Category: Maintenance

I’m working on something kinda new.

It’s always been my dream that people could here the songs which I name the entires after. The problem’s always been that embedding audio is a royal pain, as Real, Windows Media Player, and Quicktime never came seem to agree on a happy medium.

So screw that. I found a stat which says that 97% of web users have Macromedia (Now Adobe, I believe) Flashplayer. Odds are that you are one of the 97%, and so I found a flash-based solution. Originally, I had tried XSPF Web Player, which was a small, simple player that actually uses an open source architecture for the structure of the playlists, which is rockin’, but it was too hard for me to get the hang of. [I couldn't get the *.xspf files to behave correctly.]

A much simpler solution was the Audio Player for WordPress Plugin. It integrates directly with WordPress, and has a lot of customization without me needing to learn any crazy programming stuff. Which is neat.

So without further ado:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I think in the future I’ll just stick these right at the top. You can listen to the song and read the entry concurrently. Any feedback on this little feature would be stellar. Right now I’ll upload some legacy tracks to the entries on the homepage. I’m not sure if I’ll be leaving them there forever, but we’ll see.

I don’t want people munching up my bandwidth just listening to MP3s and not reading the posts, so it might be a “only 10 audio files online” at a time thing. We’ll see. For now though, enjoy!

I should also say: I got so distracted working on this little tweak that I neglected to study for a German test I had Wednesday until like… 2 AM on Wednesday… Which was dumb. But this thing’s really cool, and the test was a joke, so I guess it’s all good.

That probably was my latest college night this year, clocking in at 4:30 AM before I was in bed and turning off the light. I was fine the next day though, which is encouraging; though sleep-fest of this semester has made me soft, I still got it where it counts, you know?

I’ve been caught up in a number of technological things. First and foremost, I finally made some headway on the Student Senate’s new website. wooooo. (In truth, it actually looks pretty good; link later once it’s up) In that vein, I also found out that Senate is funding my early return! Which is bittersweet, and means that my summer officially ends on Friday, August 17th.

While I was working on the Senate site, I started getting booted from the server. While I was on ITS’s site checking that it was their problem, not mine, I found a pretty cool link. It’s called Zamzar. What it does is convert a vast number of file types into… another vast number of file types. For instance, say I downloaded one of those cool vector graphics from wikipedia, and wanted to edit it in an older version of Adobe PS or stick it in a powerpoint without worrying about its fancy properties messing things up.

Zamzar claims to be able to turn that PNG into a regular ol’ JPG no problem.
I’ve yet to try it, and I’m mainly blogging about it so I save the link in case I find myself needing it in the future.

Additionally, I’m thinking about adding SnapShots to this site. Just toying with the idea, really. I like the blogs where I have a TON of links, just becuase a la wikpedia, getting distracted in reading the exact back-story of several little references is something I have a lot of fun with. SnapShots is a tool that makes a little preview pane of all those links pop up.

To check out exactly what I mean, I’m going to refer you to Ethan’s Xanga. Xanga started using SnapShots a few months ago. Initially, it irritated me, but I’ve sortof grown to like them and recognize the utility. Not that anyone really reads this, but if you do, and you have an oppinion on SnapShots, I’d like to know.

It wouldn’t be over-kill, it would only be links to stuff off-site that got the little preview pane, and it’s supposed to load really quickly. So I’ll see. It could be more trouble than it’s worth, but it could also be kinda slick.

Finally, I just wanted to comment on one of my favorite webcomics: Ctrl+Alt+Del. I really do enjoy this comic, but it can be a sortof love-hate relationship. The author summed it up best for me, placing the two extremes of the dichotomy of the comic back-to-back:
I hate these…
But this is incredibly funny.

If you see the SnapShots start popping up, it means I’m tooling around with them. Even if I decide that they’re gonna stay, there’s code I can put up that allows you to turn them off, so fear not.

I’m happy to say it; We’re Back in Business!

