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Baby Changing Table: Update

As an update on the baby changing table, I’ve gotten new side-rails cut, and the center rail as well.  Both have been cut from 1″x6″ white oak planks.  I’ve sanded them down to nice and smooth; now I need to get a 1/8″ roundover bit for my router so I can clean up the edges.  I need to figure out what I’m going to do for the stiles, since they need to be just a bit shorter than the rails anyway.  I’ll have pictures this evening.

How to fix strange characters in MySQL database – Vinh Pham

I admit, I borrowed this from How to fix strange characters in MySQL database – Vinh Pham.  But I also added a few more that were missing;


update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '’', '\'');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '…', '&hellip;');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '–', '-');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '“', '"');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '”', '"');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '‘', '\'');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '•', '-');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '‡', 'c');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, 'â„¢', '&trade;');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '®', '&reg;');

Hopefully this helps someone (probably even me) sometime down the road!

My Favorite Films of the 2000s – Flickchart

gms8994’s benchmark at master – GitHub

I’ve recently been posting my benchmark scripts to github.  You can find them here: gms8994’s benchmark at master – GitHub.  I’ve also started posting the results within the wiki, each page with the same name as the script.  For example: comparing MySQL inserts with one set of values, or multiple sets of values.

Pet Peeve #1

This is a new series of posts for me, where I’ll include my list of pet peeves.  It will have it’s own category, but then also have tags relating to the topic.

Pet Peeve #1: Always wave “thank you” to drivers who let you over.

No matter if you were a jerk who got over at the very last minute, forced your way over, or just pulled in to the mile long open space, toss your hand up and wave!

Project: Baby Changing Table

My newest project is a baby changing table.  It will be made from mahogany (I think, not 100% sure on that yet), and will fit to the dresser that it was designed for.  This will be a gift to my best friends’ new baby boy when he arrives sometime around February.

I have some base measurements laid out (I should really start carrying a tape measure with me everywhere).  The existing product that I’ll be basing my work from has some images in my projects gallery.  I’ll be taking more pictures of the project as it comes along, and will be keeping track of my expenditures as well.  I’d really like to beat the price that is listed.

Tomboy and Mediawiki Sync

Tomboy is great. It’s a small app that accepts your input, and creates an In-app wiki. Sometimes, I’m on a machine with Tomboy; sometimes I’m not. But I’m almost always near an internet connection. So I wrote a script to synchronize between a MediaWiki installation, and Tomboy. It handles local and remote deletes, renames, edits, etc. I’ll be releasing the code on GitHub in the next few days, so you can look for it there.

Edit: Code posted!

Codeblocked: An Adventure in Slow Code

It’s amazing how much content a company can add in a year, especially when that company writes articles for it’s living. A year and a half ago, I wrote this code against Sphinx:

$cl = new SphinxClient ();
$res = $cl->Query ( $q, $index );
foreach ( $res["matches"] as $docinfo ) {
    $excerpt = $cl->BuildExcerpts(array($contents), $index, $q, $options);
}

Now, for those of you that don’t know, Sphinx’s BuildExcerpts function takes an array of textual scalar values, and generates the excerpts from them. If you’ll notice, I’m cutting off BuildExcerpts at the knees.

18 months and a million searches later, and I’m trying to revamp this. It’s not looking much prettier, but it is *much* faster….

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• Jeremy Zawodny: Recent Sphinx Updates (jeremy.zawodny.com)
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Google Voice Blog: Help improve transcription quality

As helpful as I think this might be, why are we, the users, not just given the ability to edit the transcription?  We could also donate it, and then Google would have much less work to do, and I could get more accurate transcriptions much sooner.

Google Voice Blog: Help improve transcription quality.

 

Part 1

The pain was unbearable.  Heat scorched his eyes, his skin, his teeth.  When he could take no more, Marco took a breath, knowing he was going to die.  But the breath he took was not painful; it was fluid, smooth, and cool.  Marco opened his eyes, and stared at the floor for many long seconds, not daring to move.  His eyes didn’t melt, much to his amazement, no skin had fallen away, all of his teeth were still in place.

Slowly, Marco stood up, and looked around.  Immediately surrounding him, the grass was green, soft, and cool.  Further away, the ground was black, scorched, dead.  His house was gone.  His car, gone.  Everything was gone, as far as he could see.  For a while, he stood there, confused, not knowing what he should do.  Then, he decided he should walk.  He wasn’t sure where, but something in his mind told him that east was the best direction.

When he reached the riverbed hours later, he stopped.  The river was gone, the bedrock was bare.  Not even algae remained.  Marco was confused.  What had happened?  What kind of thing could kill grass and destroy buildings, make millions of gallons of water disappear, but leave him in pristine condition, without injury?

“Maybe, the Rapture”, he thought out loud.  ”But why leave me? I’m a good Christian! I go to church every Sunday, help out with the Youth Program, even sing in the choir! Why am I still here?  I should be sitting with Jesus, in heaven!” he screamed angrily.