Entries this day: Back_to_work. Basic_perl_404_handler Perl_rules korea_update ridiculous_UH_registrar_site shopping_with_Kazzah tweaking_emAlbum z_list zzz_sugar_addict

Back to work.

8:46am JST Tuesday 23 May 2006 (day 13208)

Now: worktime; we are back in the office, back at it.

Basic perl 404 handler

handling 404 errors with perl

Perl rules

10:33am JST Tuesday 23 May 2006 (day 13208)

Nice. I just tweaked my 404 handler to allow me to move the entire directory of pics from SWUUSI 2002!

Actually (surprisingly), all the files were duplicated on my server. They were in the location listed above *and* in /images/journal/2002/07/SWUUSI/ and I found google had indexed those pages so I couldn't just wipe them out without causing a lot of 404s. Definitely didn't want to make millions of changes, so the 404 handler was the only way to fly.

Thanks to perl, it was easy squeezy.

I've been hesitant / unwilling to post the code because it includes some of my directory structure, but I can post a slimmed down version.

korea update

12:09am JST Wednesday 24 May 2006 (day 13209)

I got a call from Jenny Lee at the English school in Seoul where DruDaddyG works now. She told me basically it takes a month to process paperwork and shtuff after both parties accept (they and I), and I have just over a month left in Japan.

Shit. I need to write to Sumidasan to ask him to ask his peeps to make a decision Y/N within a few days, but I still want to be sure he understands I totally appreciate him trying to hook me up with a job here in Japan.

So I started the process of contacting UH to get transcripts and diploma sent to Korea.

ridiculous UH registrar site

12:17am JST Wednesday 24 May 2006 (day 13209)

Candidate for worst website ever:

That's about the worst way I can imagine presenting a phone number. Cute little fucking phone button images? How utterly inconvenient: can't cut-n-paste them anywhere; website to speech software probably won't easily tell a blind person the number; can't increase the font size of the numbers for a semi-blind person to read the numbers, and even to an average website reader, they require extra brain processing to figure out why it is seeing pictures instead of text. And, even after recognizing the numbers within the pictures, they are hard to read as 7137439050. They should be formatted with hyphen separaters as normal numbers in the US. 713-743-9050.

Now isn't that easier to read???

User Interface Rule #1:

The user shouldn't have to think to use the interface.

- - - -

With my fax, I will include a note that mentions the same points as above, but in gentle way. I wonder if they'll change it.

shopping with Kazzah

8:00pm JST Tuesday 23 May 2006 (day 13208)

After work (study for Kazzah, website for me), we went shopping at Apita, where they feature 1/2 price Tuesday. It's a bit of a ride to get there, and it was a bit rainy (big drops, though sparse) so we were pleasantly moist going into the store. It happens to be downstairs in the same mall area from where I called Kazzah "across from 'America' video store" on the day I arrive in her hood.

Walking past Starbucks, Kazzah looked for Leslie, who often chills there. Not there.

Instead we came across Leslie at the entrance of the store; she came for celery (and got two big stalks at 1/4 normal price) and found water on sale as well.

Kazzah and I separated and she focused on vegetables where I focused on dairy (ice cream, cheese, and eggs) a bit of meat (if by "meat" I mean "remains of animals pressed into little sausages") and granola. Then I remembered wanting carrot cake, so I sought the necessary ingredients for that.

Found (oh, I shoulda taken a picture) a display called "Home Made Cake" which features little itty bitty packets of raisins and nuts and sprinkles and sugar and stuff to make cakes. Cupcakes, probably, but yeah. I talked to the guy who had previously shown me to the eggs, asking him if they had anything bigger than the little packets available in that section.

No for walnuts, but yes for raisins, and as he led me over there, I noticed the ice creams I had picked up (3 * 200ml for 88 yen each) were even *more* on sale if I buy five, so I grabbed two more.

As we converged in line, Kazzah reminded me she didn't have much of a freezer, but I told her it shouldn't be a problem. (*)

8:15pm

(*) I have just finished the last of the five ice creams. One liter of vanilla ice cream goodness for 418 yen! (At convenience store prices, they would be 515 yen. I saved money by gorging on ice cream! Whoohoooo!

- - - -

Anyway, headed out and it had basically stopped raining. Kazzah went ahead when I had to stop to tighten my pedal (argh), and I zooooooomed along with sparse traffic back to her apartment. Didn't pass her and didn't find her at the apartment. I ate an ice cream while waiting, and then another, and then guessed (correctly) she had gone to the other grocery to look for more veggies (said the selection at Apita wasn't that great today). I started to head out in search just in case, she showed up just in time.

tweaking emAlbum

11:59pm JST Tuesday 23 May 2006 (day 13208)

This evening I worked on setting up emAlbum on my site. I couldn't get past one of the directory configurations; I am trying to set it up in directories that *I* want it to use, and apparently something doesn't quite work with what emAlbum wants.

