Si Dawson . Com - Latest Comments

Re: WordPress 2.8.5 dashboard not working in Firefox

Si Dawson — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:48:28 -0000

The above solution is only for 2.8.5 wordpress.

However, I can tell you straight off - 503 means "webserver not available" (due to high load, or temporary maintenance on the server). So, that's nothing to do with wordpress, that's right at the bottom of the stack, not near the top.

If you're not using a litespeed webserver then it probably means you're linking to something on someone else's site, and their server is broken.

Re: WordPress 2.8.5 dashboard not working in Firefox

Prashanth S — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:28:10 -0000

i corrected it as you said and my view source gives correct urls, still i cant get the styles. when i clicked the style links (from inspect element) to open it in another page and it shows,

503 Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily busy, try again later!
Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server
LiteSpeed Technologies is not responsible for administration and contents of this web site!

how could I correct it?? i use wordpress 3.2.1 version

Re: Twitter OAuth Invalid Signature on friendships/create

Ryan Triggs — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:39:57 -0000

You saved me hours! Thanks for the post. The same problem exists for /friendships/destroy.

Re: The Importance Of Pipes

Si Dawson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:54:08 -0000

Ha! How could I not reply to this for so long? Very slack of me, I apologise.

You're quite right - in many unexpected ways, DOS was further ahead than the windows behemoth (which is what I was referring to). The difficulty of piping GUI apps together drastically limited the ability of windows apps to scale with anywhere near the simplicity & flexibility of unix (or even dos, text based) systems.

I believe they've started re-addressing this in the last 5 years or so, with a "power" user version of dos shipping as a support kit for admins, buuut, it's still really bandaids on an architectural limitation. Developing a good GUI O/S, it's not for amateurs :)

Re: The Importance Of Pipes

Batch-code Jack — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:49:43 -0000

(additional info)

Most people who use DOS batches are probably aware of the redirectors "<" and ">", which are also tremendously useful, but the true pipe "|" is often misunderstood and not used.

Re: The Importance Of Pipes

Batch-code Jack — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:47:47 -0000

Great post, as usual Si... I've not checked for a while and just caught up on your other blog as well. Small correction for you though - the "other operating system" you refer to (presumably ms-dos?) also has pipes, and it's had them since version 1.25 as far as I know. Very useful things, too! :) The main problem is that not all applications written for it are able to use them, which is where it all falls down a bit.

As I recall though, you wrote some very small apps for me in the early 1990's when I worked at DIA, which created date-strings for use at command prompt levels. I used pipes to get them where I wanted then. Thanks for those, btw! :)

Looking at what you're describing, having lots of small programs doing small tasks to accomplish the larger task, reminds me of using the OS as a language like FORTH, where you slowly build up the language by creating small commands which do minor tasks, until finally you have one command that does what you want. I guess the OS (DOS or UNIX derivatives, or even CP/M for that matter, if you remember that far back) can be used in the same way...

- Jack

Re: Old School Cool

Si Dawson — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:37:11 -0000

Oh really? Wow, that's awesome.

Amazed you still have that kit actually. I couldn't find my C64 even IF you paid me for it :)

and yeah, talk about hardcore memories on that vid. Just too cool NOT to post :)

Re: Old School Cool

Jack M. — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:30:27 -0000

Very nice indeed.... :) I almost cried when I saw the spectrum but then I remembered I'm a guy, so it must have just been some dust in my eye.

Btw, did I tell you I sold my zx81 earlier this year? And the manual as well ? (separate online auctions) They both got huge amounts of comments and interests. I'm currently cleaning up my collection of Apple Newtons, I'll send you the link once they're on TradeMe... :)

Re: Unit Testing – Necessary, but Not Enough

Si Dawson — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:23:21 -0000

a couple of my testing rigs depend on conditional compilation code which is internal - it's pretty much necessary to access all the internal variables. And the overall code is so complex that without that you'd never know what was wrong.

I suppose, thinking about it, you could just wrap all the header declarations with conditional statements - then change the compile flags every time you tested.

You're right though, it's ugly & impure.

Re: Unit Testing – Necessary, but Not Enough

Christine D. — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:05:04 -0000

The accessibility thing bothers me, too. Someone needs to hack our respective languages and create a new accessibility modifier for "public, but only for testing robots. Otherwise private".

(I suppose an alternative would be to have unit tests living in the same class as the code they are testing. I dislike it in an architectural purity kind of way d: )

Re: Unit Testing – Necessary, but Not Enough

Si Dawson — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:56:18 -0000

Yep, I completely agree.

I'm definitely in the "unit testing is a must" camp now. I'm just not sure they're enough

However, I am finding, even going back and writing tests afterwards, that it's making me double (and triple) check all of my logic. Plus, as you point out, tidying up everything at the bottom of the stack, and rethinking flow. It's kindof an enforced code review - which is always helpful.

The only thing I dislike is the requirement to expose so much of the interface in order to test things thoroughly. There's a stack of private methods that are really only pertinent to the inside of any given module that shouldn't be exposed.. and yet have to be. But it's a minor gripe really - particularly considering how sloppy my architecture is generally :)

Re: Unit Testing – Necessary, but Not Enough

Christine D. — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:04:06 -0000

At the very least, code that I write which is unit tested is written in a way which is much clearer than code that isn't - if I can't easily test something, just about every time it's because there's a better way to organise things.

(And, well, I like the happy green lights that unit testing tools inevitably show up when everything is working properly <: )

Unit tests, at least, can help you make sure that the little details at the bottom keep on doing what they're supposed to / unit tests which *could* be testing the wrong thing are probably trying to test too much.