Adam's Blog

I just finished adding tags to ALL of my previous posts, which is over 200. I LOVE tags. I love that they are so dynamic. No need to add new categories, just add a tag, and -- poof! -- it's live. This goes double for me, since my topics/categories are always completely random.

I was practically pissing my pants. This is the funniest thing ever. Watch the Window Media file

I got flow. Flow is generally defined as a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity by Wikipedia. See, sometimes I can REALLY focus on something, usually PHP, and make tremendous progress. So I've rewritten large parts of the Small Axe backend to deal with tags using Ajax. If I were more courageous, I'd rewrite the whole backend using better, leaner code, smarter coding techniques, and a more modern UI, but not now. In the meantime, sethadam1.com is running some of the best code I've ever written. Note the tag and subject clouds, the dynamic URLs, the styled feeds, and the HTML-templated site.

I've really struggled with the challenge of implementing tags efficiently. Basically, I wanted to preserve the basic tag rule: as many tags as you like per post. But if I do that, I need another table in the database. However, to do this, I need an additional query for each story. Since Small Axe loads in just FOUR queries on the main page, this was a HUGE hit. It went up to 24 queries, albeit 24 simple, basic, efficient, FAST queries. So I wrote it to use a single query, and guess what I found? The implementation sucked. It was slow. It was dirty. It meant editing tags was a precise business. And searching was lame. So, I rewrote tagging (while preserving links, etc) and - boom! - fast. Yes, it added a query for every story on the front page, but dammit, it works, it's clean, it's easy to read, and best of all, I'm going to implement some flickr-style tag editing on the backend. So, that's cool. I guess we'll see what happens in the next week or two.

More links I kinda dig: Children's drawings of Winnie the Pooh, redrawn by talented artists This reminds me of The Monster Engine. Very cool. http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?306 Kinda old, but an interesting look at the development of OS X and Vista. A funny picture A fantastic optical illusion

So, I recently added a new feature to sethadam1.com, one that is largely useless and mostly for my own amusement: tagging. Although it has been awhile since I've updated Small Axe, I have pretty faithfully updated sethadam1.com, added new features, cleaned up the code A LOT, and gotten this thing pretty stable. The admin section has been largely overhauled. The queries are better and the code is clean. Unfortunately, I haven't backfilled most of that code into Small Axe yet. All of which is to say, I'm not very happy with HOW I've implemented tags. It's kind of sloppy, and it may change. For now, I'm leaving it, but I may be changing the way it works. If I do change how it works, it will be invisible - meaning the links in place will still work.

Kill! Maim! Send them to federal "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison! Make them suffer for the crimes they have committed against not just us, but humanity! Sigh. The world is a sick place, and we are supposed to be above it. Not as a country; current state of affairs aside, history has proven that when assembled into a large group, people are idiots. But as individuals, we're supposed to be good people. We're supposed to want good and decent things. But we don't. We suck at understanding justice. See, the thing is, we have a mind built on revenge. We are built on revenge because we have a wacky and unswaying sense of equitablity. See, we believe things have to be "fair," whatever that is, and as such, we believe in payment for misdeeds. Let me stop being so cryptic and complex. Kenneth Lay died today, and people are screaming that they wanted him to go to prison. They wanted him to suffer. I have a friend in prison. He was convicted of a fairly public crime that made national news, but in the end, he was just a small piece of a much larger story of irresponsibility. And yet, people wanted BLOOD....

Here are a few great links. Rogue Helicopter Pilot Friggin Hilarious. This guy is a complete NUT! Red, White and Blue Idolatry & Why I Walked out of Sunday Morning Service This about sums up why Americans piss me off. I do love America, but I seriously dislike almost all Americans. How to properly adjust your side mirror Honestly, you need to read this. I did NOT know this.

My problem with My Space is that I find my principles about my pride conflicting with my feelings about putting myself on My Space. My issues rest with my inability to quickly find my friends and my collegues from my past on my own. My patience is too short to do my research without my websites and my hobbies taking over my attention, and my belief is that without my absolute focus my will could be my downfall. MySpace is my solution, except that MySpace is my sworn enemy. My temper rises envisioning myself on MySpace where my screen is hijacked with colors that hurt my eyes, my browser is frozen by multiple music tracks assaulting my ears, and my computer freezes because MySpace is eating up all of my resources. God help us if someone posts this stuff on my profile, then it's my job to fix my site before my friends close my page and remove themselves from my buddy list thus decreasing my count and my worth to myself and my other friends since my participation is my measure in MySpace... but alas... There are just so many people on this one site that it really makes...

I spent some time over the last few days updating some code in my blog. Some new things now: 1. Each story now displays a "related stories" link. This will fetch up to five items of the most recent items tagged with the same topic. Since all of my "topics" are complete nonsense, this is a useless feature, but it's still fun. 2. The documents section of the website was completely rewritten and it's now MUCH faster and less useless than before. Old code dies hard, or something. 3. I changed the URLs from blog.php?page=2 to /blog.php/page/2. It looks so much nicer to have pretty URLs. 4. I've cleaned up several dirty nags in the admin section. 5. I fixed the stupid 404 redirect. 6. Although not completed, I hope to have image uploads built in soon. 7. I've added a stylesheet to both my RSS and Atom feed, so if you view them, they both look pretty now, even without an RSS reader. This was mostly just for fun.