This weekend I've re-started on a website that I was meant to have finished ages ago. Now that I have all of those extra minutes per day having extracted myself from Facebook's clutches, I've resolved to get it finished and get it finished I shall.

Rather than re-inventing wheels, like I did with my own website, I've opted to build this site using Textpattern. So far it seems pretty straightforward. This is ideal as I don't intend to maintain the new website (another good reason not to hand-crafting my own Perl, PHP or Python).

One thing that did take a while to get working, however, is getting 'Clean URLs', those without question marks and ampersands all over the place, to work. Thankfully like so many things, this is a solved problem. For future reference, the solution was easy for the virtual host on my MacBook Pro, with just one line needed in /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf...

<Directory "/path/to/website">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Allow from all
    AllowOverride FileInfo
</Directory>

Incidentally, I'm keeping both /path/to/website and /private/etc/apache2 under source control with Git, as I am doing with pretty much everything I do these days. Git is version control done correctly. Thank you, Linus!

Happy new year, folks!

Here's a little utility I knocked together yesterday to decrease the number of key-presses needed to switch between unit test and production code:

toggle_unit_tests : plug-in for toggling between source and unit test files

I've tested it with C++ and Python and it works nicely, but should work well with other languages too.

If you find yourself doing TDD in Python using Vim, you may find the following page useful:

Integration with PyUnit testing framework.

That is all.

I've deleted my Facebook account. Hip, hip, hooray!

Having never much liked Facebook, it bugged me that it still occupied far too many minutes of my days. I complain too much these days that I don't have enough time to do this and that, so spending fewer minutes declining invitations to install applications letting me know who thinks I'd make a good rock star should mean that I can spend more minutes of my day playing bass. Makes sense, doesn't it?

I appreciate that it's a good method for some people to stay in touch, but there are many better (and in my opinion, more appropriate) ways to do this and they work for me, thank you very much.

Here's a YouTube video that highlights some of my many pet hates about Facebook. FaceBook In Reality - idiotsofants.com and BBC's The Wall.

This came in via email. I'm unsure as to whom it should be properly attributed.

God rest you merry fund managers,
Let nothing you dismay
Remember that liquidity
Must ultimately return one day,
To save us all from bankruptcy
When we are gone astray;
Glad tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Glad tidings of comfort and joy

From the central banks our heavenly Fathers
A blessed angel came.
And unto certain chief executives
Brought tidings of the same,
How that on Wall Street was born
A bailout package by name:
Glad tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Glad tidings of comfort and joy

Fear not, then said the angel,
Let nothing you affright,
This day is born a bailout deal,
Of virtue, power and might;
So frequently to vanquish all
The friends of illiquidity quite;
Glad tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Glad tidings of comfort and joy

Life is in boxes; about fifty boxes of purest cardboard. The removalists came this morning and in three hours the lovely apartment in which we have lived for the past year and a bit was a warehouse.

Tomorrow we move 18km (11 miles) across Melbourne to take up residence in our new house, which will be, I think, my nineteenth "permanent" address since I was born. It will be great to live in a house again, having lived in apartments since we moved to Melbourne in February 2006. I shall miss the terrific view that we have enjoyed from the tenth storey since moving in though. It really is glorious particularly on sunny days such as today.

Now we have mortgages in both of hemispheres, which seems terribly grown-up. I don't feel terribly grown-up, not even just passed my 2⁵th birthday.

The good news for those of you who are fed up with updating your address books each time that I move home is that the Post Office Box address, which you've had since we landed in Melbourne remains valid. You can thank me later.

The bad news for those of you who like to keep in contact via electronic means, such as Skype or (the other multitudinous instant mithering and social networks to which I am connected) is that it shall be a little while before we have broadband connected in the new abode. I shall sporadically check my email on the iPhone, of course. I may even tweet, who knows.

But first, we must celebrate K's birthday. Just think of all of the presents (read: "boxes") she'll get to unwrap tomorrow. Aren't you jealous?

Among the emails in my inbox this morning was one from my mother asking me if I could "get into scrabulous". I quickly fired up The Fox and put "http://www.scrabulous.com/" into the location bar only to be presented with a GoDaddy.com holding page. "Odd", I thought; either they're having some DNS issues, or the legal eagles at Mattel had usurped the brothers Agarwalla.

