Just watched the Rango trailer and it looks really good. But here comes my one issue – the desert portrayed is not the Mojave. How do I know? Saguaro cactus don’t grow in the Mojave.
Browsing Posts in General
This is a nice hack. The “necklace” is big and ugly but I’m sure that could be changed pretty easily. The biggest problem I see is that this can only work for one point of view at a time. Still cool though.
How did we make it back in the day when you couldn’t hear some music in the background of a commercial, google it, and be listening to the song a few seconds after you saw the commercial? Did I really sit up at night, thumb literally on the record button of my cassette deck waiting for a song I wanted to come on the radio? I’m pretty sure I did but that seems like something I’d laugh at in a movie, not something I actually did.
Change is in the air. I’ve been doing a bit of python work lately and would like to be posting code snippets. But the current theme is too narrow for it to come out right. I’ll be switching to a new one soon. It’s time anyway. I’m not sure which I’ll use, and I may have to just slap something generic into place as I don’t have a lot of time for tweaking something right now.
My man Tony or The Fun Guy as we know him over at the old dot, gave me a nice mention on his heavily trafficked blog and on twitter. He’s a good guy and someone I’m glad to count a friend. If you are interested in a middle aged IT guy’s take on life and technology (with an Open Source bent), then you may find some things here of interest. If you like books- specifically of the tech/sci-fi or fantasy kind, then you might want to hit up my book review site, GeekBook.
I’ve got a Drupal install with just under 300 users. I needed a certain type of node created for each user. Didn’t feel like logging in as each one and creating a node. Didn’t feel like looking for a module either for a few reasons. Decided I’d write my own little script to handle it. The tough part was just making sure I had good logic figured and a solid understanding of what Drupal did when it made a node. It ended up involving 3 tables which isn’t too bad.
I have a little, local Drupal install that I used to write and test. Today I made a copy of the production environment, on the remote server and tried it out. It didn’t work. It ran and made the nodes but nothing showed up. It made me sad inside.
It took me a little poking around to figure it out. The nodes contain a bunch of Arabic in the production environment, but not in my test. My script was not handling the unicode correctly and a single line added to my script fixed it.
This is what I had:
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'drup_user', 'drupal')
or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
echo "Connected successfully. \n";
mysql_select_db('nmsdemov3') or die('Could not select database');
And this is what fixed my problem:
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'drup_user', 'drupal')
or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
echo "Connected successfully. \n";
mysql_select_db('nmsdemov3') or die('Could not select database');
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$link);
As mentioned, I wrote the script in Netbeans. I’m not sure if I liked that experience or not. A full IDE might be a bit of overkill for a single file script. But it wasn’t horrible or anything. I may keep doing it just to spend more time in that environment so that I learn it better for the other stuff I do.
The camera in my phone isn’t the greatest, but I’ve always got it with me. I was syncing today and pulled the photos off – they aren’t the best but there are a few I thought I’d share. The three monitors is my desk at work. It looks cooler in person – the image I use for my wallpaper is here. It’s by David Lanham – that guy is very talented and I love his work. The birds are Sandhill Cranes. I took those when I saw the three of them just off the road as I was riding my bike to work. They are big birds, the pictures don’t really show that – but they are big. The adults are a good 3 or 4 feet tall. The baby is taller than a full grown chicken. The last picture is a vulture flying off a roof at work. It’s not that good – but I like the way you can see the feathers spread. It’s a Turkey Vulture. They are what keeps us from being knee deep in road kill here in Florida.
It’s been a couple weeks since I went to Puebla, but they’ve been busy. Here’s a quick summary.
We saved about $200 each by flying into Mexico City rather than directly into Puebla. There are buses that run about every half hour directly from the airport to Puebla. One way is 185 pesos – which worked out to 13 bucks or so at the time. Finding where to get our tickets was a tad tricky. But we found the counter and then a bit of travel hilarity ensued as the people at the counter said they couldn’t sell us tickets but to go downstairs. The people downstairs said to go up and get tickets. We worked it out and hopped on a large, very comfortable bus for the 2 hour drive down to Puebla. I’m really glad we did it that way because the bus rides were as close as I got to doing any sight seeing. We drove through some pretty countryside.
A friend picked us up at the bus station and took us to our hotel. We stayed at the Villa Florida. (Which struck me as a bit funny since we were coming from Florida.) It is a very nice hotel. It appears to be almost brand new, everything was in great shape and worked well. The restaurant was very good and prices were very reasonable for what a nice place it was. It is built in an area with a lot of new development. There was a near by mall with many good restaurants and a super walmart a stones throw away. All of it was within walking distance. I was able to stock up on water, etc. from the walmart and find good food without any effort at the near by places to eat. Of course, every time I go to Mexico food is a highlight. They really know how to cook some great stuff down there. Though I have to confess I tried mole poblano and found that it wasn’t really to my liking. I did have awesome tacos and enchiladas though as well as a really nice steak one night. Lunches were not so fabulous – we ate in the office to keep working and had exotic fare like papa johns pizza.
We were setting up software and training some staff in how to use it. Our normal day consisted of getting up in the morning, going to the office, working until 19:00 or 20:00 and then heading back to the hotel before we got dinner. No time to check out the city. In fact I always get my kids something when I travel and I ended up having to buy them t-shirts in the airport on my way home. That’s not something I would normally do if I had any other options.
Puebla has a lot worth seeing. Our national office for Mexico is there and hopefully I’ll be able to make it back again when I have the freedom to explore a little. The people were great, though navigating without Spanish can be tough. It’s interesting that in a country so close to the U.S. that English is difficult to come by. Though maybe the proximity to the U.S. is the reason. I’m working on my Spanish, but I’m still way too early in the process to do much. Just buying the t-shirts for my kids got pretty interesting. (Purchasing things isn’t hard – but I needed help finding the right sizes.) But while finding people who speak English is not all that easy – all the people I interacted with were extremely helpful and friendly- so I don’t think it is just anti-US sentiment or anything like that.
I had to leave a day earlier than my counterparts and caught the 7:15 bus from Puebla to the airport in Mexico City. As we were leaving the city I had a magnificent view of the Pico de Orizaba. There was a haze in the air and it seemed to just float in the sky, snow capped with what looked like steam or something emanating from the top. It was amazing. Matlalcueitl was also beautiful with snow covered peaks. Mexico isn’t as modern as Europe, but it is an amazing place to visit and much more affordable. I really love it there.
