Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

I’m an old-fashioned guy in some ways. As a long-time programmer of the “old school,” I was skeptical of these new programming paradigms, such as I used in updating my web site (see, “It’s a Brave New (Virtual) World”), or for some of the new hardware platforms like my Droid. Having delved into this at some length, however, I am convinced. Enamored of these new programming methodologies, I’ve decided to apply them to an everyday use:

I’m redesigning the Phone Book.

Chances are, you’re still using the OLD phone books: behemoths of many hundreds of pages with the names listed alphabetically (if you can believe that!). Well, no more!

My Phone Book (actually a “Communications Resource Retrieval Library”) will have only one page. One! How’s that for efficiency? (It will be preceded by maybe a hundred pages or so of set-up, headers, disclaimers, and licensing agreements, but the content itself is only a page.) When looking to enhance you communication, do not hesitate to change to get  the best mobile plans.

Of course, that one page can’t hold all the phone numbers. Instead, it will list a hierarchical control set that will ensure you find your number in the easiest, most efficient way imaginable.

For example, say I want to look up the number for my friend Kyle. In the old days, I would have to know his last name–and the alphabet–and leaf through many many pages to find his name. How inefficient!

With my new book, I simply turn past the scores of pages of headers, find the Control page, and start at the first line, which directs me to the correct initialization book. E.g., it might say, “Retrieve country identification, use Country ID Book.” So I pull my Country ID Book (bBook_Country) off the shelf, skip over the dozens of header and disclaimer pages, and find a list of countries with their appropriate identification numbers. I get the ID number (referred to as ID_C) for United States, say “100125,” and go back to the Control page in the first book and go to the next step.

Seven more simple steps, involving a few more books, and I’m done!

Observe the new, streamlined process, and try to imagine why we ever did it another way:

1. 1 ) Get Country identifier from Country ID book (bBook_Country)

1. a) in bBookCountry: “USA” => ID_C = 100125

2 ) Get nRegionName from Region Book (bBookRegion)
a) Under ID_C, find appropriate nRegion_Name (“WestCoast”)
b) Using nRegionName (“West Coast”), get ID_Reg from Region ID Book (bBookRegionID) => “99842”

3 ) Get Sub Region ID from Sub Region Book (bSubRegBook)
a) Under ID_Reg, find appropriate SubRegion_Name (“WA”)
b) Using “WA,” go to Sub Region ID Book (bSubRegionIDBook”, and get ID_SubReg => “9349842”

4 ) Use ID_SubReg and refer to Locale Book (bBook_Locale)
a) Under ID_SubReg (“9349842”), find appropriate locale name: nLocale_Name => “Tacoma”
b) Using “Tacoma,” go to Local ID Book (bBookLocalID), and get the ID_Locale => 3449345

5 ) Using ID_Locale, refer to Gender Book (bBook_Gender)
a) Select “Male,” “Female,” or “Other” and find appropriate ID_Gender => “35449”

6 ) Using ID_Gender, refer to correct Occupation Book (bBook_Occupation)
a) Under ID_Gender, select “Student, College” => ID_OCC=35449_C

7 ) Refer to Name Book (bBook_Name)
a) Find names associated with ID_OCC, select “_____, Kyle” and get his ID_NAME => “49-4775-54”

8 ) Refer to Phone Number Book (bBook_PhoneNumber), which has only males in college in Tacoma and, using his ID_Name (“49-4775-54”), get his number!

Critics may point out that this means having hundreds of books to look through, totaling perhaps a half-million pages, and that it would take maybe fifty times as long to actually look something up, but these Luddites are missing the big picture: It’s now a process! If someone’s number changes, like Kyle’s, the Phone Company need only replace a single, thin book (the final bBook_PhoneNumber) which is only 100 pages or so, 99 of which are exactly the same!

How simple is that! And just think how easy it will be to maintain!

As soon as I can get major universities to start a degree program in Phone Book Design, we’ll have literally scores of people with the skills necessary to produce this 21st Century Phone Resource Retrieval Library. So start building your new bookshelves soon!

When I set out to update my ancient, five-year-old site, I thought, “I’ll bet the Internet community is up to like HTML 5 or something by now!” and prepared myself to acquire a new HTML skill or two.

Ha.

The first few days went something like this:

“HTML?? Dude, that is like soooo 2007! You need to learn XHTML, now!!”

“XHTML?? You smokin’ 2008 weed, bra? He needs XML!!”

“Whachu talkin’ XML?? That went out way back in the spring, summer of 2009! I’d give up my PS3 Slim before I’d read an XML site! It’s PHP now, dog!”

So I dutifully jumped into the shark-invested waters of PHP, CSS, CMS, OMFG, WTF, and several other euphemisms for insanity. My learning curve quickly became an MC Escher pretzel and the life insurance premiums on my Mac went through the roof. However, just a few weeks and another hundred blood pressure points later, I’m (mostly) up and running! At least until the next, best, greatest programming standard kicks in, probably later tonight.

In the meantime, I hope readers get as much joy out of reading this site as I did in creating it.

Okay, maybe a bit more.

If you are looking for ways to earn money with the help of the Internet, I suggest you try investing in VT markets.

At least, that’s what I’m aiming for.

Just spent the week updating my website, bringing into the mid-eighteenth century (in computer time). I’m now using CSS for the structure, which is geek for Completely Sanity Sapping. It helps that one of Microsoft’s motto is: “Standards? We don’ need no stinking standards!”

And of course, there’s this blog. I spent mucho time using 1and1.com’s built-in blogging service, then much more time trying to find how in the hell you customize it. A tech call to India (“We put the ‘dots’ in dot-com”) solved the problem: you can’t. Another tech call put me on course for installing WordPress myself and here I am!

Still got some more HTML/CSS crafting to do, but I’ll be going live soon.

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, adipiscing elit.”

This stuff is popping up everywhere in the webcrafting world. I finally relented and looked it up: just a bunch of nonsense, which is pretty much what I thought of real Latin back in high school. I stuck a bunch of it here to test the page length and word wrapping. Don’t read more into it than that. I’m assuming there’s nothing horrific hiding in the declensions and conjugations.

The alleged purpose of using such drivel is that it enables the designer to focus on the layout rather than the text. Maybe; but now I’m suffering post-traumatic nightmares of 10th-grade Latin and Mrs. Gilmore.

Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, emphasis consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, test link adipiscing elit. Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, emphasis consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, test link adipiscing elit. Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, emphasis consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam dignissim convallis est. Quisque aliquam. Donec faucibus. Nunc iaculis suscipit dui. Nam sit amet sem. Aliquam libero nisi, imperdiet at, tincidunt nec, gravida vehicula, nisl. Praesent mattis, massa quis luctus fermentum, turpis mi volutpat justo, eu volutpat enim diam eget metus. Maecenas ornare tortor. Donec sed tellus eget sapien fringilla nonummy. Mauris a ante. Suspendisse quam sem, consequat at, commodo vitae, feugiat in, nunc. Morbi imperdiet augue quis tellus.