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Admin
You don't need familiarity. Just the right code:
Admin
You do remember I use PHP, right? Where such voodoo is not provided out of the box, but by multiple extensions, 0 or more of which may be provided, and 0 or more of which might actually work even if installed? :stuck_out_tongue:
Admin
Yes, but if I've got the right tool for the job, why would I force myself to use the wrong one just for compatibility with your comfort zone? :smiling_imp:
Admin
That wasn't quite what I meant :stuck_out_tongue: More a case of 'you have the shiny tools and I don't, so you could be a shade more considerate about it' but nice to know that it was some kind of retarded encoding error rather than OCR gone wrong.
Admin
You could probably do it by shelling out to
iconvor something.Admin
Probably, but I'm currently on Windows where I CBA to install iconv in the first place either.
And don't even get me started on ImageMagick on Windows and definitely not on ImageMagick/Imagick->PHP on Windows.
Admin
The only thing I ever got working with Windows > PHP > ImageMagick was a system command implementation via exec(). I have a foggy memory of giving up on getting the extension installed, but I can't remember what the issue was. I probably don't want to either :ptsd:
Admin
The sad part is that via exec is still the most reliable way of using ImageMagick in PHP.
Admin
If I a ever have to defend my implementation, I will cite this fact instead of my "fuck it, it works" excuse :-)
Admin
I use Opera 12 as well, but using Opera >12 is stupid because it doesn't have any of the features that make Opera Opera. Using it is telling Opera Software ASA that what they have done is fine and acceptable.
Admin
The web server is the wrong place to transmit character set data, which is why HTML has meta Content-Type (and now meta charset). Unless you kept a master list of every page on the server somewhere, how the fark would it know the difference?
Now if you're scripting and can set headers, sure, but good luck doing that on GeoCities or Xoom.
Admin
The server could pull the information out of the in-band metadata, sure, or it could use its intimate knowledge of the host OS (hah!) to hazard a guess. Or someone could even have told it, I suppose.
Admin
html meta http-equiv is just there because some ppl can't affect headers. Describing your own encoding like that only really works in ascii-compatible.
Admin
The hell of trying to get ImageMagick+Imagick working on PHP alone will defend this implementation.
EDIT: I should really write that up as a WTF sometime.
Admin
please.
it should be front page material if you can work Hanzo into it.
Admin
I'm not front page material. But then again... I think I prefer working on a completely different level to that.
Admin
you might not be, but it sounds like PHP+ImageMagick integration on windows might be!
Admin
It starts with finding the exact versions of libraries otherwise it won't work, then copying one set of DLLs on top of another and restarting Apache to see if PHP throws any errors this time, and if it does, whether you get the 'module could not be loaded' or 'module is not a valid module' error to see if you can guess which one of the many variables you got wrong this time around.
Admin
Really? You didn't get over that while you were gone?
Admin
It's a shame you didn't read the rest of the post which would have told you in what manner I hold that observation.
As in... why would I want to be that? If I have to write like I don't give a shit about something to make it fit criteria... maybe that's a sign I don't want to be that.
I'm not front page material because I couldn't write down to that level if I tried.
Admin
@blakeyrat?
I certainly didn't get the last part of that last quote from what was after I previously quoted, but it sounds like you're over your "i'm not worthy" phase, which is a good thing.
A little saucy, though.
Admin
i dunno. i like that bit.
:laughing:
Admin
I wasn't--strictly speaking--complaining.
Admin
No, because I was trying to be nice about it. As in "I operate on a totally different level"... the implication was 'higher'.
In ironic news... song lyrics that literally just played:
Admin
The eStatement one, those look to be different accounts, so why wouldn't he get an email for each one?
"import settings" probably tries to do suggestions if there are zero results, even if it's the same as the search term.
The silly No-we-gen site, TRWTF is doing the translation on the client-side. Yes, let's prepare what the client sees on the client-side.
I'm glad that whatever controls the bus displays on that monitor.
Last error, this is why we can't have nice things.
null, I blame you.Admin
There are five accounts. There are still multiple emails for each account, although not as many as it appears from a casual glance.
