This isn't so much a site history update for this site - but an update on my business site that I am developing using the Drupal CMS.
I've just been playing with the latest version of the program pulled from the drupal CVS - and there are some really keen features that are working their way into the core of this product.
One of the features I am playing with is its 'aggregator' - which pulls XML feed from outside sites and plugs it into the CMS for display. I am of testing this with my own feed, but it doesn't seem to be getting anything besides the site description. So this post is to see if it picks up any new posts I have made.
And sure enough it picks it up without a hitch. Fantastic.
I'll be updating everyone on the launch of the new site as soon as its complete.
andre
Alex has also asked about how SCode is working on my movable type install.*
Awesome!
I haven't encountered any comment spam since I've installed it. There was one questionable comment - but it was put there by a real human - and since the comment was kind of on topic I left it. (If you are that desperate for a link from my site and you go through the trouble of posting a comment that is on topic - I'll let it slide).
I also haven't had any complaints regarding the fact that it only a "sighted" human input validation scheme. So, as I originally said, until I get a complaint I am going to leave it.
But now that alex mentions the SCode implementation - I noticed that I never labled the input field. Which tells me one of two things.
1) People are so used to seeing the little box of numbers they know exactly what to do in order to have their comment posted.
2) People have been getting frustrated by failed attempts to post comments.
I'm going to go ahead and fix that right now.
andre
*see Sighted Human Input Validation
As I had mentioned in a previous post, I have been busy trying to figure out my business name. I had been reading all the "expert" advice on the web. One interesting piece is found at IGOR (Formerly 100 Monkeys, who are in the business of coming up with names).
(and some other interesting articles in their Press Section)
'Igor' talks about looking to your competition and see what they are calling themselves. Come up with ideas. Push the envelope. etc. (I am paraphrasing).
I said "Hey, I've got a million ideas - sadly none of them are good enough for my business name" *pause* "what about calling myself 1,000,000 ideas?" *pause* "Nah, it really doesn't say anything about what I do..." *sigh* "neat name though... one million... that's a really big number... how can anyone really grasp how big a number it is... i'm sure someone has come up with a representation... it'd be easy... just make an image with 1,000,000 dots... it wouldn't be that big... it wouldn't be hard to do... I could do that in like 3 minutes... I wonder what it does look like..."
And so I made the image.
Alex points out that the image is broken. I'm pretty sure it works. I can see it fine on my 1600x1200 resolution screen. The problem is that 2x2px black dots with only 2px of white space around them ends up looking like a big gray screen. Squinting really hard or using the magnifying glass accessibility tool in windows might help to see the bigger picture.
As for why I did it at 2:00am? Its what I do at night - work. Sleeping is for wimps... but if I do have to sleep its between the hours of 5-11... and anyone awake during those ungodly hours is nutty. I suppose its either that i'm wired for life on the west coast - or that the world is simply a quieter place in the wee hours of the morning and I can actually get work done without distraction.
Now - if I'm ever going to have to start keeping normal business hours I might go insane - but if it means getting paid - I'm up for it.
andre
Ever wonder what one million looks like?
5 minutes ago the the thought occured to me again. What does one million look like?
So I fired up photoshop - created a 4px4 px image - with one pixel coloured black - saved it as a pattern - created 4000x4000 px image - filled it wth the newly defined pattern and voila - 1,000,000 dots.
For fun I painted one of them red. Can you find it?
Nine Hundred and Ninty Nine Thousdand Nine Hundred and Ninty Nine Black Dots and One Red One.
andre
As some of you may know, I've been searching for the perfect business name.
I desperately wanted to avoid using a common name or phrase. I wanted to come up with something original that meant something to me and said something about my business. Most importantly, I wanted to avoid ending up with a TLA or YABA.
I played with a number of ideas. I scanned every page of a thesaurus. I enlisted the help of all my friends. At the end of it all, I simply wasn't satisfied with any of the names I came up with.
So, in typical computer geek fashion I decided to let a computer come up with my name. Afterall, my business is web related and I work with computers 99% of the time - so why not let a computer choose.
Begin New Zen Learning Adventure.
I scoured the web for random word generators and found a ton of cool information on 'markov chains' and a few fun and friendly tools.
One of them was "The Random Word Generator" at fourteenminutes.com. It supplied me with hours of entertainment - and came up with a ton of amuzing (if not useful) names for my business.
Still, as a tool, the random word generator at fourteenminutes didn't have the one feature that I was looking for. It did allow you to supply the first few letters of the word the site would create, but it didn't allow you to specify the letters that would end the word.
So, I got in touch with Richard at fourteenminutes.com and asked if the feature would be available in the future - and, if not, would he mind sharing the source code so I could figure something out for myself.
Richard, a very fine fellow indeed, soon responded and said (I'm paraphrasing) "Yeah, that'd be a nice feature - but I have no time to do it right now - since you're clearly a polite neato cool person I've attached a version of the source code".
"Right On!" I said.
So - armed with a perl script and a small database file I was off to the races. The only problem is that I'm not a perl programmer. I can read it; I've worked with it, but I've honestly never written anything in it.
No problem - its a heck of a lot like PHP (or PHP is a heck of a lot like perl) - So i decided to port the program. Right away I realized this might be a mistake. PHP wasn't designed to crunch the amount of data that this little program crunched. There was a reson this was written in perl. But, no problem - I would just have to squeeze a bit more efficiency out of the code.
After finding a few CPU savings I finally got my version of the random word generator working.
Then it was on to tackling the original problem: Random words that end in the letters I want. The idea was simple - just do what the random word generator does - but in reverse. So after re-jigging the database and fudging with the code a bit I did it. Its not perfect - and some of the CPU savings from my first version could not be applied to the new version - but it works.
You can try my reverse random word generator here.
So ends another Zen Learning experience
I still don't have a business name, but one can't be far behind when I have tools that come up with words such as:
pivolution
wrizio
lerpostion
bletruio
Then again - its the same tool that comes up with winners like:
infyhsnggrud
tchbectiudehidelznor
tbicglgrud
borecofsrup
*shrug*
andre