Yes, indeed, in fact I lost about 20 days ago, it's just it took until over a month after my last post for anybody to notice. *sniff*. Which means - it's time to vote on a colour and a talk title.
As I offered when I first announced the IronMan competition (see also the non-profane version here if you don't want the full rant), there was a forfeit if I missed a post.
Since that happened, it's time for all you wonderful (?) people who've been blogging along with me to get your revenge for being dragged into this mad, wonderful escapade of ours.
Which means, that, between you, you need to choose:
- A hair colour.
- A talk title.
Now, since I'm too lazy to set up a voting application (and would fully expect it to be screwed with massively, because LWP::UserAgent would be just too tempting to resist) we're going to do this via nice, simple HTTP.
If your blog is already in the Iron Man planet and you've had a post collected by the aggregator, ever, you are eligible to vote.
To vote, make a post any time in the next week. I'll be closing down the data pulling at midnight Thursday May 25 GMT - this currently being Tuesday May 18 that gives you 7 full days plus what's left of this one to vote.
To cast that vote, make a link back to this blog entry with a query string containing a chosen title and a chosen colour. So:
http://shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/iron-man-lost?colour=pink&title=why+i+love+mysql
would consitute a vote for a hair colour of 'pink' and a talk title of 'why I love mysql' (remember you can use + instead of space in query strings).
Yes, I will accept the american spelling of color. I just won't like it.
Note the first: Please try and make the talk title interesting. If I can defeat your attempt to screw me over only by applying sarcasm, that makes it too easy. Challenges please.
Note the second: If a hair colour is too difficult to arrange (this is unlikely, I have genius dye ninjas standing by for this process) then I am permitted to wear clothes of all that colour instead for the presentation. You should bear this in mind before trying to make me shave my head by proposing 'transparent' or 'nonexistant'. You really should.
Why am I doing it like this? Simple.
Somebody with half a brain and some mech skills can whip up a script to monitor this as it goes along. I may do if I have a minute, if you write one link me to it (tweet @shadowcat_mst or mail mst@shadowcat.co.uk) and I'll post about it.
It means you have to post if you want to vote, which I think is in the spirit of the competition.
It means your vote is on your blog under your control, so as popular ideas emerge you can change your votes - right up to the deadline you'll be allowed to change your mind what options you support.
Finally, it means that authenticating one vote per existing Iron Man blogger is trivial.
Oh, and I like HTTP. Most days I hate web development, but I like HTTP. Also, I'm lazy and HTML::LinkExtor and friends will make the counting script easy.
Note: I plan to run the counting script against your last post according to the database. If you post twice before the countdown runs out, just include the link in both. This way I don't have to think or debug this script. You're the ones getting to have all the fun here, so I get to be lazy :)
Let the voting commence!
-- mst, out