Archive of December 2004

Friday, December 17, 2004

jpcache

If you run/code a PHP based sites, you owe it to yourself to check out jpcache.  I've been using it here at PolarLava for at least the past year and a half.  This bad boy will GZip compress your pages before they are sent to the browser, which cuts down on your bandwidth as well as speeds up your page loads.  Additionally you can tell it to cache a page for a specified period of time.  This makes those DB generated "static" pages into true static pages, thus making them much faster.  And you have your choice of either storing your cached pages in flat files or a MySQL database, which is what I do.

Another alternative if you are distributing code but don't need caching, is my GZipContent class.  It provides the benefit from GZipping compressing the output, but doesn't do any caching.  If you are interested in this, just drop me a line.

Although it's not released as of this writing, GZContent will be part of PolarBlog beginning in V1.4.0.  Although this blog actually doesn't nor will it be using that, as my whole site runs under jpcache.  ;)

01/04/2005
A few weeks back I spent some time hacking on jpcache to implement a feature that I wanted, but it lacked.  That being the ability to flush individual pages.  I had added the ability to flush all pages, permanently cached pages or just expirable pages some time ago.  But you still couldn't flush individual pages.  Previously I had sent this basic flushing change to Jean-Pierre, the developer of this application for possible inclusion in a  future release.  Like all of us, he's busy and has not put out a new release in quite some time.  Anyhow, I've pushed this modification a bit further now and have the ability to flush individually cached pages.  Generally this is far more useful than flushing groups of pages, although sometimes that is useful too.  I forwarded this latest change to Jean-Pierre who wrote me back to let me know that some form of this will make it into the next release of jpcache which he hopes to start on soon.  Yeah!
December 17, 2004 @ 12:51 pm | Category:

This is del.icio.us

Okay, I've been lurking around it for a while, but I finally signed up at del.icio.us have started my own bookmark collection.  I can see this becoming really addictive, but also very useful.

I used to collect lots of bookmarks, but they were always a hassle to manage.  Thus several years ago I basically stopped book marking things and would just search for whatever I needed.  Google obviously has made this easier, but often you can't find your way back to that exact link you found previously.  You know the one…the one you didn't bother to save or bookmark!  ;)

The biggest reason I like this is that it will allow me to easily "share" my bookmarks between work, home and wherever I may happen to be.  I can always access this list.  This is also the same reason that I switched to using a web mail interface exclusively a few years back.  Unless you are always in one place —very unlikely for most people these days, you need to be able to access your information globally.
December 17, 2004 @ 12:39 pm | Category:
Tuesday, December 14, 2004

2nd Blogversary

Today marks the second anniversary of the PolarLava Blog. And here is the now infamous first post.  Being a generally pointless post, here's a generally pointless link to last year's posting about this momentous event.
December 14, 2004 @ 12:35 pm | Category:
Monday, December 13, 2004

LiveStrong, Die Prematurely

You try to do something good and what do you get?  In some cases, maybe death when you could still be saved!  DOH!
December 13, 2004 @ 05:07 pm | Category:
Saturday, December 11, 2004

PolarBlog V1.3.0 Beta

I'm now running what will be PolarBlog V1.3.0 on this, my live blog.  If you notice anything odd, let me know.  There are a few bug fixes and enhancements in this release, but the biggie for this release is internationalization (I18N).  With this release —barring any unknown problems, PolarBlog should now support languages other than U.S. English.  I've been working with a German developer on implementing this and he may also be beta testing this as well in the coming days.  If you are fluent in something other than English, translators are need.

Looking ahead to V1.4, if you have features you would like to see added please let me know.  At this time I know of two feature that will be in V1.4:
  • Topic Icon Sizing - Right now all icons are locked at 32x32.  This was a carryover from PWL.  I may add scaleable sizing to the Topic Edit section, but that may be more trouble than it is worth.  At the very least the 32x32 lockdown will be removed.  That's a trivial change.
  • Output Compression - I will be add the ability to gzip compress your PolarBlog output.  This creates a minor load increase on the web server, but it cuts your bandwidth useage greatly.
December 11, 2004 @ 04:37 pm | Category:
Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Quality Parenting

As a parent I often question whether I am qualified or even mentally fit to be "molding" little minds.  But then along comes quality parenting like this to make me feel better.  I might not be "Father of the Year", but I think this fall under the category of "Things you really should know not to do".
December 8, 2004 @ 05:18 pm | Category:
Tuesday, December 07, 2004

PolarBlog V1.2.3 Released

This unplanned release fixes a problem introduced in V1.2.2 whereby the Comment link on an entry would display the entry (ala Permalink), but not the commenting form!  I've also backed out half of the change made to the DisplayEdit() function that dealt with converting HTML entities.  This wasn't working as well as I had hoped and I need to explore this further.  This entity situation is likely of minimal impact to anyone.
December 7, 2004 @ 11:02 am | Category:

Christmas Lights

Every year it's the same thing…I vow that putting up the Christmas lights outside isn't going to get me all pissed off and stressed out.  And every year I seem to fail in this pursuit!  Yesterday was this year's adventure and it proved once again to foil my best intentions, although it really doesn't stress me out any more as I've come to expect it.  I hauled out the lights and started checking full strings of lights to see if they work.  After last year's adventure I vowed I wouldn't mess with burnt out strings as it it dirt cheap to replace them anymore.  So everthing is working except the one special/short string that I have to have for around the bedroom window.  Figures.  Score: Lights 1, Kevin 0.  Time for a beer!  I then plunk down and begin working through checking each bulb in the string.  Not bad, only 4 bad bulbs in a string of about 50 lights!  Grrr, but successful.  Score: Lights 1, Kevin 1.  Let the hanging begin…the lights that is, not me.

