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Me and Ellen and a horse (July 20, 2007)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

He became so absorbed in his reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk to dawn, and his days from dawn to dusk; and thus, from so little sleep and from so much reading, his brain dried up, so that he came to lose all judgement.

Miguel de Cervantes


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Saturday, October 6th, 2007

🦋 New features

OK so it's a little corny... I spent last night and some of this morning writing code to administer and display at random different images and quotes at the top of the blog. This is fun, but I think I am doing it mainly for the sake of getting better at writing SQL queries and PHP scripts. The administrative pages are set up pretty nice and clean, I think.


...And guess what I have now!!! -- The ability to delete posts, something I have never been able to do before; and an automated backup script for the whole site, databases and scripts and all. Currently all my data zips up to ¾M.


Ok, so instead of putting up new posts every time I add a feature, I am just going to update this post for a while. (Hopefully I will get out of programmer head sometime and be able to think about anything besides updating the site...*) Just now I wrote a really cool addition to the database which handles categorization of posts with SQL joins instead of dumb text searching. This will eventually, I am thinking, allow me to include lots of interesting (?) information in the sidebar about what category of post is being displayed, which will involve some pretty sophisticated programming.


*This morning I was trying to read Other Colors and I couldn't stop thinking about database tables! How annoying.

posted afternoon of October 6th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Codex Seraphinianus download

Bill just told me about the Grey Lodge Occult Review which looks like a fun site. The first thing I noticed is, their current issue has a downloadable edition of Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus. Cool!

Update: You can also read the book at scribd.

posted morning of October 6th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, October 5th, 2007

🦋 Linkrot

So here's what I did, see: There are thousands of links all over the internets pointing to my blog, with the address http://www.readin.com/blog/blog.asp. Well I wanted to write the site in PHP; but what to do about all those old links? As it turns out I just kept the same url and told my http server to send .asp files to php:

AddHandler php5-script asp

I'm pretty sure the new script is able to handle all the parameters the old script was, and to give back quite similar results for nearly any set of parameters. So hopefully all those old links are going to continue to work.

posted evening of October 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Programming Projects

🦋 A Streetcar Named Desire

Tonight I was watching A Streetcar Named Desire and thinking about All About My Mother -- as I noted before I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the source material and then watch Almodóvar's take on it again. Really nice viewing experience -- I was able to start imagining that Brando and Malden and Leigh and Hunter were members of the same circle as Almodóvar's characters.

Note: Brando seems too young for his character at points. Leigh does too, especially early in the film.

posted evening of October 5th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 And, we're live!

Hi everybody, this is my new blog. I realize it looks largely the same as my old blog, if not indistinguishable. But it's quite different under the interface, and I have got lotsa plans for ways to enhance it and improve your user experience. (Hopefully they will come to fruition sooner than the plans expressed in the last paragraph here.)

posted evening of October 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

🦋 First post using the New Software

PHP is the coolest.

Update: But its lack of required declaration of variables is, well, kind of a pain.

posted evening of October 4th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, October first, 2007

🦋 Woo-hoo!

Well now I've got Apache 2 and PHP 5 installed on the new server, and working nicely together. Tonight or tomorrow should see MySql working, and then I'll be ready to write a test version of this blog. Also: I built my own vim, because the one that came in the distribution did not have a lot of features I use like syntax highlighting and mouse support.

Update: ...And, MySql is working! A bit of a hassle while I recompiled the latest version of php with MySql support, broke it, and eventually fixed it. (Still not quite sure what was broken or how I fixed it; but am finding the FAQ's at php.net pretty useful.)

Update: Here is an update done with the new system.

posted evening of October first, 2007: Respond

🦋 Ornamentation

One thing the sheet music for Farewell to Peter does not include, is the fiddly bits that you hear when you listen to Natalie MacMaster playing it -- grace notes, trills, etc.. I've been trying to get some of these going on, and having a little success with it; but more success when I am not looking at the sheet music.

posted morning of October first, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, September 30th, 2007

🦋 The right idea

Tonight for bedtime stories, I read the end of De Jong's Along Came a Dog to Sylvia. She noticed there were several blank pages after the last page of text and wanted to know why. Well... I'm not sure, that's just how it always is with chapter books... Sylvia's suggestion: "That way if you don't think the story's over, you can write some more."

posted evening of September 30th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 A deep, resonant quality

Playing that viola feels like having an organ on your shoulder! (No, not like that, get your mind out of the gutter.) -- Tonight I played all of Farewell to Peter, which I have played bits and pieces of but never the whole thing. My music reading is getting better -- playing "the whole thing" meant being able to distinguish the slight differences in the repetitions of the theme, based on their representation on paper. I was transposing from F down to B♭, because I was reading the music as if I were playing a violin -- i.e. where I read notation for "A", I was playing D. This is way easier than it sounds. I should probably figure out how to read viola music straight at some point.

Update: Hmm... apparently learning to read viola music straight is going to involve accustoming myself to a new clef. May possibly never happen.

...and Later: Well, I bought a book of music in alto clef today -- 6 Suites for solo viola, by J.S. Bach. Wonder if this will go anywhere.

posted evening of September 30th, 2007: Respond
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