Other

As blogged previously, I was impatiently awaiting the release of the 2 DVD set “Heima”; a documentary on their recent free Icelandic tour and their new double CD “Heim / Hvarf” which has a CD containing some re-recorded acoustic tracks and a CD of new recordings (including the hard to find Salka).

The re-recorded “Von” (originally on their debut album ‘Von’) is nothing short of stunning. The longer intro features Amiina (the string quartet that record and tour with Sigur Ros) at their most beautiful. Likewise the re-recorded “Hafsól” (again, originally from ‘Von’) fares much better now the band have matured.

The real gem is the DVD. The first DVD ‘Heima’ covers their recent tour along with interviews with the band. Their music set to the frighteningly stunning Icelandic landscape is quite moving.

For such a huge band with such a devoted following, they are incredibly down to earth. Jonsi, Georg, Kjarri and Orri all seem bemused by their popularity and seem happiest playing beaten up equipment in threadbare tatty sweaters.

In a world where bling is king and children aspire to be a saggy panted hip hop stars showing off their houses and cars to MTV, it’s refreshing to see four friends creating such beautiful music for the villages and hamlets in their own country.

I’ll save a more verbose review for a later blog entry, but I wanted to get some information ‘out there’.

First off, the new metallic look is pretty nifty. It gives a nice “new” feel to the standard menus and toolbars. The new ‘Coverflow’ is very nice, too. It provides a quick and easy way to scroll through your files to find what you’re looking for.

The new 3D dock is pretty to look at but it’s very hard to see which applications you have running. All you have is a tiny little white arrow (or is it a ball?) underneath the running application.

“Stacks” are fun to play with. I dragged my Application folder into the dock to create a ’stack’. Handy to launch applications without rooting through finder. I can probably remove a lot of infrequently used applications from my dock, now.

Time Machine is very fancy to look at but it has limited usefulness to me. Most of my daily work is web based and versioned using SVN. This makes Time Machine pretty much redundant for day to day work. I also use iBackup to archive my photos and music daily which takes up much less space. For this reason alone, I’ll most likely turn Time Machine off. The two hour backup is slightly distracting when it runs, also.

I’ve not played much with ‘Spaces’ as I have a two monitor set-up but I can see this being very useful for my MacBook.

As with any new OS X release, there are a few teething troubles with existing OS X applications.

The first is with Adium. MSN wouldn’t connect this morning. This post fixed it.

You have to do some jiggery-pokery to get PHP and MySQL running. I usually use the excellent Entropy packages but these don’t work yet with 10.5. You can get the OS X version of PHP running using this post, but it is a bare-bones installation without GD, etc.

I received a warning message when I launched mail about the plugin ‘SpamSieve’ being disabled. If you use this plugin, then read this to get it working again.

So far, so good…

Debbie and I have known since the end of June that we’re pregnant. We wanted to keep it pretty much to ourselves until we had our 12 week scan and told all our family.

We had decided very recently to start a family after years of ‘thinking’ about it. I’ll spare you the graphic detail but we didn’t have to wait too long for a positive pregnancy test.

It’s been a bit of a bumpy road so far which a lot of stress and a lot of worry but we both hope that’s behind us and we can look forward to March when our baby is due.

We’ve both been keeping blogs of the experience so that we have a true record of our adventure. Feel free to read them, although you should note that they are a very personal experience and full of things like feelings and emotion. We’ll continue to update them as we go.

My blog…
Debbie’s blog…

Here’s our 12 week scan picture, showing our little baby ‘Flump’ at 11 weeks and 2 days.

We’re both excited and words cannot describe what it feels like to have created a life.

I’m a huge Sigur Ros fan.

They’re releasing some new material over the next few months. A compilation album featuring some previously unrecorded songs (including the beautiful Salka) is due out in November and the band have a website up for their ‘Heima’ project which is a DVD of their recent Icelandic tour.

They’ve released a trailer for this which showcases a song that I’m not familiar with. If the hairs on your neck don’t stand up during the key change at around 3:00 minutes then you must have just had it waxed.

The website is already up.

The Arcade Fire are one of my favourite bands and their latest album “Neon Bible” is a brilliant snapshot of life in the 21st century.

Here’s the band playing “Neon Bible” live in an elevator.

Brilliant.

If this doesn’t make you want to keep your ears clean, nothing will.

A nine-year-old boy complaining of “Rice Krispies” sounds has discovered he had two spiders living inside his ear.

Jesse Courtney from Albany, Oregon, complained of snap, crackle and pop noises in his ear but his mother Diane had no idea what his local doctor would pull out when she took her son for a short medical examination.

Don’t want to spend over two hours watching Scorsese’s latest mob epic “The Departed” (although you should, because it’s very good) - then get the gist of the film in 5 seconds.

Genius. Check out his other movies. My favourites include “The Return of the Jedi” and “Edward Scissorhands”.

I came across this blog via “.net” magazine.

It seems to me that if you’re a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it’s there in every aspect of life. You can’t stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

It really took me back to when I worked as a graphic designer. Everything I saw I viewed as a piece of design. Road signs with inconsistent leading or kerning really annoyed me. Incorrectly centered text would grate and I’d want to correct it immediately.

Similarly, I’d keep things in mind that had good design, be it a piece of packaging or a business sign. It would inevitably find its way into my own work.

One of my party tricks would be to name fonts from book covers or food packaging. I couldn’t help myself. It was an obsession.

These days, the names of fonts have been replaced with PHP syntax and the eye for good design has been replaced with an eye for neat, compact code but a small part of me still wants to go out at night and fix all the bad design I see on a daily basis.

This may come in handy for anyone else who has migrated to Wordpress from Moveable Type.

I didn’t really want to lose all those incoming clicks from the old style permalinks which have been long since spidered so I set about figuring out the best way to forward the old style to the new style.

There are some mod_rewrite examples on the Wordpress site but they don’t take into consideration that Wordpress also uses .htaccess mod_rewrite for ’search engine friendly’ links.

Here’s my final solution which is in two parts, one is a modification to the .htaccess file which converts the old “/archive/2007/04/blog_entry_title.html” format into “findmt.php?s=blog_entry_title”. A new file”findmt.php” queries the database and forwards to the correct blog entry.

.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .*archives/.*/(.*).html /findmt.php?s=$1 [R,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

findmt.php

require( 'wp-config.php' );

//-----------------------------------------
// Fix up S parameter
//-----------------------------------------

$search = strtolower( trim( urldecode( $_REQUEST['s'] ) ) );
$search = str_replace( '_', '-', $search );
$search = preg_replace( '/[^\d\w-]/', '', $search );

//-----------------------------------------
// Get DB connection
//-----------------------------------------

$connection_id = @mysql_connect( DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD );

if ( ! $connection_id )
{
print "Could not connect to the DB";
exit();
}

if ( ! mysql_select_db( DB_NAME, $connection_id) )
{
print "Could not select the DB";
exit();
}

//-----------------------------------------
// Attempt to get post via title.
//-----------------------------------------

$qid = mysql_query( "SELECT * FROM " . $table_prefix . "posts WHERE LOWER(post_name)='" . addslashes( $search ) ."'" );

if ( $row = mysql_fetch_array( $qid, MYSQL_ASSOC ) )
{
header("Location: /index.php?p=" . $row['ID'] );
}
else
{
header("Location: /index.php" );
}

?>

Umberto Eco once said: “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”

He makes a good point. A lot that passes as life doesn’t make sense and is rarely fair. We all have to face difficulties and make decisions that we don’t want to make. We somehow get by and face another day.

