Please help! A comment just arrived on the “contact us” page, and it’s a work of art. I can’t decide if it’s a flame, or something intentionally funny. The irony is beautiful.

The comment comes from Jane, who writes (verbatim):

Can I help you with your spelling, any site which mis-spells as much as you is truly doomed, even foreignors know the difference between your, you’re and what you have written, this country has gone to the dogs, good luck losers

Looking over the server logs, I can see that Jane has visited only this page, before leaving her comment (she arrived via a google search for “phone numbers direct”). Curiously the page Jane read has no incorrect use of “your” (possessive) or “you’re” (accusative) in either the article or the comments… bizarre.

So; flame or intentional irony? If your English skills are up to it, see if you’re able to spot the spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes cleverly woven into Jane’s missive. If it’s a flame I may have to create a new tag (FOTW) so I can keep track of any similar comments that share its brilliance.

How can I tell my Apache server that MSIE prefers JPEG files over PNG?

The images you see associated with each story on this website are available in two formats. The first (and preferred) format is PNG. The second format is JPEG. JPEG is still good, but doesn’t include alpha transparency information.

Content Negotiation

The two formats are used so that browsers which cannot display PNG’s are instead sent JPEG’s automatically. This works because of an Apache feature called content negotiation. The idea of content negotiation is that it enables the client to tell the server what kinds of file it can use.

The assumption of this technique is that the client knows what it can and cannot display, and that the client is correct when it gives this information to the server.

In the case of Internet Explorer version 6, this is not the case. IE6 cannot display PNG’s properly.

What I want to be able to do is to have the Apache server refuse to send PNG’s to IE as part of it’s content negotiation, thus leaving JPEG’s as the only option. Such behavior, however, has eluded me; so please speak up if you know how to achieve it.

It’s also worth mentioning that although it could quite easily be done in PHP, it would mean that the pages could no longer be cached, so this is not solution.

Alternatives

If you’re viewing this site using IE6, it probably looks bad, sorry; IE6 sucks and there’s only so much time I’m able to commit to cleaning up Microsoft’s mess.

IE7 is on the way but in the mean time you might like to try an alternative. Personally I use Firefox but Opera is also very good. Both are capable of rendering content properly.

Many years ago, in the bar where I worked in Mumbles (Wales), there entered a bloke who sported a bandana. It wasn’t common for locals to don such headgear, and coupled with the tour dates on his tee shirt that were all for gigs in US cities, I figured he may not be a local.

He and a couple of friends were visiting from Chicago. So the beers, and vodka, flowed. After many beers, and then many vodkas, I recall that we drew the night to a close on top of a telephone box (well where else is there to go at 2am?), discussing the world and it’s music, in some detail.

The bloke with the bandana was in a band (The Howards) and his name was Dave Winer. In the intervening years he sent me some of the Howards material on CD, and vynil (which I still have), but due to one too many house-moves we’ve lost contact, and my supply of Chicago ska has dried up.

I Googled Dave recently and it turns out that a few years ago he requisitioned this rather original Pac-Man guitar.

So, where on earth is Dave Timely Winer today? Anybody seen him around? Gigging? In an office somewhere?

Does anybody have a digital copy of the (ahem) arthouse classic “Intrepid Michael: Traveller of Time and Space”?

Intrepid Michael was filmed in and around Swansea sometime around 1990 – locations that I can recall included a house in Woodcote, the common wasteland in Dunvant valley, and the exterior of a house (and it’s garage) in the Hendrefoilan estate.

I recall the garage because my role called for me to jump backwards from it; and I recall sitting on the waste ground drinking tea.

Other players included Adam J. Barwick (in the lead role) and C.M. Bristow who was also in the tea drinking scene, operating a large hourglass.

In the same breath I should also ask if anyoen has a copy of “Dunvant is Boring”, and any of it’s sequels, which included challenging and labour intensive scenes such as stop-motion paddling along Dunvant railway line.