Lewies Blog

Work continues on my Gravatar Program. Tonight I worked on caching the profile icons so that I don’t have to worry about pegging the Gravatar website too badly once this program gets out. I am caching people without gravatars for 4 hours before I look again. All other gravatars are cached for the time specified in the response headers.

With all of this caching, I found it hard to work with getting gravatars. I started adding a feature to just purge all cached data, but I only needed to test one Gravatar at a time. The answer? I added a small utility to delete Gravatars individually. I’ll set it up later to email people too, but it is disabled for now.

Ack! I tried to check out my status today and the site was riddled with errors. I wonder what had happened. I don’t know if this had happened to anyone before either. To think that I may have lost a referral during this down-time. Oh the humanity. They better fix it soon. I want my free iPod!

I just found out about this through Spit Noodle & Joey when she started talking about The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. I didn’t know they were making a movie out of these books. Actually, I didn’t even know that one had already existed as the BBC version. I only heard of radio versions of this series. It was done back in 1981, so the old one might be cool.

My mind is going crazy. I loved this book. I got a large volume that contained six of the books within one. The preview is just amazing. Marvin doesn’t look anything like what I had imagined. The movie has him look very big and spherical. I imagined he was big, but more square like, but rounded edges and gray.

The most awesome part of this is that it will be out in theaters towards the end of next month. I’m drooling.

Last night, I was having some problems when it came to programming with passive FTP in C#.Net. Since then, I have figured out what I was doing wrong. I had forgotten to close my second connection that was transferring the data before I asked the primary connection for its status.

This is really great news. I am now able to fire up my Gravatar Program and click a button to parse my HaloScan comments and post a JavaScript file to my FTP server. The list on the right hand side of my site lists the most recent people who have commented on my site who have Gravatars and website addresses.

So what is left? Shabootý wants it to work with peoples HaloScan accounts that are free. Currently, only premium accounts support exporting comments. This will take some work, but I think I can do it using regular expressions. He also wants a Mac port (He’s mad I tell you!). I could do it with Mono, but my Mac only has OS X 10.2 (I need 10.3 to support Mono). However, there are other options I can use to port the code to a Mac such as the DotGNU Project.

The other thing I need to setup is to allow the program to be run from my task manager and load up a custom configuration file specified in the arguments. This would make it so that I never have to think about the program again when it comes to updating my own blog.

Last - caching data. Rite now, I’m running over to the gravatar site each time I make a report and asking for someone’s gravatar. I could at least hold on to the valid gravatars so that I don’t have to ask again. I would need an option to purge the cached data though.

The good news is that this program is getting close to being in beta. That means that you will be able to try it out for yourself.

I stumbled onto a site that was very cool. Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog had a post showing how he had made an igloo using an Icebox Igloo-making tool.

It looks like a box with some of its sides cut out and attached to a pole. You use the pole to guide you when building up each layer to get the correct angle. He had created four igloos in about four hours for each one. His were eight feet in diameter and eight feet high.

This sounds like a really cool thing to do. I mean, I am wishing it was snowing rite now and that I had one myself. Unfortunately, winter is just about over, and the icebox goes for about $175.80 for a complete system. Ouch! At that price, I’m thinking about seeing if I can make one of these kits myself. A PVC pipe and an old metal box might be something to start with.

A few days ago, Aurorealis posted a link to some spoiler images to Starwars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. She had been drooling over these things. I took a look at them and had to stop. Someone had practically posted a story board of frames from the entire movie.

Ever since I read the post, I had been wanting to see the preview for the movie. I didn’t bother to see if I could find it on the movies website, because I had tried this once before for episode II. I had to be a member of some club that I would have to pay for. It turns out I was an idiot.

Why you ask? I’ll tell you why. Someone had just posted a comment on my blog. A really old entry from what I could tell. Haloscan doesn’t let me see what it is that people are commenting on. People just comment. That’s it. But I did see some hints regarding Starwars.

Dude, the trailer rocks, the emperor rocks and the bastard jedi are finished.

Death to the Republic!

I saw that the first comment on this post was on November 6th, 2004. I went to my archives to see what movie I was reviewing in November 2004. Then I saw it. Star Wars Trailer. I opened it up and saw that I had documented where I could see the trailer for episode III without handing over any cash. (Thanks for the link Lewie!) On top of that, I figured that I would look at the Episode III website to get any new information about the movie. Guess what. A new trailer for Episode III was waiting - free for anyone to view.

