As some of you may know, I had a brief interest in running fanlistings at one point in time. When I set them up, the only available script was phpFanBase, but one look at the code convinced me I’d rather be caught dead than use it on my site (luckily for me), so I re-wrote it. I remember at the time being absolutely scandalised that there were no functions in the original code, so most of the edits went into the back-end; I kept most of the front-end, particularly the admin panel1. When I was done, I renamed by bastardised script phpFanBase REDUX and then didn’t think much about it for the next three years.
Now, at the time I used a quick-and-dirty 403 hack to add password protection to the admin panel. I don’t remember what my reasoning for this was at the time2, but at some point in the intervening years it broke and I couldn’t be arsed finding out why. For ages I did my site admin ‘raw’ via phpMyAdmin. By the time this had happened, several other fanlist management sites had appeared, but after some investigation I decided I didn’t particularly like them. I found Enth3 too heavy and needlessly confusing. BellaBuffs turned me off by being based on flat-files. So the other day I rolled up my sleeves and put my own script back into an appropriately working state.
For the lulz, I’ve decided to release the end result as sk.fan. It fills a hole in between the two ‘big name’ scripts in this space by being extremely lightweight in comparison. Yes, this means it doesn’t have things like code upload and management, and doesn’t organise your joined fanlistings, but… meh. Works for me! Might work for you, too.
So yes, for those of you who missed it, Mat and I got married on the 11th. The ceremony was very small; 13 people in a private room at The Ottoman. We ate posh food and drank posh wine and it was an all-round great night apart from the fact that I’d put my back out earlier in the afternoon while putting on my boots. No, I am not kidding; it was that old back twinge from the car crash I thought I’d gotten rid of. But no, it was back with a vengeance. I’d gone to see Die Hard 4.0 the night before, so when the pain hit I asked myself “What would Bruce Willis do?” and limped around for three scenes then put a band-aid on my nose (trufax).
Anyway, the next day we flew down to Melbourne for the week for our honeymoon. The plane tripe was decidedly uncomfortable, but that night in the hotel I managed to fix my back by accidentally kicking one of those metal stand things you put suitcases on. Hard. It crunched.
And you know how usually when you stub your toe you kind of hop around for a minute feeling stupid then get over it? Yeah. No; I couldn’t walk. Which of course felt so fucking dumb because, Jesus Dee, you just stubbed your toe; stop whinging. The next day, the whole thing came up purple and stayed like that for the rest of the week. I felt all the bones, but none of them hurt to touch so I assume that means I didn’t actually break anything I (justify not going to a doctor to get a x-ray by saying that, even if I was fractured, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do for a toe-bone anyway). Conveniently, I was walking in a new pair of Chucks at the time. Now, the thing about Chucks is that they’re very long, narrow shoes; not a good combination at all when you’ve just destroyed your little toe. So we went out and bought me some ugg boots from the Target in Chinatown. As I type this I’m still wearing one Chuck and one (now extremely filthy) ugg boot; their pairs are still sitting together at home in pristine, near-new condition.
Anyway, asides from that it was a good week, mostly involving shopping and lazing about the hotel room watching American Chopper. And also some crazy show about an ex-SAS guy parachuting into wilderness areas and eating zebra carcasses. A nice break from the frantic panic of the previous fortnight (getting both the wedding and the house purchase organised), despite the constant, agonizing pain.3
Oh, and I caught the wrong direction of tram trying to get out to the Ministry of Style again. West Preston, Dee; you want to catch the 112 to West Preston.
- I have a pathological hatred of writing admin features. ^
- Probably my pathological hatred of dealing with from data. ^
- I never realised limping was such hard work. Whenever we’re in Melbourne we pretty much walk everywhere, and this was amazingly hard going; especially on top of the still-healing back injury (which manifests itself as stiffness running down my right side from the small of my back to my knee). ^
I’m glad to hear you had fun! Sorry to hear about your toe though!
939 days ago
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