Binary Balance

Last week my wife asked me to buy her some printer ink cartridges at a particular online store that sells such things so armed with her Visa card I undertook the quest.

I found the desired ink cartridges and proceeded to check out. I arrive at a page that tells me it has been detected that I am a part of the “Verified by Visa” program and that I will be sent to a page to facilitate said verification by Visa. I’m redirected to a page that by the URL and branding I assume is owned by the bank that provides the merchant facilities for the ink cartridge website. This page partially loads but then dies because my NoScript Firefox Add-On disallows the JavaScript on the page. I’m left looking at a button that says something like “Click to enter your password” but due to JavaScript being disabled, it does nothing when you click on it and even if it did, I would not know what password to enter. Read more...

Not too long ago, I was brought in on a failing website development project. The client had commissioned a website from one of their local web design/development companies, that company had sub-contracted the development of the site out and the web developer in question had skipped the country without finishing the project, never to be heard from again. The client was understandably perturbed by this and had lost faith in the company that they originally hired to do the work.

There is a saying that will be familiar to many developers: ‘Hell is other people’s code’ and I have found this saying to be quite accurate much of the time. So I’m often reluctant to come in at the end of a project that’s ostensibly at the FUBAR stage. But this time, circumstances were such I decided to see if I could pitch in and sort things out. Read more...