Just when I thought captcha systems are getting dumber and dumber there pops up a very nice talk about the usefulness of solving captchas.

But first I want to show you a captcha which Google presented to me some time ago. Do you have any idea what that is supposed to mean? I don’t.

Another captcha on Twitter. Easy to decipher but still made me smile for a second. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

And now comes the video of a nice talk about re-captcha. A project with a great idea: instead of making people just waste time by solving captchas they aim to extract useful human power out of it.

I surely do not blog a lot but today I experienced what I feared for a long time: Orange is evil (at least compared to One, the mobile network operator which was absorbed by Orange last year).

Once upon a time there was this fresh, young, stylish, really great Austrian mobile network operator. It was named “One”. If I remember correctly One was the third mayor mobile operator in Austria at that time and a pretty good alternative to the existing operators. They started at a time when competition was just going to blossom out and rates were falling to a level where also students could afford a simple mobile phone with a cheap prepaid card. Right at the beginning I knew it was the right operator for my needs. I loved their service and I even liked the brand they created. All was perfect for almost a decade (or was it even more than 10 years?).

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Anybody using the Zend Framework (or any other php script using set_include_path() ) might already have experienced problems with set_include_path() at one time or another.

Most Zend Framework implementations (including implementations from the reference guide) are using set_include_path() within the bootloader.php file to setup the correct include path for the Zend Framework. The nice thing is that by doing so you’ll just have to write e.g. require_once(‘Zend/View.php’) for including Zend Framework classes or not even that by just using the great Autoloader feature. In a perfect environment setup you’ll just have to instantiate a new object of any Zend Framework class and it gets loaded automatically (you don’t even have to require/include any additional file as the Autoloader loads classes automatically from within the specified include path). Additionally you extend the include path to a library folder, etc.

Now it happens that in some mysterious server setups you cannot override the pre-defined include path. Neither set_include_path() nor ini_set(‘include_path’, ‘/path/:.’) have any effect on what get_include_path() is holding for you.

In such a case it might help to check you apache config which also can set the php include path. If it is set within the apache config you are out of luck. You simply cannot override it by script anymore. Same applies to setting the include path from within .htaccess. That also disables the ability to set the include path by script.

One thing I have not evaluated yet practically (but which I hope to be accurate in theory) is that you still can pre-define the value within apache config and .htaccess and at the same time allow override by script: just use php_value instead of php_admin_value when pre-defining php values.

Farewell everyday life. For the next month we are visiting family in Japan again. Yes. You read it correctly: four complete weeks in Toyko. It has been a busy time since January 1st. Running a business as a one-man-show can make your life really busy. But in this case busy in the sense of a really good, very intense time. After figuring out how to spend my precious time I am looking forward to experience an exciting year. The last months were amazing and all the things which are queued to take off right after the trip are causing great vibes already.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise so be sure to check for updates in mid/end of may. In the meantime (while I am enjoying tasty asian cuisine and colorful sunsets at Odaiba beach after relaxing in traditional Japanese Onsen for hours) you are invited to take a look at a recent “just for fun” project: topsellerblog.de. The German platform for brand clothing gives you a high quality listing of brand clothes available online directly at the selling companies. Third party services like Google friend connect allow you to easily share your thoughts on the products.