h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After hearing that, I find it unnecessary to fire bazookas at the Enemy. Just play 'Clementine' at him, and he will flee...

The wiki article mentions the fact that the slide mechanism of the bazooka does not affect the pitch, being purely a visual gag.

A brass player told me once that the same was true of the Bass Serpent: you could play any note fingering any combination of holes (it had holes like a recorder). The pitch had to be created entirely by lipping.

I just watched that video, before rolling over to this page and I was just going to say that the bazooka is the stoopidest "instrument" I've ever seen. It was so obvious that the slide does absolutely nothing. It's like one of Carrot Top's props.

Joke name, sir, like Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus.

Well now we know why the techs could not spare the time to look at my suggested fixes. They were busy rewriting the login system to get around a hacker attack on the system.

Now that'll be one sad hacker.

It's now more than six months since I sent in my suggested fixes to the Pliny system. I know that for a long time the techs were working on something else, but are they still?

It really would be a benefit if the "borders on tables" bug were fixed.

If my suggested fix was tried and found not to fix the problem, it would be nice to be told.

Hey,
I wasn't aware about any fixes you suggested, but I do remember seeing borders on tables recently. Not sure where, but I was pleasantly surprised.
So I can't say if the fix was according to your suggestion, due to it, or otherwise. Or even how to achieve it.

I'll see if I can find out more

I put borders on my own tables in Pliny using an ugly piece of GuideML on every single td tag. It makes the tables a nightmare to build.

I tested it yesterday and certainly the normal (non-ugly) way of putting borders on a table (border="1") works in all the other skins but not in Pliny. So either my fix didn't work or hasn't been done yet.

I believe the problem is caused by a CSS file being accidentally deleted from or never copied to the present server.

Any progress on this, Milla?

I reckon my suggestion would only take 5 minutes to implement. I don't know whether it actually would fix the "borders on tables" bug, but I think it would.

If it has been tried and found not to work, I'd like to be told rather than kept waiting.

Is it possible to render a barred crossword grid in HTML (or even Guide-ML)?

I'd need to insert bars between any two cells (not blocked-out squares).

If there is, I don't know it - that's why Bluebottle's crossword grids have to be rendered as .jpgs.

What do you mean by "barred crossword grid"?

Sorry, I have no news. Please email your suggestion to [email protected], and I'll push from there.

A barred grid is one without blocked-out letters, but with bars separating words in the same row/column. The Listener corssword is typical - see the image on A87842424

And yes, this one's for The Post, Dmitri.

It is conceivable that one of those crossword grids could be done using HTML but it would be immensely complicated.

ok thanks Gnomon. I'll send in an image

Send it at 600 pixels wide - that's our limit, and if I have to resize, it sometimes affects the clarity.

It's now 8 months since I e-mailed the potential solution to some of the problems in Pliny. Still no response, either to apply the fix or to say that it didn't work. It's clear that this site has now no technical support at all.

Without a working system that can attract new writers, this site is going nowhere. I don't see much point in continuing with this project. I haven't written any new entries since October, and I don't intend to.

It's been a good sixteen years, but it's time to take my skills elsewhere.

Happy Christmas, everyone , and goodbye to any of you who are not already on Facebook.

Goodbye. It's been great. It's now a backwater.