Ever wondered how regular expressions could help you? Visit the IRC Log Conversion FAQ, and you too can act bewildered from all the backslashes, square brackets and backreferences..

Given that it's coming up to end-of-semester assignment time for many, I've had a few people recently ask me about database design - specifically, many-to-many mappings. Read the FAQ on foreign keys for more details.

Found a couple of useful tools lately.. HyperSQL is a doxygen-for-SQL tool; I'll be updating it to support PL/pgSQL this week, hopefully.

For the second time in the last few months, I've had to call 112 (emergency services; GSM version of 000) for a prang on the roads. Interestingly enough, they had no idea what state I was in, let alone which mobile cell I was on... sounds like the local mobile telcos haven't even started work on location-aware services for mobiles... yet.

I've added an FAQ Section for all the inane questions I get asked during the day. RTFF and save everyone's time.

I've got a few complaints to make about Office 2003. Specifically, a few long-running defects that make most shareware programs look godlike in comparison. Firstly, when you open a document that's read-only, make a few changes, go to save, realise your mistake, and either checkout the file in the VCS or make it otherwise writable, why does Word fail to check that the file has been made writable again? Is this not a simple, common mistake? I tried to work around the problem. Saving the file as another name (Document.doc -> DocumentX.doc), then Save As to the original filename. No luck. Close the file, open the new copy, and save over the original - it works again. What braindead monkey came up with the logic for this operation? Why hasn't this long-running defect (yes, it's been plaguing me since the Win3.11 days of Word 2.0 and Word 6) been fixed?

Onto another fine defect from the same office suite. Why cannot you open two files with the same names from different folders? Attempt to open Checklist.doc from V:\procedure1, and V:\procedure2, and Word will tell you it can't be done. WTF?!? It's not rocket science, people. </rant>

Finally decided to get a few prints done up.. images are available here.

Just got my phonebill for last month. One of the entries:

25 Mar   12:40am   MELBOURNE    USA       111619991****   49:30   OS   $13.11

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's 26c/min. Now, let's look at one of the domestic entries.

30 Mar    5:42pm   SPRINGVALE   NATIONAL  038379****       7:00   PN   $ 4.045

And, for the second call.. 58c/min. Why the fuck am I paying double the amount for a local call, as opposed to one that's routed over billions of dollars worth of fibre-optic trans-pacific cabling? I'm stumped. From now on, I'll be making all my calls to a VOIP gateway in the states. It'll be a hell of a lot cheaper.

Two unrelated topics? Not this week... went paintballing on Saturday... far, far, far too addictive. Spent about $100 on paintballs - it's far too easily done. I can see where my next addiction will be...

On the topic of project management, as per the last 2 months, I've been working on the administrative side of my project at work - timing plans and documentation. Take this as a horrible mental picture though - a project manager with a gantt chart tattoo...

Whoever invented magic_quotes_* deserves to be shot. Especially the twits leaving it on by default in Debian. It's a lousy hack to support useless developers.

Stable SL-C3100 build from org.openembedded.dev:
hdimage1.tgz | zImage.bin | updater.sh | gnu-tar

Bloody brilliant trip up to Sydney for a rather long weekend (well, 6 days is close enough to a week for my liking..). Drove up with a few friends on Thursday, caught up with a few people over the weekend and went in the Mardi Gras parade, and had an all around wonderful time. Caught an earlier flight back on Tuesday, so I got back in to Melbourne around 2045.. the only downside was work the next day.