kjp

Well, I've started a new section of my website - Photos - and I thought I'd put down why I did it the way I did. By the way, before I forget, if anything looks wrong then please let me know.

To handle the photos section, I started another blog withing my Movable Type installation. I figured that the data types would be different to the rest of this website, so it should be handled separately. Having said that, one of my overall objectives was to try and make the look and feel of the rest of the website flow through to the photos section. So, I started off with somewhat contradicting aims...

I was originally planning to have three separate pages for each of the photos - one page for each of a small, medium and large image. However, I discarded this option. The large images were too large (2280 pixels) for any normal use of the photos. So I figured that they would just be a waste of bandwidth (about 1 Mb per image). So the large images were taken out of the scene. I decided on having "medium" pictures having a size of 800 x 600 pixels (or 600 x 800), saved as jpegs at a quality of 95%. These images are between 44 kb and 203 kb. I then put a smaller version of all of the pictures on the main category page, these being 400 x 300 pixels at 90% quality. I decided against having individual pages for both the small and medium images, because I figured that if someone is interested in a close look (close enough to click on the image in the category page), then they won't be interested in the small version of the image.

Finally there are sample images. For the main index, there is a small (50 x 50 pixels) section of each of the images, sorted under category (which are clickable). These were obtained by taking the medium images, taking a 100 x 100 pixel sample, and reducing the size of that sample image, saving at maximum quality. Picking the sample region to use was a bit difficult sometimes: especially when there was not a focus to the image - when it was more of a "scene". All images are jpeg's. I'd prefer a lossless format, but you'd prefer the lower bandwidth ?!

So now that I've decided on the images that I'd be using, there was the issue of fitting the in. For the individual archive pages, the medium image overlaped the panel that was containing it, and looked pretty dodgy. I wanted to keep the panel width dependant on the browser window size, so I removed the image from the panel, and just had the picture there, straight on the background of the page. It breaks the look of the rest of the website - everything is in "panels", but it seemed to be the only way around it, that I could tell. Having said that, it doesn't look too bad when seen on a full screen browser on a monitor running at 1024 x 768 pixels.

Because I didn't have the time that the images were taken, I thought it would be pretty stupid to include at "date / time" posted / taken attribute to the entries. So the entry heading templates for the images are the same as the standard template, with that bit removed.

Finally, I did not include the path to the image within the (text) post. I did this by storing the filename (no path / extension information) in the Entry Excerpt field. It is a bit of a misappropriation of the Moveable Type program, but it seems the MT isn't flexible enough to allow the addition of arbitrary fields to an entry... However, this means that the image names don't have to be hard coded into the entry / template. Which is much better, I think.

The photos of my skydiving escapades are now available. Click here for the good stuff! Enjoy!

Well the results are out of the Robotbattle Tiny Bot Bash. I didn't put as much time as I could into developing robots for this competition (primarily just Friday night), so I'm pretty happy with the result. I put in two robots - imaginatively titled red and holly - coming 4th and 12th respectively. It was a pretty interesting contest - with just one match in the competition (having a large number of games - 10,000), with a size restriction of 512 bytes and a large arena (2000 x 2000), with all 16 robots on the field at the same time. Pretty severe conditions really.

Ok, here's the go from the past few days:

Wednesday there was no Go, as I wanted to talk to my good friend J who's coming up to this neck of the woods in early May. Thursday saw the return of W from Canberra. Friday night I was going to go out, but ended up at home putting two robots together for the Tiny Bot Bash. Saturday seemed to just disappear (it happens when you sleep through most of it). I did a bit of cleaning in the afternoon, and cooked some burritos up for dinner.

Sunday morning I went up to the beach (Coloundra). Initially I was at King's beach, then after a while went North a bit around the heads to Dickie beach. At both locations the waves were pretty mucky and strong. I caught a few of them - but not many. At King's beach there were a couple of really strong waves - when I was right on the bottom of the sea (where it is usually fairly calm), I was still being pushed down - yikes. There was a strong sweep at Dickie beach (heading north) - very easy to get carried outside of the red & yellow flags if you weren't paying attention.

