Wulffmorgenthaler again! Yeah, I know it, but I love the comic strips.

And if you love them as much as me, you would probably like to view all of them easily, and not just one by one directly from their website.

Therefore I wrote a script that allows you to download all the comic strips easily. The script is written in PHP, and you need access to a webserver running PHP (or just on your own computer having PHP with minor adjustments to the script). Upload the script to any folder of your choosing. The script will attempt to create the folder ‘wulffmorgenthaler’ in the same folder as the script, but unless the access rights are correct you have to create this folder yourself.

There are 3 ways you can run the script:

1. Access the script directly from the place you put it (e.g. http://domain.com/wulffmorgenthaler.php). This way all images from the first image available at http://wulffmorgenthaler.com will be downloaded until the last one (4th of August 2003).
2. Access the script by adding ‘?start=url‘ to the URL in pt. 1. This way you start downloading comic strips from the date of your choosing.
3. If your download was aborted somehow, you can just point your browser to the same URL as in pt. 1 and it will continue from the last place it stopped.

Download the wulffmorgenthaler.phps source code. (remember to change the extension to .php)

The script isn’t perfect, of course, but it did the trick for me. You’re welcome to change it to whatever your needs are.

The only totally foolproof network security system

Anybody still remember floppies?
I have wanted to take a photo of something we have in our IT building at my university for a long time, and here it is - the floppy automat:

Put some pictures from last weekend when we 1. celebrated having finished our presentation in ITEC810 - Information Technology Project, and 2. ehh.. just partied :p

The pic above is of some of the people in my project class after our presentation; Frank Moisiadis (.au/.gr), Michael (.au), Markus (.de), Oksana (.ru) and me Jan (.no).
On Saturday we were VIP guests at Home nightclub - actually there was at least 100 VIPs, so we didn’t feel that ‘VIP’. They got a nice view over Sydney Harbour (since its located at the waterfront):

It was Home’s 7th birthday, so the place was packed, and Sneaky Sound System were playing among other DJs;

And to finish of that night, Tanja and Markus;

The rest of the pics are available in the Gallery. All photos taken by Markus Spillner.

The rest of this week I’ve been working on my ITEC831 - Advanced Internet Programming assignment. Had to develop a J2EE application for a high school data entry&reporting system. Pointbase database, Sun Application Server, business logic, servlets, JSP, HTML and God knows what else I put into it. If that wasn’t enough my laptop died on me when I needed it the most. Windows just thought it was best to destroy my filesystem so that I could live at the lab at the university for the rest of the week - nicely done to keep me at the university for up to 18 hours. Well, going from frustration and almost giving up I at least looking at a decent score - I think.
Being that stressed the last month I just had to relax, which I’ve done yesterday and today - done absolutely nothing except reinstalling my laptop and watching tv-series
Starting up with exams on Tuesday. Have a written exam in ITEC852 - System and Network Security and a oral exam in ITEC854 - Security Management on Thursday. A small oral exam in ITEC831 thereafter, but I don’t really count that as an exam… more like a ‘friendly chat’ =)
Just looking so much forward to finishing of this Master in IT and have a nice summer vacation down here in Sydney, Perth-Broome, and wherever else I should end up.

And I’m having my 26th birthday on Tuesday - so expecting plenty of big green dollar bills and hard packets then (unless you’re female and give really good hugs :p)

Wired News has an article about some of the worst software bugs known to man. Interesting reading for developers that might write software that might end up being catastrophic.

Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars’ gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn’t a hardware problem — it was a programming error in the smart car’s embedded code. The Prius had a software bug.

History’s Worst Software Bugs