frase.id.au archives

frase.id.au archives for July 2005:

31-07-2005 - zOMG!!! UNBELIEVABLE!!! (frase)

28-07-2005 - did you ever know that you're my hero? (frase)

26-07-2005 - uni (frase)

23-07-2005 - going offline, bbl (frase)

22-07-2005 - test (frase)

20-07-2005 - new authentication engine is done! (frase)

20-07-2005 - as fast as a... (frase)

17-07-2005 - go you big red fire engine (frase)

16-07-2005 - mmmmmm.... (frase)

10-07-2005 - white (frase)

09-07-2005 - express yourself (frase)

08-07-2005 - I gave blood :) (frase)

06-07-2005 - world's ugliest dog (frase)

01-07-2005 - tribute (frase)

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Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Australia/ACT' for 'EST/10.0/no DST' instead in /store/1/www/frase.id.au/common/functions.php on line 78

Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Australia/ACT' for 'EST/10.0/no DST' instead in /store/1/www/frase.id.au/common/functions.php on line 78

Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Australia/ACT' for 'EST/10.0/no DST' instead in /store/1/www/frase.id.au/common/functions.php on line 80

Sunday 31-07-2005

zOMG!!! UNBELIEVABLE!!!

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 22:02 on 31-07-2005

So anyhoo, here's 55's clan stats from WCG (yeah, not much yet, but we haven't been playing on the WCG server's for very long).

http://61.88.56.108/wcgstats/clan.php?id=1337

LOOK!!! LOOK AT OUR CLAN ID NUMBER!!! I ONLY JUST NOTICED IT!!!

1337. U LEH!

EOB

t

Thursday 28-07-2005

did you ever know that you're my hero?

comments (2) »

Posted by frase @ 01:09 on 28-07-2005

cripes! it's 1am and I've finally cracked the regex problem I've been working on all afternoon. FAR OUT perl regex is crazy!

anyhoo, a fascinating piece of news found its way to me today. Dan the man Sweetman is, well, the host of a new morning cartoon show! How awesome is that!

Dan, YOU ARE THE COOLEST!!! But if it sucks, I'll disfigure you!

j/k... or am I?! You know, our neighbour's dog was impaled by an arial during a storm once.

And, um... toad+shoe.

Yep, that oughta do it :)

Here's the Courier-Mail article:
Two slices of talent, toasted please

t

Tuesday 26-07-2005

uni

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 14:11 on 26-07-2005

well, here I am back at uni. Yay...

I'm not really sure whether or not that was supposed to be sarcastic... I'll move on.

Had two lectures today; Team Project II and Computer Networks, both of which look like they'll be alright (well, that will all depend on who are my other team members for TP2). The project is to build a personal voice recorder note-taker thingummy - and associated computer software. Gotta be happy with that, considering what last semester's batch had to do.

I'm gonna go catch a movie now, and grab a bite to eat. Possibly a peanut butter Kit-Kat. They are extremely delicious and I'm thoroughly addicted to them; props to whoever came up with that zany idea down (or up, as the case may be) at Nestle HQ. I hope he/she got a raise or something...

t

Saturday 23-07-2005

going offline, bbl

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 08:38 on 23-07-2005

yerp, heading up to the island for a few days before the start of semester. a spot of fishing immediately before the advent of classes couldn't be a bad thing.

btw, the comments system was broken; it's now fixed (I think).

and one final thing...

BAGURK!!!

have a nice weekend :)

t

Friday 22-07-2005

test

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 15:38 on 22-07-2005

first entry from new backend

t

Wednesday 20-07-2005

new authentication engine is done!

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 23:36 on 20-07-2005

Finally! I have finished the new authentication engine. All that's left to do is tidy up a few awkward assignments and whatnot, and then I shall start integrating all the actual content management code into it (and writing the new stuff).

The new system is all sessions based (no HTTP authentication at all) and I've coded it for different levels of access (ie, there can be superusers who control other user accounts, etc). I've done all this, of course, with group weblogs in mind. So most of the new stuff I'm going to code will be to do with all that, although I definitely plan to improve the link and blog management, although that isn't a top priority.

Hmm... off to bed now :)

Oh, I also used a ternary assignment operator for the first time! Ummm yeah... that probably shouldn't excite me :/

t

as fast as a...

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 19:48 on 20-07-2005

Zirtec!

And boy, they really are as fast as they say they are! For some unknown reason, I was just having some sort of sneezing fit and it just got so horribly, I asked Claire if we had any antihistamines. She produced the Zirtec, and seriously, after about one minute I'm already feeling 500% better! Amazing stuff!

t

Sunday 17-07-2005

go you big red fire engine

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 18:06 on 17-07-2005

I made some major performance improvements to the site this afternoon.

