Channel 4 showed a programme about the Celts. This was good beacuse it is always good to see tv programmes about interesting historical topics. There were some fascinating sites and objects.

However, it was also bad – or at least irritating – because any tv history seems compelled

• To sensationalise. (Any body must be the result of human sacrifice.)
• To gasp in awe at everything no matter how banal. (Gasp! Giggle! They had toilets in the monastery!)
• To assume that everything in the ancient world was ritual and religion. (Knocking the top of an amphora is assumed to be a sacrifice not just opening a bottle, when the celts did it.)
• To have to show reconstructions whether they are relevant or accurate or not.
• To contradict themselves throughout. (Don’t get me started on this)
• To have a presenter you want to strangle. (You really don’t want to get me started on this.)

Following on from http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/18/paypal-and-firefox/ – I sent a helpdesk request to paypal a good few hours before that blog entry and, at the time of writing, still havent had any reply from paypal. This is a shame as I was hoping to be able to put their side of the argument in, but never mind.In a nutshell, I have been trying to log on to Paypal pretty much every few hours since Friday (yesterday) and, as I use FireFox as the browser of choice, each time I have been presented with a major problem. It seems that they have some sort of “browser sniffer” and it is getting the wrong idea about Fire Fox (or at least my version of it). Continue reading →

Just realised today that for some reason PayPal wont let FireFox connect to it! 🙁

I have sent a complaint to the Help Desk so will write more when I get a reply.

In anticipation of the Celts programme on Channel 4 tonight, you may want to check out some of the updated sites on Etrusia. The Normans Site has undergone a bit of an overhaul and there is quite a bit of new content there now. You can see more at http://normans.etrusia.co.uk/. On a similar vein, the Celtic Website is always worth checking out – look for the articles link to see what has been added recently.

If you are looking for all manner of “history” related articles then check out the Etrusia Articles archive at http://www.etrusia.co.uk/articles.php.

PHP 4 seemed relatively easy to get to grips with after an initial hair-tearing out period. I have now been told that PHP 5 is a step toward making it as unpleasant to use as any Visual Studio style langauage. That is, it has an object model that you have to stick to and variables have to declared properly and so on….

I thought the value of php was due to the way that any half-arsed neophyte could get a dynamic website running without having to worry about the demonic “object classes” and so on.

Is it true that standard programming logic has replaced the pleasantly ad hoc nature of php4 coding? If so, how back-compatible is it? Can I continue writing illogical but fast php code or do I have to draw a dozen class diagrams before I start and decide the names and types of any variable I might choose to create before I start?

On the plus side is it true that there is a short php5 alternative to the dreaded dbConnector stuff? Is it really easy to set up?

I want to know if it’s worth struggling with the new version in the hope it will have advantages, in the face of the fact that installing and configuring the thing is always the worst bit.