Ash Searle’s Blog

Sony don’t include an HDMI cable with the UK’s PlayStation 3 console (40GB version). But, if you buy it from Amazon, they’ll give you an HDMI cable free - if you ask for it.

As Jacob Nielsen (usability expert) said: Amazon is no longer the role model for e-commerce design. I totally agree. I completely missed the opportunity to get a free HDMI cable, and I blame their UI.

It’s my own fault. I’ve become a bit lazy, and trust Amazon to do the right thing. I buy stuff from them quite regularly, and the only thing I really check is (a) the price, and (b) is it really being sold by Amazon (or one of their market-place sellers.)

I missed seeing the offer completely! As I write, Amazon are flogging the PS3 for £279. Right below it they show an HDMI cable as a “perfect partner” - to buy with the PS3 for £299.98 - i.e. it looks like the cable costs £19.99.

I may be a cheap-skate, but I wouldn’t spend £20 on a random cable - I’d either buy as cheap a no-name brand as possible (£5 or £10), or double-up and spend £40 on a brand I trust (QED or Ixos.)

Anyhow. It turns out that if you go for the £299.98 deal, Amazon take the £20 off at checkout time… you don’t even have to mail-in a rebate form. I find that a little misleading… on the one hand it’s great that they’re giving away a free HDMI cable - and on the other, they’re pretending it’s not.

I guess I’m just miffed because I didn’t read the small-print and completely missed the deal. I’m said to say I lost a little faith in Amazon today.

If they’d surprised me with the cable I’d be delighted, and shout their praises. As it is, I’m a little saddened, and feel I have to pore over every product page in future. My casual shopping days are over.

Apple are marking the launch of the iPhone by keeping all their US stores open from 6pm till midnight. I suspect the sales-process will be slow (since contracts need to be signed) and the stores will be full of people picking up random goods just to pass the time.

Not that this has anything to do with the iPhone, but if you’re going to buy a MacBook Pro with the full 4GB memory you have to make a decision:
1) MacBook Pro with 4GB memory installed by Apple
2) MacBook Pro with 4GB memory you installed, PLUS an 80GB iPod Video, PLUS an iPod Shuffle

It’s your choice. Installing memory is a piece of cake: pop the battery out and take off the memory cover (4 screws), replace old memory with new memory, then put the cover and battery back on. All in, it’s a couple of minutes.

So, the Maths: (with an ‘S’, because I’m English.)

That’s some juicy saving… Let’s buy some iPods:

Even after buying two iPods, you still have money left from your savings to buy drinks to celebrate.

Now I’m not going to moan about the rubbish exchange rate being used - I think we’re accustomed to being stiffed in Britain; but I will say something in Apple’s defence: they’re not alone. Dell also charge similarly extortionate prices for memory upgrades on their laptops. I’m not been writing about Dell for two reasons: (1) I’ve no idea if their laptop memory’s as easy to replace, and (2) they don’t make iPods.

And finally. Back to the iPhone. Instead of blowing your $470 savings on iPods, you could always use it for the majority payment of your iPhone (whether it be the $499 or $599 version.)

Good luck to those of you trying to get your grubby mitts on an iPhone tonight.

Officially known as bathroom attendants, the bog troll lurks in bars and clubs, interrupting customers’ casual hygiene routine by obstructing sinks and hand-dryers and extorting money for performing such mundane tasks as turning on taps and distributing paper towels.

The bog troll is a menace. The bog troll does not encourage hygiene, it prevents it. Once the third-pint breaks the seal, regular users have no wish to pay an extra pound to offload their processed beer. With typical British manners, bathroom visitors are put in an uncomfortable position: wash their hands tax-free and risk offending the troll; or leave the bathroom unclean, hygiene-be-damned.

Many customers choose the latter. Damn you Bog Troll! Damn you for hoarding the paper towels. Damn you for covering three sinks with CK One. Damn you and your tray of Chupa Chups.

Please help us regulate this scourge, sign the Ban The Bog Troll petition at Downing Street.

This has been a public service announcement. Thank you.

Official Site: Ban The Bog Troll

Out-of-the-box WordPress assumes it’s going to be talking to a MySQL database using PHP’s original mysql extension instead of the newer mysqli extension (true up to WordPress 2.1.3 at least). If for some reason you need to run using mysqli, there are simple instructions on the WordPress support site: MySQLi for WordPress 2.1.x.

Switching to MySQLi was easy and worked as described, except for one thing: I couldn’t upgrade WordPress. After a bit of sleuthing I found there’s a MySQL version check buried in the upgrade process. For the current version (WordPress 2.1.3) it’s checking that MySQL is version 4.0.0 or higher. According to the PHP documentation for mysqli, it needs to run on MySQL 4.1 or above - so the version check is redundant.

Short-term fix: follow the first few steps of the WordPress upgrade process but before running the upgrade program edit wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php and gut this function:

function wp_check_mysql_version() {
    // (version-check removed)
}

You should be able to run the upgrade program fine now.

Like most developers, I often find it useful to spit out a few messages in the middle of a PHP script - especially when I’m debugging some problems.

Sadly, after only a few months our pristine code-base has become spotted with this, over and over again:

if (DEBUG) {
    echo "New user object: "; var_dump($user); echo "\\n”;
}

After discovering var_export I felt like I’d improved things by switching to:

if (DEBUG) {
    printf("New user object: %s\\n”, var_export($user, true));
}

I still didn’t like the fact that if (DEBUG) was appearing all over the place. So, after stumbling across call_user_func_array I’ve implemented by own debug function:

function debug()
{
    if (DEBUG)
    {
	$args = func_get_args();
	$args[0] = “<pre>” . $args[0] . “</pre>\\n”;
	for ($i = 1, $l = count($args); $i < $l; $i++) {
	    $args[$i] = htmlspecialchars(var_export($args[$i], true));
	}
	call_user_func_array(’printf’, $args);
    }
}

Which means I can remove all the if (DEBUG) statements, leaving only:

debug("New user object: %s", $user);

I think that’s much cleaner.