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

I've been busy testing the new H2G2. It has some great features, some annoying ones and tons of bugs. I've no doubt the bugs will be sorted fairly soon.

I've already edited my home page so that all the links on it will work with Barlesque, although this means that some of them don't work on Brunel anymore.

I've discovered that <LINK H2G2=" will automatically put a /entry/ into the address, so to get around this, I have to use a ../ in front of the address.

So to display the last posting in a conversation, I have to do:

Click here

It'll be better when the bugs are fixed.

Wow. In Barlesque, it doesn't display all the wonderful things I've discovered.

Another bug.

The thing is - Barlesque? Why? That's a flippin' awful name. It puts me right off even thinking about going back in!

But I really do like the look of it (although the logo has gone which is rubbish) even though I'm a Goo user. When it's ready for impatient eejits like me, I'm looking forward to having a good poke around.

Once it´s the only skin around, you won´t have to worry about the name. Barlesque is a shortening of Barley-esque, because it resembles an older BBC skin called Barley which was never used on h2g2.

I´ve discovered how to type apostrophes on the new skin so that everybody can see them. Alt 0180. I´ll do that until the apostrophe bug is fixed.

I notice that the programmer Damnyoureyes is working on the system at the moment (Sunday morning) and it seems a lot more stable than it was yesterday.

Gnomon, does your Alt 0180 trick work with other codes, like angle brackets? Does it have any effect on the smiley problem, for example?

Programmer Damnyoureyes has already solved the smiley problem and the fixed version is due to be released soon. I suspect it will affect the way in which &lt; and &gt; signs are treated, so there&#39;s not much point in investigating them too far.

OK, thanks

For reference, at the moment (12:04 23/1/2011), typing &amp;lt; and &amp;gt; gives &lt; and &gt; but that may change soon.

I'm with Sho

Not been back onto the new site, since err about 1 AM or 2 AM this morning, : I did try posting to this* thread last night from within the new site, but it kept bringing up the filthfilter, and blocking it, even when I'd removed all the smileys and suchlike Looking forward to going back onto the new site in a bit as soon as I've found some lunch to eat, and seeing how its progressing..... and absolutely brilliant last night to get that message on Ask showing that someone was there, from the beeb, looking and trying to fix the problems... though I'm confused why its someone from the beeb, and not the company who coded the new site It seemed all much more simpler when the beeb had their own coders and designers, but I think they had to ditch all that with the cut backs and media fueld hatred campaign against the bbc Still a few things I've not managed to get to try on the new site, which arn't really possible with the filthfilter and other bug problems ... hoping they might disappear soon enough so can test it more earnestly

I am running into the filter block again when I try using Barlesque today.

Did you mean that the smiley problem has been sorted, or just identified?

The smiley bug is still very much there; tried to post a reply to a (not containing smileys) journal entry I wrote on the new site earlier, it would only pass by the filthfilter once I'd removed all the smileys... (back in alabaster now)

I mean that the developer has identified the problem and produced a new version of the site with the problem fixed, but that new version has not been released yet.

That makes sense. I could not post to 2legses journal earlier today, although I did not use any smileys.
And I just noticed that in your journal it says Post Message, whereas in 2legses journal it said: Save Message.
So I guess when it says save you do not even need to bother trying?
Well, I cannot post to this journal, either, and I do not use a single smiley.
That's my save/post theory gone then. (posting in brunel)

I see that the programmers have implemented a fix to the system so that links to conversations in entries are automatically converted to the new format.

If (in the new system) you have the following in an entry:

Click here

and you hover your mouse over it, you'll see the link in the status bar shows:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/forum/123/thread/456

So clicking on the link now (since yesterday) brings you to the right place.

Unfortunately, if your link ended in &latest=1 (which most of mine did), this isn't understood. We'll have to change them all manually to /page/last.

There shouldn't be any links to conversations in Approved Entries, so it is not a problem for the curators, just one for those people with large numbers of conversation links on their Personal Space.

I'm creating this entry to see what A number it is given.

Result: the number is A80236604. Stripping off the check digit, 4, we get the number 8,023,660. So that means that there have been 8 million entries created since H2G2 was created.

8 million is not a lot. Even if each entry was a megabyte in size, that would only be 8 terabytes of data, which would cost 600 euros to buy for my PC. I know that server disks cost a lot more, but it is still reasonable.

I suspect that the figure is more like 1 million entries than 8, due to deleted entries, and entries within the 8 million belonging to other sites such as 606.

I also suspect that 1 megabyte per entry is huge - most entries are only going to be thousands rather than millions of characters.

So I could fit the whole Guide, Edited and Unedited, on a disk drive costing less than 100 euros.

What about the conversations?

I've no idea how many conversations there are.