libertus

I was recently informed of the existence of Baxters Online Newsagent, from which I ordered a copy of Scuba Diving Magazine – an American publication that I have never seen in a shop. The magazine duly arrived within their promised timescale, at a charge of £1 over the cover price.

The site is well-designed, the product range is impressive, their feedback is responsive and the service works. Recommended.

They do adult magazines as well.

The following code works on Linux (3 rows returned) but not on Windows, which returns a SQL syntax error citing LIMIT "0", "3". See PHP bug 35801 closed as “bogus” by an idiot on Christmas Day 2005 for the bogus reason:

Limit statements cannot be part of prepared statements.

Anyone care to confirm?

Continue reading ‘Christmas Bogus Bogus PHP PDO Bug’ »

I was in two minds as to whether I should watch “Apocalypto”, primarily because the director, Mel Gibson, appeared in the TV adverts for it, which is a real turn-off for me. In its favour, I thought it would look gorgeous, probably contain some innovative movie-making and we had free tickets!

Simply, it does look gorgeous. The scenery and costumery is top-notch. There are some innovative scenes, mostly related to making blood and gore more realistic. Unfortunately, prettiness does not make a movie good. Apocalypto has a muddled plot that depends too much on deus ex machina, some over-long sections and little to empathise with in the over-passive main characters.

On the other hand, it is thought-provoking. What is civilization? Had the Mayan civilization already destroyed itself from within before the Christian Conquistadors arrived? What makes modern society more civilized than the one portrayed in Gibson’s movie? Have we learned from our past or are we repeating it?

My recommendation: rent on DVD.