Rick's b.log - entry 2025/10/19

The brown beverage lives!

Tea now looks like this, I think the colouring is better - yellow indicates a scheduled programme (was cream) and cyan now indicates a movie (was yellow), and similar-to-scheduled programmes are now in cream (was cyan).

What's on TV this evening.

There's now an option (in the main menu) to turn the highlighting on and off. It'll probably start off "off" because that's what the bit in the settings file ought to be. Turn it on if you like.

The local and UK time selection now works. After a lot of thinking about how to actually do this, I realised that having written a uktime() function yesterday to translate the GMT values stored in the programme definitions to the correct UK time, all I needed to do was add two lines of code here - if the user wants local time, just fudge the time a bit more.

The programme information is now retrieved. I ran into a 426 "Too many requests" error from the server, but looking in Firefox it seems as if there's some sort of authentication key being sent. I copied this into the program and now it is working... but I don't know if this is hardwired or if it changes in some manner (like daily, IP address, or whathaveyou). The site appears to use drupal and react and that means piles of scripting...
...anyway, if you start getting unexpected HTTP response 426, that means this has gone wrong and the site is saying to get lost.
As annoying as this is for us, AI scrapers and bots are ruining the web, so I can sort of understand why they may want to protect their data. It's a game of whack-a-mole really.
Oh, and if the app didn't suck as much as the website (sort of slow, clankly, and doesn't show much on-screen at once, not to mention making it a pain to flip around the timeline) then maybe I wouldn't need to use the app. Oh, and let's not forget the need to pull it from an external source because it's geo-restricted because god help anybody pick up signals outside of the UK...

Images can now be fetched and provided for the programmes. Where there's no image, you'll get a nice picture of a cup of tea (surprised?).

Postcodes can now be translated into network IDs so that regional channels and programmes now work. You may, as the message tells you, need to reselect those channels that are regional such as BBC1 and ITV.

Sorry JGH (it was you, wasn't it?) but it is no longer possible to fudge together long titles that spill over into the description...
...like this.
The reason for this is because the listings (and titles) come without any descriptions, those are fetched individually as needed. It could be done by tracking down the icon and recreating it, but fixing one with potentially loads more wrong... might as well just accept that it's lame for them to have done it that way and leave it at that. ☺

This is what the programme window now looks like; scaled down because it's ~400 pixels wider now.

Programme information now.

Note also the accessibility options at the bottom left.

The cached programme details ought to be invalidated at 5am GMT (maybe it ought to be midnight? that's 2am in the morning here and, sorry, I wake up at 6am for work these days, or 3.30am on alternate Saturdays as of this week, so I'm not up for testing this).
At that time, the cached programme information/images will be deleted if they're more than 24 hours old.

Hopefully this shall do for a while, but I have a feeling that I ought to be touching something wooden or throwing a black cat in front of me...

I think I'll now go make myself a nice bowl of differently shaped pasta for dinner. Even with two days, one more than I'll be getting next week, this weekend passed super-quickly.

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺
As of February 2025, commenting is no longer available to UK residents, following the implementation of the vague and overly broad Online Safety Act. You must tick the box below to verify that you are not a UK resident, and you expressly agree if you are in fact a UK resident that you will indemnify me (Richard Murray), as well as the person maintaining my site (Rob O'Donnell), the hosting providers, and so on. It's a shitty law, complain to your MP.
It's not that I don't want to hear from my British friends, it's because your country makes stupid laws.
 
You can now follow comment additions with the comment RSS feed. This is distinct from the b.log RSS feed, so you can subscribe to one or both as you wish.

jgh, 19th October 2025, 21:07

EastEn  ders  ?

Rick, 19th October 2025, 22:27

It wraps to fit the icon - actually, I think the Wimp does that itself I just clip the text so it doesn't overrun.

jgh, 20th October 2025, 15:20

Is the programme really CamelCase "EastEnders" rather than "Eastenders"? I'd never really noticed having not seen it in several decades.

Rick, 20th October 2025, 17:12

Yes - Wiki → EastEnders 😉    I've not watched it in decades either. I'm not a soaps person.

Add a comment (v0.12) [help?] . . . try the comment feed!
		Your name
		Your email	(optional)
		Validation	Are you real? Please type 10615 backwards.
		UK resident	Check to verify that you are NOT a UK resident.
		Your comment