For no particular reason (other than an RDO today...??) I felt like going into the city last night - initially went to the casino, but I was in the wrong frame of mind - thinking of buying a digital camera (more later) as opposed to being happy to loose $x and enjoying myself. And I wasn't feeling good - so I just came home. Oh well, that's life. But it happens when you don't know many people in a new town. This evening I'll be picking up S from the airport: she's staying for a while as W will be out of action for a while from Tuesday.

There's an interesting summary (chronological listing) here about legal, ethical and media issues and events surrounding the internet and IT industry. Some I knew; some I had forgotten about; and some I had never heard of...

There was a wait of about 1 hour 40 minutes to get my dinner down at "the club" tonight. A group of 8 people from the dog park arranged to get down there at about 6:30 pm (I was a bit late - it was drizzling (my favourite) so I had go for a jog...). Apparently one of the chefs was sick. The meals came in drips and drabs: mine towards the end (ordered last). I was eating not too much before 8:20. Such is life on half price tuesday. Good enjoyable company though: that's why you go out for meals. On the up side we all got a free drink because of the late food. Nice.

But it meant that I got home well after the start of All Saints (so I couldn't tape it all for those down in Canberra). Don't worry: I've got all of Alias on tape. Phew...

Couldn't help myself. According to the Lord of the Rings Character Test: if I were to be a character in the Lord of the Rings I would be Faramir. I can think of worse...

As they say: "Who would you be?"

Well that's a "bold sweeping statement"... and wrong. Sort of:

This morning's orienteering was at Bunyaville State Forest (close by: less than 10 km northwest). It was pretty good fun. The forest was a bit wet, and there was a bit of rain. I had my control description in my pockets. I didn't use it (had marked the control card with the information), and at the end of the event it was a pulp. (All my clothes were sopping). Great. So I'm (probably) going to get one of those control description holders that wraps around your wrist. Should make life a bit easier, and means that I don't rely on my scrawl on the control card to get control description information.

The more major problem I have with orienteering at the moment is my lack of forest fitness. Back down in Canberra there were usually about 2 events in bushland each week. Up here it's one every few weeks, with a few street / park events dispersed between. As a result I think that I've lost some of my forest running "ability" (getting my legs higher off the ground, "sixth sense" of the forest around me, etc), and have slowed down as a result. The fact that Queensland bush is a lot thicker & lusher doesn't help.

On another note I was doing some gardening late this afternoon - putting in some shrubs / ground covers in the little garden box in the middle of the front lawn. The plants were all freebies: from a nature and environment thing put on by the city council last weekend. Hope they survive...

Came across this. Very funny stuff. Particular favourite - the conclusion: on taking out the power supply bottleneck.

Earlier this afternoon there was a production of Puccini's opera Turandot on SBS. I enjoyed it: I've never heard (and seen) the full opera - just heard bits and pieces ("Signor(e) Ascolta" and "Nessun Dorma"). It was a good production - it was a live recording made at a performance at the Forbidden City itself - in Beijing (where the opera is set). Nice stuff.

Last night's St. Patrick's day "do" went down pretty well. We left work on a bus at about 4.30 pm, getting to the Irish Club (in the city) at about 5 ish. It was good to catch up with the other people that started work at the same time as me and meet a few new people. Good fun. I didn't end up drinking that much - although I now have a new appreciation for Kilkennys. As a result I caught the train back to work (instead of home) and drove home from there (the happy hour was from 5 to 7 pm ish, caught the train at 10:50 pm ish...). Much better than going back for my car this morning.

Today there was the monthly meeting of the group (about 30/40 people) that I'm in at work. For some bizarre reason I got the "Quiet Achiever" award for my ten pin bowling exploits. What a weird world we live in. Work is a bit annoying at the moment - I want more jobs to keep me busy. I think. Sort of... I'm waiting on people to get back to me to give me information I need about jobs I'm doing. Oh well.... It should be fun tomorrow afternoon / night: after work there is St. Patricks Day thing at a pub in the city. I'm not sure about transport - I think I'll be leaving my car at work overnight and pick it up on Saturday morning.

