If you have problems with non-UTF-8 characters breaking your feeds in Wordpress (ie. breaking XML parsers), one solution is to attach a filter to the the_excerpt_rss() function and stripping or converting the characters. I’m guessing the errant off-character characters (ahem) are the result of promiscuous copypasting.

1. Grab Jason Judge’s self-contained function for limiting to valid UTF-8 characters (here’s a link to the source).
2. Paste it into your theme’s functions.php file.
3. Also add the following lines:
   
   function the_excerpt_rss_utf8($text) {
return trim(clean_utf8_xml_string($text));
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'the_excerpt_rss_utf8');

I had totally forgotten why I don’t use <button> elements:

1. When using multiple buttons in a form, IE6 and IE7 sends the values of all of them
2. IE6 and IE7 sends the innerHTML as the value of the button (ignoring the value attribute)

If you need a longer explanation, Drew McLellan has written about it.

Today I tried signing up for a Nectar card, a customer loyalty card for Sainbury’s (among other stores). Their site, Nectar.com, is nice looking, and finding where to sign up for a card was nice and easy.

However, my attempt to sign up was thwarted when, on page two, I hit a form asking me a) how many children under 18 I had living in my household (answer: 0) and b) to provide their birthdays (empty text fields). Whatever I entered — and I mean whatever — it wouldn’t let me past the javascript validation complaining about a mismatch between the number of children and their ages. I couldn’t get past it despite an attempt to create an imaginary child to get by it.

Stumped, I gave up. Figuring I’d notify them of the issue, I clicked over to their Contact us page.

But they have only three options of contacting them: chat (which requires you to have a Nectar card number), calling them, and writing them — via snail mail.

No email address or contact form!

Adding insult to injury, their footer promo content for contacting them offers an “Email us” link.

We visited Notting Hill today. Beware the legions of Ugg boots and sunglasses.