Some further backend changes today, which should only have any effect on Internet Explorer 6 users (who really should be using something more modern).
I've also made some edits to the reviews in Chain of Events after realizing I'd missed out Dead Pets Society and been a bit too harsh on The Adventures of John Blake.
An addition to my last article about The DFC, this one is about Chicken Caesar Junior and how much I won't miss it. There are - admittedly - some exaggerations, but the general synopsis is accurate to the story. It's also about 100 times funnier than the original.
Well this is a sad day. I wonder what it says about me that I feel more sad about this than when our cat died? Also, there is a blog entitled Save the DFC, who are attempting to do what you'd expect them to. I'm not convinced they can do much, but it's a worthy effort nonetheless.
Additionally, I've decided to take an idea from the latest video game review at Zero Punctuation and classify pointlessness as a 'web journal'. So there you go. Not a blog, but a web journal, be sure to remember that.
All 2008 articles are back online, and a permanent redirect has been set up at the old FreeHostia site. pointlessness is officially back and this is now the new address. Now, back to thinking up new articles...
Well, that about does it for FreeHostia. I've decided I don't want to be with a host willing to censor me like that, so I'm a sub-domain of Arc-Nova.org, which I hope will serve as a stable home for pointlessness in the future. To be honest, FreeHostia were generally quite good for a free hosting service, but their technical support proved consistently incompetent and censorship is something I simply do not stand for. Your mileage may vary, I guess.
FreeHostia's technical support have finally admitted the actual problem here. It is a server-side problem, and it is deliberate. They see Mininova (but not The Pirate Bay, Seedpeer, or Demonoid it seems) as a warez site, and view any links to warez sites as a violation of their Terms of Service. Still no explanation for the strange error or why the ToS only applies to one torrent site in particular, but they see no problem and hence won't fix it.
This is a restriction too far for me. FreeHostia is based in California, and I know of no law there that prohibits sites from linking to the front page of sites such as those above, which means FreeHostia is being 'proactive' about censorship. That's something I'm not going to stand for, hence I intend to move hosts as soon as possible. Watch this space.
Still no progress on the Weirdest Problem Ever. My discussion on this has spilled over into a FreeHostia forum topic. A total of four support techs have now attempted to blame this problem on my actions, even when presented with irrefutable evidence that I am not at fault. The more they do this, the more I suspect they're attempting to conceal something. Whether this is an actual server problem or some sort of censorship policy is something I cannot determine from here. I refuse to give up though, I intend to make a fight of this.
Either way, work continues towards getting pointlessness back up and running. All 2007 articles are now done, with some tweaks where I spotted mistakes. That just leaves the 2008 articles to be done.
Some of those reading will already know that I'm having something of a dispute with FreeHostia over a problem that's been standing for a while. The problem (and FreeHostia's response) is detailed in a new page about FreeHostia's technical support, which I think is pretty appalling. To provide some context, I have uploaded Why openSUSE fails (the original article that exposed this problem) as well as an alternate version of the same article that gets around the problem by using TinyURL.
In other news, the fixing and cleanup is still progressing (I think the 2006 articles will be next) and I've found that Kopete is an IM client that I actually like.
Update: All 2006 articles are now up again, some with minor fixes. The list section is also up again, with all lists updated to reflect changes since I last did anything with them.
After some work, everything on pointlessness except the articles themselves should now be working again. Things also look a lot cleaner from my side after the massive cleanup. The articles themselves will have to wait until after I've eaten, as I'm starting to get fatigued now.
I've also archived December 2008 through to February 2009 now (not that there was much to archive) and gave Leafpad a go. Leafpad seems to be the Notepad replacement I've been looking for all these years, and I think will make a fine tool for typing up short notes. But for coding pointlessness, GVIM remains unbeaten.
I also went back to yesterday's update and added some more links.
News update time. pointlessness has been affected by another server issue (yes dammit, I am sure nothing's wrong my code this time!) which I have dubbed the "Weirdest Problem Ever". Time to stop dwelling on that though, and update what I can. I've just finished reading through the archives of Venus Envy, which was quite enjoyable and inspired me to start getting pointlessness in a working state again. Venus Envy has been added to my comics list, which is now back online and updated.
In other news, I have a Super Dual Box Pro now. This allows me to connect PS1/PS2 pads to my PC (I've chosen my trusty, seven year-old DualShock 2) and I can confirm it works on Linux! No rumble features, and I haven't tested for pressure sensitivity, but all basic functions work (including the analog sticks) and it's very responsive. The fact that I've spent a lot of the last few days on Megaman and Metal Slug probably have something to do with pointlessness not being updated until now. I also have Serial Experiments Lain on DVD now, which is something I'll have to find a spare six hours for at some point.
I'm really going to try and have some serious updates in March, and I hope to have pointlessness completely back online sometime in April. I'm starting to feel energized again, which is a good sign that pointlessness isn't going anywhere for a while yet.
pointlessness is now back. As I suspected, it was a server-side change that made things break, but my code was also incorrect. Extensive changes will be needed, and I'm taking this as an opportunity to clean up my ridiculously messy directories. This may take a while, and front page cleanups are on hold until that is done.