Vent of Hearing

Small Problem

Aquarion's website appears to be down. Not a problem in itself (unless you are wanting to read Aquarion's website), but because I didn't put in any error checking on my code (very silly children; do as I say, not as I do) I got a nasty (Connection refused) error message written across my website. I've removed the reference to aq2 until I've written some error checking.

Its a start

Take your eyes to the right hand side of the screen.

You'll see the latest 5 posting from my weblog "From the Orient" and also the latest 5 entries from aquarionics.com.

Neat, isn't it? Took roughly 10 lines of code, thanks to the power of rss, xml, Python and Castalian

Let me know what you think.

Testing the new index page

Here is a screenshot from my testing of a new little program I'm writing to grab the information about Vent and Orient onto an index page. I haven't had to change any templates as by default MovableType creates an RSS format xml file. I just had to write the python to grab the info and am using Castalian to display it. (It isn't operational yet as Castalian is not yet installed on Angel).

As a bonus, as Aquarion has kindly provided an rss version of his diary, I can get the into from his site using the same code.

Here is the Castalian code used :-

<?cas
result =
r.processRss("http://www.dellah.com/vent/index.xml",5)
for rr in result:
response.write(rr)
?>

Thirty Years Young

A phone call, late Sunday night, from one of my oldest friends. I just happens to have been born a scant four days after me. 'How does it feel to be 30?' he asks.

Interesting question, because it is one I've been thinking about quite a bit over the weekend. I'd not considered it much being of the 'just one day older really' school of thought, but my wife bought me Turning Thirty at Christmas and I've just started reading it. More about the book itself when I come to review it, but the subject matter is clear from the title. A 29-year old man deals with the fact that he is turning thirty.

Actually, the book is really about his life and where it is going and where he has been. He just happens to be turning thirty whilst he has these thoughts and it appears significant to him.

I feel very young and rather old at the same time. I lot of the time I still feel 15; I read books, play computer games, watch football, write computer code, listen to music, play football amongst other things I enjoyed fifteen years ago. It is a me-ness that was pretty much defined by the time I was fifteen years old, and it hasn't really changed over the years. My personal preferences may have changed (David Eddings turns into Graham Greene, Elite turns into Fifa 2002, BBC Basic into Python) but what I enjoy remains. On the other hand, I'm older in the sense I've responsibilities. A child, another on the way, a wife, a house, a job and certain other new activities related to my family and house (gardening, DIY, doing jigsaw puzzles with my daughter).

So, in answer to the question, 'It feels great to be 30'. Being 30 has changed me, but it took 15 years of gradual change for it to come into effect.

Up and Running

The Vent MovableType templates and files are back in place. However, I can't import the old entries until this evening. Until then, you have just this one post. (visit From the Orient for weblog stuff).

I am now in a position to finally move foward on all my ideas now we're on the new server, and I've been rather busy recently so there is plenty of stuff to add.

Stage
1 - Move all journal entries into separate section
2 - create an index page to pull together everything from vent/journal/orient so everyone can see all updates.
3 - customise page :- category selection, see only new comments, get nofications etc etc.
4 - move away from MT onto own weblog system.

Maybe stage 4 should come first?

In other news, we are 5 weeks (+/- 5 weeks) away from baby number two, I sold my old computer to a friend for UKP75, my old office is converted to a bedroom for Emilia, the garage is virtually decluttered (link will exist again this evening), we had a power failure last night that left Windows XP in a UNMOUNTABLE_DRIVE state, chkdsk /r solved this but took years to run ( the downsize of large hard drives), I have a new digital camera to play and show off with, and it is my birthday Sunday.

Many thanks to Aquarius and Chris from Intermip for helping a fool through the server move process. Despite me doing a number of stupid things everything works, and the grand plan that is Angel (speaking of Angel ... oops no spoilers) can continue apace.

Quiet, too quiet

Things are very busy and therefore I've got a lot of personal entries to make but can't find the time to do. Also, I've got to fit in a move to a new server, ASAP. I backed up dellah last night, and hopefully all I need to do is unfurl it on the new server. If it fails I need to do some horrible looking import/export routine for MovableType to work.

New features

I've gotten myself a weblog.

Well, I didn't mean to have a weblog before, Vent of Hearing was supposed to be a place for my narrative fiction, stories, rants and other assorted gubbins. Of course, as with all my previous efforts at this, it turned into a cross between a weblog and a journal. Which, as Aquarion would say, is suboptimal.

So, I've got a cunning plan. It is so cunning that even Baldrick wouldn't have thought it up. And it doesn't involve turnips.

One, create a weblog so that when you feel the urge to mess vent up with weblogging, you can do it in a weblog.

Two, create a journal so that when you feel the urge to mess vent up with your diary, you can do it in a diary.

And here's the cunning part, with the use of Castalian create a master index which shows when each part is updated so that you know exactly what is going on. Plus, with the addition of lots of user friendly interface malarky stuff, everyone can customise that page (examples: ignore the journal, only have weblog entries for the category science, etc etc)

Anyway, that's the plan. Isn't it cunning? It will all have to wait until at least next week, for that is when I move servers.

Until then you can see the weblog at http://www.dellah.com/orient/. That's isn't the final design by the way. Everything is going to change later, so I didn't waste my time on a design.

um, except you can't view it there because I'm stupid. For now, visit http://www.dellah.com/weblog/.

Google Bombs

This is an experiment about Google Bombs.

Did you know a search on Google for chest infections produces my posting about chest infections fifth on its list. Boy, the people searching for help with their coughs and pains will be very disappointed when they find that.

I also turn up pretty high on a search of dssagent (6th) but at least I'm providing a small amount of help for that little problem.

Mozilla Site Navigator Bar

So, I install Mozilla and load it up. Fine. Better than Opera me thinks. First site to check - Avocadia: Nodes. Reason - Opera hated it. It was never displayed properly. Looks loverly (although I think gil has just done a redesign). Hang on, what's this. A Site Navigation bar with the following :- More/Authors/Bookmarks/Other Versions. And nestled in there is a link to Vent Of Hearing.

What's it all about?

"[Mozilla] makes use of the element to define a document's relationship to other documents in a collection" [Link Elements]

An example from Avocadia

<link title="Vent of Hearing" rel="bookmark" type="text/html" href="http://www.dellah.com/vent"/>

I really must look into this more and work out how it works. A few pages I've seen have these features and have things like Contents and links to Chapters etc