Archive for October, 2002
I've been blogging for one whole year today! Looking back it's obvious I didn't quite get the point of blogging and just used it as an egocentric soapbox. You'd be forgiven for thinking nothing's changed ;o) (Just Jake and his idiosyncratic nonsense).
Thank you to Scott Young from Texas for the gift from my wishlist. A nice surprise as I'm off work today with a nasty cold-like thing.
So, because this is a blog, here's a link to something funny (via AULA).
A few things today and all of them nothing to do with PHP:
Lee Powell kindly sent me a copy of his new book, LotusScriptors Plain Simple Guide To The Lotus Notes C++ API. Having skimmed through it I can see how useful this could be and I've already sprung an idea for my very own server addin task. If, like me, you've tried to get in to the C++ API in the past but have been put off by the lack of documentation, give this a go. A nice and simple introduction. Thanks Lee.
Talking of books, Mike and I just walked down to the bookshop and bought the book I mentioned yesterday. It's a huge 1400 pages. Looks worth it so far though. There's not nothing that isn't not in this book.
Jeff Condon of IBM has shared this useful link with us all. Most of it's your normal stuff but some of the articles and tuturials look worth a read.
Brendon Upson wants me to mention his "blarticles" over at Puakma.net. Although he probably doesn't want you to know that he wants me to let you know. If you know what I mean ;o)
Finally, after what feels like forever, Danny Goodman has released the second edition of Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Guide. If you liked the first edition (the only book I take to every desk I ever sit at) then you should appreciate the update. It now includes the complete reference to all the latest browsers (and presumably techniques).
Some handy links to amazon.co.uk and amazon.com that earn me cash ;o)
Off to add it to my Safari subs....
Okay, with one hurdle in the Notes->PHP conversion out of the way (if you haven't guessed already, this blog is fast turning in to the misadventures of a man on a mission), the next is the data itself. How do I get the data from Notes in to MySQL? Well, one of the obvious solutions is to use something like DECS or NotesPump. Not me. Don't trust them as far as I could....
What I've done is write yet more PHP. This time it connects to the Notes server using COM (Thanks to the JunkHeap PHPDOM project for their example file that got me started) and dynamically creates a series of SQL INSERT statements after formatting the text. I can then save this as a text file and dump it in to MySQL. Et, viola, here's the code. The result is text that you can save to a .sql file like this.
If you're getting really excited about the fact that PHP can get to Notes data via COM. Don't. It wasn't long before this is what PHP was telling me:
Warning: Invoke() failed: Exception occurred.
Source: NotesDocument Description: Notes error: Maximum number of memory segments that Notes can support has been exceeded in D:\HTML\codestore\sqlexport.php on line 41
Probably my fault...
Last month I spoke about the need to cater for all the links/bookmarks that include "A55692/store.nsf" in the URL if and when I make the move to PHP. Think I am just about there with the logic for the code needed. If you've never seen PHP feel free to have a look (if you know PHP feel free to comment on the code). Or just see it in action. Follow one of the links below and see how the URL gets redirected:
/A55692/store.nsf/unid/BLOG-20020824?OpenDocument
/A55692/store.nsf/all?OpenView&count=10
/A55692/store.nsf/unid/EPSD-5D6R6R?OpenDocument
Note that, in the code, part of the response sent is the HTTP Status Code 302 which tell the requesting agent that the resource has permanently moved to the new location. This is mainly to make it search engine friendly as it will (should?) update their records.
Okay, time for a stats update me thinks (Like anybody other than me cares). Back in July the average hits per day was 15,186. An increase on February when the average was 6,800. However, the average now is a whopping 24,341. I must be doing something right...
And to finish, here's a link to the bizarre. Rather Good has some warped stuff to pass the time. My favourite is the Punk Kittens doing White Stripes or Pavarotti expressing his love for elephants. You'll need sound to truly appreciate it.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot. I published another article today. Hope you like...
Jeb Cashin wants to see how I compose these blogs. As he says:
Codestore is one of the cleanest looking blogs I've seen. I suspect it looks rougher behind the curtain.
He's right! Look at the state of this:
Thanks to Christian Behrens for my gift from the wishlist ;o)
Something I forgot to mention yesterday was the other reason I prefer this URL:
http://www.jakehowlett.com/codestore/article/EPSD-5D6R6R/
to this one:
http://www.jakehowlett.com/codestore/article.php?unid=EPSD-5D6R6R
(both of which now work by the way) is that the former is more search-engine friendly. There is a lot of debate about whether Google indexes files with multiple query-string parameters. In fact Google themselves say that they don't like to index "dynamically generated" sites. So, if you use the former URL Google is none-the-wiser as to its origins. If it's going to get really fussy then we could even create URLs like this:
/codestore/articles/EPSD-5D6R6R.html
You'd never know ;o)
To leave you with something useful for the weekend here's a nice piece of CSS from Simon Willison. And asa Hope you all have good weekends....
Ned Batchelder was part of the team that wrote the original Domino server. He also has a weblog. In it, he recently Reader's Digest. It's a Domino site but they've kept the URLs simple (.html instead of .nsf) so as not to confuse the "silver surfers". For example, this page:
http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/misc/pfaq.htm
Is actually just the following page (where, using Apache as the web server, they have masked the URL):
http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/rd/rduk_misc.nsf/$BouncerNormal/pfaq.htm
Taking this masking one step further, I read on Simon Willison's blog today a related post about keeping URLs logical when using PHP with Apache. When I get round to converting this site to PHP it means that I can easily create friendly and logical URLs. Such that:
http://www.codestore.net/A55692/store.nsf/unid/EPSD-4XYGZL?OpenDocument
Becomes:
http://www.codestore.net/articles/EPSD-4XYGZL
And:http://www.codestore.net/A55692/store.nsf/unid/BLOG-20021008?OpenDocument
Becomes:
http://www.codestore.net/blogs/2002/10/08
And:http://www.codestore.net/A55692/store.nsf/area?OpenView&Count=10&RestrictToCategory=JavaScript
Becomes:
http://www.codestore.net/articles/JavaScript
Shall leave it up to you lot to decide which are the more logical...
For those who haven't read the lastest edition of A List Apart I've got something to show you. Using a basic list element and some CSS you can produce really nice looking menus. Here's an example with everything you need inlcuded in the source. Nice.
Like it? Like this site? Like me? Want to pay me back? Well, there's always my Amazon Wishlist (.co.uk and .com). I've always used them as a way to bookmark things I want for my own records but I suppose there's no harm in sharing (note that I am not begging ;o). Even if you don't feel like treating me to anything you can always just have a nosey at what kind of things I am "in to"/planning to buy.
Hope that when I get round to finding a wife and producing rug-rats I have the foresight to do something like this...
A note about yesterday's picture. I would never condone the use of turn-ups in any circumstance other than when paddling in the sea, like I had been doing just before this shot was taken. Other than that they are a fashion-crime!
Seven days without phone, e-mail and internet is a lot nicer than it sounds. Going to take me a while to get back in to it all though. First things first - must reply to all the mail...
I tried my hand at street-performance while I was there. My talent being the ability to balance bottles of water on my head. Did I get much money? No. Just lots of funny looks.
