Richy's Random Ramblings » Snippet

Snippet: Predicted Caffeine Intake

Richy C. — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:00:48 +0000

Today I’m probably going to be consuming:

2x Mars Mochachino Hazlenut coffees (caffeine value unknown – one already drunk)
1x Mana Health Potion (160milligrams of caffeine)
1x Bawls G33k B33r (64milligrams of caffeine

1x Cherry Lucozade (46milligrams of caffeine)

At least 1 cup of tea
Total: At least 270milligrams

Why? Well, just to try and keep me awake and warm. According to my other half 10grams of caffeine is lethal: so I’ll have less than a twentieth of a lethal dose (just 0.27grams).

Giggity-giggity watch me turn to goo

Snippet: Ok, who thinks I’m dead…

Richy C. — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:07:46 +0000

I was just looking up the dates of one of my namesakes who committed suicide (don’t ask), so I searched on Google for “richard chiswell suicide” (as you do): and my Twitter page came up as first result!

The word “suicide” doesn’t appear on my twitter feed (Google admits it only “appears in links pointing to this page”), so I want to know just who thinks I’m dead!

News Snippet: Mythbuster Kari Byron is Pregnant

Richy C. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:56:49 +0000

News just off the press direct from Mythbuster Adam Savage: Girl Geek Cutie Kari Byron is pregnant: there’s no word yet as to when the kid will be joining the Mythbusters team or in what capacity (Buster replacement or team member).

Update:
There’s a video available (of the “official announcement”: not a “making of”! – oooh, you are awful!)

Snippet: It is two cups, one ball – not…

Richy C. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:48:29 +0000

Why oh why when I was writing a couple of paragraphs about probability, did I not write “there are two cups and one ball…” but instead typed “there are two girls and one cup…”: what was my mind thinking???

Snippet: ClickCartPro: Extracting VAT Exempt orders

Richy C. — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:16:26 +0000

If you are looking for a way of listing all orders in Greenbarnweb/Kryptonic’s ClickCartPro software that is exempt from European/UK VAT, then you may find the following SQL query useful:
SELECT `id` , `dateday` , `datemonth` , `dateyear` , `ordertotal`, `eutaxrefundtotal` , `country` FROM `gbu0_orders` WHERE STATUS = 'C' AND (eutaxrefundtotal >0) ORDER BY dateyear DESC , datemonth DESC

Snippet: Parallel Processing in PHP

Richy C. — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:13:05 +0000

*snippet* This is just a quick “bookmark” style post to remind me to look at the potential for utilising Parallel Processing in PHP using the “divide and conquer” method which may help in compiling/comparing stats in an application I’m working on.

Snippet: What Microsoft Can Learn About Retail from Apple and Best Buy

Richy C. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:43:44 +0000

Robert Scoble ( @scobleizer ) has an interesting post on FastCompany about What Microsoft Can Learn About Retail from Apple and Best Buy and there’s quite a few pointers there.

Snippet: London Underground “Tube” – Oyster or Travelcard

Richy C. — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:57:29 +0000

I’ve suspected it, but it’s nice to have confirmation -it is cheaper for me to use Oyster Pay as you go then a Transport For London (TfL) travel code for my commutes between Zone 5 and Zone 1. Is it cheaper for you? (by looks of things, only if you regularly travel in to London during the weekend is it even worth considering a TravelCard).

Snippet: Weird Pricing on TheCloud

Richy C. — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:41:15 +0000

I’m just helping somebody find temporary wireless internet access (ideally free wireless in London), and I remembered The Cloud. Their pricing is a bit odd: for Pay as you go access, the price if £6.99 for 3 hours or £9.99 for 24 hours, or you can go for their subscription wireless access, it’s £6.99 for a whole month.

There must be a snag there – who would pay for 24 hours access, when it’s cheaper to get 30 days?

Snippet: PHP, MySQL and IDN Email addresses

Richy C. — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:58:30 +0000

Here’s something to look out for if you are building an international website where you are handling email addresses…

Email addresses, as you are probably aware, comprise of two parts. The “local part” (the bit before the @ sign) and the “domain part” (the bit after the @ sign). Therefore with the email address richard@example.invalid , “richard” is the local part and “example.invalid” is the domain part.

The domain part of the email address can actually be 255 characters in length theoretically (it’s 63 characters for the actually domain name, then the TLD: however, you could have sub domains in force which can take it up to the 255 limit.

The local part of the email address can be 64 characters: bringing the count up to 319 characters. Allow an extra one for the “@” sign and 320… Just slightly too big to fit within the standard 255/256 character string field that has tended to be used. I’ve seen rumours that this section may be expanded to 128 characters, so plan for 383 characters.

Oh – don’t forget that Internationalised/Internationalized Domain Names are becoming popular in some countries and unless you want to handle conversion to/from Punycode or another storage format for the IDNs, then you’ll need to make your database store the email address in Unicode… However, that appears to cause a problem in some version of MySQL if you store it all in a Varchar field.

So in your programming language (such as PHP), you’re going to have to keep all the above in mind and then split the email address into two parts for storing in the database for sanity.

See http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2821.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address, http://www.santosj.name/general/stop-doing-email-validation-the-wrong-way/ and http://askville.amazon.com/maximum-length-allowed-email-address/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1166932.