Mon Feb 15 1999 22:24: Oh, did you need that? NYCB got nuked. The good side is that now I have full online editing capability for the notebooks. No more having to put up with bad links and typos and such. I was going to make my students do it, but finally gave in (the corresponding lecture is a week away) and did it myself. Good thing too, actually, as giving it the required generality was tougher than it looked. I had to write a full front-end. I wrote it in Python, just to be contrary. Having mixed feelings about Python. Nothing I do was made easier than the corresponding action in Perl. Not sure how much of that is due to my inexperience. Source forthcoming as soon as I sec check it, generalize status messages, etc. You can see the new interface here.

Memo to myself: Do the dumb things I have to do, think up more enhancements. One: a line containing only a URL will be replaced with a link and a br

Egad! Slashdot adoption of Leonardonics!

I'm writing this paragraph in the editor.

Man, this editing stuff is addictive.

Mon Feb 15 1999 22:31: The next step is to tie this in with the old news. The step after that is to allow any document in my webspace to be edited remotely. I actually don't need that level of control, as I can always telnet in. But an automated news mover would be very nice indeed.

Tue Feb 16 1999 09:29: Well, I just shelled out $67 for a ticket back from San Jose to LAX. Thanks to Stephan Nagey and his gang for offering me a ride up there and saving me from having to spend even more money.

Wed Feb 17 1999 18:31: Whoever was surfing with HP-UX Netscape and got a bad browser greeting, it's fixed now. Marvel as my monstrous CGI recognizes your browser, no matter what it is!

Wed Feb 17 1999 18:32: Easy midterm. Of course, I said that about the LS midterm. But that was an easy midterm, I just did terribly on it. If that makes sense.

Ha ha, I just made a typo in this entry, and submitted it. "Oh darn," I thought. "But wait!", I then thought. "I can edit this now! Now I WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!!"

Wed Feb 17 1999 18:36: In other news, I ordered 2 10.1 gig hard drives. One for me, one for gogol.

Wed Feb 17 1999 18:56: Made the publishing frontend more convenient for me (and for anyone else who uses a .notebookrc) with automatic name insertion. Also fixed the thing where the notebook names were coming out in the wrong order, and learned about tuples in the process.

Wed Feb 17 1999 19:31: I knew there was a security hole in the new notebook scheme, just waiting to be expressed! Waiting to die! Well, it's dead now. You could edit the public notebook without having the system notebook password. That's all changed now. The notebook program isn't here to create disorder. The notebook program is here to preserve disorder.

I'm still not sure if someone could screw with the notebook program by creating malicious HTML interfaces into it. I doubt it, as everything except adding to the public notebook goes through the system password or the user password.

Wed Feb 17 1999 20:19: I updated the travelogue. It now goes up to the 27th.

Thu Feb 18 1999 16:16: News You Can Lose has been ported over to fire. The news page now scans the directory for news files so I don't have to keep updating it. I'm wondering if that should be done as a cron job.

Fri Feb 19 1999 06:53: Whoever was complaining in the public notebook about not being able to see my notebooks, you can still see them. They're just not on the guest menu. To see them you'll have to go to (we present) my menu, which is conveniently the default one.

Sat Feb 20 1999 19:45: I think Garrison Keillor got lucky during one of the musical numbers on A Prairie Home Companion. He was breathing hard and stuttering a lot.

More cannibalism jokes in the monologue.

Sun Feb 21 1999 10:59: Hoo-hah! I sucessfully performed tape surgery and restored the "Carlos/Andy Spoken Word" tape (containing Eat A Pita, both versions of Feedback Feedback Feedback, the Gumby interview, ad nauseum) to a playable state. I gotta make a dub quick, though, as I don't think it will last much longer.

On the subject of tapes, Jake's "Booty Mix" tape has inspired me to do parodies of Soul Coughing songs. So far I have "Is Los Angeles/Is Not Los Angeles" and "Cephalopod Nation". The alternate ending to cephalopods!

Mon Feb 22 1999 20:24: Articles and opinions have been moved from sampo to fire. I am also moving over January's NYCB.. I hope I can find a non-garbled version somewhere.

Mon Feb 22 1999 20:37: OK, January's News is now properly Bruised.

Tue Feb 23 1999 07:52: Am I a lot smarter or does Zippy the Pinhead make a lot more sense than did a few years ago?

Wed Feb 24 1999 19:27: Well, my GNU acronym overflow story is finally getting some Slashdot love.

I still have that note from RMS taped to my wall.

I need to add "I crave x the way I crave tacos" to Leonardonics, to celebrate my first verbal usage of the phrase today ("I crave PHP on kuato the way I crave tacos!").

Fri Feb 26 1999 14:58: I have a really nice view of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction on the way home from the bus.

Sat Feb 27 1999 17:25: Whew! That's over with! Writing three programs in three different languages, two of which I don't particularily like and one of which I've never used before. Now I have the rest of the day to--oh, it's 5:30. Well, time to make Pasta Roni and listen to PHC.

Sat Feb 27 1999 18:04: Woohoo! I'm driving up to San Jose on Tuesday with Mark! I have saved over $100 (some of it in airline credit, but I can use that this summer)! We are to rock and roll, Cleveland.

Sun Feb 28 1999 18:25: OK, The notebook program, MK IV, is now operational. Some things don't work, but the important thing does. And the important thing is that people can have any number of notebooks, and the notebooks are kept in the user's .notebook directory. The only system notebook is the public notebook, and I may make even that on a per-user basis.

Actually the important thing is that I can add to and edit NYCB. My development cycle looks like this (at least for programs that I personally use):

1. Think of a new feature.
2. Add the feature to the program, breaking it.
3. Fix the program without taking out the new feature.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This works out fine because I have a strong incentive to fix broken programs which I use.

Sun Feb 28 1999 18:27: The other thing I need to do is archiving. Monthly archiving, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars. People who want other kinds of archiving can add it themselves. Then I need to do an archive editor. It never stops, you see?