Life Outside PLT1

Epoch Fail

I’m really unimpressed with .NET

The webservices handler is a disgusting clusterfuck. not only does it not handle chunked encoding for incoming soap envelopes (good god, its an HTTP1.1 standard: you freaks.) but due to the oddity of .NET “value” types, you cant make dates optional: System.DateTime is not nullable, so when it deserialises from the soap XML, it NEEDS a value: automatically assigned minOccurs=”1″ in the WSDL. this is silly because you dont actually have a way to check if date data is unassigned. same with numeric types. it also makes SQL mappings horribly dangerous: if you load an INT field from SQL thats null, how do you handle that? make it 0 - but that leads to some serious issues, 0 is different to “not there”. With dates one can conceivably use the beginning of the epoch, but thats a dangerous game too… you check that in a different system, and it has a different epoch: you end up interpreting a date wrong, imagine, invoices dated to 01/01/0001 when you dont actually have a date…

on that note, microsoft are freaking weird and cant pick a single epoch…

1. December 31, 1899 - Microsoft Excel
2. January 1, 1601 - Windows’ Win32 file time-stamp
3. January 1, 1980 - MS DOS
4. January 1, 1 - Microsoft .NET’s DateTime

so that looks really weird to the unix/Mac OS X/Java epoch which is the good old 1/1/1970.


one neat exception is the Mac OS 9 epoch

January 1, 1904, was chosen as the base for the Macintosh clock because it was the first leap year of the twentieth century. [...] This means that by starting with 1904, Macintosh system programmers could save a half dozen instructions in their leap-year checking code.

cute huh?

as for microsoft: cunts, do some proper design work for once… seriously, 4 epochs? you dumb fucks, one of them thinks that feb 29 1900 is a real date! whats next in this trend of assigning fantasies to variables?

int i = SPELLS_AND_FAIRIES_AND_JUSTICE

party, work.

Camille, Josh and Hamish are all having birthdays, we thought to chuck this in with flatwarmingness. Halfway down domnion road… all welcome to come and get boozed up.

also, if anyone wants some meta-data analysis contract work, i know of a job going.

My Hovercraft is full of eels.

Afrikaans	My skeertuig is vol palings
Albanian	Hoverkrafti im është plot me ngjala
Arabic	h.awwa-mti- mumtilah bia-nqalaysu-n
Armenian	Im odatirry li e odzadz.kerov
Aromanian	Pãmporea-a mea-i ãmplinã di uhelji
Avallaen	ägloinniyüvoih po-vlen üevs erüs
Basque	Nire aerolabangailua aingiraz beteta dago
Belarusian	Moj pavetrany coven pouny vugram
Bulgarian	Korabãt mi na v’zdyšna vãzglavnica e pãlen sãs zmiorki
Catalan	El meu aerolliscador està ple d’anguiles
Cebuano	Puno ug kasili ang akong hoberkrap/hovercraft
Chamorro	Bula hasuli gi halom hovercraft-hu
Chinese (Cantonese)	ngóh jek heijínsyùhn jòngmúhn saaisíhn
Chinese (Mandarin)	Wo de qìdiànchuán zhua-ngman le shànyú
Croatian	Moja je lebdjelica puna jegulja
Czech	Moje vznášedlo je plné úhoru
Danish	Mit luftpudefartøj er fyldt med ål
Dutch	Mijn hovercraft zit vol palingen
Esperanto	Mia kusenveturilo estas plena je angiloj
Estonian	Mu hõljuk on angerjaid täis
Finnish	Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita
French	Mon aéroglisseur est plein d’anguilles
Gaelic Irish	Tá m’árthach foluaineach lán d’eascainn
Gaelic Manx	Ta my haagh crowal lane dy astan
Gaelic Scottish	Tha mo bhàta-foluaimein loma-làn easgannan
German	Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller Aale
German Swiss	Miss Luftchüssiboot isch voll Aal
Greek	To hoverkráft mou íne gemáto hélia
Hebrew	Harahefet sh’eli mele’ah betzlofahim
Hindi	merī ṃḍarāne vālī nāv sarpamīnoṁ se bharī hai
Hungarian	A légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal
Icelandic	Svifnökkvinn minn er fullur af álum
Indonesian	Hovercraft saya penuh dengan belut
Interlingua	Mi hydroaeroplano es plen de anguillas
Italian	Il mio hovercraft/aeroscivolante è pieno di anguille
Japanese	Watashi no hoba-kurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu.
Klingon	DujwIj naQ ghargh
Korean	Nae hoebuhkeurapeuteuneun changuhro kadeuk cha itseyo
Latin	Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat
Latvian	Mans gliseris ir pilns ar zušiem
Lithuanian	Mano amfibija su oro pagalve pilna unguriu;
Lojban	le mi varkiclaflo’i cu culno lo angila
Luxembourgish	Mäin Loftkësseboot ass voller Éilen
Macedonian	Moeto letacko vozilo e polno so jaguli
Malay	Hoverkraf saya penuh dengan belut
Malayalam	ente prrakkum-paetakam niraye vlankukalanu
Maltese	Il-hovercraft tiegi hu mimli sallur
Marathi	Majhī hoḍi māsaḷyaṅni bharlī āhe
Norwegian	Luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål
Occitan	Mon aerolisador es plen d’anguilas
Persian	havā-nāv-eh man por-eh mār-māhi ast
Polish	Mój poduszkowiec jest pełen węgorzy
Portuguese	Meu hovercraft está cheio de enguias
Quenya	Nîn hvurmkirwa e quanta lyg-lim
Romanian	Vehicolul meu pe perna de aer e plin cu t,ipari
Russian	Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey
Serbian	Moja lebdilica je puna jegulja
Shona	Hovercraft yangu yakazara nemikunga
Slovak	Moje vznášadlo je plné úhorov
Slovenian	Moje vozilo na zracni blazini je polno jegulj
Spanish	Mi aerodeslizador está lleno de anguilas
Swedish	Min svävare är full med ål
Tagalog	Puno ng palos ang aking hoberkrap
Thai	ho- woe khra-p kong phom tem pai duay pla lhai
Toki Pona	tomo tawa lon sewi supa telo mi li jo e kala linja lon insa ale
Tok Pisin	Bilong me hangamapim bot stap pulap maleo
Turkish	Hoverkraftimin ici ylan balg dolu
Ukrainian	Moye sudno na povitryaniy podushtsi povno vuhramy
Vietnamese	Tàu cánh ngầm của tôi đầy lươn
Volapük	Lutakujababot oba binon fulik senkafitas
Welsh	Mae fy hofrenfad yn llawn o lyswennod

