“Oops!”
The home page is broken!
Nobody complained; do any of you guys read my home page? It’s the one-stop shop for recent activity: it has the latest blog entry and the last six comments (if you expand the ‘blog’ section, that is).
I noticed, after “We’re not in Sudan” showed up as ?We?re no in Sudan? that the special characters weren’t making it intact from the blog to the home page. That trick is done (currently) using MagpieRSS to parse the RSS feed from the blog. I did a quick read round on the subject and got the impression that a later version of Magpie might cure the problem with no extra work. I upgraded and, in so doing, broke the thing properly. I’m re-installing the old version, in another window, as I write this.
Finger’s crossed.

kellan Says:
You need to set the output encoding (any version since 0.7 should do), e.g.
define(”MAGPIE_OUTPUT_ENCODING”, “UTF-8″);
December 9th, 2005 at 6:58 amMark Says:
Kellan, your comment has restored my hope in the Internet!
I posted this entry yesterday. I knew full well I was too lazy to go seek out the proper answer when the first quick search didn’t come up with it. I’m bloody busy today because the ‘pooter in my house is refusing to switch on and I need to re-read the Cisco CCNA notes for my final exam. Im fighting with laptops beligerant WiFi adapters.
Next day, the authro of the software no less, has left a comment here telling me how to fix it! The Internet is a village after all.
I affected the fix by remotely logging in to the server and editing the php file with vi, just like we used to in the old days at Davies & Brown. Switched back to the new version of Magpie and, of course, it worked. Thanks Kellan.
December 10th, 2005 at 1:12 amjan Says:
oh god I thought it was just how it worked these days ?? derrrrrr jan
December 12th, 2005 at 12:24 pmChris Says:
I always just type in bitterjug.com/blog in the browser… can’t see any extra information on the homepage that would be of interest, since the only dynamic bit is from the blog, which I’m going to go and read anyway…
Maybe I’m being picky. I’m allowed to be now - I’m 40.
Chris
December 13th, 2005 at 2:19 amMark Says:
Problem is that since I can’t get Murias to answer any of his emails and help me with moving the domain name to the new server, I set up the redirect on bitterjug.com/blog to go to the welcome page. Which, as Mithi pointed out, has neither the latest comments nor the latest blog entry on it. The home page has both the latest blog entry and the six most recently added comments. I’ll consider updating the redirect. Unfortunately my old server doesn’t have modrewrite enabled so I cant do a smart forward to the relevant page. Now where is that Goth when you need him?
December 13th, 2005 at 2:39 amCad Says:
Love the Santa, especially when you hover over the search box
Don’t know if you’ve heard Mark, but the big oil terminal in Hemel Hempstead blew up in the early hours of Sunday morning.
We’re about 8 miles away and the whole house shook, waking us all up! I thought the boiler had blown up or something.
It was still dark outside and all the lights in the houses started to come on, this was at about 6am.
As fate would have it, we had to drive into Hemel for 8.45 (Holly’s ice-skating session), as we drove in we could see this immense pillar of black smoke, boiling upwards into the clouds. We arrived at the leisure complex, where the ice rink was,
to find coaches dropping off people with blankets wrapped around them. We were worried that they had been hurt but it turned out that they had been evacuated from around the terminal in case of any more explosions.
The Salvation Army swooped in then, armed with tea urns, and whisked them away, all under this this huge black cloud. It was very strange indeed.
Some images here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4510000/newsid_4518400/4518486.stm
It’s still burning today, 2 days later.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:01 amThe cause is still unknown, but folk are starting to talk of bombs.
Mark Says:
I actually didnt know, and thanks for telling me about it. Im glad you are all well. Im amazed by the photos.
December 13th, 2005 at 6:04 amjan Says:
xmas wishes to you and hey when are you off to the coast then >?
December 13th, 2005 at 3:38 pmevery xmas I think of you and remember odd and wonderfull xmasses we have had …
this one seems to be getting stressfull with the finishing of the house at cotes av..
so if I miss you and you go hvae a good timne and more when you return as time seems to be slopping away…and slipping !! xxx love jan and Steve xxx
Tyg Says:
hello …
Drew’s family home is not far from hemel. But the house was empty (cept for the cat) and Drew was at mine when it happened. I was up at 6 am sunday trying to get ready for my flight to rome so heard about it on the telly. He drove back on sunday night and says he could see the plumes of smoke from the house … I was looking at the satelite pictures on the news in our hotel in rome and the smoke looked like it had covered all of london!
hmmmm … everyone OK here though …
hugs to you …
xxxTyg
December 14th, 2005 at 9:20 am