Admin
I still get the feeling that there's another factor on the user's side that's causing this.
Admin
Sounds like a case for... filesystem metadata!
Admin
Or just slapping users until they use UTF-8 properly. That works (or gets you in court on a murder charge ;)).
Admin
Assuming they use a language that actually understands WTF UTF is.
Admin
Why does that make me think we need a new encoding: WTF-8 :smiley:
Admin
UUTF-8... and squint.
(And anyone that wants to Unicodify that UU into more like a W is more than welcome to do so)
Admin
Well, given that the romans used U and V interchangeably,
VVTF-8
Admin
This reminds me of a joke I made about 6 months ago telling Romans to go home, in the mispronouncing R as W manner of Life of Brian.
Admin
Does that include my fwend Biggus Dickus?
Admin
Yes. As long as I don't suggest that an important but underrepresented segment of our industry should go home.
Admin
Admin
Admin
But more importantly... What the ### is the magic trick for finding the discussion threads belonging to posts whose titles contain non-alphabetic characters? The site seems to be utterly baffled by, for example, "you-can-t-beat-this-high-score", claiming to find 0 posts. This happens consistently.
Admin
Screw you.
Sincerely, front page writers.
Admin
The readers, not the authors.
Admin
Indeed as chubertdev said - to the readers. My natural style is far more involved than would work for this place. And it does require me writing below my actual level to make what is desired.
That said, I thought you were the champion of saying what you thought without any filters or rules? This is what happens. You wanted a place without filters or rules, this is the kind of consequence you can expect: me saying exactly what I think - which is that my skill at writing is actually better than the style I would have to work with for the front page which is why I sucked so badly at it. If I have to be at the stage where I have to not care about what I do to get a semi-decent result, I am better than that.
Admin
Screw you.
Sincerely, TDWTF readers.
Oh, but by all means, speak your mind! I'm not saying you can't do that. And by the same rules, I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself not only as a reader you've insulted, but as a writer too.
Not only are you telling me, @Yamikuronue @mott555, @Lorne_Kates, @mark_bowytz, and most importantly Alex that what we're doing is in your mind some kind of MTV pandering to the lowest common denominator, but you're also insulting people we do that for.
Trust me, we're not in it for the paycheck. Frankly, the pay is not something to sell your soul for. We're doing it for fun, to provide an amusing, entertaining story to people, to support a site we like. And I fdon't give two shits about your style, I don't care if you think yourself the next Kafka or Dostoyevski, or if you have the skills to pull that off - if you don't have respect for people who enjoy different kinds of stories that angst-ridden bullshit and consider them brain-dead, then don't expect any fucking respect from them.
And if you think writing a genuinely funny story is easy, think again. It's not easy to entertain people. It's not easy to provide content that's both funny and intelligent (and yes, people do expect intelligent writing here), especially when you get a bad primer that you have to really stretch to pull out any funny from it. That's not an easy task, and you've been able to see that for yourself, except instead of thinking "okay, so I suck at that", you're thinking "I'm too good for that". Honestly, I think it's just a defense mechanism at that point.
So look. You can insult me, I don't care. My stories aren't really good anyway. But you've also insulted every single person who worked pretty damn hard to actually make people laugh, you've insulted pretty much everyone on this very forum, and to me, you're just behaving like a spoiled fucking brat who got booed off stage and is now throwing a tantrum about how people "just don't understand his art".
Maybe as a writer. Certainly not as a person.
Admin
If you tried to print a Jane Austen story in the local newspaper, you'd be laughed at. Different applications require different styles. If @Arantor can't write in a given style, he's obviously not as good a writer as he thinks he is.
Admin
Nah, it's fine to specialize. If Jane Austen tried to write a noir detective story, it'd probably be mediocre at most.
What I do have an issue with is him pulling off a huge drama because I and some other people argued with him, having people defend him, then ragequitting, then having other forum members apparently care about him and what's going on with him, and then coming back and telling pretty much everyone who cared "fuck you, you're all hapless morons entertained by shit other hapless morons shit out".
