I’m really looking forward to December. If all goes according to plan I will probably be the recipient of a Broadband connection. Since I live in a rural area, I’ll use the term “probably” because such schemes have a habit of falling apart in small countries with telecom companies (well, company) that are only interested in giving the large dense population areas a chance at the broadband revolution (they cost less, can be charged more). It sucks really.

I can see it now; an always on connection, ICQ/Jabber running in the background, people actually having a half chance of catching me live online. I might even be capable of holding a live bug kicking session – something brought home after realising the turnaround period on fixing a simple bug can be 2 days for me – 1 to actually get around to reading the report, 2 because uploading a fixed version is painful (to say the least) using my current slow connection – and takes time to arrange (it’s really slow…not joking).

In other news, have 2 more design changes to make in the base QS code. Small ones, both related to some assumptions I made which aren’t entirely accurate. Matt (aka Mibocote) is back working on Q-LIB, so I need a new SF project to provide a segregated development location for it as soon as possible. When Matt works, he works fast – he already has changes to be committed. Erick (over on the QS forums) has submitted some QS logos. Along with Omega’s and mine that makes a grand total of three, well we have to start somewhere!

I’m also dried up on testing AA Traders. As some will already know, in keeping with the space theme I’s hoping to host something to complement QS when its ready. TKI has now vanished into a merger with BNT (probably be a while until Proton). So I thought about giving AATraders new release a walk on my server.

Unfortunately their recent release has a few questionable requirements which I’m not about to change my server simply to accomodate (if you think like me it’ll be the very first thing you notice – since it will simply refuse to install and suggest you alter your PHP configuration; like that’ll ever happen). I think it’s safe to say it won’t be hosted any day soon on a server near me – we’ll see how 0.30 goes. I think BNT will make a far better choice when Proton, the next version, is ready. I’m pretty close to drawing PJ’s attention to an oddity I discovered while trying to get that blasted ShoutBox working. I’d read more of the code but I had trouble keeping my gaping mouth closed the last time I peeped at it – I even wound up posting at their forums which incidentally do indeed exist. Based on that post even SE might be safer in the long term – something I suspected was impossible, but apparently isn’t.

That’s another weird thing – for some reason IE can’t ever seem to find the AATraders website on my home PC (least under Windows when I use it). Firefox finds it, and returns a page of garbage. Not sure why – first time I’ve experienced it on any website. Doesn’t seem to be GZip since its returning as chunked – then again maybe it is and the chunked return is an error. Have a feeling I have Norton to thank for this – warrants a little investigation to appease my curiousity I suppose. I tested at work and it was fine. Still very odd as to why it’s the sole exception…