Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Silently Fail - The Death of Happiness

Sometimes programs fail to do what they should. Usually they pop up an error message. Occasionally they explode in a fireball of death. But that is not as bad as silently failing. You press the send button, it looks like it sent, but it didn't. You tell it to save your file, it looks like it's saved, but it's actually not. These silent failures are the death of happiness.

Recently I have been setting up a web server at work. I want this server to be running Asp 2.0, with .Net Framework of 3.5 because I'm crazy like that. Last week it was all set up, ready to go... It was eagerly awaiting my website to be added so that it could serve it to the masses.

Yesterday the piece of code I have been working on has reached a point where it could be tested by humans (humans being non-programmers). I uploaded it into the virtual directory, and what did I get in return? http 404. WHAT?!? 404?!? It's sitting right there! I access an image in the same folder, and it displays. Why is it refusing to display my aspx file? What is going on?

After a bit of tinkering, I told that virtual folder to run in asp 1.1, at which point it gave me errors that I would expect to see if I ran it in 1.1... I put it back to asp 2.0 and it gives me a 404. Why would that happen?

Well, after a bit of tinkering, I discovered that it was because the framework 3.5 install did not complete. I had installed it, it said success, but anything I run that requires any framework above 2.0 would not work. The install had silently failed. I spent two days hunting this problem down when I should have been doing something meaningful with my life.

But now I reinstalled 3.5, and low and behold, it is all working perfectly.

Yes, silently failing is the death of happiness.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Flickr Video

Wow, what a cool idea. Normally I think video on the internet is completely silly. But I like this idea. Flickr has decided to allow users to upload very short videos.

This actually makes a lot of sense. Flickr is a place for people to share their personal photos with each other. Sometimes it's art pictures, and sometimes it's just personal pictures. But the thing is, a lot of times people are taking videos, not pictures. Our digital cameras take videos as easily pictures.

Very cool. They are limited to 90 second videos. They are supposed to be snapshot videos. Or 'moving photos'. Only trouble is, you have to sign up for the pay version of Flickr to upload videos. I've been contemplating upgrading for a while just so I can put more pictures up there. Maybe I should go ahead and pay for all the cool features.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Today

Well, we all knew it would happen eventually.

I have gotten bored of this blog thing. It turns out that I actually don't like ranting about random topics. I find blogs to be pretentious, and I find those that write them, and those that read them, to be pretentious.

I simply just don't have anything to say. I'm not a very wordy person, so it's so hard for me to come up with things to blog about. So it's just silly for me to keep this up.

I'll go ahead and leave my blog up for a few more days, just so everyone can snag any links off of there that they want. And then I'll be deleting my blog. I'm thinking I should probably take down my website too, http://oakwright.org.

I've also been thinking about giving up video games too. They are boring. I've been trying too hard to be a geek. I burn out on MMO's, and find myself just fiddling around to waste time. So I've decided to take up something that would better me as a person, and entertain me. I'm thinking perhaps taking up a sport... My coworker tells me about this game called Frisbee Golf. I liked paintball, so it makes sense that I should like other outdoor sports. I might just go ahead and try golf instead though, or maybe baseball, I hear it's the right season for that.

I've also decided that I should give up on giving up meat. I never really liked meat. But why? It's pointless. So what if it's the cooked flesh that came out of a living being that had big soft eyes before it was mercilessly slaughtered? It's just a cow. Moo. So tonight, I am going to have a big steak.

No more doing the dew either. That stuff is bad for you. I think I'm gonna give up caffiene altogether. For real. I mean it this time.

Does anyone want to buy my Alienware computer? Since I'm not going to play video games I don't really need it anymore, let me know your best offer. I could use that money to buy my new golf clubs.

I think I'll get a haircut tonight. The long hair thing is so overdone. I should shave too.