Category: Angst

I need PHP to go up one level of a directory, then go back down several more, to include a file. I don’t know how to do this, but I’ve been getting around it by using a URL instead of a path; now Dreamhost is turning off the option of using URLs in include statements, for (good) security reasons, so I can’t do that anymore.

I also absolutely can’t find a way to do it the path way. It won’t work with an absolute path from the root directory, nor from the highest web-accessible directory (I’m in a Linux / Apache environment, if you hadn’t guessed). I can’t use ..s to ratchet up, or do any other kind of relative movement I can think of. Does anyone know how to get what I want?

Actually, Lisa, I think you’re the only PHP programmer who reads this, so maybe I should have just emailed you. But I might be wrong.

Update 0224 hrs: Never mind. I found out how to do it, but it doesn’t help, since I need to have Apache parse the file (a NewsBruiser portal CGI, if you hadn’t guessed) before I grab it, and an internal include obviously doesn’t do that. I’ll have to use the curl library, once I figure out what it is.

And I know I’m a bad programmer for going with this setup in the first place, but I had the choice of frames, meta refreshes or dumping a load on PHP, and it was rocks and frying pans all over.

There’s a section of Barret Avenue (on my bus ride) that is apparently being cleaned up by a volunteer group, or has pledged to reduce its emissions, or something. As part of some city PR rep’s bright idea, they’ve demarcated it with signs as “The Green Mile.”

Which is a nickname for the walk to the electric chair.

Let’s see if LJ picks it up this time

Don't blog on me blog, verb / To noisily and simultaneously void one’s spleen, stomach, bladder and bowels.

In case you can’t read the text on the second one (which would be the back), it’s the Devil’s Dictionary 2.0 definition of “blog,” so of course this would be pending Mr. Knauss’s approval.

Seriously, if I got a couple dozen of these printed up, would anybody else be into it? I know my bitter, self-mocking iconoclasm is somewhat uncommon within my circle of readers, but there is a time and place for the ironic acknowledgement of one’s own participation in an overhyped and crass medium of expression. Like, say, concerts.

It occurs to me that I really don’t care about my GPA. This is literally the first time in my life, or at least in my living memory, I’ve been able to say that. I was always ashamed of my Cs in Handwriting, and since fourth grade I’ve been straining for As (and, since junior year of high school, usually getting Bs). Right now I want to get through my two classes, finish a project and graduate. All that matters is passing.

Of course, that project may be the lurker below. I had a solid setup with a professor at the beginning of the semester; it sounded like work I’d enjoy, and there was even compensation involved. All we had to do was wait for the company that wanted the code to sign off on the contract.

It’s March 10. Guess whether they’ve done so. Guess also whether the aforementioned professor appears to care, beyond a little guilt.

I’m going in tomorrow to talk to my advisor and find out what I need to do to get the DBCAC site approved as my final project. It’s for a nonprofit organization, and the work is easily as complicated as what I would have been doing otherwise; I’ll even write a paper about it if they want one. The quiet assumption is that MS students get a rubber stamp on their project requirement by building a professor’s resume, but I tried that and it didn’t happen. I’m not going to let someone else’s short attention span keep me here another semester. School has ceased to interest me, and I’m going to be finished in May, one way or another.

The "advantages" of paying with a bank account.

I get this every time I buy something with a PayPal button and change my funding source to be a credit card instead of my bank account. The advantage of paying with my credit card is obvious: I have a 20-day grace period to actually pony up the cash, while the thing I’m buying is shipped immediately. The disadvantage to PayPal is also obvious: electronic bank transfers cost them nothing; credit card usage requires a per-transaction merchant fee.

But it’s still sad that they’re trying to talk me out of using my credit card like this, and that their reasons are so flimsy. Look at that: it says “the benefits of paying with your bank account,” but none of those things are benefits. They’re implicit conditions of any reputable interweb transaction. I mean, “you’re still paying instantly and securely?” That’s not a benefit, that’s explicitly the same! And am I to assume that credit card payments are somehow delayed, or that they don’t keep my credit card information “safe and secure?” (Note also that “military-grade encryption,” historically, has not been that great a qualification.)

A-list? More like <i>F</i>-list! HA!

I was wondering when somebody would get around to this. Tycho weighs in about the sound and fury surrounding Jason Kottke’s idea that hey, people should donate lots of money to him so he can just do his “web log” all the time. Crucial to Tycho’s statement is the fact that, as I and all my cool friends know, webcomics have been doing the same thing for four years.

Yeah, yeah, bloggers are all USA Today thinks is important on the interweb, but some of us young rebels are actually into other kinds of sites! Nice lag time, new media.

“Gonzo” is another word for “bad”

My poor friends page and feeds page are all full of grief and sorrow. Fear not, bereaved hipsters! I know you’ll miss that guy who took a lot of drugs and helped you realize that editors are Satans, and also took a lot of drugs. But remember that you can still see him whenever you want: dancing, forever dancing, rendered almost as realistically as he was in his own writing.

I’m sick again, which I’m positive is against the rules. I only get sick once a year! Being sick is fired!