Life does not define you, it’s the way that you react to it that does.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re happily married with a son. Imagine that you’re hitting a career high. Imagine that you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and have six to twelve months to live. How would you react to that?

For me, that’s not something I have to face and I hope it’s something you never have to face.

I stumbled across Brian’s blog recently and have found it a bittersweet insight into how one copes with an awful and unavoidable truth. Less a depressing liturgy and more a philosophical awakening.

Read it and try to learn from Brian’s experiences.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Back in 1999 a little known Scottish group called Travis released their second album “The Man Who” (produced by Radiohead’s long term producer Nigel Godrich) and virtually changed the face of Indie music overnight.

I fell in love with the album’s clangy and bittersweet reflection and played it for months. It was such a landmark album that it inspired another fledgling band by the name of Coldplay. It turned Travis into a huge international success.

Their 2001 follow up album “The Invisible Band” was a change of direction. Their melancholy was replaced with bouncy pop and never hit the same high. 2003s “12 Memories” was a dark, politically driven hodgepodge of ideas and concepts which fell a little flat.

There were rumours of them splitting and I figured that was that.

I figured wrong. It’s been four years, but they’re most definitely back and they’re back with a handful of stunning songs with their album “The Boy With No Name”. The titular boy being Fran’s newly born son who he referred to as “The boy with no name” while he and partner Nora deliberated over his name.

Their first single “Closer” was released on Monday and it’s a true return to form. It’s more mature, more confident but it is of the same pedigree as “The Man Who”. Check out the video which features a cameo by long term friend of the band, Ben Stiller.

The album is out on the 7th May and I can’t wait.

I came across this via a topic Rikki posted on our company forums.

Kiva is a website that allows one to invest in companies located in developing parts of the world. In a nutshell, you offer an interest free micro-loan (from $25 upwards) to pre-vetted companies registered with the website. When the company has enough lenders, they are given the money with a view to paying it back.

Personally, I think this is a break-out idea that can have a real impact on poverty in developing countries. Small donations to large organizations can be frittered away and make little impact into helping the cause they support but loaning money directly to people trying to start up or expand their small businesses will really help.

Selfishly, it also makes one feel good knowing that you’ve helped a small business and you may even get your money back to withdraw or re-invest. So far Kiva has a 100% repayment rate although you should accept that you may not get your money back.

I’ve invested in a few business and you can see my profile here.

Registration is quick and easy. All payments are done via PayPal who have generously waived all fees so Kiva can pass on 100% of the loan.

Brilliant.

Have you seen the Red Nose Day t-shirts?

Am I the only one who wonders why the owner loves randomizing? Does that make me a geek?

Well, it’s the first day back after Christmas. I’m still trying to retrain my stiff fingers in speed typing after around 10 days away from the keyboard and filing away thousands of spam emails.

I plan on beating my body back into shape after serial food abuse and a week away from exercise. I’m actually looking forward to that in a masochistic kind of way.

I hope your Christmas was as jolly as mine. Highlights include a Nintento Wii (thanks Debbie!) which is pretty nifty and just as much fun as expected. The controller system is genius and ‘Red Steel’ is great fun to play.

I also got CoD 3 for the xbox360 which I’m working my way through. It’s graphically more impressive than CoD 2 but I’m not so sold on the over-the-top gung-ho structure and cheesy cliche dialogue. Still, those textures. Pretty.

It’s that time of the year again!

When people rush out to the nearest supermarket and buy enough food for a month when they only need two days worth. When people are flustered, irritated and easily annoyed. When it’s all elbows and fuck yous when you’re trying to navigate around the store. When the same four Christmas songs are played on the radio over and over again. When we wish for a white Christmas but the best we get is fog. When we watch Christmas films to try and invoke that elusive “Christmassy” feeling.

When you’re with your family and it’s all worthwhile.

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

It’s true, proof is here.

I’m not so sure why 71% of women are so concerned with the size of my steaks, however.

….if you’re the iTunes Music Store.

There’s an Icelandic ‘alternative’ band that I adore. They are called Sigur Rós (pronounced Si-ur Rose). They produce some interesting music ranging from the pretentious to the glorious. They’re so good, even Radiohead cite them as an inspiration and they’ve toured with Radiohead at Thom Yorke’s request.

On their 1997 debut album ‘Von’ there’s a track called “18 Sekúndur Fyrir Sólarupprás” which translates to “18 seconds before sunrise”. Unsurprisingly it’s 18 seconds of silence.

You can buy this track from iTunes for 79p. That’s a whopping 4.4p per second of nothing.

Now that’s good value.

Last week, we went to see United 93. For the few that don’t know, it’s a visualization of what happened to the crew and passengers on flight United 93 on the morning of September 11th 2001.

I say “visualization” because it’s not really “based on the events of”. If anything, it’s a reconstruction of that fateful flight.

First off, let’s get the big statements out of the way. It’s hard to say it’s a “good” film because it deals with very sensitive material. It would be imprudent to say “it was a fantastic film”, so I won’t. It’s a very moving and very powerful film that’s ultimately almost too difficult to watch. It’s shot in the shaky immediate style of a documentary which really puts you on that plane. The lack of patriotic flag waving is refreshing and no-one’s a hero. These are ordinary folks in an extraordinary situation.

The film opens on the ‘terrorists’ making preparations for the day ahead. They’re packing bags with modeling clay and electronic toys. They pray. They talk. They’re scared. Controversially, they’re human.

Next up, we’re following the people that are about to board the flight. Thankfully it doesn’t fall into “TV movie” territory by attempting to weave back-stories. Its documentary style merely observes people checking in and waiting at the gate. We follow the cabin crew as they make the plane ready. We overhead their conversations - about looking forward to time off. We see the captain and the copilot walk down the gangway bantering and discussing recent flights and destinations. We’re a voyeur; a ghost just along for the ride.

The movie builds very slowly. We meet the head honcho at the FAA controlling over 4000 flights nationwide. We meet ‘tin-pushers’ barking into their headsets to control traffic over their cities and states. We meet the military barking orders in the dark-light of underground bunkers, talking in code and wearing combats.

Before long, reports of planes being hijacked filter through the different command centers and confusion builds along with the tension. We cut to news reports telling of a small aircraft that’s crashed into the World Trade Center. More confusion. More panic. No one knows what’s going on. More reports of hijacked planes. Tin pushers overhear garbled transmissions from the hijackers.

We cut to the Kennedy air traffic tower as they zero in on a low flying 767 barely scraping the Manhattan skyline.

We cut to the real-life footage of the plane hitting the second tower.

Then silence.

The impact of that moment is reflected on the faces of the ground staff and military as they try and process what they’ve just seen - and this moment is shared with the cinema audience. We’ve all seen that clip a hundred times but in the context of the movie with its build up it’s a really powerful moment and it brings a new dimension to that awful day.

