happen, and $second_db become “Resource id #3”, thus allowing me to juggle the two connections as I need to.
Anyone out there had similar problems, or able to spot what I’m missing?
Well, it’s December, so obviously, it’s time for the heavy drinking again. Spent the first part of Thursday night at Albertine in Sheperd’s Bush. Bit full of BBC types, but after three quarters of a bottle of Australian red (the name of which escapes me, which is annoying, because I’d happily buy it again) I cared a lot less. Might try and get back there – the wine list looked interesting, and the food sounded like it’d go well with the wine…
Quiet night in Friday night, and then out for drinks with davebushe, daveman23 and seanazz last night, which were just what the doctor ordered, I think. Sadly, the slight hangover combined with the first trip to the gym in a couple of weeks has left me more or less unable to move.
I rewatched the first episode of The Prisoner this morning. It’s dated very strangely, that show – it’s unmistakably of a certain era, but because of the very stilted and stylised atmosphere in the village, it gets away with it surprisingly well, and it sort of feels like the sixites/seventies decor is just another part of the strangeness of the setting, rather than a sign of aging. Why do I suspect that the upcoming remake won’t be half so clever?
Another “nothing to do with the internet” link, but still, it’s nice to know that scientists are working on really important things.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
I’d like to say that I think it’s a load of rubbish, but I don’t – I think it’s quite economically likely.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
I have had a very pleasant and relaxing weekend. Just what the doctor ordered. Many thanks to all the lovely humans that helped me unwind.
My brains get no such thanks.
I had hoped to wake up this morning refreshed and ready for another week of work, but no. Whatever I was dreaming about, it cannot have been good. I woke up, half an hour early, curled up in staggering tension. Not in fear, or panic, or anything one might get from a nightmare, but rather the kind of tension that you find yourself in when you know something is about to kick off, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, that tense, wary, ready to hurt something tension that you can feel up and down your spine and across your shoulders.
So much for relaxed and refreshed. Still, if anyone tries anything on the tube, I’ll be ready.
Bastard brains.