Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Radians
No, I’m not talking about the alien-worshipping religion (which is the Raelians anyway); I’m referring to the world’s most pointless rotation / angle measurement.
Everyone on the planet knows about degrees: 360 degrees in a perfect circle; 90 degrees is a quarter; 120 degrees is a third, so on and so forth. Standard mathematical measurement for [...]
VAT and foreign websites
A lot of people reading this blog will be aware that the EU has a tax on non-essential items which, in the UK, is called Value-Added Tax, or VAT. The annoyance of VAT itself aside, it is a legal requirement for sites to support it when selling things for VAT-registered entities based in the EU. [...]
Flash! (Ah-ah!) ActionScript 3 varDump function
So, recently I’ve been doing a fair amount of work with ActionScript 3 in Flash, and its complete lack of a useful variable dumping function has really started to get on my nerves. So, after a lot of toing-and-froing, I eventually found some examples which partially did what I wanted them to do.
Most of the [...]
Tickyboom thing
I just found the most bizarre code comment ever in one of the files on the site I’m currently working on.
/*Not sure what this does but if you comment it out the little tickyboom thing stops ticking and goes boom.*/
I honestly have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean, or what it’s referring to. [...]
Insecurity features
I’m surprised I haven’t written about this before, actually, since it’s something that really bugs me and I see it happening more and more.
The amount of sites out there which insist on checking that passwords match /^[a-zA-Z0-9]$/ and exclude all other characters astounds me. There’s no better way to make passwords easily crackable than limiting [...]
Beckon forth the Brave New World
When it seems like you can’t get any more tired of Blighty’s incompetent incumbent Government, they go and do this.
Now, I find this particular move highly offensive. I value my privacy, and I don’t appreciate being snooped on by a bunch of power-mad control freaks, hence this post.
Since we seem to be swiftly moving in [...]
Tax Online: Round 2
Last week, I received a letter in the post from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs regarding the tax self-assessment form which I submitted online in January, about two days before the deadline. It says:
“We have not yet received payment of your outstanding self-assessment tax. Please pay £amount immediately.”
Oooohkay… Now, there’s something I probably need to [...]
HMRC: Tax really does have to be taxing
Dear Sir, Madam or Thing,
I am not entirely convinced that you understand the precise workings of the Internet. Here in Cyberland, we have this wonderful invention called e-mail which allows for near-instantaneous communications between protected parties.
When I navigate to your Self Assessment Online[sic] pages, I am greeted by a login field asking me for my [...]