News of the attack reaches the pilots of United 93 and it’s not long before the terrorists are cutting throats and showing their fake, homemade bombs. I can’t fully explain how ‘real’ it all feels and just how difficult it is to watch.

There are many poignant moments. The final phone calls home - based on the real life testimony of the surviving families. The terrorists praying to their god to help them complete their mission and the passengers praying to their god hoping the terrorists don’t complete their mission. The plane spinning and falling out of the sky as the passengers fight back…

The final five minutes of the movie is just painful. We know how it’s going to end but that doesn’t stop us willing for a different ending and when the house lights go up at the end we’re all just sitting there, too stunned to move.

On my internet travels today, I found a list of useful FireFox extensions. One of which I installed as soon as I saw it.

Perfomancing’s Blogger Firefox plug in is a nice little extension that allows you to blog from within Firefox. It supports all the major blog software (Moveable Type, TypePad, Wordpress, Drupal, etc) and seems to work really well.

If you’re setting up for Moveable Type, you might want to read the blurb on setting up API keys and click on the “Advanced” checkbox when entering your XML-RPC url when setting the extension up.

Great stuff.

You’ve probably heard of the movie “Hostel“.

According to some IMDB users, it’s the most gory and the most scary film in the world, ever. Apparently, in some theatres, members of the audience were so scared and shocked they left the theatre and hid in the toilets and had to be coaxed out by sweet-natured staff.

Bunch of crap. I can only deduce that the majority of the IMDB comments that don’t end with “This sucks, avoid” are written by Eli Roth and / or members of the Hostel marketing team. It’s as scary as a visit to the dentist. When you’re the dentist.

Now this blog entry contains spoilers. But the whole movie is spoiled by being rubbish, so I wouldn’t worry.

My biggest problem with this film is that it’s not really a horror. The “scary-gory” scenes probably last around 12 minutes. The other 83 minutes are filled with soft-core porn. I’m really not joking. It’s porn. Outright porn. It breasts scare you, then you’ll be terrified as they’re everywhere. In mirrors, on women, in saunas, everywhere. In-fact there are so many breasts, it plays like a show-reel for a narcissistic plastic surgeon who specializes in breast augmentation.

The other problem is the plot. There isn’t one. Most slasher movies won’t trouble anyone above the age of five for complexity, but “Hostel” didn’t bother with the plot. Eli was probably too busy interviewing semi-naked women to worry about the plot. The premise of the movie is scarily like Eurotrip. Three young men, two of whom are American college students circa 18 years old (actors age, 35) and an Icelandic fellow are backpacking their way through Europe (”ya-ya, good drugs, no? Haha, ya.”) in an attempt to sleep with as many women as they can without catching a blinding or burning sexually transmitted disease. That’s it. Three horny men in Europe after “European women”. They’ll do anything to continue their hedonistic adventures. In fact, on the say-so of a random European stoner (”Ah yes, go to a hostel in Bratislava, they love American men there. They will sleep with you, no problem”) they travel to the lawless, war torn end of Eastern Europe.

Our heros (who are so annoying, half the audience are wishing they’d just get tortured and get it over and done with) travel to Bratislava. Or at least the strange stereotype that most American movies portray to be Bratislava. Shelled out buildings, gangs of children, small old cars (Ladas, Skodas, etc), toothless men, etc, etc. On the train, they meet a strange old man who chillingly tells them that “with the right money, you can do anything in Bratislava”. I bet we’ll see him again.

We’re about 25 minutes into the film, so settle down for about 40 minutes of porn. The premise is that in Bratislava, a business called “Elite Hunting” uses “beautiful” women to entrap young men who are carted off downtown. They are chained to chairs and paying customers can then torture them and, if they fancy it, kill them.
In a sequence of scenes we see our heros seduced “Ooh, look at my lovely boob-job in the mirror as I dress” and “Ooh, watch my bum eat my thong as I wiggle away”. One by one they’re carted off downtown and tortured in the movie’s raison d’être which is basically a dark, dirty gloomy room with a chair and various torture tools (scissors, chain-saw, drill, etc). If you’ve seen “Saw”, then you’ll get the basic visual effect. These “torture” scenes last about 40 seconds and are so dark that you think you have myopia.

The last guy to get carted off does so after tracking down one of the “beautiful European” women and demanding to be taken to his friends. They do, he ends up chained up in a chair. A German Josef Mengele look-alike has a bash and chain-sawing our heros fingers off. He does. He comically slips on them and falls on the floor. Our hero wiggles out of his chair and manages to chain-saw up Mengele. It sounds worse than it is. It’s basically two gallons of tomato sauce and a prosthetic arm.

He escapes, he hears a scream, he goes back and saves a girl (missing eye, burnt face) who, through sheer gratitude lobs herself in-front of a train.

And that’s about it.

Here’s how to recreate the “Hostel” experience. Watch the Amsterdam scenes from “Eurotrip”. Then watch 40 minutes of porn, then watch the last 10 minutes of “Saw” and you’re done.

Now, this is going to be a very short and contentious entry:

The Microsoft xbox 360 is amazing. What’s more amazing is xbox live. Games which you’ve completed still get a spin in the drive thanks to online gaming. Call of Duty II is a brilliant single player game - but it’s even better when played with other humans across the internet.

Now, it’s about now that Sony Playstations stalwarts (Rikki) start telling me that PS3 will be awesome, and the xbox360 is really just an xbox 1.5.

Yes, yes - that may all be true, but it doesn’t stop the xbox from rocking.

I have an LG HD LCD on order too. I couldn’t resist it. My bank manager thought I should.

Oh, BTW. My GamerTag is mattmecham. Feel free to send me some abuse if you see me online. If you’re ever around when I’m online and have a copy of COD, let me know.

I’ve finally done it. I finally own a dual monitor Intel powered machine.

It’s still a Mac though.

After nearly three years of faithful service, it was time to retire the old G4 / 1ghz / 768mb iMac (of the iLamp style). It’s definitely served me well but recently it’s struggled to cope with the demands of my day to day work (TextMate, Firefox, Interarchy, Photoshop, etc). I got used to seeing the beachball for a good few seconds when switching between applications and just sluggish behavior in general. More memory wasn’t an option as the iLamps use laptop memory sticks, one of which is hardwired - and it’s near impossible to find a 1gig stick in that configuration.

So, I went out and purchased a 17″ 1.8ghz Intel Dual Core iMac and had an extra 1gig of memory fitted, bringing the total to 1.5gig. I also purchased a cheap BenQ monitor to extend the desktop. The new Intel chip along with the ATI graphics card allows a second monitor to be added via the mini-DVI port for either desktop mirroring (boo!) or desktop extending (yay).
The desktop extending works really well. The main display (built in 17″ widescreen apple LCD) has all the menu bars, dock and alert pop-ups and the second monitor is basicaly a draggable area. I have FireFox on the second monitor and TextMate on the main monitor which really speeds up development. OS X allows you to configure the color calibration separately and allows you to use a different desktop wallpaper.
Previously, this facility was only available to G5 Towers, so it’s a nice addition.

All in all, the system works really well. PowerPC applications seem to work fine on the new Intel chip, and Apple’s own “iLife” applications work really well and noticable faster.

Larger Picture of dual monitor set up
Photo of the new Mac and the iLamp in the background

I thought it was time for a bit of a make-over and retire Dr. Evil.

