True to my pledge, I’m updating my blog.. and ok, it’s actually just after midnight on Tuesday and I’ll totally be doing the 23:59 time frig trick so it shows up in the right place.. but at least I’m doing it, right? RIGHT?!
Ruby on Rails: I’m going to play with Ruby on Rails. Simon at work is the biggest fan and gets all doinky in his pants over it. I’m not quite there yet (and doubt I’ll ever will be?) but it IS sexy stuff.. It’s supposed to make developing web apps very easy.. and lets you do all the sexy user interface stuff without having to write tons of complex user interface-y type code. I still don’t totally “get” it, but I want to take some time (make some time?) to explore and play a bit. It ties in with an idea for a website that I have in my head right now, that I think only 3 other people know about.. which brings me to my next peeve..
Domain Name Registrations: What the fuck? Every name under the sun seems to have been registered and most are those corny wank “landing” pages that just have a million links to other directory/advertising pages. I read an article the other day that Bob Parsons (chief bloke at Go Daddy) had written, explaining how registrars can register a domain name, then cancel it 5 days later, then reregister it again.. rinse and repeat.. because they cancel within 5 days, they never get charged by ICANN.. so some unscrupulous registrars take advantage of this and have their own landing/advertising pages which creates extra income for them. Meanwhile, you and I and the rest of the general public can’t get the domain name they want cos some registrar is acting like an asshole. That said, I realised that I already had a domain name that I could use for my project, that’s a .com name that’s only 4 characters long (hello? that’s like gold dust these days, especially if it’s actually pronounceable or recognisable!). It gave me a dippy grin that lasted for blocks! More news on that one as it happens..
Spam is Evil: It’s true. So true. As in spam is just fucking evil and while I may have the tiniest smidge of admiration for people who figure out advanced email address harvesting techniques, really these people are the scum of the earth and should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.. (which is my second Douglas Adams reference tonight, but the first one will be in my second blog post tonight, with me?). I created a new Gmail address the other day. The only place that email address has been published is in The Georgia Straight, and their website (www.straight.com). Within a couple of days of it appearing online, I’ve had spam. What’s happened is the spammers have pointed their little harvesting program/script at the webpage that has a whole bunch of email addresses on it, then sent their spammy shite advertising to all those addresses.. 10 out of 10 for ingenuity, 15 out of 10 for being annoying fucking assholes! And what can you do? Not much really.. click the spam button in the lovely Gmail interface and move on to the next message, sad with the knowledge that you can never reclaim those 5 seconds that you just lost dealing with the message in question.
