tenpastmidnight blog

Got MySQL back on my iBook (though a newer version than before, 4 is soooo much easier to install than 3.23 on OSX.) Cocoa MySQL could connect fine to 'localhost', so could ColdFusion, but PHP wouldn't, I kept getting an "can't connect to local mysql server" error. Eventually I tried using '127.0.0.1' rather than 'localhost' on the connection string, and it's started working, so if you're having the same problem, try that.

I've updated my Google Search Appliance page with my Google Mini work, the Mini's seem to be getting quite popular as a product so I'm hoping to get more of that. I've also written up what I did for Drake and Cavendish as it involves exotic things like custom meta tags to feed parts of the search results.

Flash Coders Brighton is a networking group for people working with Adobe / Macromedia Flash... in Brighton. It's good to see another local niche group starting up, to go with the Brighton Linux Users Group, Brighton Bloggers, Brighton Freelancers (The Farm), Brighton 2600 and of course the big daddy, Brighton New Media (BNM) List.

(Apologies to anyone I've left off that list!)

While out looking for a present for my girlfriend last week, I popped in to the London Road YMCA shop (not for shopping for her!) and noticed a book on the shelf - The Rage for Revenge by David Gerrold. This is the third of four 'Chtorr' books of an unfinished series by Gerrold, and I have the first two from years ago. They've been out of print for donkey's years, and as it looks like they'll stay unfinished, which makes them very difficult to get hold of. Last time I checked eBay for them the prices were ludicrous, but I see they're much more sensible currently. It was great to find one of them and I'm looking forward to reading it. They're better reads than the cover might lead you to believe, with a mixture of good, innovative ideas as well as action. They're not Shakespeare, but they're fun, and a bit of a cult classic within SF, which admittedly is a genre almost completely built on cult classics.

Hmm, checking around I found one of my posts about them in rec.arts.sf.written from 1994, so I've definitely had the first two books at least 12 years. I have a feeling I bought them from a great second hand bookshop in Worthing which has since closed down. All this makes me feel old :-)

You can read more about rumours that the Chtorr series might be getting finished off through a search for 'chtorr unfinished' on the sf.written newsgroup. Personally I'll believe it when I see it on Amazon.

Techie news site Slashdot has had a redesign. It's a good update from the previous version, which had got very dated, but it is a touch dull. Perhaps the dullness will help it fade in to the background and promote the content, or age slightly less quickly than a very cutting edge design would.

About the only real annoyance for me is that they've reduced the font size of the main content down slightly too far, and also changed to a sans-serif font. I'm one of the few people who seemed to like the use of Times New Roman on Slashdot because I found I could read a lot of comments without my eyes getting tired. Now they've changed to a slightly-too-small Tahoma I've found I get tired of the comments much more quickly. Still, at least now the design and layout is CSS based I can re-write that myself to get the font I prefer.

(By the way, the fact that this blog and most of my sites use sans-serif fonts isn't lost on me, though they are generally much smaller pages than a Slashdot article with comments.)