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

The tech team were all working today. There was some server prodding, some server poking, a bit of code fiddling and a bit of database stroking.

This has resulted in Barlesque being installed in its new home. It's not working yet, but initial signs are good. How good? Well, the caching is one of the aspects that isn't working yet, so each time a page is requested, it goes to look for the preprepared version, can't do it, goes to the database, can't do that, faffs a bit with error handling and then writes some error code to the screen. You may be wondering why this is good news, simple, it's very quick at doing all that. *Very* quick.

Brian & Phil are going to continue poking things on the server, and myself & Maz (another developer) will hopefully get it hooked into the test DNA database this weekend.

If all goes to plan, we should start seeing progress soon.

So the program chases its tail, but it does it really fast?

Congratulations.

aha, so my error messages were your fault

Not unless you're using the test server, and there's only four of us that know where that is so far.

You're problems are yours

I rather wish they were yours!

Remember what happened with the last test server?

A87706632

Sounds very exciting.

Terribly, terribly...

When I was a young kind, my school had a computer. One. A solitary BBC Micro that got wheeled out on its trolley for special occasions.

I think that must have stuck in my mind then, that computers were kinda special and a bit cool.

All through school you only got to have "a go" on one of the few computers if you were really good.

I was very lucky in that my parents saved up and bought me a Commodore 64 when they came out. Of course, it wasn't to help with school because there was no way it could. However, I was able to use it to learn to program in BASIC.

I later upgraded to an Amiga, and then a CDTV because I had started to not just program, but play around with computer graphics. I must have been the only kid on the council estate that had a computer at home. I wasn't a spoilt child, there was no way my parents could have afforded to spoil us, but I think someone in the back of my dad's mind he *knew* that computers were going to be the future. As for my mother, she had a slate and chalk at school until she left at 11 and was determined that my brother and myself were going to have any advantage she could give us.

Fast forward to leaving school and going to college, there weren't courses or degrees in new media, it was still so new it wasn't there. There was an internet, but it was IRC. So, liking computers I did electrical and electronic engineering. Half the course was teaching us to program in Turbo Pascal and some other language I've forgotten, the other half was how to wire up everything from a plug to a three phase factory.

Not exactly web development.

It was many years later that I actually got my hands on a PC and an emerging internet connection. 14.4k, pay by the minute, but this just felt exactly what I'd not had. It was programming, and it was graphics. *This* felt right.

So yes, I'm a geek But it just feels right.

I'd just like to make it clear that post #7 wasn't facetious. I am genuinely excited about Barlesque.

Oh Lord!

An excited Mr 603, can we cope with him?


lil x

Barlesque is actually (now) a *really* good platform.

Once we've got it hooked in properly, I think everyone will see that not only is it a lot faster, a lot more modern, but it will also have a whole new set of bugs to hunt

Tavaron, i'm getting dozens of error messages, and cant stay in for that long, on different computers as well.
I've not been able to log in before, but this is the first set of errors thats lasted more than a few minutes before

Will Barlesque stay 'washed out' Prussian?

It's just some of us quite like the idea of it going ultra violet..

Good question Effers! I guess for now it will stay like that and we can add more pretty versions later?

I feel so bad for the folks that were brought in to design barlesque (and I feel even worse right now because at the moment I can't remember their company's name, seriously I have a memory like a... oh, darn... what's it called... one of those things.... those things you use to strain stuff... SIEVE! Yeah, that's it.)

They came in after h2g2's MOT (or whatever it was officially called) and tasked to redesign the site to update it into a new decade and streamline it while not really being allowed to make significant changes to the underlying infrastructure. Then, when it was prematurely unveiled, it was thrashed by the users (yes, I contributed my fair share to that thrashing). Then in the middle of that mess they find out the whole site was to be "disposed" by Auntie Beeb.

I really did like the look of the design. I only had issues with some functional issues, so I'm looking forward to see it up and running again.

When I worked for the MoD many years ago, they had a BBC Micro that got wheeled out on its trolley on special occasions.

The occasions were lunchtimes, when we'd postpone the cold war and play "Chuckie Egg".

I've a BBC Micro up in the attic. Perhaps we could wheel that out and put Barlesque on it?

Barlesque, once it has the bugs ironed out and the little fiddly bits (technical term) added, is the future of h2g2. At least in the short term.

DNA is just a clunky thing that we're all familiar with, which doesn't work very well (half the Editor tools are broken, for example) and we can't fix or make any changes to.

Well done, Pastey and team!

Update: Woohoo.

It's starting to come together, hopefully it'll be ready for alpha testing by next week.

Just don't do what the BBC did and make it the default skin for unregistered users before it's been tested.