sauce, and links to explanantions

THE REASON FOR ALL THIS MADNESS!

im shutting down my accounts with dating sites: signal to noise is so high i dont get a good laugh anymore.

Fucking freaks, I swear.

These people are weird, insecure and 13 short of a dozen. my best so far is this girl in LA who starts an account, browses my profile then kills it off. 6 times. 6 FUCKING TIMES! twit. She has done it under the following aliases:

• alonelygirl269
• Nygrl420f
• Lababee
• lagrl269
• lonelygrl269la
• alonelygirl269

theres also a bunch of random sluts, so i started my own fake account and sent a couple of messages:

To: sluttymistress
Subject: you stupid bitch
if you’re going to troll a dating site for something to fuck, at least show a real photo, or, heaven forbid, cut the name of the bikini company’s site you nicked the images off. and you could have picked a model without thighs that could crush suns.

I’d offer to fuck you, but I’m afraid that I could catch being a fucking retard through a condom.

hope you die swiftly,

Love, the Scarlet Bastard

To: sun_moon_earth
Subject: another online slut.
clearly you have the face of a dog. if you had an attractive face, you would advertise the goods. and moreso: if you are so good at scoring, why are you trolling dating sites? too ugly to score at a bar? nice tits though.

Love, the Scarlet Bastard

seriously, WTF?

a nicer note though, I added a kiwi band working it over the ditch to my myspace friends, and they were nice enough to send back a message.

Hey bro,

Thanks for flickin us a friends request. We see you have some mighty Dunedin bands in ya friends section! The bombers fuckin rock as well - easilly one of the fav Auck bands along with 5th Threat. We’re battling away over here - played 3 shows in 8 months and fuck me… i can’t tell you how much we’re not into practicing anymore! Our last recording didnt come off the way we wanted it to…hence all the practcing on new songs and getting something together for the end of the year. I assume you might know some of the same people we know back home so pass on our hellos! Thanks for givin a shit bro,

Not Ok

so i sent a message back:

Cheers for the message. It’s fucking great to see good bands give a shit back. And cheers for putting in the work, maybe you’ll bump some of the shit off the charts, I’d much rather see good acts make it than marketing efforts disguised as music.

If i bump into anyone that knows/knows of you ill give them the hellos.

-Jonny

am I in the “scene” yet? yays.

Fear and Loathing in Redmond.