Following a question not long afterwards by another friend who enjoys playing the game as to the whereabouts of the website, I dug a little deeper. Google's cached snapshot of http://www.scrabulous.com/ as it appeared on 26 Sep 2008 07:32:13 GMT said:

The site is taking a coffee break. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Probably not a DNS issue, then. The news pages tell me that the name "Scrabulous" has been ruled a trademark violation. The Wikipedia page on Scrabulous has some better news, though. It mentions that from the ashes of Scrabulous rises Lexulous.

It looks like Lexulous is not yet fully-functional; I cannot see a way to invite others to an email-based word game (I daren't use the 'S'-word, lest Hasbro leap on me litigiously), but it has got my user information from the old site.

Good news, Mum, it looks like you won't have to find a new pass-time after all!

This lunchtime K sent me a link to the news story that Robbie Coltrane is being used by police in New Zealand to try to catch a teenage burglar.

I suggest New Zealand police check the local convents. I suspect the thief has disguised himself as a nun and is hanging out with an Eric Idle lookalike.

I mentioned that we'd made a purchase or two recently. The biggest one is that we've bought a house. All things being well, we shall pick up the keys on Kirsty's birthday a mere 74 days from the day we saw the place and put in an offer.

Buying the house has proved a lot easier than buying the house in the UK. It's all good. If you're going to be in the Melbourne area in October, keep the last Saturday free for a housewarming party. Details to follow.

I'm a bit concerned, though. According to Internode's website, they don't have ADSL2+ coverage in our new area. And Google Stret View seems to cover ever street in Melbourne, apart from our new street. What have I let myself in for?

So I have this weblog, or blog thingamajig. It has been sadly neglected recently. Mostly by me. I don't know if you have been neglecting it, too, largely because I have better things to do with my life than trawling logfiles to see who's been visiting and when.

It seems that since I last posted, back in June with this throwaway entry, the commentage box has had a bit of use. So somebody's reading...

Yay Portsmouth!! But Paul Daniels a celebrity? He's certainly infamous...

Paul Daniels is certainly a celebrity.

Then there was this rather strange comment, which appeared twice...

Nice Site! http://google.com

Google is clearly a very useful site, but I cannot take credit for it. Thanks for sharing the link, though. I'm sure somebody will find it useful!

You may remember me mentioning some spam I received...

Regarding this Mary , from Melbourne ( she writes "Melburne" asking for merchandise to pay using her visa card.

The merchandise she ordered is around U$ 400.00 ,but the courier she recommends , "bringingworld" supposedly in UK, charged over U$ 900.00 to get it to her, and we are supposed to pay the courier .We never heard of "bringingworld" courier , neither did the Google. Now any one can cancel a VISA operation after we pay the U$ 900.00 to the courier . . . It does not seem to be a sound business . All be advised . . .

Christopher Svoll

Clearly, Christopher, it does not seem to be a sound business. Perhaps I didn't state clearly enough that the message was spam. I cannot emphasise enough the first rule of spam prevention: Never reply to spam. And while I'm on the subject, never buy products from spam.

Apparently, the colours of this website were changed automagically on July 4. I'd forgotten that I'd done that.

ARGH MY EYES MY EYES. Thankfully this 4th July thing only comes round once a year. This colour scheme is a tribute....right???? Lou x

Sorry, Lou.

Someone, or some process (more likely) wants us to...

have a nice day!

That's very kind of you. You have a nice day, too!

I have another couple of blog entries brewing, both on new purchases. But they shall have to wait until after I have been bouldering.

Email-based questionnaires seem to be doing the rounds again. If I answer these, I usually favour sticking the answers up here, rather than burdening people's inboxes.

Here's the latest one:

SCATTEGORIES - it's harder than it looks! Copy and paste into a new email. When you have answered all the scattergories, send it on to friends but DON'T FORGET to return it to the person who sent it to you. Use the first letter of your first name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things - nothing made up. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same first initial- which by the way is hard if you already have read their answers! You can not use your own name for the boy/girl names.

1. What is your name: Pete
2. A 4 letter word: Pick
3. A vehicle: Pick-up
4. A city: Portsmouth
5. A boy's name: Paul
6. A girl's name: Pippa
7. Alcoholic Drink: Port
8. An occupation: Postman
9. Type of Clothing: Pantaloons
10. A celebrity: Paul Daniels
11. A food: Pasta 'n' Sauce
12. Something found in a bathroom: Perfume
13. Reason for being late: Passed out on the tram and ended up at the depot
14. Something you shout: Pint, please, barman!
15. An animal: Platypus
16. A body part: Patella
17. Word to describe yourself: Pedantic