March 2007

Escapepodder 0.17

Released Escapepodder 0.17. Just a little maintenance release. Added:

• Case insensistive mp3 extentions
• Fix for a buffer overrun issue with long titles

Paraquat in RockErie

Here's the site for my band Paraquat at RockErie. Hopefully, we'll get a few songs up there soon.

Edit Mar 28: Ooops...wrong website.

More Thingamablog Commenting

Added some maintenance functions to my commenting script. Not pretty to work with, but still workable to remove junk (i.e. lots of debugging statements!).

Relative Sizes

If you think the Earth is big, and the Sun is big, check out this video.

Thingamablog - Archiving Settings to Fix Upload Issues

One of my complaints about Thingamablog is that it seems to try to upload every web page all the time. I changed my archive settings and it seems to behave better. Here's how I'm doing it now.

Commenting Within a Thingamablog Post

Note that this is in reply to this post.

Let me start off by staying that I'm not a PHP guru by any means. However, if you want to have the comment for Thingamablog included after the post, you should add the following PHP script to the Thingamablog template after the comment. Modify accordingly if you have tweaked your add_comment.php file.

Please note that I have not tested this! But it should be close.

<?php
// Change mailto to your e-mail address, or leave blank if you don't want to mail notification
    $mailto = "xxx@yyy.com";
    $mail_program = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t";
    $post_key    = "123456";
    $origin = $_POST["origin"];
    $title="<EntryTitle><$EntryTitle$></EntryTitle>";
    $permalink="<$EntryPermalink$>";
    $article="<$EntryID$>";
    $base='.';

    echo "<form action=\"add_comment.php\" method=\"post\">";
    echo "Your Name: <input name=\"user\" type=\"text\" /><br />";
    echo "E-mail (optional, will not be posted): <input name=\"email\" type=\"text\" /><br />";
    echo "Web site (i.e. www.xxx.com): <input name=\"www\" type=\"text\" /><br />";
    echo "Comment:<br><textarea name=\"comment\" cols=\"70\" rows=\"20\" ></textarea>";
    echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"post_val\" value=\"$post_key\">";
    echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"article\" value=\"$article\">";
    echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"permalink\" value=\"$permalink\">";
    echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"title\" value=\"$title\">";
    echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"origin\" value=\"$origin\"><br>";
    echo "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Submit\" />";
    echo "</form>";
?>

Doctor Who Review

Well, I just got through watching the first episode of the new Doctor Who (well, the 2005 series) and it rocked! I liked the Tom Baker series of Doctor Who, but I always thought that was a bit campy and silly. The special effects made this one a lot more fun, and just the being filmed outside and on location made it a lot more believable and watchable. I loved it...it is my new favorite TV show, so now I'm going to have to get the whole series on Netflix.

I was a bit nervous after seeing Sneakatron's comment, but hopefully this one will stick around in my 'favorites' for a while. Definitely my favorite TV show. Can't really say what other TV shows I watch, though.

Thingamablog Woes

I reduced the size of my archive templates in Thingamablog by removing unnecessary junk that I wasn't using, like the calender. It seemed to update faster, but didn't seem to help my problem of getting the 'null reply from server' error message.

Test Comment for Antispam

This is a test comment to test if my lame antispam comment filter is working.

Waves Photographed in a Wine Glass

Ok, the wine glass made music, and this is sort of a science experiment. I filled up a wine glass full of water and ran my finger around it to make a musical tone. I then used my camera to take a picture of the waves. The thought was that I could determine the tone that was being played by counting the waves and doing some math with respect to the circumference. Well, I didn't do any of the math, but got a cool picture of the waves around the outside of the glass.

Thingamablog Update - Latest News

Unfortunately, nothing new to report.

Hi James,

So far so good. Unfortunately, not much new to report- Still working on it.

-Bob

Playing with the Look

After checking out Sneakatron's Thingamablog website, I was inspired to play with the look a bit. Hopefully nothing major is broken, but at least the front page has a new look for a change. Maybe a bit cleaner.

Hurra Torpedo

Check out Hurra Torpedo, the world's leading appliance rock band, from Norway. They have a guitarist and two guys who bang on freezers, stoves, and other assorted kitchen appliances. Quite an amazing sound for such a strange makeup.

Twitter

I've been playing around with Twitter, a sort of mini-blog thing where users post simple one line statements as to what they are doing. It's kind of interesting, but I'm still not sure what the point of it is. Maybe the point is to waste time and watch other people wasting time.

Doctor Who on WQLN

According to the WQLN website, Doctor Who will show up on Friday, March 23rd, at 10:00 pm!

Ani-movie Camera Repair

My son's camera, an Ani-movie animator camera, stopped working with its SD card. Upon disassembly of the camera, I saw that there was a plastic shield that would go between the pins of the SD card and the SD card cage (which holds the card). That shield had been mashed into many pieces by the SD card. I pulled out all the pieces with a needle nosed pliers and small screwdriver, and replaced it with a thick piece of plastic that I had lying around which was used to create stencils. You have to be very careful when putting in the card to make sure that the SD card is between the circuit board and the new plastic shield. My guess is that when I want to put the SD card in, it is safest to take the camera apart to make sure that the SD card is in the right position.

Camera disassembled with new shield in place

Detail of SD card cage with SD card in place.

Here's why I made the statement of wanting to disassemble the camera when inserting the card. I tried putting in the card manually, and mashed the second to leftmost pin because the SD card came to the wrong side of the shield.

Cleaning your keyboard by washing it

I read that you could clean your keyboard by washing it in a dishwasher. My son's keyboard was filthy, so I decided to try it. It came out beautiful, and even worked for a while. Then, it stopped working. The caps light comes on after powering up the computer, but that's it. Now I have a mostly dead keyboard. Maybe I should try washing it again.

In any case, word to the wise - don't wash your keyboard! I suspect that minerals from the water might be causing trouble. Regardless if it is minerals that is causing the problem, I'm out a keyboard.