I originally added Dr. Evil as my blog header a few years ago when we (IPS) removed the free trial version of IPB. I had a lot of “fan” mail accusing me of being mean and evil. I figured the best way to show that I was non-plussed by childish name calling was to make Dr. Evil into a blog header.

Now, times have a-changed and I wanted to create a more adult and professional blog look. I am, after all, thirty years old now.

I will, at some point, find a picture of me when I’m smiling. It really does happen.

Happy Valentines Day.

If you expect this to be a misanthropic rant on the over-commercialism of another Hallmark-generated holiday, look elsewhere. If you expect a saccharin-sweet message on this day of romance, look elsewhere too. This isn’t an entry about Valentines day, I was just being polite in wishing you a happy one.

Ok, you’ve got me. It’s been over two weeks since my last blog entry and I’ve got nothing interesting to say. I’ve been working on a the “secret” product that I mentioned earlier this year when Josh and I were writing up specificatons for it. Work is now in full swing and we’re expecting it to go into beta early next month if all continues well. It’s something a little different and will certainly be interesting to see how it fares, especially when one considers the cost of the product.

IP.Dynamic continues nicely. We’re about two components short of the first beta which will be released to a closed testing group. I can’t wait to gather the reactions, comments and improvements for my first major application that’s not a bulletin board. It does feel like I’ve been in Groundhog Day mode for the past few years. To date, I’ve written six major revisions for various bulletin board products and I must admit IP.Dynamic has been a welcome project to work on.

That about wraps it up for now. If you’re taking your date out tonight for a romantic meal, I hope it goes well. If you’re single and staying in then I recommend you listen to the “Thirteen Senses” and read Dean Koontz’s “Velocity“; not because they are in any way Valentines day related or deal with lamenting on ones own - they are just recent finds that I’ve enjoyed.

This blog entry started out as a reply to comments on my previous blog about Web 2.0 and the abuse of AJAX. It turned into another mini-rant that was a little too lengthy for a comment, so here we are.

I think the thing that irritates the most is that “Ajax” is a term than captures most ‘new’ DHTML methods.

Ever since the iFrame we’ve been able to send POST data quietly back to our scripts and read the results for javascript to add to the DOM. In fact, I wrote a prototype spellchecker (IPS SpellWell) years ago that used an iFrame to send the raw data back to the spell checker script which returned the corrected version.

Certainly, using XMLHttpRequest is a much neater solution that doesn’t require ‘hacky’ methods such as the iframe - but that’s all it is - a neater DOM method.

Let’s face it - nearly all the ‘flashy’ work that makes “AJAX” seem so cool is nothing but bog-standard JS work that’s been done before.

Take IPB’s “edit topic title in place” feature: (For those that don’t know, IPB 2.1+ allows one to click and hold the topic title in a forum listing which turns it into a text input box. On clicking away from the text box or hitting enter, it’ll turn back into a normal topic title using the newly edited text). The actual ‘whoo’ factor comes from simply taking a span of text and making it a CSS styled text input box. The “AJAX” part is totally invisible.

Moving on, it seems that someone else has a great idea: Wouldn’t it be cool if we could use “AJAX” methods but using an iframe! I give it a week before someone has dubbed it “AJAF” (Asynchronous Javascript And iFrames).

I read the term “mashup” the other day. This is another Web 2.0 buzzword that encapsulates the result of taking two “Web 2.0″ APIs and creating a new product (for example, taking the Google Maps API and using it with the Flickr API to render a map with the Flickr user’s location pinned on it). It’s another buzzword that makes me want to cry. Whenever I read it or hear it, it strikes me as something a terminally untrendy person would say at a party to appear trendy. “Oh yeah, I saw a wicked mashup the other day online”.

Seriously. Enough. Please.

Every now and again something really odd appears on the TV that doesn’t suck.

Debbie and I were surfing the music channels over the weekend and this video started, called “JCB” by a band called “Nizlopi”. It’s a catchy song with a great video - and despite the unorthadox lyrics, it’s really quite beautiful.

Apparently, it was originally released in June this year before an internet campaign kick started a word-of-mouth buzz that has seen the video become the bookies favourite for this year’s Christmas number one.

Excellent stuff, very original and a great nostalgiac trip. Buy it when it comes out. If you don’t, we’ll have either Girls Aloud or Westlife topping the charts this Christmas.

The JCB Song Video

No one codes javascript, they wrestle it into submission.

Yes, I’m fighting with javascript again. Just like Neo had Agent Smith and Mama Cass had her ham sandwich, Javascript is my nemesis.

Neo had it easy. All he had to do was be extracted from a computer generated reality, learn how to bend the rules of the computer’s programming and defeat rogue Agent programs that had super powers of their own.

He never had to make sure his DOM code worked in Safari and IE.

Howdy ya’ll. Have you had a nice day?

I recently returned from a whirlwind trip to our corporate headquarters in Virginia and my body is still adjusting to the 10,000 mile -5/+5 time zone change a week on.

We got a lot done in a very productive week and it was great to meet some of the new techs in person. You don’t really appreciate how big IPS is until you visit the headquarters. We’ve got room for around 60 employees and the air-conditioning power to make a polar bear feel cold.

We discussed a lot about development and how to move into a more professional methodology. As you’re probably aware, Brandon Farber relocated (along with his wife and two children) to VA to become part of the IPS team. Brandon has huge experience with IPB and is a very tidy coder who has some great feature ideas and concepts.
Brandon is taking over the day-to-day IPB maintenance and will play a part in large future releases. This frees me up to work on IP.Dynamic and on the more architectural elements of our product line-up.

This change has forced us to rethink how we handle development and future releases. Adam, Rikki and Josh have been using SVN (subversion, a CVS-like system) for a while - and now I’ve joined the party with Brandon. This allows us to check-in our own code changes without killing each other’s code. We’ve also set up a main trunk and point release branches to ‘freeze’ releases and to allow a quick rollback point if things go badly wrong.

We’ve also implemented development changes at a management level. Firstly, and most importantly, we’ve set up a QA (quality assurance) department which will be handed a release before it’s made public. The QA team will go over the release and either green-light it, or send it back for changes. This will mean much less production bugs and a much better end result.

The second change is that we don’t write a line of code without a product specification (I’m writing the IP.Dynamic and IPB 3.0.0 specs currently). These specifications are like blue-prints for the product and explain the features and how the features work (Joel Spolsky has some interesting things to say on product specs).
Writing out these specifications has already saved time coding by working out the raw logic before touching BBEdit. Often, I’ve found myself re-working bits of code simply because the logic doesn’t work or I’ve changed my mind on how a feature should work. The spec irons out all those mistakes. Another plus is that we have one blue-print to work from. The PR department will know which features are planned and how they work, so developers won’t get a call from downstairs asking “Hey, is this going to be a feature in a future version?…” anymore. This is a good thing.

As a footnote to SVN, I am comfortable with the command line interface, but found svnX a joy to work with. This is a Mac OS X GUI for SVN and makes refreshing, committing, adding files and viewing changes much easier.

Click on the image below for a large version. Or not. The choice is yours.

What a few weeks it’s been.