The internet connection I was sponging suddenly vanished, so I have half a screen of code in an emacs window that was remotely opened on my server. Looks like this (the first line being emacs'):

File Edit Options Buffers Tools Help


} else {
        $status .= qq~
  <tr valign="top">
        <td width="350" class="album">$template_path</td>
        <td width="75" class="albumbold">Passed</td>
        <td width="254" class="albumitalic">Template File Exists</td>
  </tr>~;

}

#Check to see if emAlbum.cgi exists

$emCGI_path = $cgi_path."emAlbum.cgi";
unless (-e "$emCGI_path") {
        $error = 1;
        $status .= qq~
  <tr valign="top">
        <td width="350"

Then bang; no connection.

Read some cool geeky articles from space.com, and was surprised at the number of pluralizations errors in the articles. (What's that about?) Then about OpenLazlo and something else. The guy is claiming that OpenLazlo is the wave of the future, and I'll admit it looks pretty cool, but it has PHP at its core, so I'm a bit not wanting to learn.... At the same time, I want to "keep up with" web technology, but I don't want all sorts of ridiculous flashy visuals. Just want a photo album that works the way I want it to work.

emAlbum will need some tweaks (or major overhaul) to make it do what I want, but it was pretty damn close, so I'm going to fart around with it for a bit.

z list

10:07am JST Sunday 21 May 2006

Things to do

Today there is a 5% chance of internet and 95% chance of being outside, so I will focus on non-internet activities:

o = started; * = finished

1. Contact UH and get transcript and diploma sent to school in Korea.

2. change website passwords

3. move /travel/Palestine/2005_olive_harvest/one_shade.jpg and two_shades.jpg

4. * move pictures out of online /images/journal directories:

   1. * 1998/
   2. * 1998/flood
   3. * 1998/rally
   4. * 1998/tree
   5. * 2001/07
   6. * 2002/03
   7. * 2002/06
   8. * 2002/07
   9. * 2002/11
   10. * 2002/12
   11. * 2003/03

5. create more albums in images/need_to_upload

6. Uploading more pictures from my hard drive:

   1. from Kobe to meditation center
   2. those that are in folders on the desktop (marble track, moving from me-an-Wende's house, etc)
   3. the final final ones from PB 52
   4. the final final final ones from PB 49 (unless I did them already)
   5. the ones from Koji's farm
   6. from riding to Koji's farm (unless those are done)

7. Incorporating them into my journal entries from those occasions.

8. decide what to do with /journal/images/kyoto_nara_kamakura

9. Updating iPhoto to iPhoto 6 (if it's a free upgrade, which I think it is)

10. figure out what I have transcribed from PB 52 journal

11. o list below what I need to transcribe from PB 52 journal

12. transcribe Japanese journal from PB 52:

    1. page on backside of picture with me and Kin sleeping
    2. page with me and Kin sleeping picture
    3. Kimberly and some guy picture page
    4. next page about Vodafone
    5. buncha pages after that

13. write card to あかね

14. mail November card to Delphine

15. mail card to あかね

16. mail card to Genkiman Dan

17. think about how logfiles can be sent to me

18. Write about my trip from Kobe to the meditation center

19. Research photo album software

    http://holocore.com/?PictureSync
    http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Images_and_Graphs/Image_Indexing/index.html
    http://www.view-sw.com/birch/
    http://www.emalbum.com/

    plus, this extracts images from mail messages with perl. Awesome.

    http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/05/07/iphoto_perl.html?page=2

20. Testing the output of saving for web and updating (or hopefully scrapping!) iPhoto_2_legible.pl as necessary.

21. write birthday reminder code

22. read email

23. research auto-geotagging camera

24. start looking into how to do googlemaps again. draw that red line!

25. look for official US govt info regarding Airplane Day

    archive it

26. * make a note to look again in (each year for) 10 years

27. in 10 years, look up public school textbooks about Airplane Day

28. archive proof against govt version physics911, etc

29. add birthday field to Rob Updates db

30. add birthdays:

    1. Rei, May 2nd
    2. Slavena, 17 February

31. write comic snagger with on/off switch

32. allow Rob Updates to change directory

33. think about writing site_visualizer; look for a free version

34. look in to marketing Francois branded cups and shirts

35. write to Jimmy regarding Francois branding

36. offer to take teddybear Tomoko's teddybear up Mt Fuji

37. login to quicken/turbotax to do taxes.

38. Ask Zach from World of Where if I can get a registration code (I helped him find some bugs in his previous version of the software (and paid for a registration anyway after he gave me one free); perhaps if I can find bugs in the new version...)

39. Write a Rob Update

40. Decide where to go next if I continue TJ Biking: (basic ideas:

    1. ? somewhere near Fuji to see the peeps who I met on the last day of PB52
    2. Odawara to meet Nachiko
    3. ? northwest Tokyo to meet Alice and her husband
    4. back into Tokyo), OR escape the country OR plant myself somewhere.

41. Decide what to do next...

42. comment on http://www.yruuspider.com/

43. see why ひかり doesn't show up correctly on http://robnugen.com/cgi-local/journal.pl?type=all&date=2003/08/09

zzz sugar addict

12:41am JST Wednesday 24 May 2006 (day 13209)

Kazzah suggested I might be addicted to sugar.

I certainly won't deny the possibility.

A liter of delicious vanilla ice cream: slurp!

A 400gram bag of granola: crunch!

My guts may be mad tomorrow, but my tummy is happy tonight.