Great Hackers is probably the best article on programming (and to a lesser extent, problem solving in a technical setting) that I’ve ever read. It resonates.
Tag Archives: programming
Things You Should Never Do, Part I – Joel on Software
A great article on coding — and something I need to keep in mind a little more often when campaigning for massive change in the more code-related areas of my life: Things You Should Never Do, Part I
Whoo! I’m still a programmer!
I wrote my first plugin, or rather significantly modified someone else’s plugin, to offer better comic navigation for the comics. If you’re on the homepage, you still have to click the “navigation links” link under the current comic to get to the nav links, but once you do that, you can now navigate through the archive by category — so if you just want to read the Get Outta My Head comics, you can do that, or just the Sketchy Theater, or just the Idiocy on the Internet. And the Comics category stays there so you can navigate through all the comics as well. This makes me happy :)
Next three orders of business: fix the left nav up because one of my images keeps stepping on it (might be “fix the image” instead) and then add some big ole buttons to access the forum and the store to the top somewhere.
But not right now. This programmer’s going to go get some sleep.
Just catching up
So I’ve been pretty busy. Working hard at work, and resting hard at home. We spent the first half of the weekend with family, celebrating birthdays and fixing computers. We spent the second half of the weekend with appliances – dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, etc. Right now is computer time: I’m trying to fix some new problems in the forum, and Nighthawk is trying to learn all the patterns to beat Pac Man.
Yeah, I don’t even ask anymore.
Anyway, it looks like one of the bb plugins I’d added prevented everyones’ signatures from displaying on the bulletin boards. I’m still trying to hunt out why but suspect I’ll be doing a lot of code rewriting in the near future. Ah well, that’s how you learn, right?
It’s been, well, quiet lately. A lot of people seem to be off doing there own thing. The forums have been quiet, friends have been out of touch, even the comic community seems to be quieter than usual. Or maybe it’s just me – I’ve been so busy I haven’t been around to cause my usual level of trouble.
I’m staying about a week ahead on comics and have more stuff to add shortly. I think. I’m still knitting and working on my Mother’s Day gift too.
That’s all that’s new here. How’re you all?
OCD 2006 update and soon sleep
So, it’s 2 AM and I’ve been monitoring the Online Comics Day spider (which checks the fidelity of links and linkbacks) for the Online Comics Day hub since about 9:00, taking over for Aric, who’d monitored it prior to that.
Midnight EDT resulted in a whole bunch of comics updating (ah, chron jobs) and it took a while for the spider to churn through, so that by the time everything updated and everyone was notified, it was time to run the spider again. Whee.
1 AM (when I originally planned to go to bed) resulted in almost as large an update, plus by then the comic checking code borked the status of 3 comics and I had to manually log into the database to fix ’em. Oh yeah, that’s a lot of fun, by the way. I’m pretty good with mysql through phpMyAdmin, but I’d never used a pure command-line to update it before. Honestly, I think it was actually easier than phpMyAdmin for the small changes I was making. Then again, it’s 2 AM, I might just be delerious.
Anywho, by the time I got THAT straightened out it was almost 2, so I figured I’d run the spider one more time before I go to bed. Strangely, no updates. I guess nobody in Mountain time decided to run a midnight update.
The comic creators that I’ve spoken to via email have been friendly and helpful for the most part and really, despite the late hour and the crash-course in database-thwacking, this has been a lot of fun.
The chron job to check links that we’d hoped to have running for the spider doesn’t appear to be – we’re doing manual kickoffs and then verifying the results – so the site will be quiet until Aric hits it again in the morning. We’re up to around 40 active sites and a handful more that are choking the spider. (No, that’s not a euphamism.) Not bad for an event that almost wasn’t last year.
Up and down the rollercoaster
So much to tell you, so tired, this’ll be quick.
On the plus side:
There are comics in the queue, and more on the way, and lots of ideas firing off in the brain cabinet.
Also, everyone is healthy, the diabetes thing is progressing without major incidents, we’re all good.
Plus, I’ve been coding again (more on that in next post) which makes me happy. Tired, but happy. The project itself looked like it was going to be a lot rockier than it turned out to be, and success is iminient.
On the minus side:
I’m on Day 2 of a headache that may be sinus, may be migraine, but is definitely HURT. It’s much better than it was thanks to the care provided by my totally awesome husband, but still lots of hurt.
The coding and the headache have set me way behind on a knitting project for which I was way behind anyway.
I haven’t heard from my sister on what’s going on this weekend yet. (HINT HINT!!)
And, oddest of all, we found out today that Nighthawk’s primary specialist passed away suddenly on the 23rd. He was a good doctor, and a good man, and it’s going to be very strange to go to the office and see someone else after over five years of care.
So, as always, we’re riding the rollercoaster of human existance. But you knew that.
Can you catch flies?
