2010-05-14
Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates
at 8:25
Just a quick status update.
I’ve done some significant re-theming on http://www.ficfan.org/ and fixed a bug that was causing many of the quotes to not show their additional metadata.
While doing so, I noticed that, because of how wp-lifestream caches paths (though I can see no benefit to it), the switchover to the new fileserver caused it to get in a fight with PHP’s safe_mode. (Why doesn’t anybody tell me these things?) That is now fixed.
Finally, now that I’m on vacation, I had time to dig into wp-lifestream and add a workaround for the double-encoded YouTube links. YouTube faves in my lifestream now actually work.
Enjoy.
Permalink
2009-11-11
Posted in Otaku Stuff, Site Updates
at 1:41
After far too long, I finally found time to make some of the planned improvements to my gender-bending index.
Beta 2 brings the following improvements:
- The detail expanders on the tables are now at least as comprehensive as the original “static HTML page” version of the site.
- The “Other Sites” list has returned, complete with icon-bullets denoting site types and a handy legend.
- I filled in author/artist/director names for almost every entry. (The remaining ones are a bit tricky, so they’ll have to wait)
- At least half of the data has been reworked to be per-character, per-incident-type rather than per-story. When searching is implemented, this will be very important.
The major remaining features left un-implemented are:
- Filtering and searching (You still have to make do with category grouping and adjustable sort orders)
- Spoiler-hiding (Occasionally, there’s a big plot twist that’s relevant to the nature of the gender-bending. This will require much thought because I need to decide how to classify something that seems to be X but is revealed to be Y.
- An interface for submitting new data and reporting errors directly rather than having to visit my usual contact form.
Enjoy.
Permalink
2009-07-01
Posted in Otaku Stuff, Site Updates
at 3:52
Gender-Bending Fiction Index
Well, things are looking up. On a whim, I re-implemented most of the old gender-bending list’s functionality on the new database-backed platform I’ve been meaning to write for years.
I’m not sure how steadily I’ll work on getting the rest done, but at least it’s somewhat usable now. (I still have to hook in display of and filtering by types of gender-bending and the sorting can be a bit finicky, but it is possible to browse by category, see the degree of gender-bending in each work, and click them to see what used to be footnotes.)
Permalink
2009-06-24
Posted in Site Updates
at 22:11
The bad news is, my main site is down and I’m too busy to update my blog.
The good news is, I’ve finally cooked up a tool which prevents me from procrastinating or getting distracted for days on end, so it’s only a matter of time before I’ve caught up to my real-life obligations.
The main site should be renovated and back online some time within the next month or two and, while I don’t want to promise anything, I’ll probably resume reviewing fanfics and commenting on interesting geeky stuff shortly afterwards.
Permalink
2008-05-20
Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates
at 1:18
Useful Hacks @ ssokolow.com
I just pushed my attempts at RAR and GIF handling in Python to my useful hacks page.
The GIF one functions as a partial validator, but it’s main designed purpose was to tell static from animated GIFs without a ton of dependencies.
The RAR one is only really useful for identifying RAR files by header and listing their contents so far, but I eventually hope to add support for extracting files which were stored without compression. (Usually video files, as the docstring says)
Enjoy.
Update: I’ve since been made aware of an alternative Python package for reading RAR files simply named rarfile. When I can find the time, I plan to examine it and, if it meets my needs or can be easily patched to do so, plan a migration and retirement path for my own rar.py.
Permalink
2008-05-17
Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates
at 0:15
Well, exams are over and the “no obligations” portion of my vacation is roughly half-way through. I’m not in a blogging mood at the moment, but I did write up a new Useful Hacks page on a whim.
Given how automated it is, it’ll probably get updated frequently. (I just drag-and-drop files into the FTP client and it does the rest)
Enjoy.
Permalink