After three really intense days I’ve beaten WordPress into behaving how I want it to, the archives are all integrated with the old material, and I’ve made some aesthetic changes as well:

The Navigation buttons above have been scaled down so they take less bandwidth and load faster, which I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time. Additionally, we’ve got a new set of banners up top (also scaled down in terms of size, but hopefully not noticeably in quality), which I’m quite pleased with. I also updated the F.A.Q. and the About pages to reflect the recent changes and upgrades in the site.

All-in-all, Tuesday’s little mishap with Graymatter turned out to be really a blessing in disguise. WordPress is a really cool utility that I’m excited to use more. In the process, I learned a lot of new things, and got some older skills back into shape. It was a fun experience. I’m also going to keep tweaking this layout (in particular, the comments form is sorta rough; I’ll get to it soon), but for the most part, it’s squared away.

[If you check more towards the bottom of the page, I've actually posted the post that incidentally killed Schrödinger's Blog v.1.2.]

But, that said, I’d like to introduce Schrödinger’s Blog, version 2.0!
[Please Also Note: You'll need to subscribe to the new RSS feed, just as you did the old one. They look the same, but feed from different sources, and the previous one will not be updated anymore. Thanks!]

Additionally, for anyone that cares, there’s a new clip out for Evangelion 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE-

So it’s going to be a long time before things are REALLY up and running again. However, WordPress is my god now and forever. You know why? I was able to automatically import ALL the old entires from GreyMatter, despite the fact that their core was completely shot.

That alone is saving me an incredible amount of time.
Plus this interface is slick as hell, and will do some cool stuff once I get it to work.

I’ll remove the temporary index and allow things to follow here as soon as a get the theme wrangled into looking like my website, and not some template.

So welcome to the new age…

To begin with, two crazy stories:

A woman came into the cleaners (Brookside, not Foxhill) the other day to pick up a lot of her winter things so she could put them in storage. To thank us for such a good job, she gave us a box of strawberries! How nice (plus, they were delicious). Then she asked to use the phone to call a cab. OK, awesome.

So we wait for a while, no cab. Finally one comes by, but it’s not the right company. Then it comes by again. The lady figures that maybe she was just confused, and maybe that really is her cab. So she goes out there, and the cab stops. Then, in a weird twist of fate, two people get out of the back of the cab! The lady kinda freaks out, and starts backing towards the Cleaner’s building. The two young women that got out start following her!

Suddenly, she’s back inside, telling them she just doesn’t feel comfortable with it all, and they’re giving her trouble, yelling back out to the driver that “she say she ain’t interested.” To which the woman replies, “that sounds terrible! That’s not what I mean, it’s just…” But these two women will not leaver her alone. So? So I lay down the smack. I go out in front of my little counter that separates employees from customers, and I tell the women that it’s fine, and they should leave. “Really, it’s OK. We’ll take care of it.”

They left. I felt slightly useful and assertive.
The old woman then clarified to Chris (the other person working at the time) and I that when she went outside, the man said the two young ladies were his daughters, and he was just taking them home from school [At 5 PM in July, shyeah, RIGHT]. They then offered to “wait at the cleaners, so you can ride alone with our dad.” Which just sounds like all kinds of wrong.

I was surprised at the woman’s unwillingness to get into the cab. She trusted her gut, and it paid off. We called the cab company back, and they said they hadn’t even sent anyone yet. So that whole dad-daughter combo was just trying to scam a fare! Gryah. Creepy. Eventually the lady’s REAL cab did come, and Chris and I each got a dollar tip, which never happens ever.

It was exciting.
About as exciting as dry cleaning gets, honestly.
[Some other guy came in and made a big fuss, but it's not that great a story, so I digress.]

The other story comes from directly after Ethan and I saw Live Free or Die Hard, two nights ago. Let me preface this by saying that this movie is terrific. The story is really solid, and I actually enjoyed the way the characters were formed throughout. You got a little bit of an idea as to why John McClane is the way he is, as well as what’s been going on since he was a big ol’ mess in Die Hard, With a Vengeance.

