okay so if we establish that it's crazy and we establish that python is 'best', can i still assume the answer to my question is that it's possible?

i seem to remember seeing *some* parts of the bitcoin code done in php, like address validation, etc.

maybe it's crazy, but would it be possible to make the bitcoin software entirely with PHP?

i don't mean RPC to bitcoind, i mean actually do everything within PHP code?

as in bold above, my timezone is gmt+10.

don't worry, i know not many of us are on the east coast of australia, compared to us and europe. i'm used to having to stay up at night, but 4am just happens to be when i'm always sleeping... too late to stay up til, and too early to get up for.

well, i haven't worked it out exactly, but i remember wanting to play bitcat.ch but for me the rounds kept starting at 4am which was no good. i'd play if they started at 11pm for me which would be 1pm in the afternoon gmt time.

how many scams can one person run at once?

i think jakeantifaev is trying to break some kind of record.

but the block chain can even be shrunk with actual ZIP compression (or similar). would there be a way of making it compressed like this while being able to be accessed at the same time?

then when people install bitcoin for the first time, it'd be good if the client could download the blockchain in compressed form

yes, i see thank you. just hadn't had much time to work on the site until today.

one more update... just added xml too (i hope the formatting is acceptable, otherwise please some xml guru tell me if i need to change it):

http://payb.tc/donate/xml

thanks everyone for your interest

also, i've added links to the various api options on each page.

done!

also a couple of other things...

firstly, thanks to whoever just sent me 0.1 btc donation, that's great

secondly, i noticed in the database the following short links:

http://payb.tc/mtgox edit: confirmed to be unofficial
http://payb.tc/tradehill edit: confirmed to be unofficial

unless the owners of mtgox and tradehill can confirm they are the owners of those addresses, i think we should assume it's just someone trying to be a bit sneaky.

i'm not really sure other than have someone else run a cron to check addresses every x minutes and then alert the owner if it has changed.

payb.tc addresses aren't editible by members so they should never change.

there's no expiration time. i'll keep the site up as long as it's still being used. that might be decades.

maybe i should do some kind of internal hit counter though, and if a particular link hasn't been hit in the last 12 months say, then that shortlink can maybe be freed up for someone else to register.

that would make it a lot harder to spread virally via the 'get your own free short link' link on everyone's page. hardly seems fair.

thanks! i got the idea when i saw someone else charging money for their shortening service and decided to do a free one.

okay now it outputs json

just add /json to the end of your short link and you'll get something like this:

{"username":"donate","address":"13QTW27b3SgqrEjefB9PbiZ6hcrVCJAxfx"}

( that's from http://payb.tc/donate/json )

any comments? is that the sort of output you would expect for a json api?

payb.tc faucet closed for now

thanks, paid everyone 0.02.

one other thing is i think at least the client should have some input for notes when you send an amount.

that note doesn't have to go into the block chain but just get recorded somewhere in your client's files.

user would just be the person's short name, eg 'donate'.

sorry i'm not sure how that link you gave me helps.

what should i include in the json data?

i was thinking:

user -> myusername
address -> 18fjaiofjblahblahblahblah

anything else?