When I first started blogging, one of my reasons was so that I didn’t have to worry about forgetting things - because they would be here for the world to see. Apparently, I forgot about it. What an idiot.

I running across the net and came upon [ Invisible Warning ]. There is a lot of explicit language on his site, so be warned. I found one post where he took the Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno Test.

Although I do not believe in hell, I figured that I would give it a go. I took the test and found that I had been banished to the Third Level of Hell.

Third Level of Hell
In the third circle, you find yourself amidst eternal rain, maledict, cold, and heavy. The gluttons are punished here, lying in the filthy mixture of shadows and of putrid water. Because you consumed in excess, you meet your fate beneath the cold, dirty rain, amidst the other souls that there lay unhappily in the stinking mud. Cerebus, a canine monster cruel and uncouth with his three heads and red eyes, dwells in this level. He growls and tears at the damned with his teeth and claws.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!


Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno Test

I read a post by OneGal today called Needle and Thread. She was really happy about getting into her sewing habits. She pointed out in her post that she didn’t have a smiley with a sewing machine. I went to work rite away and came up with a cute little guy that only takes two frames.

I admit that I took one of her existing smilies to make the guy. I flipped him in the other direction and turned him yellow. I Googled for Sewing Machine images and found one that was a small and simple sewing machine to start out with. Where did I find it? It was on a films website for American Jobs.

I stayed home from work today for my quarterly visit with my doctor and to get a prescription to refill my medication. We got there on time. Both Angel and I gained a few pounds. Doh! Any how, it wasn’t too much.

The doctor started asking about my medication and if I have been having any problems in bed. I looked over at Angel and she had no complaints. He then asked if it was working. We started giggling. The doctor clarified himself and asked if the medication was working. The poor guy. I think he is still confused why we were laughing. He prescribed me my refills.

Angel had a puncture wound from a cat that had bit her this past weekend. Our doctor friend was concerned that we hadn’t gotten attention for it rite away. We knew we had an appointment with him today, so we didn’t get immediate help. We didn’t realize how serious it was. Her hand is swelled a little and he prescribed her some anti-biotic. He said that the wound is not benign.

I am clueless with this doctor lingo. I should throw some programming terms his way when I talk about my problems and see how he likes it. Yes doctor, the pain is asynchronous when I instantiate any new tasks with my arm.

Any how, Angel and I went off to Wally World to get a few of our scripts. We left with a book for tetanus shots (why am I included here?), anti-depressants, muscle relaxers for the back (or was it to help sleep), and something for anxiety. I just sounds crazy when I think about the number of things we were prescribed.

As we arrived at Wal-Mart, Angel saw that the doctor put the wrong name for her last name on one of the scripts. We caught him the last time doing this while we were at the office. Fortunately, the pharmacist accepted the script and fixed the name. Angels name was written correctly on the other scripts that she handed her.

We did a little shopping for some things to put in the house. After that, we decided to eat at the Wal-Mart restaurant. The selection had changed from the last time that I remembered and there wasn’t much to choose from. We both got the two mini cheese burger meals for $2 each. Two meals came to a total of $4.20. I was surprised at the price.

Looking at the burgers, I could see why they were so cheap. They were about two inches in diameter. Angel thought they were sausage at first until she tasted them. They reminded me of little sausage biscuits as well.

We got our medications after eating and split a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans on the way home. She would pick out two of the same and split one with me. It was a lot of fun. Her favorite is butter flavored pop-corn. There was a pink one that she gave me and it tasted horrible. I don’t know what it was, but she made sure not to give me any more pink ones.

Now this one is interesting. I saw an advertisement on my Google banner about a free audio news service.

Free For DC Area Bloggers

Free personal Audio News Service when you’d rather listen than read.

I went on over to the website and saw an even cooler offer. I could get a FREE MP3 player if I act now and join the special test group for Newsworthy Audio.com. How awesome is that?

To get into the special test group, I had to take a survey. I was asked a lot of questions about my reading habits for news, my commuting time, my blogging habits, and some information about my computer at work and at home.

In the end, I got a nice “Thank You” message. Nothing is guaranteed and they will contact me if I am chosen. Joy! Well, it seems that some how or another, I may actually get a free MP3 player. So many opportunities are close. I just hope something works out soon.