I think it should be something about the Chosen One.
Sir? I think you have a problem with your brain being missing.
Zoe ,'The Train Job'
Buffistas Building a Better Board
Do you have problems, concerns or recommendations about the technical side of the Phoenix? Air them here. Compliments also welcome.
Elena - Mar 01, 2003 10:34:25 pm PST #3297 of 10000
Thanks for all the fish.
Noumenon - Mar 01, 2003 11:10:38 pm PST #3298 of 10000
No other candidate is asking the hard questions, like "Did geophysicists assassinate Jim Henson?" or "Why is there hydrogen in America's water supply?" --defective yeti
How 'bout
Buffy: I'm sorry. Am I repeat-o-girl?
John H - Mar 02, 2003 2:05:49 am PST #3299 of 10000
for some reason the program really likes quote No. 1
Just for the record, if you're interested, we use the built-in RANDOM feature of the SQL database, and it seems to be broken in some way in this version.
That random feature is very database-intensive, because it does something like assign a different number to every row in the db, then sort them by that number. Somewhere in that process something goes wrong, and it's not just us, there are other people in newsgroups whinging about it.
It's been proposed before that we generate a random number in the PHP and fetch just that one record instead, but ita doesn't think it's worth the effort for something that's not an essential feature.
Noumenon - Mar 02, 2003 2:12:41 am PST #3300 of 10000
No other candidate is asking the hard questions, like "Did geophysicists assassinate Jim Henson?" or "Why is there hydrogen in America's water supply?" --defective yeti
It's been proposed that you just hack it so it tries again if it comes up with that quote. Somebody second me so I'm not allowed to bring this up again for six months.
John H - Mar 02, 2003 2:25:27 am PST #3301 of 10000
It's been proposed that you just hack it so it tries again if it comes up with that quote.
OK that's just doubly illogical. If we do something database intensive and it doesn't work, the solution is to do it twice a pageview, not once? What if it comes up with the "baby Jesus" thing again? You're going to make me wait for it to come up with an original quote, when people are reporting 6 out of 10 "baby Jesus"?
The beauty of my approach is, you note, once, how many quotes in the db, -- six hundred or so? -- you generate a random number, on load, from one to six hundred and the job's done. ita has to remember to change the upper limit when new quotes get added to the db, but as that's only ever happened once, and nobody would know if she forgot, it's not onerous.
This way we're hammering the database on every pageview in order to get something random, but we're not getting something random. It'd be more sensible to adopt one quote and stick with it...
Noumenon - Mar 02, 2003 2:42:51 am PST #3302 of 10000
No other candidate is asking the hard questions, like "Did geophysicists assassinate Jim Henson?" or "Why is there hydrogen in America's water supply?" --defective yeti
I understand both ways I was illogical now. That's enough to make me be quiet for six months instead of suggesting easy code kludges that end up slowing down every page load and bothering the server.
John H - Mar 02, 2003 2:51:02 am PST #3303 of 10000
Aw, don't take it that way. It's just the quote thing is a kind of specialist subject of mine.
Noumenon - Mar 02, 2003 2:57:03 am PST #3304 of 10000
No other candidate is asking the hard questions, like "Did geophysicists assassinate Jim Henson?" or "Why is there hydrogen in America's water supply?" --defective yeti
I wanted to back down extra far because I was also pushy about Marcie just a few posts before and I probably don't know what I'm suggesting there either. My programming knowledge is limited to non-internet C++ stuff, so I mistakenly thought of the iterating as painless and the coding as one little if statement. Also I misread you about which randomization method was more database intensive.
Jesse - Mar 02, 2003 8:33:25 am PST #3305 of 10000
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
I think it should be something about the Chosen One.
How about just the early-season opening credit thing about one girl in all the world, blah blah?
Nilly - Mar 02, 2003 8:42:39 am PST #3306 of 10000
Swouncing
How about just the early-season opening credit thing about one girl in all the world, blah blah?
In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.