So much to do and so little time. IPB 2.1.0 has been released, followed by a little update to fix those firsts day blues. IPD is coming along nicely and our new products have just been announced - not to mention that I’m putting together some developer’s documentation.

I’ll be back to my usual blogging activities in a few weeks. Promise.

After almost a week after picking up my PSP I feel more qualified to give some kind of a review. So here it is.

The first thing you notice is how well its engineered and built. It’s very well finished with glossy surfaces and it’s very tactile. All the buttons click nicely and the analogue thumb control is smoother than a baby’s bottom. The screen is large compared to Nintendo’s DB / Gameboy offerings. The clear shoulder buttons (R1 and L1) are finished nicely and have a smooth action.

The second thing you notice is that the unit is quite big. Those with small hands will have trouble holding it comfortably and also have immediate access to the thumb stick and the shoulder buttons. Having said that, it does fit very comfortably in your hands and you’re not too aware of the weight.

It’s technically on-par with the PlayStation 2 in terms of graphic and music capabilities. The large screen with three backlight options is very clear and bright. Wipeout Pure, Midnight Club 3 and MediEvil all look gorgeous and it really is like having a PS2 in your hand. The sound through the headphones is excellent if not a little quiet. Sony has limited the output of the headphones to 90db which is pretty low if you’re used to blasting your iPod in your ears. If you’re in the room with the TV on, you struggle to hear your PSP clearly with headphones on. Removing the headphones it gets a little worse. The built in speakers are very quiet and tinny. I feel this is a deliberate move as the PSP is meant to be a personal device and thus we don’t want the noise from it infliced upon us when someone else is using it. I think I’ll see if I can boost the volume from the headphones with a different pair. The headphones come with a wired remote which makes the headphone cable amusingly long. Forunately one can bypass the remote and plug the headphones directly into the unit.

The UK PSP came with the “2.0.0″ software update which adds a web browser. This is based on Mozilla and is very capable. If you’re used to browsing on your mobile when out and about - you’re in for a treat. Although there is no GPRS option, the WLAN wireless does an excellent job. It picked up my Airport at home with no effort and browsing speeds are excellent. The browser allows you to add bookmarks, manage your cookies and pretty much everything else you do day to day. I regularly check in on the forums and this blog from the PSP and it’s a joy to use.

The “Desktop” is very much Mac inspired. The floating blue background is almost exactly an animated version of the original desktop image that came with OS X. The icons are large and clear and scroll smoothly when asked. The layout is logical with everything (photos, movies, music, settings, games, etc) very easy to find. You can send photos between PSPs in ad-hoc mode which doesn’t require a WLAN connection to a router or internet. On one device you simple pick a picture and select “Send” and on the other, you go into your photo section, press triangle and select “Receive”.

Game share is a novel idea although currently limited to sending demos of the game you’re playing to other devices. I can see this being used in a variety of interesting ways once the platform takes off.

The UMD format looks like it could replace DVDs eventually and I hope it does as I don’t fancy shelling out for both a DVD and UMD format when a new release is available. I bet that this time next year we’ll be seeing home UMD players which plug up to your television.

In short, the PSP is sexy, well engineered and as powerful as your PS2. Buy one. Or two - just don’t expect many games. There are only about a dozen or so titles out at the moment.

I can’t wait for GTA: Libery City Stories (due October) and Brothers in Arms (due November).

So, I picked up my Sony PSP today (yes, in the UK we get things decades behind the rest of the world - today was release day) and I’m really pleased!

The build quality is superb - it really reminds one of Apple’s hardware. All glossy surfaces and neat engineering. The screen is beautiful and…

… oh, heck - screw this, I’m off to play some more.

Very few movies cause me to put finger to keyboard. Earlier this year “Creep” was so moronic that I had to purge myself of all bad thoughts about the movie by putting them into digital form. An exorcism if you will.

Recently, we (that’s Debbie and I) took a trip to the cinema to see “Bewitched”.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ll know that Bewitched was a US TV sitcom about a witch who married a mortal and all the ensuing hilarity. I must admit that I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of the original TV show so I had no strong preconceived ideas on how the movie should or would be like.

I’m a Will Ferrell fan. I loved “Anchorman” where he got to run wild; ad-libbing and improvising most of the dialogue and indeed for most of the story. I loved his “Frank the Tank” character in “Old School” and all of his other smaller roles (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Starsky and Hutch, etc). He’s absolutely at his best when he’s allowed to go nuts and run off 100 takes of the same lines and the best is picked.

The first problem with Bewitched is that he’s hopelessly miscast as Jack Wyatt; a loathsome, egotistical, idiot actor whose career is on the slide after his last two big budget (and somewhat indulgent) movies flopped at the box office. He’s neither playing the straight guy nor the funny guy. He’s forced to stick to the drab and lifeless script with no room for his trademark improv or face puckering. There are two scenes that I can remember laughing at and both involved Will Ferrell running his mouth off and ad-libbing. The scripted “jokes” raised a smirk at best.

The second problem is with the script. It’s just too confusing. Instead of going for a straight remake, the Ephron sisters have created a complex “story in a story” plot which, on paper, was probably very clever and inventive. We have a curious situation where Will Ferrell is cast as Jack whom is cast as “Darrin” in the remake of Bewitched which is about a studio remaking Bewitched. Isabel (Nicole Kidman) is actually a witch whom is cast as “Samatha” whom is a witch in Bewitched. No one knows she is a witch apart from her father Nigel (Michael Cain). Although in the TV series which is being made inside Bewitched it’s her mother “Endora” who pops up now and again not the father. But then in the remade TV series which is the film it’s Michael.. er Nigel who is popping up and not Shirly MacLaine.. er Endora.

Confused? Me too.

It gets worse as the movie develops. “Uncle Arthur” appears near the end of the movie and we’re never sure if he’s a figment of Jack’s imagination (as Uncle Arthur from the original TV series) or he’s Isabel’s *real* Uncle Arthur. Aunt Clara turns up for a bit and it appears she’s Isabel’s *real* Aunt Clara and not a figment of anyone’s imagination. Conveniently, Aunt Clara was also a character in the original TV series - although not in the remake of the TV series within the ..er.. movie.

Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine are wasted on a confusing sub-plot which never amounts to anything and just irritates. The movie runs for 104 minutes and their combined 20 minute screen time could have been cut nicely from the movie and no one would have noticed. Michael Cain’s character has some small narrative which helps move the story along but otherwise his dialogue is mostly just fluff.

There is also a pointless sub-plot with Jack’s ex-wife. I really, really can’t see why 8 minutes of the movie was devoted to a few scenes which did nothing for the story. It was ‘rewound’ later on by Isabel anyway.

Ferrell’s character Jack is a little confusing. At the start of the movie it seems that he’s a genuinly nice guy who is receiving some bad advice form his manager. His manager talks him into being an asshole and demanding that the remake is tailored towards him and not the character of Samatha as the original TV series. It’s unsure why Jack’s manager is even in the movie. I think he had some sub-plot about getting a kick-back behind Jack’s back for getting Jack to agree to playing the part of Darrin as we “overhear” part of a telephone conversation he has with the studio remaking the series - but it amounts to nothing and distracts.

