Trivia

It's a trivial detail, but I've fixed WalkyTalky's favicon (the site icon many browsers show in the bookmarks listing and address bar) so that it displays correctly in Safari. If you're still seeing just a black square, delete that from your icon cache with Safari Icon Manager (link shamelessly appropriated from Bart). (As far as I can see, this was a Safari bug. The .ICO file didn't provide a 16x16 icon, which was my fault; but the black square was the icon mask, providing info about which pixels of the icon to display. I can understand scaling the 32x32 icon, and that's what most browsers -- and even the NetNewsWire RSS reader -- do. I can understand rejecting the favicon outright. But scaling the 1-bit mask? What the hell is that about?)

I've spent much of the day working on a proof-of-concept web service for Ian. Not paid work, as such, just passing the time. I remember only a year or two ago when web services were supposed to be the next big thing, touted everywhere as transforming the entire infosphere. I was pretty sceptical about that at the time, and now that I've actually been called upon to look at them in detail I have to say: what the fuck was all that hype about, anyway? Tsk.

Still, there's always something very satisfying about getting disparate systems (in this case Java on my PowerBook and Delphi on Ian's ThinkPad) interoperating, even if it is via the abject clunkiness of XML.

Otherwise, I really have fuck all to report. Life goes on. No-one is clamouring for me to work for them. The prospects for stuff I really want to do still look poor. In less than four days time (May 18) I will be 37 (feel free to send cards and flowers) and almost certainly still unemployed. I'm too old for this nonsense.

On the plus side, Spriteboy is back, though his comments still aren't pop-up-blocker friendly. Safari users: command-K in and out of his site.
Posted by matt at May 14, 2004 10:38 PM