Its escalated to all out war. Seriously. Microsoft are now screaming the corporate equivalent of “MEANY BUMS!!” at criticisms or observations of their last strategic decisions. They are facing difficulty breaking into wider markets than just their traditionl bulwark: the desktop OS. Windows CE is loosing ground to other embedded OSes (like linux for the OLPC, despite MS bullying; and ubuntu on intel’s MID; the iPhone runs a cut down version of Mac OS X; the Motorazr2 runs linux), and their recent jab at Linux by publicly claiming they own patents that Linux infringes, without revealing them (which is because their old stooge and puppet SCO is dying and this was EXACTLY what SCO was doing to the Linux community, the community (lead by Red Hat, Ubuntu and Mandriva is basically telling Microsoft to fuck off.). Zune is a failure (despite misreporting its sales targets: people said it had broken 1M units, and it was actually the sales VP saying that he EXPECTED it to hit 1M units within the next three months: worse still, i cant find any current sales figures, but heres some biased ones anyway), and the 44.6G USD offer on Yahoo! (that hasnt yet gone through). They did do well with the Xbox 360: thats a neat machine (I’m still buying a Wii though), but the original Xbox was a well marketed joke.

The interesting thing about the Yahoo! offer (which despite Gate’s call for “kinder capitalism” was pretty fucking hostile) is that naturally the official Google blog raised some concerns about inter-operability and of Microsoft repeating their business strategy for the desktop market with internet services. Microsoft issued a statement basically whining that Google is close to a monopoly and that they are going to make a more fair marketplace by doing so. How? you morons: if you take the Microsoft market share and the Yahoo! market share and unify them into the Microsoft market share, you havent changed the market use, you’ve just lessened the number of large players. well ha-ha: Yahoo! might just jump in bed with that sexy young Google, rather than the Microsoft old-man-with-bling-a-tan-and-a-porsche.

The other major event is the OOXML vs. ODF war. Its turned into all out name calling. IBM voted against fast tracking OOXML through the ISO standards application. For Good Reasons. but then Microsoft got angsty, and IBM responded. When Microsoft complain that its a standard: don’t listen, its not yet controlled by a standards body of the caliber of ISO or IEEE: its an ECMA standard and you can buy those. Also, don’t believe them when they say that Sun and IBM control ODF, they handed it on to an independent standards body: OASIS. whats really funny here is that Microsoft are supporting ODF (but probably not completely) in office ‘07, partly after pressure from the Belgians and others. This means that you can now use ODF on iWorks {edit: that was a rumour, and is not true}, KOffice, Open Office and MS Office. One piece that i thought interesting is that the OOXML example files don’t even validate against MS’s own XSD, which I find personally entertaining because I have had hell with MSXML in the past (such as not accepting chunked encoding for webservices and not documenting if a read method actually advances and consumes part of the input stream or resets to the last position (some do some don’t)), and I have never had any issues with SAX/Xerces/Xalan.

All this adds up to serious fear and loathing in Redmond, WA. Its like the Halloween documents all over again: but public and more desperate on Microsoft’s part. Desperation bought out of confusion bought out of an inability to understand and so capitalise on a shifting market (much like the RIAA). And this isn’t an “o yey, microsuck gonna go away” rant. They wont. Some of the stuff they do is damn useful, some, I daresay, even good: but they are used to operating from a dominant position like they had when the computing world was all about OS’s and sovereign applications, but now the computing world is about availability and services. But for services to be available and useful, they have to present in an accepted standard fashion: which means open standards. And the Microsoft strategy has been to offer their own standards and make them dominate. We seem to be moving away from that: standard data but with your preference for interface/services/performance. After all, if there was no difference between the document formats, would you still use MS Office with its pricetag? or would you install KDE on windows and use koffice or just install open office or maybe even go mac? When you have all the water, you can charge whatever you like, until someone digs a well…

For a finisher, heres a funny quote from somewhere…

A fatal exception in THE TRUTH has occurred at 0028:C0011E36 in MS BUSSTRAT (08) + 00010E36. The current business strategy will now close.

* Press any key to terminate the current business strategy.
* Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart your business. You will lose any market value in your current business strategy.

Avoidance of work - surrealist rubbish and other ugandan space probes

A surrealist poem by Daniel Bertinshaw, featuring an interjection by Daniela Dunn.

fishes swimming in souffle, fishes dancing on a hat!
but these fishes have whiskers so they must be cats.
cats have no hats, so there are no hats, except on my head, which is where i lost it tomorrow.
–
CUTTLEFISH!
–
a cuttlefish without a cuttle would perhaps be some kind of farming machinery. except in the rain: then it would be a fine dessert.
or perhaps a desert. where there is nothing, so i shall go there and see everything.

what i did on my holidays.

i got drunk. christmas saw me drinking TWO BOTTLES of whisky. i got my nosebridge and both nipples peirced. i got a new tattoo. i went to a scaface claw gig. i went to a bones gig. i just missed out on a gideons gig. i got to four parties.

overall this is awesome as camille likes the idea of me having metal in my nipples.

im drunk and my nipples hurt. fuckin’ ciao yo. i love you guys ^_^

the naked face

Emo Balloons

sonic screwdriver

ALWAYS WHINE WHEN YOU WANT CAPEX!