I’ve partially fixed the problems outlined in the article, “Failure”. Unfortunately a new one has creeped up: I can’t delete or edit any files at all. The last post I made was a test to check if everything was working. I can’t get rid of it. Very frustrating.

The changes that work (hopefully) are:

• The RSS has moved. To find it, either use standard auto-discovery or click the orange XML button on the navigation bar. This was done to facilitate future changes that are in motion,
• I finally added an accessibility statement to the site. This has been done for a long time but I didn’t have a link to it. Read at your leisure,
• The archives still work but, since updating, are a bit twitchy. If you notice anything odd, notify me.

I’m also going to be gone for a few days; probably Tuesday before any more updates are available. The next PHP challenge should go live around then too.

For those waiting on responses regarding PHP challenge #3, my apologies. I’ve been too busy to reply properly. This will be rectified by this time tomorrow! I’ve set a deadline now, so I’ll have some motivation to meet it. Most likely, I’ll extend the challenge deadline by a few days to allow for the amount of time I’ve not been answering people with regards to the challenge. Watch this space and the challenge entry itself for more details.

UPDATE: I’m abandoning this challenge. Too many different configurations of server exist (among other factors) for this to work properly all the time. Since the point of these challenges was to test people and provide code to the public (hence everything submitted is public domain), and I can’t helpfully do either, it’s over. Apologies to the people who submitted scripts already. I hope this unfortunate incident won’t stop anyone joining in next time.

The Google Browser is a fantastic Java applet that takes in a URI and returns a graph of related sites. Related sites comes from the Google index of related sites e.g. here are the related links for this site.

I’m not entirely sure how Google creates this related list, but it doesn’t really matter. Try out the Google Browser to see some bouncy graphs.

World Of Ends is a site talking about why the simplicity of the net is its strongest “selling” point.

By keeping all of the detail out of the lowest belly of the internet (the Internet Protocol), we can build all kinds of complex (or simple) systems on top of it, without going to stupid lengths.

The film, “Adaptation“, is about Charlie Kaufman. He’s a screen-writer who is given the task of adapating the book, “The Orchid Thief“, by Susan Orlean, into a movie. The problem is that he doesn’t know how. So, instead of writing a film directly about the book, he writes a film about how he doesn’t know how to write a film about the book.

The really bizarre thing is that the film “Adaptation” was written by the real Charlie Kaufman, who was actually given the task of adapting the very real book “The Orchid Thief” by the real Susan Orlean. He, instead, wrote about how he couldn’t do it. Now, to really mess things around a bit, “The Orchid Thief” book seems to echo the story of the character Charlie in an abstract way. Are you following?

It really blurs the line between reality and fiction to a point that I’ve never seen in a film. So many parts of the film are “real”, and some aren’t (Kaufman’s twin brother, Donald, for example).

To really understand, you have to see it; something which I must insist that each and everyone of you do. Now! Then you too can be stuck in the same nightmare of trying to sort various levels of reality into some ordered form. Enjoy.