Disseration 101: spanning data across multiple cookies

Cookies have are spec'd to hold a max of 4KB. Thats a lot of data. 4096 ascii characters to be exact. However this is 2009, and my ideas of 'a lot' are laughable. Well since we know that one cookie holds x, how about 2x?

Well thats great, but how do i split data across two structures, and ensure that it remains consistent. Well clearly this problem isn't new, it's been solved in TCP, RAID, and many other situations.

TCP's approach is to assign each segment a sequence number, it divides the load based on the window size and assigns it a number.

But how would that look?
(key:value)
foo=1007; hello
bar=1007; world

the issue with the above is that i have to access random keys to get at the data, so something like the below would be better ...

x1007=foo: hello
x1008=foo; world.

in the above the name of the cookie is the sequence number, the first value is the name of the user key, and following the semicolon, the value. Still a little rough around the edges, but what isn't?

Another alternative, is to cram as much data into each cookie. This increases the amount of entries that could be assign

Foreign living

My trip to Barcelona has been fasinating so far. One of best moments was visiting a local supermarket. It was amazing to be surrounded by people, who all spoke another tongue. It was amazing to have a convrsation with someone else, knowing that everyone (or at least most people), had no idea of what was being said.
It made me really want to live and work outside of uk. i've always felt that i don't want to raise my children in britian, for variety of reasons. So it seems logical that i try to move aboard, but the question is where do i start?

hola! Barcelona

I'm on my way to barcelona at the moment. Its perfect timing really as the weather this week has been crap. So 3 days in relative sunshine should be nice.

Jonathan and the social internet revolution

It's 2009. I forget this a lot of the time and find myself doing things circa '00.

Well as of today, no longer. Twittering, flickr posting, facebook ... Stuff (surprisingly doesn't have a verb yet), i should be doing it all.

I won't go as far as to say that the days of isolation are over, however when i find myself giving away my location (using googles new latitude service), you can see why i think this way.

i really want a new phone

Sadly in the mean time, i'll have to deal with just having this (e61) thing. I had planned to get the nokia e71 again however, the palm pre happened. At which point all my funds went right back into my pocket. This isn't a blog post of sorts, just an opportunity to test out blogging from a phone, via email. I was working on a blogger client using python for s60 however, i've just remembered how much fun mobile development is without a decent emulator.

Wow, thats old

Considering that this is the internet and all, i thought i should post this. below was the old text from the about me section of this very blog.

Russian Space Station, named in partial memory of the Fallen "Mir" and that outpost from the movie "Armageddon". I talk about technology, my new life at Southampton Solent University and living on my own @ 18. Subscribe on the RSS or just visit, thanks for popping by.

Tad out of date don't you think.

Are men really that useless: Anglerfish reproduction...

I've always been told that men are useless, however this takes the biscuit. This is how anglerfish reproduce

When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release.

Sadly i know men who are about as useful as this...

Source

Anyways I'm gonna try and liven up the blog, one post a month/2 months is crazy, this is web 2.0 right. Daily journal returns ...

Quote of the Day

Josh "After i'm done swiping my visa, I'm gonna ask them what their flavour is?"

Me "What do you take this thing for, Baskin Robins!"

Grown women taking their clothes off, seems to have a strange impact on people.