kentcowgill.org/blog

Just giving something a quick test.

The documentation suggests that for centering an image, you should be able to put an "=" inside a set of exclamation marks in order to do it.

inside a table		another cell
short cell	this should be a long cell, hopefully long enough to make this cell be wider than the middle cell in the first row, hopefully so that the above cell will show whether or not its centered. or not.	another cell

If that doesn't work right away, I'll probably fiddle with it a few more times.

Turns out the solution is to have the vertical bar for the table cell the image is to appear in, followed immediately by an equals sign, a period, and a space - then the image.

You've probably already noticed, but I've added some additional organizational capabilities in the form of categories that each post is filed under. To the right, you'll see a little "cloud" of topics I've posted about - and the more often I post about something, the bigger the topic appears in the cloud :)

Also, I've gone ahead and tagged all my articles. Thank goodness I'm doing this now, because I'd hate to have to go back and do it after hundreds of posts :)

I've also done a lot of tweaking and refactoring of the Catalyst code that powers this thing - I started noticing a lot of repeated code for doing things like formatting posts, obfuscating email addresses, etc. So I'm doing what I can to get rid of that duplication. The only visible effect you'll see from this is that from time to time, you'll probably get an error message - that just means I'm right in the middle of fixing something :)

(Maybe I should have a prettier error message?)

Walking down memory lane, I found a few older posts from a different site of mine.

I figured I'd copy those old entries in this blog, just to have everything in one place. And also to help flesh out my "archives" section a little more.

Turns out I actually used a different data type to store dates.

Ugh.

So I figure, "I'll just change the column type, surely my database is smart enough to figure these things out".

It wasn't.

Needless to say, I'll be adjusting the dates of the existing posts to try to make them somewhat match what they used to look like.

Please forgive me - I'm working on updating this. "This", of course, can mean different things. But what I mean is that I'm working on finishing my Grand Unification Project. What's that? Well, I'm finally bringing everything together. And finally making my blog public. It's done in Catalyst, everything else is plain CGI.

All this means is that you might find some things that don't work from time to time. If you encounter this, please excuse me. I'm only human. I can't know about every single bug. Yet.

So far, most of my blog has been updated. I even have a new version of my photos up and running. Even my resume has been somewhat updated... :)

So, I'm a moron.

Seems I'm not making proper use of the Model:: modules. I had originally found an old out of date tutorial making use of the Class::DBI helper scripts, so that's what I used in making this blog. Problem is, the tutorial was woefully incomplete, AND CDBI seems to work - at the surface - without any additional configuration.

Except when you have a stupid datamodel that requires you join a table to itself and get a count of child rows for each parent row.

These days, using Class::DBI seems frowned upon by the catalyst community, so I think instead of trying to fix what's broken, I'll just use a different model to access my data - HOPEfully one that isn't woefully broken, lets me write some of my own nasty SQL and actually reference the correct results to stuff into TemplateToolkit.

Too bad I'm busy working on my wishlist, otherwise I'd tackle this issue straight away.

Ok, that part about my ribs hurting? Guess what - I have a broken rib :/

On a more positive note, my real ride website seems to be up, running, and stable... thanks to XO communications, my DSL line is finally working again. If you're rambunctious enough, feel free to even sign my guestbook :)

So about that rib. I was in a whole heap of pain earlier this week, but it seems to be feeling a lot better. I feel comfortable riding my mountain bike on the roads, but my road bike is probably a bit too stiff and bumpy on the roads for my comfort. Fear not, I'm still putting in some fake miles on my stationary trainer - I did 10 today to just see how things went - and everything seemed ok.

So for the time being, I'm just going to ride my mountain bike to work, make a few excursions on the way home, and keep the road bike in the trainer. sigh

Training, training, training... last weekend I only managed to get out on my bike once. I was going to go to the bike shop so I could pick up a new shirt. Unfortunately, I got a really bad flat tire. As in - I was riding on my rim flat in under 3 seconds. And I had no tire pump to put air in my tire if I patched it. Fortunately, I was within 50 feet of the bike shop. I had actually hit the curb near the bike shop and I think that's what wounded my tire. Unfortunately, the bike shop was closed. Fortunately, a friend (and potential sponsor - hi Jeff!) lives near the bike shop. Unfortunately, he wasn't home. Fortunately, I was maybe 13-14 blocks from Lisa's place. Unfortunately, she was out shopping. Fortunately, she had her cellphone and was almost finished shopping. Unfortunately, she got stuck in the checkout line. Fortunately, she picked me up after about 20 minutes. :) All tolled, about 10.5 miles.

Fast forward to this weekend. I ride to a DIFFERENT bike shop (thinking that the other one was jinxed) without trouble. I bought a seatpost-mounted rack and a bag to put on it so I don't have to carry all my stuff in my backpack. I rode to Patrick's place, and we went out for another Lake Shore Bike path ride. We got down to the University of Chicago area, and stopped for lunch at a deli on or near the campus. I suppose it was Patrick's turn to get a flat tire, because about 5 minutes after heading back, I hear his tire expel all its air. He apparently ran over a piece of glass that totally shredded his outer tire and innertube. Unfortunately, neither of us had a pump, but with the damage to his tire it wouldn't have mattered anyhow. Fortunately, a taxi drove by immediately after we located the offending piece of glass. Unfortunately, Patrick didn't have any cash. Fortunately, I did :) Also fortunately, the taxi driver didn't mind having Patrick load his bike in the trunk of the taxi. So I basically raced the taxi back to Patrick' place (about 8-10 miles). I almost won, because the traffic on Lake Shore Drive was horrendous! He barely had enough time to get home and change before I rolled up. After that, I had had enough, so I went home. All tolled, about 35 miles. And I've got some really nice sunburn for my effort :)