First of all, I converted *most* tables in the database over to Unix timestamps rather than standard MySQL datetime, which will save a few cycles now that less conversions are needed. I also moved the blog generating code to a seperate file and 'universalised' it; it's now callable as a function and you only need to pass it a result set from a SELECT query on the blog table and it will do all the rest :)

Most importantly though (and this is what took most of the afternoon), I rewrote a lot code to allow for more efficient querying of the database. All up, I've saved tens of queries per page (many tens on the archive pages where 20 or more entries are on a single page), and on most archive pages, PHP now generates the output in well under half the time it used to take! For the main page, the saving is something around 30-40% - I couldn't be bothered to work it out exactly, but suffice it to say, it's a dramatic improvement.

I'm still working on the new authenication backend and lately I've also had the crazy idea of coding in a statistics system to record information about hits, browsers people are using, et cetera. But that will have to come later. Much to do and not much time to do it before it's back to uni!

t

Saturday 16-07-2005

mmmmmm....

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 08:06 on 16-07-2005

I'll tell you what. Nothing hits the spot on a cold winter's morning like a nice hot steak and kidney pie!

That is all.

t

Sunday 10-07-2005

white

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 22:18 on 10-07-2005

I promised it, and here it is! The new colour scheme is in, and I've reverted to something a little 'blander' than what was there before. But simple is good; I dig it. At least it will load a bit quicker for those on sub-100Mbps connections to my server :P

It's not a permanent change - then again nothing is really permanent when it comes to my website. Until I finish my current line of development (I'm getting there!), this will be the theme.

Also, I made some minor changes to the layout and now the site is un-gayed in IE at 800*600. I can't wait for IE7 - hopefully they'll fix their crappy browser so I can un-rape my code again. Use Firefox. Or anything besides IE, really.

The sidebar is a wee bit smaller now, and the FreeBSD pimpage doesn't fit anymore, but the new FreeBSD logo should be announced soon (the competition closed 10 days ago) so hopefully I have something new and rad to put in its place!

Enjoy the new colour theme. And if you don't like it, well... you can always use Greasemonkey and override it :P If you use Firefox that is...

t

Saturday 09-07-2005

express yourself

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 22:12 on 09-07-2005

Some of my recent favourite expressions:

-proto-chicken
-anticoagulative
-educated spam

If you use any or all of these expressions in regular conversation in the near future, you are extremely cool. I'd be especially amused if someone went and asked for a McProto-Chicken at maccas. I would myself, but you know, McProto-Chickens aren't really my thing...

t

Friday 08-07-2005

I gave blood :)

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 14:47 on 08-07-2005

Yerp. I was inspired by the voiceover guy on that ad, and so it was that I decided to give blood.

Actually, Kez just said "Fraser, go and give blood on Thursday night, Lax, Danny and Ali are going" and I just said "Okay", but meh.

So anyway, yeah, giving blood... what can I say. It's not that bad - not that I thought it would be; I've had plenty of blood taken out of me before, just never went into other people.

Hmm... my blood was very slow. It took something like 15 minutes, and every one else was done in 6 or 7. LOL! (No seriously, I did literally laugh out loud just then - because I just remembered this). Ali asked "Frase, are you giving a double donation or something?" and it was funny...

yeah...

Hmm other news. Got my uni results. Semester GPA of 6, so I can't complain about that at all. Got my 7 in Operating Systems, which is cool. It's a strange place to be in when you're elated at how well you did but also know that you could have done better. So next semester, hopefully I can beat that. JLo and I chose our subjects the other day; we've got Team Project II, Computer Networks I and Embedded Systems Design lined up, so hopefully it should be a good one.

Also, today was very Summer-y. Just thought I'd add that.

OOOH! Yeah and today's folding (well, yesterday's really, since it all goes by US time) was awesome! Broke the single-day 1000 point barrier for the first time!

Oh yeah, and on the matter of proteins, at the bloodbank yesterday, we had to fill out this form and it asked questions about 'have you been the UK between 1980 and 1997' or something like that, and I asked the lady if that was about BSE (it was). She was very amazed as apparantly I was the first person ever who had asked if it was BSE or not; everyone just calls it 'Mad Cow Disease' or something...

meh

EOB

t

Wednesday 06-07-2005

world's ugliest dog

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 17:39 on 06-07-2005

and it's easy to see why it won!

/me shudders

that is ONE UGLY DOG!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050701/ap_on_fe_st/world_s_ugliest_dog

t

isn't he gorgeous!!!

Friday 01-07-2005

tribute

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 20:53 on 01-07-2005

I arrived at work yesterday to some horrible news.

Well, it was news to me; everyone else already knew but this is what happens when you take a week off. Things happen and noone tells you anything and you come back and everything is different and you're the only one who didn't know...

Steve's GONE!!! To Dalby.

And I didn't even know! And I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye - he wasn't allowed to tell anyone until just a bit before hand because it would 'ruin the team spirit', but frankly it's much worse when you come to work to find that your manager, the best boss I ever did work for, and a great man with whom I got along extremely well, has tranferred to a far-away land and wasn't allowed to tell anyone.

Anyhoo, can't change the past of course, and I shall look forward to meeting my new manager (even though at this stage we have no idea when we'll get one or who it will be) with eagerness. But for now, let us all take a moment to remember Steve...

one minute's silence

Steve, I salute you! And I'll be coming to visit soon :)

t

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