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

That's a relief

RhoMuNuQ

Were you afraid you might be the only one who didn't understand any of that or were you worrying about all the other people who might have been reading this thread?

Both. I can't be the only seemingl... - err - omnipresent one, after all.

RhoMuNuQ

just pretend farlander isn't lurking around here....

Well it was "your" thread on my space until Rho barged in after all.
Were we discussing anything important?

Well, you were talking about me - F107134?thread=267401&skip=10&show=10

RhoMuNuQ

So that would be a "no" then would it? The debate having devolved to mere trivia.

Of course with the right computer and a fairy cake you could still be Rho the omnipresent one and centre of the universe.

I thought that the fairy cake had been eaten, though.

RhoMuNuQ

"_a_ fairy cake" - and you're a sub-editor?!

I know someone who makes them with [content removed by internal censorship algorithms].

I'm talking about *the* fairy cake, though.

I won't ask!

RhoMuNuQ

That's the problem. Farlander is allegedly an adult. Anything he still can't cope with is therefore his own problem - or there's always the yikes button.

However, some of the other people round here...

(i have long since quit trying to cope with life. trying to cope and understand *life* would severely violate the second law of thermodynamics)

carry on, do

Hmm, a new film in the series eh - "Carry On Do". Sounds about right for the way this thread is going.

Actually you might be interested in something else. Rho persuaded me (he does grovel so nicely) to tidy up my program for converting graphics files into TABLE cell art. For simplicity (and legal) reasons, at the moment it only eats upside-down BMPs (2, 16 or 256 colour uncompressed ones). Most of my commercial software packages have these as one of their export options. So it worked for me but I wasn't sure how useful it was for anyone else. Also it currently has a DOS command-line interface (because that's small and easy for me). However, Windows is do-able without too much trouble. With a bit more enthusiasm I might manage upright BMPs (need to be held in memory), compressed ones or even some other format. I didn't want to waste any effort on that though since BMPs do me just fine.

Are you interested at all?

yeah, i'm interested! only thing is, i don't know enough useful programming to save my life - my programming 'skills' are limited to drag-n-drop (i gave up trying to write everything from scratch ages ago because i kept on getting the spaces wrong. i once sat at a computer for hours puzzling over where i'd gone wrong with my javascript ). or are you looking for someone to try out your program?

You don't have to program it - just run it and it's already been tested. You think I'd give out dodgy software?

Actually Rho had a go with a full-size screen wallpaper and it even managed that - though it took a while and the output file was enormous apparently. That doesn't surprise me at all though. TABLE art is a poor substitute for any sort of graphics format - even a not very compressed one like BMP. It is only necessary because the powers that be cannot be allowed to get away with suppressing the creative freedom of the community.

I'll see if I can figure out a good place to put it on my website. It's not the sort of tool the rest of the internet is likely to want and my site was designed with education in mind. If I put it in the h2g2 isolation ward you'll have to go back and find my CA volunteer thread to get the address since I'm vaguely trying to remain incognito and don't want to keep repeating it. I'm not sure quite why, other than general precautionary principles, but there do seem to be a few very nasty people around. The front door of my site is more discreet (being a virtualised domain name)...

ooh, yeah, sure i'd like to try it out! i'm a software junkie... (i'm not sure that's a good thing)

Well it's in the isolation ward already. Now you just have to find your way there!

I've been re-considering connecting it up to the main block but haven't done so yet. I was a bit busy with a number of projects on and off-line/site over the last few days.

I've now connected the h2g2 isolation ward to the main entrance hall of my web-site. The doorway to that can be found cunningly hidden behind an SEP field on my h2g2 page here.

It's clear that your website means everything to you.

RhoMuNuQ

Don't go giving extra clues, Rho. Not that that was a very good one. It's a sort of intelligence test to get there. I guess OwlOfDoom failed by cheating with some Yahoo information (of which you have even more available!).