He has a right to do that, sure. But if any of you guys is going to show even a sliver of sympathy towards @Arantor, better think twice whether it's worth it. Because he's met the enemy and damn right is it him.
Admin
Specialization is fine, but saying that because you write noir detective stories you're "too good" to write Victorian love stories is bullshit. If you were "too good" for anything, you'd be able to adapt.
Admin
Guilty.
But seriously, I respect what the FP authors do. @Arantor's thing there sounded like sour grapes, and if I were a FP author, I'm sure I'd be annoyed by it, too.
OTOH, I've said infelicitous things like that which weren't really what I meant. They just came out wrong.
YOU GUYS ALL SUCK AND I HATE YOU ALL
Admin
I never suggested for a moment that I wasn't my own worst enemy. I am well aware that I am by far my own worst enemy.
I didn't ask anyone to defend me, or stand up for me or anything. I didn't like the way things were going, and I stepped out for a bit.
Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. Dunning Kruger could certainly be a thing in my world at this point, but I'll take that rather than a paralysing feeling of being utterly worthless the rest of the time. It seems to be how everyone else manages to get through things.
What I do know is that I am better as a person when I can work on something i care about. For me to work on front page stories, I'd have to not care about it. When I can stretch out and care about what I'm writing - especially if it's my own story - something decent emerges. When I'm writing someone else's story and mashing it to fuck to please a style that appears to be dumbed down unnecessarily, it's never going to work.
Fun fact: there have been complaints for a very, very long time about the quality of front page stories - and after the new batch of people came along, it visibly improved.
Some of them are still tragically long and dull, but that's not your writing style that's the problem. There's only so much you can do with the source material and sometimes you have to push hard to get a joke out of it.
And there's the problem. I came to the conclusion that I'm a better writer when I'm not fed some source material that isn't mine that I have to bastardise. That's not about adapting; that's about something entirely different.
As for the content TDWTF gets and has to work with... consider what you're saying. It's not easy to entertain people when you have the source material you have. Especially when, let's face it, we're talking about the same concepts presented different ways, that haven't actually changed in a decade.
I looked back at the articles from 10 years ago... the same basic things are there: booleans done retardedly, fundamental things (in this case networking) broken by straight up stupid configuration, bizarre interconnections of logic (e.g. SQL sproc generating HTML), stupid management, clueless people that don't understand technology.
Now compare to last month. Stupid management, clueless people that don't understand technology, and that's just the first couple. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
So yes, there's a fundamental problem in that you can only work with the source material you're given and forced to contort it to be original. This isn't my style, and I think I'm better writing when I'm not recycling someone else's material or trying to come up with a fresh twist on something.
Is there sour grapes? A little. Can't deny it. But at the same time, I think it's better for me that I didn't end up with the gig because it works better for me to be original in what I create. Does that make me a better or worse writer? For this case... worse, because I can't adapt. In general, for the things I want to write? There's the question.
Yes, I will admit in my haste to make a point and score one off you, I insulted people. I'm sorry, this wasn't my intention. What I was aiming at - and screwed up because I'm great at self-sabotage - is that my skill is better employed creating rather than rehashing, and that for my ego's purposes, it's better for me to be original than to rework something else.
You will notice I never actually criticised the FP articles in any of their comment threads. Because I would actually have had even more issues ever having the balls to do it and put my name on it. I could write the best thing ever and I'd still be so jittery about putting it out on the web. So there's also a certain amount of lashing out at things I don't have the balls to do - because I'm frustrated about it.
You know how bullies work, right? They're feeling inferior and have to try to bring other people down to their level. I couldn't do what you guys do. I could maybe do other things.
So, again, I'm sorry. I screwed up. I meant to say one thing, ended up saying something else and I'm not as good as I think I am.
Admin
100% acceptable by my book. I prefer creating my own stuff too, but what I need right now is a consistent deadline, which is why I applied in the first place. Sitting down regularly to work on things is a lot easier when someone's waiting for it.