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Computer says No.

April 6, 2008 by mlq3  
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This has long been a-gestatin’ but finally having been born, it seems cursed with a birth defect.

The Philippine Diary Project is something I’ve been wanting to get off the ground for some time. What’s driving me nuts, though, is the hit-and-miss part of setting historical dates. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it works -and for several entries in a row. Then all of a sudden, “computer says… no.” And insists the date has to be either 1970 or 1969, and then, you have to enter into a battle of wills, posting and re-posting the entry until finally, the date you want appears. Trying to figure things out just leads to a headache: see Using < 1970 dates, and Gripe against PHP dates prior to 1969 and Posting in the past (like 1775) and Timestamping Years, is it possible and Post dates before 1970 (adodb_date_library question). In the face of all this, all I can say is, there’s a reason people end up very superstitious about computer use.

Aargh.

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8 Comments on "Computer says No."

  1. sparks on Sun, 6th Apr 2008 6:11 pm 

    Congratulations on your new endeavour Manong. Looking forward to reading more of this new site! “The computer says no…”Little Britain!!!

  2. nash on Mon, 7th Apr 2008 6:35 am 

    Any chance the facsimiles will be put online too? There is much info that can be gathered from the writer’s handwriting too.

  3. Jon Limjap on Tue, 8th Apr 2008 1:54 pm 

    Wow.

    Are you using wordpress for that? That means Wordpress.com is not Y2K compliant — in insisting the use of dates after 1969.

    The 1775 problem is a database glitch. Certain versions of MySQL or SQL Server can only hold dates after 1/1/1775. Only later versions can hold dates that go back to 1/1/1.

  4. mlq3 on Tue, 8th Apr 2008 2:15 pm 

    john, yes, wordpress on their free blog thingie. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, i don’t even want to try to figure it out anymore.

  5. mlq3 on Tue, 8th Apr 2008 2:18 pm 

    sparks, bingo!

    nash, no resources for that.

  6. XAX on Wed, 9th Apr 2008 12:55 am 

    Good start, Manolo!

    Would you be able to provide cross-links to other materials/literature, at least on the more significant entries in FM’s diary?

    You know, just for added context. Mahirap ba?

  7. mlq3 on Wed, 9th Apr 2008 9:07 am 

    xax, mahirap nga. maybe some day, but encoding the entries is time-consuming as it is.

  8. Rob' Ramos on Wed, 9th Apr 2008 2:02 pm 

    Manolo, is this Project about Philippine history?

    Because if it is… this is just so cool!

    I’m a history nut myself, and I’ve long lamented how little there is out there in terms of really reliable data on the country’s history (it took me time to realize, and after my dad and kuya pointed it out, what was wrong with Zaide…), and if you’re posting stuff that comes straight from the thoughts of the personalities that shaped our country, this will be invaluable.

    Now, how to make the kids of today appreciate all this…?

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