How can days start off so well and then go down the toilet so fast? Everything was going great. I had a decent (last) day at uni, and everything was roses. Then I came home and thought I’d do some work on improving the URLs around here.

Locally (I run an Apache server on my own computer), I got everything looking nice: URIs everywhere, and everything looking simplified and clean. Things worked well. Now, despite the test sampling I tried a few days ago that worked fine, when I uploaded, my host crapped out. It refused to load any page that used the mod_rewrite rules I specified.

After a while of trying the new permalinks (of the form /News/2003/05/19/#PageTitle), I gave up. But then my host completely crapped out. The server went done and FTP calls were blocked for a long time (or so it seemed). So, not only did the new URLs and permalinks not work, I couldn’t change them back.

In the meantime, I though I’d try out the new version of Firebird. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. Although everything was initially fine, after a few minutes pages would take forever to load and then the browser would drain all resources. The net result was that pages didn’t show and my music wouldn’t play. Fun.

But, as things usually do, things semi-worked out: I got the old files uploaded (so those lovely new permalinks don’t exist anywhere but on my computer), and managed to revert to my old version of Firebird. So nothing lost, but nothing gained.

There are certain things you should not attempt to do either drunk or while recovering from a serious night of drinking. These include, but are not limited to:

• Drinking orange juice. It will go right through you, and that is the last thing you’ll want to see/smell/experience,
• Debug 2 apache servers simultaneously. This is not recommended behaviour at any time, but it gets more fun when you can’t focus on which one you’re fixing. This leads to more problems and more debugging. Ad infinitum,
• Install mod_rewrite. Tracking problems online and offline to find some common ground, to get mod_rewrite working is NOT fun. Bastarding thing,
• Watch Sister Act 2. Actually, you should never do this.

There’s far more that could be added, but for sake of pride, I’ll leave it at that.

Attention to my UK readers! As I mentioned a few days ago, Final Flight Of Osiris is the only Animatrix short film currently showing that is not available from the website. However, Channel 5 is showing it tonight at 11:35 PM straight after they show The Matrix.

Anyone who hasn’t yet seen it should watch it tonight, rather than go see Dreamcatcher.

The new version of Phoenix Firebird has finally been released, and it’s been a long time coming.

I haven’t used it yet, but there’s an extensive list of changes including a new default theme, automatic image re-sizing, smooth scrolling and bookmark context menus (a much needed addition). I just hope that it runs ok on my computer; everything since 0.5 has caused massive drains on the available resources.

There’s been a lot of talk about APIs recently. Most of it can be summed up reasonably by Evan’s post on the API situation. For anyone bringing a CMS into the world around now, it’s a bit of a nightmare situation.

Everyone (Dave and Evan – the brains behind the two big APIs – included) wants a singular but fully functioning API to hook into. To be able to write once and only once, and forget about it for the near future. Currently, it isn’t possible.

Rather than get into the politics and technical reasons behind the split; I thought I’d say that as the developer of a new CMS, I currently implement neither API. I will, some day, implement one but as of yet haven’t. Why?

First of all, I’m the only person to use a remotely new version of Finetto (the aforementioned CMS). I’ve given other sites stable working versions (Finetto was actually written for a site that I was working on, where the owners didn’t have the knowledge to update manually), and it will be used on other sites (once I get a rather unique feature finished). But for now, it’s really just me, and I’m happy using the web interface for it. I know it’s secure enough to let me log-on from other computers without compromising anything.

Secondly, the browser window is the lowest common denominator of any net capable application. I’ve checked this from a number of devices, and they all allow access through the web interface (hooray for somewhat functional XML parsers embedded in devices). This kind of interoperability puts API interoperability further down the list. More devices support browsers than custom interfaces.

Admittedly, another reason is that there are 2 problems with Finetto stopping me implementing an API. One is trivial, and I could write code for in 5 minutes. I don’t because there are things much higher on my priority list (non-crufty URLs and a comment system have been on the list for too long to ignore now). The other reason is slightly more complicated, but I have the necessary script to remedy it, I just need a lot more time than I have to do so.

Finally, because there’s not enough time in the day. I’m a student. I have exams getting imminently close, a girlfriend, friends to do stuff with, alcohol that needs drunk etc. You get the picture. There’s not enough time to do all that as there is, without having to weigh up two APIs to implement. If there was one, then maybe, but until summer it’s just not going to happen.

I don’t know what the point of this post was if there was any. Hell, I’ll probably do a Zeldman and implement an API by this time tomorrow. But perhaps I’m trying to say prioritise, make sure you do things because you should rather than because everyone else is doing it, and don’t do drugs, kids.