On another note I was the cook for my sister's Thursday (church) group. I've joined them in their meal that they have every Thursday night here: my turn tonight. I made Mexican food - tacos and tortillas in both vegetarian and meat varieties. The vege version is very much a part of my "repertoire" - I made it every Sunday night for a couple of years a while back(!) Anyhow, it worked out well, but I ended up with too much food. That's fine for me - I've sorted out my meals for the next few days... (I don't have sophisticated tastes :). W is down in Canberra for about a week: so it's just me and Mr Twister and the naughty girl.

Today was my fortnightly RDO. In the morning I went up north to the Sunshine Coast, Coloundra in particular. I first went to Dicky beach: it was closed (the conditions were too unstable), so I backtracked a bit and went to Kings beach. It's changed a bit since the last time that I was up there (in February / March 2003). There's less car parking spaces (bad) but the public toilets have been cleaned up (good - but I don't really care).

It was just after high tide that I was there. There was heaps of water pushing onto the shore. I found it took a bit of effort to get out to where the waves were breaking (due to the long distance to wade/swim, and strong breaking waves). The upside to it was that I was able to catch waves for long rides. Great fun! Several times I both got dumped and was able to ride out a few of the bigger waves.

There was a (old - white hair!) guy a bit further out who was catching (and holding for longer) bigger waves than me. He had a paddle board thing (looked kind of like a "learn-to-swim" paddle board - just smaller and differently shaped) that he was using to ride down the face of the big waves. Looked like fun. I've got to get something similar. At an engagement party I went to, two cousins (by marriage) of mine suggested something similar - flippers and paddles on my feet and hands. Apparently it's easier to pick up speed, so you can travel (and do tricks) along the face of a wave, not just ride the wave down to the beach.

I came home via Chermside, to get some air-conditioning action. To get sometime: a sun protection water shirt thingy (from the cancer shop??). I'm getting annoyed at having to put on sunburn cream: and missing bits of me. I've taken it easy for most of this afternoon (tired from this morning). I'll be going for a jog soon (with W and the dogs). Nothing planned for the evening.

Anyhow, other bits of this weekend just gone by:
Friday night I was going to go out to the city, but it was bucketing down, so didn't. I need to go out more: I'm still feeling on the lonely side of things up here. Down south I had heaps of people that I knew around. Up here it's just (shouldn't say "just" - they're all cool) work people, some of W's friends, and now some people from orienteering and go. But I don't have one or two good friends up here that I have always seemed to have throughout my growing up. This is a problem for me.

Saturday was a boring day. I was pretty tired, and spent most of it sleeping and playing go on the internet. Exciting. I was also thinking about housing for me in the short and medium term. I may be buying a flat/townhouse sometime. I went orienteering on sunday morning, in a park (and surrounding suburbs) near Chermside mall. It was good to go for a run. But I stuffed up the marking of my map and put a control on the wrong street intersection. Do'h. It cost me a fair bit of time - annoying. I'm still getting used to Queensland Orienteerings' way of doing things (marking the map after your time has started). Back in Canberra, you marked up your map before you started (or it was pre-marked). On the upside I got a free T-Shirt (Enoggeroos Orienteering). Well, not really free - you have to become a member first... In the evening I saw the Lord of the Rings - Return of the King at Chermside mall (everything seems to be there these days). What a cool movie.

Now that I've started this Movies category, I may as well add the fact that the Friday before last, I went and saw The Passion of The Christ (the recent movie by Mel Gibson about the last day or so of the life of Jesus Christ). My primary reason for going wasn't to see the movie at all (didn't look interesting to me) - I was there as accompaniment for my sister W.

I thought the film was pretty average: I'm mostly in agreement with David Stratton's review. I think that it would be easier to get more out of it if you already had Christian beliefs (then there is a greater emotional / spiritual response). This isn't the case for me: I wasn't particularly inspired and found the blood and guts a bit excessive.

I (finally) saw Lord of the Rings - Return of the King (the final of the series) last night. Very impressive film making and story telling. I can understand why it took so many Oscars recently. Of course, I particularly enjoyed the final battle scene at the city of Minas Tirith (capital of Gondor), and the relationship between Frodo, Sam and the treacherous Gollum - it was well done. Apparently in the book (which I haven't read), there is no break in Frodo's trust in Sam. I thought it turned out well in the film. When the full version of the movie comes out on DVD, I'll be hiring and watching all of the three movies. Should fill in a few gaps.