I hauled out the folding ladder I recently aquired when my mother-in-law moved out of her house, only to find it's about 2 feet shorter than my old bulky wooden ladder in the garage.  It reaches, but it doesn't extend past the roof line.  Ah, what the hell, that will do for now…I only have to pop up there real quick and put these lights around the two windows.  So after stringing up a power cord, up on the rooftop click, click, click…I stretch out the lights and begin to put them up.  I get about two feet done when, CRUNCH!  I step on the string and break a bulb.  Grrr.  Score: Lights 2, Kevin 1.  Of course the replacement bulbs are down on the porch.  Great, now I need to go down and get them.  Oh, but before I do that, I should probably rip one of my fingers open on this piece of protruding siding.  Yep, just like that and now I'm bleeding too.  Score: Lights 3, Kevin 1.  I then learned what I already knew…always extend a ladder beyond the point you are getting off of it.  Now I must hang over the edge of the roof and locate a rung to step on and then stand up without falling.  These days I climb on my roof about once a year…to put up these damn lights!  So after a bit of testing my approach to decending and quick checking that my wife isn't going to see me when I fall, but yet come out and find me before I die, I climb down…successfully.  After bandaging my finger and retrieving the replacement bulbs, it's back up to the roof.  With the bulb replace and the lights again working, it's time to start putting them up again. Score: Lights 3, Kevin 2.

I begin putting the lights around the window, but they keep popping loose in places.  So now we must delve into a long story…  The first year I put lights on the gutters I tried to use little metal bulb hooks to hang the lights.  This worked prefectly until the wind began to howl —as it always does here in Buffalo.  At that point, half of the lights got flipped up into the gutter.  So the next year I found a much better solution.  I bought these small plastic clips that attached to the gutter with velcro.  Cool, easy up, easy down, and they worked really well —the first year.  They worked so well that first year that the next year I expanded my efforts to now put lights around the front window and the second floor bedroom windows.  But after a couple of years of being blasted by ever increasing UV radiation, the velco "fuzzy pads" (That's the technical term, you know.) began to disintegrate.  I had to replace some on the gutters last year and now it was time to pay the piper on the bedroom windows.  This means another trip down to the workshop to cut some velcro strips.  Grrr.  Score: Lights 4, Kevin 2.  Man, I'm getting my ass kicked once again!

With a pocket full of velcro pads I trudged back up to the roof and began replacing pads.  Score: Lights 4, Kevin 3.  But not for long…the old pads don't want to peel off in one piece.  After struggling to lift a corner of them, they then shred into small strips or little pieces!  Grrr.  Score: Lights 5, Kevin 3.  So it's another trip down to the workshop to get a razor scraper which makes removal quick and easy.  Score: Lights 5, Kevin 4.  Ah ha, the comeback!  So the lights go up on the first window without further incident and it's on to the second window.  We're rolling now!  What the #!@$%!!!  A third of the way through the second window and all of the sudden this string of lights is out.  Lights 6, Kevin 4.  I begin to remove the lights and scan for a broken bulb.  Nope.  So I start looking for suspect bulbs and I'm banging the lights around and the next thing I know the're working again!  So are the working or are they broke?  I shake the around and they stay on.  I used to do a lot of electronics repair work.  Often times you would remove components and replace them or wiggle cables and things start working…just like this adventure.  We always called this "cable magic" and you moved on.  So am I.  Lights 6, Kevin 5.  So it's back to replacing pads and hanging lights.  Lights 6, Kevin 6.  Yeah!  On to the gutter/trim lights.

The new ladder worked much better for the gutter lights, but once again the velcro demon reared its ugly head.  Lights 7, Kevin 6.  But some more scraping and replacing and we are moving along.  Lights 7, Kevin 7.  The gutters are completed without further incident.  On to the front window.  Again, it's the velcro demon (Lights 8, Kevin 7) and of course I need more pads than I cut.  Lights 9, Kevin 7.  Another trip to the workshop, scrape, replace and hang and we are done with phase I.  Lights 9, Kevin 9.

Phase II: Lights on the banister and the giant candlesticks.  I went absolutely crazy wrapping lights around the banister last year.  Things were going well and I was having fun.  Until after the holidays and I had to unwind this mess.  Remembering my mental note from last year, I scaled things back and didn't wind as many lights this year.  So I get the banister done without incident.  Lights 9, Kevin 10, take that!
The giant candlesticks are likely nearly as old as I am.  These were from my wife (a.k.a. "The sentimentalist") when she was a kid.  They get blown over a lot and I used to have to take them apart and change the bulbs a couple of time every year.  After a couple of years of that nonsense, I learned to bungee cord them to the stair hand rails.  Thus I was quite suprised when I hooked them up and they both still worked without having to repair them after getting banged around in the garage all year.  Lights 9, Kevin 11, hah!  Then it was just a matter of getting the extension cord connections and X-10 controller wrapped up in plastic so they don't blow.  Lights 9, Kevin 12, we have a clear winner!

This year's first lesson is that I need to find some sort of replacement for the velco hangers or prepare better ahead of time next year.  And now I stand back and admire my handy work…and turn around to learn my second lesson: I see numerous houses down my street right out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!  My lights are so lame, why do I bother?
December 7, 2004 @ 07:03 am | Category:
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