Personally, I would have found it easier to understand that Jack’s character is an ass until he meets Isabel and not because his manager makes him so. Another 15 minutes could have been saved by cutting out the manager’s part too. For most of the movie he’s just a cloying sycophant that serves no purpose.

The real highlight of the movie is Nicole Kidman. She’s perfectly cast as Isabel and brings some magic to the movie. It’s just a shame that she’s wasted on a drab script with a convoluted plot and forced to struggle along with a neutered and miscast Will Ferrell.

For me, I lost the will to live when about 20 minutes of the movie was rewound by Isabel. A certain chain of events had been set in motion which was pretty important to the plot and set the movie off in a different direction. Isabel decided she didn’t like the way that it was developing and cast a rewind spell. You were treated to watching the last 20 minutes again, in reverse at 20 x speed. Fantastic.

I really wanted to like this movie. I really wish I could rewind this version and convince the Ephron sisters to cut the crap, stop trying to be clever and just do a straight remake. I actually think Will Ferrell would have done a fantastic job as Darrin - and, the few scenes you see of the remake being made are actually funny. But alas, we’ll never know.

About an hour into the movie I had to fight the urge to walk out of the cinema. Not in a “find me the nearest cinema usher so I can beat him with my ticket stubs” kind of way. It was more akin to when one stares into space long enough. You eventually snap out of it and decide to do something different.

I can’t believe it!

Google has revealed their new IM / telephony chat service: Google Talk

It’s simply amazing! Of course, it’s just a Jabber client - but it’s Google Jabber! Gabber!

Unfortunately, the beautiful 1995 styled IM client Google offer is only for windows, so I rushed - nay - stampeded my way over to my Adium client and, shaking with visceral excitement, I entered my Gabber details pausing only to mop my brow which was slick with anticipation.

For a fanciful fleeting second I considered turning off my AIM and MSN accounts already running - after all, I wouldn’t want the obnoxious evil of MSN even TOUCHING my shiny new Gabber account! I decided that my quick disappearance mid-conversation would spark consternation and left them enabled.

For a second nothing happened. “OMG” I abbreviated to myself. “WFT!!” I mentally punctuated. Then, it happened. A beep signalled that I was logged in! A Gabber beep!!

Quickly as my stubby digits would allow, I entered the name of my first buddy: ZefHemel@gmail.com. A second later another beep showed me that he was now online!

I couldn’t contain my excitement anymore and blurted out in carefully typed words: “I can’t believe I’m typing via Google!!!!!!!!”

I wonder if someone will release an Adium skin that looks like the Google Talk client! After all, on Adium my Gabber account looks identical to my MSN and AIM accounts!

Still, it’s Google! Yay!

Just a quick update to confirm that I’m still very much alive despite my lack of blogging action over the past week or so.

IPB 2.1 is wrapping up nicely. All the features are in (even one IPB 3.0 “feature”) and we’re all set for the first RC later this week. I moved the IPS Chat stuff into the components framework today which cleans up some of the code and allows for a more accurate Who’s Chatting list. I ended up adding an AJAX ping to update who is active in the chat section of the board. I couldn’t rely on the session table because most people open chat in one window and surf around the board in another which would instantly remove them from the chatting list. I can’t rely on the applet generated list either as it has trouble handling non alphanumerics which makes a nonsense of the list.

I opted for a separate serialized array in the cache list (the components framework allows you to select which caches are loaded at run time) so that saves a query right away. This array is updated every 60 seconds by an AJAX ping. During the update all members who’ve not pinged within 2 minutes are removed (assuming they’ve since closed the window, etc).

This seems to work pretty well and is more efficient - and best of all - uses an existing framework.

Result.

Unless you live in a cave (I’m not judging) then you’ve probably heard of Dan Brown. If you haven’t heard of Dan Brown then you’ve probably heard of “The Da Vinci Code”. If you’ve heard of neither then I suggest you watch less TV and stop collecting porn from the internet. (I’m still not judging).

I won’t blog on about how fantastic the Da Vince Code is (it really is) or how mind-blowing the concepts where (they really were) or offer my thoughts on the validity of Dan Brown’s research for the book (not enough time in the day). Nope. This is about one of his earlier novels: Deception Point.

If you’ve not read it, then stop reading this puerile obfuscation of the written language (that’s this blog by the way) and go read it now.

If you need a little tease (still not judging) then reads on…. (Please affect your best “Deep Movie Trailer Voice”).

There are no direct spoilers here, but if you prefer not to know anything about this book, turn away now. Not looking at your computer screen now? That’s a bit silly.

President Zach Herney is in trouble. He’s taking a beating in the polls for the forthcoming presidential election. A stoic supporter of NASA, he’s backed and funded from tax payers money a string of expensive NASA blunders.

His rival, the ruthless Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is riding a wave of unrest from the American people he’s stirred by condemning the billions of tax payers money that’s been wasted on failed NASA projects and he’s all but guaranteed the presidency.

As the situation gets even more desperate for the President, a new NASA satellite detects evidence of an astonishing object buried deep in the Arctic ice: a meteorite containing the fossilized remains of extra terrestrial life. The floundering space agency appears to have struck gold and will silence all their critics with their find.

The President dispatches Senator Sexton’s daughter, NRO intelligence analyst Rachel to the Arctic to verify the find. She’s accompanied by a team of NASA and civilian experts, including the charismatic “Amazing Seas” presenter Michael Tolland. Their every move is watched by the mysterious Delta Force taking orders from “the controller”.

However, things start to unravel quickly when Rachel uncovers that the object isn’t all that it appears to be. A shocking discovery that will plunge the country into controversy.

Before Rachel can make her findings known she realizes that her discovery puts her life, and the lives of others in danger. Fleeing for her life with Michael Tolland and Corky Marlinson - a NASA scientist - in the dangerous Arctic conditions they have only one hope for survival: to find out who’s behind the deception.

Back in Washington, the election grows closer and the stakes get higher. William Pickering, the NRO director is frustrated with NASA’s regular security leaks which put their technological advances into the hands of the highest bidder. The NASA administrator, an ex-Pentagon man is fighting to keep NASA from being restructured as part of the governments intelligence community joining the FBI and the CIA. The President, taking advice from his sly senior advisor Marjorie Tench, prepares to tell the world of NASA’s discovery.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? It is. Dan Brown has really done is research and although you’re entertained, you also learn a fair bit about the Arctic, meteorites and fossils. His technical detail is on par with Tom Clancy although it’s not as dry as some of Clancy’s work. His real flair is in involving the reader. This is a book that you won’t want to put down.

Now, go read it.

Well, that was a busy week.

Two BETA releases, over two dozen bug fixes and I still made time to move my blog from Typepad’s hosted service to a fresh MT installation on IPS hosting.

There’s not a lot to report at this stage. BETA testing is going well and with fewer bugs that I expected considering the huge amount of changes since IPB 2.0.4. I wanted to make another beta release so that I didn’t have to face a forum full of re-posted bug reports this coming Monday. The bugs that have been fixed are easy to find and will definitely result in someone else discovering them and posting them. Fast releases always keeps the blood pumping too.

Next week will see everything bar the ACP language packs finished which will allow me to go back to IP.Dynamic which I’m looking forward to doing. We (Charles, Lindy, Josh and I) have been using it at a secret location for reasons I won’t disclose and we’ve all got some ideas and ways to improve it. I also need to upgrade some core coding to bring it up to IPB 2.1 level which won’t take long.