I've just noticed a problem with the way this blog is structured.

Individual archive pages are placed in following structure:
http://www.kjp.id.au/justification/archive/[4 digit year]/[2 digit month]/[2 digit day]/[entry name, maximum 8 characters].html. They are generated with the following archive file template in movabletype: <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y">/<$MTArchiveDate format="%m">/<$MTArchiveDate format="%d">/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1" trim_to="8"$>.html

A problem arises if I have two entries on the same day with the same first 8 characters. This has happened only once, where I had two entries on 12/01/2004, called "2004 01 12 a" and "2004 01 12 b". What imaginative titles. Regardless of which link was clicked (from the archive page) the "b" entry would always be returned. Presumably in Movable Types rebuild cycle entries are created in ascending order of index. "b" was created after "a", so "b" gets rebuilt after "a".

Anyhow, I think that I have a couple of options:
* Use the post ID in the filename (either as part of the filename, or the whole filename). Several of the blogs I read use this option. But I don't really like it. "00061" is slightly less description than "useful windows commands" or "useful_w".
* Increase the limit on the filename size to 15 or 16 characters. This doesn't actually remove the problem. It just makes it a whole lot less likely.
* Don't have entry names that are similar to other entries. I don't really like this option at all. Kind of limits what I would like to say a bit - I don't want to have to think back to all of the old posts that I've made trying to remember any with similar names or look old entries up.

So I'll change the filename "trim to" value to 16 characters.

I wonder if there is an easy way to detect to seperate entries with the same file name?? There's nothing obvious on the Movabletype Plugin Directory page. Oh well.

At work today the afternoon was mostly spent on a team building activity - where most of the section that I'm in went bowling (ten-pin) at Chermside. We had two games and some drinks free. For the afternoon I was in the "red" team and had to dress accordingly. My maroonish shirt was the closest thing I had. Actually, I was on the "Raging Red Mice Fighting Mullets" team. Yup, that's accurate: a creative organiser was at work.

I did ok in the actual bowling. In the first game I was about 3rd coming into the last frame. Because of 2 strikes I ended up with 112 and won that game. The second game saw me get 116, coming 2nd or 3rd - can't remember. Through both games I had a few gutter balls and a few strikes. Hmmm, consistancy may help??.... Considering that I've never been a regular player, and the last time I played was (at least) several years ago, I can't complain.

It's been raining all day. Hopefully it will clear up before Sunday when there is orienteering on (I haven't been in a while).

Last night I played Go, at a Go night run by the Brisbane Go Club. Go is a board game that has been around for thousands of years in East Asia (China and Japan region). It's relatively simple to get the basics of. There are two sides; you take turns placing stones (either white or black) on a board, trying to gain as much territory as possible. (There's more to it than that....) But strategy is quite hard. It's a pretty nerdish game really. But hey; I can't complain about that.

I've been playing it for a little while against a computer program; and have learnt the basics of it and some simple strategies as a result. Last night was good as I was playing against a real person - a couple in fact, and watched a game played by two others. Much more interesting than the computer. The later games I played were on a 19 by 19 board - I've only ever played on 9 by 9 and 13 by 13. The big games took a while! It's also requires more long term planning to figure out what sections of the board you want to capture. It was held at the "Pancake Manor", which seems to be the poor cousin of the "Pancake Parlour" (ACT Civic bus). Or maybe they are just in the same chain. But I didn't really go downstairs, so I probably shouldn't comment....

Anyhow, it was right in the middle of the city: on Charlotte street. I got there at around 6.35 pm ish, and spent around 10 minutes (or more?) cruising around the nearby streets for a park. Being on the tight side that I am, I didn't want to pay the rortish prices at a private car park. Quite a few of the streets are one way in that part of the world: Charlotte is one. As I was cruising up Charlotte for the 3rd ? time I found a park on the right hand side of the road. It took a fair while to get into it (at least 10 changes of gear...). I haven't reverse parallel parked in ages (only a couple since my driving test quite a few years ago), and never on the right hand side of the road. If anyone was watching they'd probably be in fits of hysterical laughter at my driving display. I might pay for an easy park next week.