So I decided to knuckle down this morning and get this AdSense business sorted out. And to a point I've managed to do it quite well. I've got the ads looking the way I want them to in terms of size, I changed the style to plain links instead of the normal links and text that you get (add a bit of mystery to them) and I've got the spacing (sort of) right. At least there isn't loads of white space below them as there was before which just made things look ugly.

However I'm still having a couple of issues.
1. I can't seem to get the ads table (a 1 row, 3 cell table with the code for the ads in each cell) to show more than once on a page - it just won't work. I want the ads at the top and bottom of each page, but even if I copy what was put exactly at the top they won't show.
2. I'm still not happy about the amount of code replication that there is. For example, even though I'm using standard shtml includes (the include being a standard page with the table + ads in it, rather than the original plain JavaScript code), I still have to make 3 changes for each individual setting I want to alter. It would be good if I could have the adsense code in just one file, and then have a function that would loop through each cell in the table, up to how many cells were pre-defined, and insert the code into each cell. Then I need only change the master file if I wanted to say, try a different ad size or colour scheme. All the current include does is prevent me having to copy and paste the code in each page, but there's still that replication within the table itself which I have to do manually.
3. This is all very well for the main website, but I also want to have this auto-generation of code in the forums. Now maybe it's just me having a mental block, but nowhere in the template editor within vBulletin does it say what type of files the individual template snippets are, making it quite hard to choose the right include code to use. I'm pretty sure they're just plain PHP files with the type declarations stripped out to save room within the editor, but I'd rather be sure before I go in and start changing things rather than afterwards once it's done and still not working. Oh and the problem of the table not appearing at the bottom of the page (its second instance) is still there in the forums.

Isn't web development just peachy?

I made a request for a repeat prescription of the Co-Codamol today and was told they only had 76 out of the 200 I usually get per batch in stock, and that I should call in next week which suits me fine as I'll be back by then. But it also got me thinking. These are pretty strong tablets we're talking about here, 500mg of paracetamol and 30mg of Codeine in each. Not exactly light. And to think 200 of them just barely last me two weeks - that's over 14 per day. Things have got to the point now where I'm struggling not to take them every two hours. I'm not trying to parrot the iterative nature of software development in real life, but anyone who reads this blog or knows me will tell you that I've said a number of times in the past, that I want to get myself off of taking these pills to lead a life that is somewhat less dependent on them. And each time that desire has fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure if it's a lack of will, a lack of support and encouragement or some underlying reason, but seeing myself now and the waste paper bin full of tablet wrappers every Monday just before the rubbish guys come to collect it shocks me. Particularly when I compare the amount of tablets I take to my actual state of health which is totally disproportionate to it. And I was thinking to myself that it's now 08 June (incidentally it would have been dad's 65th birthday if he'd been alive) which means I have just under 10 weeks before I go off on holiday to Tanzania for a month. I'm using that milestone because once in Tanzania I won't have access to the co-Codamol or anything like it; they just don't get it there. Even here in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Western Europe, you can get the medication if it's an emergency. With this in mind I'd like to be back at the levels I was at two years ago by the time I leave. I don't know if that's overambitious or not, but it's something which I'm going to use to drive me forwards.

OK, I'm hungry now as I only had a biscuit for breakfast so I'm off to have some sausage rolls that were looking rather appetising when I last walked past them half an hour ago. Until later...

One of the principles of having an online interface between you and the rest of the world that people find most difficult to grasp in this day and age is that it's not just a one time party. You can't just do it and be done with it. Nor can you work like an elf for a week and then do nothing for a year, then come back to it and work hard for a short while before leaving it again. It's an ongoing process of continuous creation, refinement, removal and re-creation. Yes, we can automate many of the processes for online development in order to make life easier, but it's not just an easy stroll in the park. Indeed, I have no doubt that every person who's started out online had ideas and fantasies of where they wanted to go, but I'm equally sure that 90% of those ideas fell by the wayside due to a lack of commitment.

And to that end I've been doing some more work on my own site both this morning and later tonight. After signing up to the Google AdSense programme a couple of days ago, I was trying to work out how to format the Google Adsense code into includes, such that I could have the required number of ads on my pages without the endless and ever so tedious code repetition. And now I think I've finally found a way to do it, and to integrate them into the forums as well. I'll play around a bit with it tomorrow and let you know the outcome, or maybe you'll just see it for yourself.

I also went back to working on my Ruby on Rails blog project, and am pleased to announce that the basic functionalities of creating, deleting and viewing posts and comments are now complete. The application by no means looks pretty, but it does the job. The next stage is to go right back to the beginning and iterate through the project adding more functionalities as I think of them or as they become logically necessary. I will look to upload a prototype of the application to the website for private (and maybe invited) testing later this weekend. The most frustrating part of Ruby development is the parser's sensitivity to hidden characters, such as the end of line marker. Java and C certainly don't have this issue. I finally had to download the Windows version of emacs, which is hopelessly non-functional with Supernova, before the file worked - I can only presume emacs somehow removed the annoying markers because the next time I tried to run the parser on it everything worked as expected.

Right’o, well I think I'm going to call it a night at least as far as me being at the computer is concerned; I'll join you all here later.