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I never had light in my eyes anyway
Oct. 28th, 2005 10:54 pmThe next issue of Mosaic Minds goes live on November 1, which is Tuesday. Luckily, Monday is my day off, so I'll have time to get things done then. There is a bit of a process that we've developed in getting this content to the site. Every article goes through a couple of rounds of editing, and most of the html tags are added here, too. (I love you guys.) It was tricky at first, because all of the rounds of editing were being done and I didn't get much time to get the site done. There was a whole lot more to think about than we expected, that's what I'm trying to say.
One of the things that I didn't think about at first came about because I am quite strict about validation. Every (known) page at Mosaic Minds fully validates as xhtml... it's the last step in my article-adding process. (I added the "known" caveat just because hey, we're human and we do make the occasional mistake, so I might have missed a page here or there.) Pages that don't validate often look okay, but they're not RIGHT and it drives me crazy. I won't get into theory here, though. I'm basically just explaining that there are some issues that arose from this need for page validation. One of the issues is that Word and other word processors think they are so clever for turning punctuation into "smart" quotes and apostrophes and dashes. They're also known as curly quotes.. they're the ones that look different depending upon which side of the quotation they're on (beginning and ending). See, the problem with these "smart" quotes is that they don't bloody exist. Well, they obviously exist because you can see them, but they're not standard characters, and they don't, or MIGHT not display correctly on the web. They often look fine to the user, depending on the system configuration, or they might display as strange empty squares, or they might just not appear at all... but one thing that's absolutely for sure is that they don't validate.
So, every article has to have these characters converted if they haven't been removed or if the feature hasn't been turned off (most of the staff has, I think.) And so... after eight months on my To-Do list, I have finally gotten off my rump and written a program that will replace these things all in one go. It's possible in other programs, indirectly or with hassle, but this will convert exactly what I want converted with one click. It also contains a miniature web browser that loads our content site automatically so I won't have to click back and forth between windows. I am super excited. It has the basic functionality right now, but I'm planning on enhancing it eventually as my vb.net skills improve. (This is partly a learning exercise and partly just because it is so, so fun and partly because it really will be useful.) It's close enough to done that I can use it on Monday when I start formatting content, anyway, which will help me figure out what needs improvement. Yay! Fun Nerd Project!
Okay. Once again, I went into more detail than necessary. But.. that's not surprising. Let's see.. what else can I talk about? Tomorrow is the Spindletop dinner thingiemabob with the Scandinavian club. It kind of kills me when I think of that whole "we paid $50 to go to a fancy dinner that probably won't even be that good" thing, but I'm trying not to think about it too much. It really is a nice event. And, maybe M will iron my dressy khakis for me. I love wearing them but they need ironed every time, and I don't iron if I can help it AT ALL. But.. I hate to ask M to do it too often because I don't want to wear him out on it.
Oh, and we just did the math on M's paycheck and now I am depressed and need to take to my bed. I work 37.5 hours a week. (Which is technically true and totally false--I actually work 35 hours one week and 40 the next but okay.) That means that in three weeks, I work 112.5 hours. M? He worked 110 hours... in the last TWO weeks. And in that two weeks, he spent over thirteen hours driving to and from work. I guess plenty of people work that much and more, but his wife doesn't care much for it. (Even though fifteen hours weekly of overtime is kind of nice when it comes payday.)
One of the things that I didn't think about at first came about because I am quite strict about validation. Every (known) page at Mosaic Minds fully validates as xhtml... it's the last step in my article-adding process. (I added the "known" caveat just because hey, we're human and we do make the occasional mistake, so I might have missed a page here or there.) Pages that don't validate often look okay, but they're not RIGHT and it drives me crazy. I won't get into theory here, though. I'm basically just explaining that there are some issues that arose from this need for page validation. One of the issues is that Word and other word processors think they are so clever for turning punctuation into "smart" quotes and apostrophes and dashes. They're also known as curly quotes.. they're the ones that look different depending upon which side of the quotation they're on (beginning and ending). See, the problem with these "smart" quotes is that they don't bloody exist. Well, they obviously exist because you can see them, but they're not standard characters, and they don't, or MIGHT not display correctly on the web. They often look fine to the user, depending on the system configuration, or they might display as strange empty squares, or they might just not appear at all... but one thing that's absolutely for sure is that they don't validate.
So, every article has to have these characters converted if they haven't been removed or if the feature hasn't been turned off (most of the staff has, I think.) And so... after eight months on my To-Do list, I have finally gotten off my rump and written a program that will replace these things all in one go. It's possible in other programs, indirectly or with hassle, but this will convert exactly what I want converted with one click. It also contains a miniature web browser that loads our content site automatically so I won't have to click back and forth between windows. I am super excited. It has the basic functionality right now, but I'm planning on enhancing it eventually as my vb.net skills improve. (This is partly a learning exercise and partly just because it is so, so fun and partly because it really will be useful.) It's close enough to done that I can use it on Monday when I start formatting content, anyway, which will help me figure out what needs improvement. Yay! Fun Nerd Project!
Okay. Once again, I went into more detail than necessary. But.. that's not surprising. Let's see.. what else can I talk about? Tomorrow is the Spindletop dinner thingiemabob with the Scandinavian club. It kind of kills me when I think of that whole "we paid $50 to go to a fancy dinner that probably won't even be that good" thing, but I'm trying not to think about it too much. It really is a nice event. And, maybe M will iron my dressy khakis for me. I love wearing them but they need ironed every time, and I don't iron if I can help it AT ALL. But.. I hate to ask M to do it too often because I don't want to wear him out on it.
Oh, and we just did the math on M's paycheck and now I am depressed and need to take to my bed. I work 37.5 hours a week. (Which is technically true and totally false--I actually work 35 hours one week and 40 the next but okay.) That means that in three weeks, I work 112.5 hours. M? He worked 110 hours... in the last TWO weeks. And in that two weeks, he spent over thirteen hours driving to and from work. I guess plenty of people work that much and more, but his wife doesn't care much for it. (Even though fifteen hours weekly of overtime is kind of nice when it comes payday.)