See you next week…

I feel compelled to comment on today’s events.

I don’t want to add speculation, or claim to know all the facts. News is still coming in and there are no hard figures on the number of fatalities and casualities and it still hasn’t been confirmed, at the time of writing, exactly how many explosive devices there were.

I feel compelled to comment on the wholly British way London has responded to the cowardly and shameful attacks on an unsuspecting public. It’s often in such unimaginable situations that the real strength of a nation shines through. We saw the fierce pride and resolve that America displayed after the tragic 9/11 attacks and how the world grieved with the American people.

The British stiff upper lip is being throughly tested today. Eye witness reports are coming in from those who were trapped underground after the explosions ripped through the underground carriages. For the most part, people remained calm, removed the odd window for ventilation and waited for the live track to be switched off before being led back to a platform where the local church was handing out cups of tea. Such an ironic display of our national stereotype brings some comfort in another wise horrific time.

I can’t begin to make sense of today’s attack. Seeing familiar places, such as King’s Cross, swamped with emergency services leading out the walking wounded is as shocking as it is surreal. The fall-out from today’s events is going to be far reaching.

For anyone who has family or friends in London, I hope they are safe and well.

I watch a fair amount of films. Some are bad, some are good, some are stupid and some are sad. Rarely do I feel like telling the world about how bad a film is, this is one of those rare occasions. Rather than blather on about how stupid the film is on individual points, I’ll give you a brief run through of the movie’s highlights.

Creep: This contains what we traditionally call "spoilers". However, nothing can spoil this film, so feel free to read on even if you haven’t yet watched the movie. It’ll save you 83 minutes of your life that you won’t get back at the end.

Prologue sequence. Some sewer engineers are happily meandering along some underground tunnels. They’re indulging in some toilet humour. They come across a blocked pipe and clear it. They find a hole in a wall that leads to more tunnels. Despite hearing strange knocking noises and inane screeching, they do what every blond girl has done in every slasher movie; they go to investigate. Now, personally, I would have run in the opposite direction but that’s just me. Cue scary music and eerie visuals. Cut to one engineer laying on the floor while his friend walks over to him. We follow his gaze past his friends shoulder to see a partially disfigured woman being dragged off. Being in a sewer is almost certainly the correct place to soil ones underpants and I assume he does so.

The film starts with our heroine at a party. I think her name is Kate. It’s largely unimportant because no one ever calls her by her name, but we’ll refer to her as Kate for brevity. We don’t know who she is, what she does or why she’s at a party although we accept that, as there is music, alcohol and people it must be a party. Kate tells her friends (again, a leap of logic because they are not introduced as her friends, but they communicate in a friendly way) that she knows where George Clooney is (another party), and as George Clooney is famous she wants to meet him. This is the only sensible part of the entire plot and to be honest we’re already on shaky ground.

As her friend left the party early she has to make her own way there. Cue outside shot of a random London street with her waving her hand trying to attract a taxi. She does this for approximately 8 seconds before giving up (anyone who has tried to flag a taxi late at night in London knows that you’re required to wave your hand around frenetically for at least 40 minutes before successfully commandeering a cab).

Frustrated at not immediately being able to hail a taxi, she takes a nice walk down into London’s underground system (Charring Cross, fact finders). She has a small altercation with the ticket vending machine, purchases a ticket from a tramp (sorry, home-challenged person) and strides purposely down the escalator (descalator as it’s going down?).

She takes a seat next to the platform’s curved wall and glances at the electronic information board which tells her, rather helpfully that there is "8 minutes for the ‘last train’". There are a few people waiting around for the "last train". She takes a pull on her mini-bar sized bottle of vodka for no apparent reason and falls into a deep sleep.
It’s such a deep sleep that she fails to wake up to the noise of fifty ton of underground train hurtling towards her. She also fails to wake up at the noise of the doors opening and the recorded announcements telling you to "mind the gap". She also fails to wake up for the recorded announcement telling you to "mind the closing doors". She also fails to wake up as the train speeds off into the distance. Why doesn’t she wake up? How can anyone fall into such a deep sleep in a matter of minutes? Oh - yes, she had a mouthful of vodka which sent her into a coma.

She eventually awakens at an unspecified time. The platform is deserted. She looks bemused. Or frightened. It’s very hard to tell as her entire facial expression repertoire is limited to scowling and frowning. She goes for a jolly jaunt around the station finding locked doors to each exit. Obviously the night guard, on his nightly "pre-locking-of-doors" sweep saw her sleeping and figured she was a tramp as she had on a brand new yellow party frock, expensive shoes and handbag and left her to it. Helpful chap.

Mysteriously a train arrives for no apparent reason. Even though the entire plot is based around her missing the last train, fortunately for her, there’s another train after the last one. She boards it. It is empty. It speeds off into the distance. (Now, there’s a whole sub-plot here involving a bloke she met at the party trying to rape her but it’s so inane and pointless I can’t be bothered to mention it). The train stops mid-tunnel. The lights go off. Now, up until this point Kate had been speaking in a rather convincing American accent but as she stumbles around in the dark proffering assorted salutations, she seems to be slipping into an interesting Norwegian accept. We eventually find out she’s supposed to be German.

Someone or something is following her. She runs through the train to the empty driver’s compartment and escapes through the door. She takes a quick jog down the tunnel (managing to avoid the live rail by chance) and makes it back to the platform. She does some more station searching and finds an open vent hatch or something like it. Bravely she climbs into it and finds two homeless people. She has a nice comfy chat with them (it transpires the homeless girl is the one she bought the ticket from and wisely invested the profit in mind altering substances and is now orbiting the planet Zob with a variety of her multi-coloured imaginary friends). Jimmy says some stuff in a broad Scottish brogue and agrees, upon payment of £50 to take her to the stations control room (apparently, jumping up and down in front of a security camera mouthing "help" hasn’t occurred to her yet). Jimmy bravely leaves his drugged out better half safe with the knowledge that at best there’s a rapist out and about and at worst there’s a maniacal killer with a predilection for rodents on the loose.

They run around for a bit and Jimmy explains to her about the live rail concept whereupon touching it would almost certainly involve some death and a lot of burning flesh. Jimmy spots their dog covered in blood (or pooh, it’s hard to tell) trotting towards them. He takes that as a bad sign, and runs off to check on his girlfriend. Kate meanwhile has a boring conversation with the security officer via an "EMERGENCY" intercom she missed at least three times on her previous expeditions. He is of the obstreperous kind and isn’t convinced that she’s in real peril and they blather on for a bit. The security guard gets killed by the screeching loony who has a small rat obsession for no real reason.

Kate runs through some more botox challenged facial expressions supposedly expressing despair / annoyance / etc.

She runs around some more and finds Jimmy at home. Jimmy’s girlfriend is missing (and there’s blood everywhere outside the vent smeared up and down the corridor). Instead of looking for her, he decides to get high. Kate finds him, slaps him a bit and they wonder off to do something I can’t remember. But it involves running around the station and swearing profusely.

