Archive of January 2004

Thursday, January 29, 2004

CycleLog Search

It's been a long time coming, but the new CycleLog Search page is finally done! And looking into it a bit, I find that it was just over a year ago that I mentioned the shortcomings of the previous search utility.  The new search now allows you to perform all sorts of date based searches.  You can now locate a specific ride, date bounded rides, X number of rides forward or backward from a specific date, as well as all rides on or in a particular month, day, year or any combination of those parameters.

More important than this just being a new search page, this represents a new beginning, effectively the start of CycleLog V2.0.  There is an entire new code base that drives the search utility and ultimately, the entire project.  Everything from here forward will utilize object-oriented PHP, a template engine and will be XHTML standard compliant.  This has been a long time in the making, but well worth the effort.  The next step will be to update the simpler section of the site: Summary, Latest and Random Ride pages.  Then a new edit/add section will be built to replace the existing add only section.  This will make life much easier as currently I have to manually edit the database to correct any data entry errors.

Oh, happy day!
January 29, 2004 @ 12:33 pm | Category:
Thursday, January 22, 2004

The Doombolt

Alright, here’s just another classic example of "Way Too Much Time!" topic section. And again it seems to be college students that have all this excess idle time. Color me jealous!

So without further ado, here it is… The Doombolt. Not terribly practical, but quite educational. And it looks as though it would be quite an enjoyable way to waste some time. Jealous again!
January 22, 2004 @ 12:45 pm | Category:
Friday, January 16, 2004

"To infinity and beyond!"

Okay, maybe not quite infinity, but back to the moon and on to mars. At least that’s what President Bush has proposed we do. And I have to say that I’m very much in favor of doing so. There’s a lot to be learned for sure, but there would also be a lot of good technological spin-off that would come from the development program. Things that would benefit all of us. This will be a huge undertaking even if it’s just to get back to the moon again. But the work required to get to Mars is nothing less than colossal. But an effort worth making.

And now for the sad economic reality. Even if the U.S. Congress were to find the extra $1 billion that President Bush is seeking, would they be willing to give it to NASA? I think the social "do gooders" would surely argue against it. Not that helping the less fortunate is a bad thing, but how much of that money would truely reach those in need? And then there simply would be demands for more without a doubt. And in all fairness, as there will be for the space program also. So my thought are to give it to the cause I find more appealing: space exploration. Maybe if we stopped marching around the world blowing apart and rebuilding countries we’d be able to help both causes. $87 billion for Iraq? How about $43.5 billion for social reforms and space exploration each? Likewise, we are surely spending billions of dollars on Homeland Defense and the War on Terror. Gee, you don’t think any of that money is being misappropriated or simply wasted on something that’s not going to do a damn bit of good, do you? Nah, me neither. Thus the bottom line is we are simply going in too many directions and spending too much money for this to likely become a reality. Pity.
January 16, 2004 @ 12:51 pm | Category: