Frequently Asked Questions

Hey, I had to put another button on the bar and I couldn't think of another section, hence this blatant filler page. You'll get over it.

What on earth does 'fscked' mean?

This is a geek joke. The Unix program for scanning hard disks for errors - the equivalent to Scandisk for Windows - is called 'fsck', from file system check. Hence, if something is badly broken, it can be said to be 'fscked'. It looks rude, but it actually isn't.

If you're shaking your head and dismissing me as utterly sad now, I should point out in my defense that both fscked.com and fscked.org are homepages of like-minded geeks. The Jargon File also has an entry about it.

How did you do the graphics on the bar?

I get asked this a fair bit, oddly. God knows why. Anyway, the orange swirl and the faint grey swirls under it were drawn in an ancient vector-based package, Corel Xara 2. The emboss effect on the orange swirl was done in Photoshop. The text was added and the rollovers constructed in The Gimp, a free, open-source graphics editing package with power and flexibility to rival Photoshop.

Then I realised I couldn't be bothered to add the Javascript for the rollovers, that I hate Javascript anyway, that rollovers aren't really important, and that it was going to bloat this already-heavy page by another 10Kb or so. So I left them out, in case you were wondering.

How did you make the site?

Another question I seem to get asked a fair bit. I make all the HTML myself by hand in the thoroughly wonderful Vim editor. I write the main part of each page, save that as a file, then a Perl script I wrote wraps the page template - the swirly bit and navigation bits - around each page. This means if I change the page template, I only have to change one file and re-run the "make site" Perl script again. It also means I'm not wedded to a particularly package, as I would be if I was using Dreamweaver or something.

Should you feel the need, you can take a look at the Perl script that sticks things together. It's not documented or anything so don't expect too much out of it, and it comes with the usual liability - if it infects your PC with a flesh-eating virus and explodes your house, you own the resultant crater and I don't want to know. Someday I'll tidy it up and document it properly.