Another last train turns up and Jimmy, in a Scottish rage of guilt and loss, jumps aboard carrying a crowbar. He builds up a manly sweat beating up chairs and such with the crowbar and inviting the screeching evil loony for a quick round of "kill each other". He eventually decides to stand with his back to a door and throws the crowbar away. Ironically, now he’s not equipped to deal with an attack he gets killed in an amusing scene involving a twitching foot.

Kate does some more running around and eventually passes a few strung up bodies on her way to what looks like some kind of storage facility. Obviously the underground staff are used to seeing bodies everywhere and blood smeared around the place and don’t question it. Or call the police. She turns out her torch in a Blair Witch moment.

Next thing we know, she wakes up floating in a cage, neck high in sewage. We had no idea how she got there, but by this point looking for continuity or a realistic story line is a distant dream. Screeching loony (we’ll call him Creep) is prodding another caged captive (one of the sewer engineers) with what looks like a harpoon spear. Presumably, screeching-loony randomly kills some, mutilates others and simply keeps a few in cages for reasons best known to himself. Fortunately for Kate, she’s been chosen to float in sewage. Quite why Creep wants to keep them in a cage until they’re dead is beyond me. But hurrah for Kate.

They quickly discover that the cages DON’T go down all the way down the the floor. How lucky for them. Sewer Engineer (his name is George, I think) tells Kate he can’t swim. But wait, one of the cages at the end of her block is open! All she has to do is swim through fecal matter and used condoms to reach the open cage. She does so. Screeching-loony (Creep) decides to wander up and down the walkway between the cages for no real reason. George pretends to be dead so Creep will prop him with the harpoon to see if he’s really dead. Again, reason and the audience are discordant. Whilst Creep is busy giving George a darn good prodding, Kate sneaks out of the cage, slips off one of her expensive stilettos and whacks Creep in the eye with it. Creep drops to the floor in pain dropping the harpoon. She helps George out of his cage. Do they pick up the harpoon and spear the freaky sonofabitch through the head and keep doing so until soft mushy stuff leaks out? No. They run away.

The successfully run away actually and discover various rooms which look like some 1950s experimental laboratory. We discover through deduction and the blindingly obvious that Creep’s real name is "Craig" and he’s a genetically mutated child who’s grown up on his own in the labyrinthine tunnels of the underground. Aww bless, that explains his maniacal fascination with murdering people and his consternation with all living things. Apart from rats. Makes sense.

Anyhoo, a bit more running around ensues. They discover Jimmy’s girlfriend covered in blood with a medical gown draped over her. They touch her foot and presume she’s dead and continue running.

Apparently she’s not dead as she opens her eyes. Creep comes in, pretends to wash his hands and dons a surgical gown. In, what I suppose is meant to be a chilling scene is actually so thigh slappingly funny that I almost vomited a lung. Creep puts on a pair of rubber gloves. They are obviously old and caked in blood. He puts them on in such a stupid manner that he manages to get two fingers in one finger hole and only manages them to pull them to his palm and the rest of the glove fingers are uselessly flopping around like flaccid phallics at an erectile dysfunction demonstration. This is supposed to be menacing but it’s hysterical. You expect him to blow the next one up, hang it fingers down under his chin and pretend to be a turkey. Unfortunately he decides against that and slices up Jimmy’s girlfriend instead. For no real reason.

Meanwhile, Kate and George find Creep’s lair. George, who so far has shown about as much ambition to survive as I have to win the 1500meters at the olympics suddenly remembers he’s got a daughter and decides he’d like to see her again. He too builds up a manly sweat smashing windows and inanimate objects cursing to himself. Anger spent, he throws aside his weapon and stands with his back to an open door. He bends down and we see Creep behind him.

But wait! George must have SENSED him because he turns around, picks up Creep and throws him to the ground! George sits on his chest and gives him a few casual punches to the head. Creep is laying there covered in blood looking defeated! George decides to start taunting him. Creep giggles maniacally. Kate picks up George’s discarded weapon, she takes aim and brings it down with all her might! She misses fantastically. Creep now pushes George’s head up towards a very large and very rusty spike! Kate, who previously swam through sewage majestically and beat Creep with her own shoes now bravely decides to throw down her weapon and gibber inanely to herself as she watches George get horribly killed.

She bravely runs away. Creep catches her. She throws a large metal object at his neck which is attached to a chain. With super powers she pulls the chain from the wall and spots a large sign next to the rail track which says "DANGER OF ELECTROCUTION!" The chain is made of metal! One end is in his neck! She’s going to electrocute him!

No. She throws it like a girl and it gets stuck the other side of the tunnel. Oh no!

Wait, the third train after the last one comes speeding down the track! Whoooooooooop there goes Creeps neck!

But wait! Creep looks a bit sorry for himself. Dramatic music swells. Oh, poor Craig. Left on his own with no one apart from rats and dead bodies for company. He’s not a bad person after all. We have to pity him and grieve his death. He’s just misunderstood!

Cue gurgling. He collapses. Kate stumbles out onto the platform just as the morning commuters arrive for the first train of the morning (or the forth last train of the night). One be-suited business man mistakes her for a tramp and throws 50p at her. She starts crying. I presume that it’s not because she’s seen people horribly murdered and spend the best part of the night running trough dark neon lit corridors, it’s because someone thought she was a tramp.

Oh, the dog survives if you were worried.

The End. Thank God.

I have decided (again) that web development can be a huge time waster. So much time is wasted chasing your tail on difficult to reproduce bugs or on bugs which are hard to debug. It gets quickly frustrating.

I had two ‘biggies’ on my schedule for today.

The first was a very simple report: "When I load the rich text editor and then hit ‘back’ in my browser, IE 6 crashes".

That’s the kind of bug which will either be fixed in a few seconds, or will take forever. Unfortunately for me, it was the latter. Firstly, I googled on ‘ie6 crash wysiwyg’ which brought up a few interesting links about a recent security update. I fired up my PC laptop and attempted to recreate the problem but couldn’t.
I ran Windows Update and when the PC restarted, I was able to recreate the problem every single time. A few wild goosechases on security reports went nowhere. I started commenting out blocks of code in the rich text editor to try and narrow the problem down and eventually traced it to the rather innocent looking rtewindow.document.designMode = "on". Remove that  and  there is no crash when you hit ‘back’ but also there is no working RTE. I did a bit of fiddling and noticed that document.contentEditable = true; didn’t suffer from this problem. Unfortunately it would mean rewriting a large portion of the IE/RTE code. Something that I didn’t want to do.
Armed with the cause of the problem, I did some more google research and found an interesting article on IE6 and DOCTYPES; especially when loading different pages into iframes.
Getting a bit warmer now. I had another look at the HTML it produces and found the culprit. A single blank HTML file which is loaded into the RTE to prime the colour picker had a dodgy DOCTYPE. I fixed that and the crash was gone!

The second bug was a little more complex. Mozilla (Firefox, etc) fails to honour the "meta" redirect now and again. Google came through again with a link to a Mozilla bug which found the problem to be with the gecko engine and nothing to do with IPB. When ‘midas’ is loaded, subsequent meta-redirects fail.
I decided to add a bit of javascript to the redirect page to force a setTimeout function if the user is using an affected version of gecko browser.

The moral of the story? Google is the best way to fix bugs.