Struby and I were at a 9 PM showing of the film. Factor in 16 minutes of previews to a 2 hour, 15 minute movie, plus a bit of the credits, and we were getting out somewhere around 11:34. We come out and all of a sudden, there’s like, some kindof mob. The hallway was jam-packed with people. Ethan voiced his bemusement at what they were all doing there. I told him (albeit with a dash of profanity) that it was because of Harry Potter. We slowly started to work our way through the giant crowd.

Only then did I understand the gravity of the situation. The crowd went way far back, an insane amount; it was going to take FOREVER to get out of the theater. Plus that meant working our way through a myriad of robe-clad pre-teens and their disgruntled “muggle” parents. It was here that I remembered that they normally have exit only doors near the furthest theaters, like the one we were in. I spun around, beginning to panic, and I saw that glowing EXIT sign back where we came out.

“Ethan, exit!” I shouted. We both turned around and quickly started to back track. However, the space that was open when we exited was quickly closing up with a mass of Potter-ites. I began to run, dreading becoming trapped by the crowd. Ethan frantically yelled after me, “Run Tom, run!”

And run I did.
But something was wrong.
The Potter-ites were getting angry, even hostile-looking.

“Heeeeeey! No cutting!” I heard from behind us.
Oh dear god, I thought. It’s like coming between a mother grizzly and her cubs. Except the cub is a highly anticipated blockbuster sequel wizard film, and the grizzly is its teeming mass/mob of fans. I knew we didn’t have long. I ran faster.

*slam* We threw the exit door open and slammed it shut behind us. After which we preceded to laughed the entire way to the car. It was that funny. And so I’ll always remember that as the time I almost saw Harry Potter 5 at the midnight showing.

I ate an entire box of macaroni and cheese this afternoon.
The immense feeling of regret concerning that decision is indistinguishable from the weird feeling I have in my tummy right now. I hope I’m going to be alright.

[Author/Editor's Note: Here, I pushed the 'post' button. The browser hung, so I copied the text you see above, and closed the window. Upon re-logging in, I tried to edit my posts. Greymatter tersely informed me that "there [were] are no posts to edit yet!” I preceded to freak out for about five minutes before booting up my FTP to assess the damage, which turned out to be localized to the core of GM, but quite extensive in its destruction!

The following post is what I used for a temporary index from the 13th to the 14th:]

Tragedy struck yesterday. In a terrible accident resulting in some crazy mis-posting, I effectively killed GreyMatter. AGAIN. Please recall this previously happening sometime in the past. It escapes me when, but I assuredly remember the feeling. It’s crucial to remember that the software’s pretty dated. The last official release was sometime in 2001 if I’m reading the literature correctly. Noah Grey stopped supporting it the next year. Just this past year the official forums went offline in an attempt to kill the project. A dedicated few of us solidered on, and tried to keep the project alive. Alas, this is where we part, sweet Greymatter.

You are too easy to break, and I know next to zilch about PERL, so fixing you is just not an option. In the end, everything’s still here, all the old entries that is, but it’s just a shell for what it once was. I assure you the inside is quite dead, and I cannot fix it, nor update anything new at all. And thus, we enter into another one of these delightful intermediaries whereby I do not post not becuase I am lazy (as per usual) but becasue I’m fixing the site.

I’ll be attempting a bold switch-over to the much newer, much fancier, much more popular WordPress. It comes well recommended, and has the ONE feature I need: timestamp editing. This way I’ll be able to load in the guts of the old entires, and change the timestamps to the correct date and time. Once this is all said and done, I should be able to pick up where I left off. You’ll even get to see the entry that served as the final nail in Greymatter’s coffin.

How entirely morbid.
In any case, I’ll be coding for most of the next few days, with classical music being pumped into my ears to keep me from having intermediate freak-out-sessions. We’ll see how it goes!