It has been roughly 36 episodes of the show now, and a fresh problem that was brewing has come to a head.
Storage.
Initially, when using my old webcam, it wasn’t so much of a problem… but then April came along and I switched to 1080p source and my storage pressures began to mount with every new episode.
You see, depending on how much I fluff my lines and amount of dialogue I spew out, an episode can devour between 10 and 30GB when you add the sources for each item. Despite my network capacity sitting at about 5TB, much of that is devoted to my rather large library of DVD rips and game ISO’s/maps/mods (all of which I own a paid for copy) - you see, I’m too lazy to compress them, and I now rue my penchant for “special editions”
Thankfully, I was forced to replace the 750GB HDD in my main rig due to bad sectors earlier this year and still had the buggered HDD to replace on warranty. So I raise the RMA and ship it off. Luckily, the store I purchased it from (since it was an OEM HDD) no longer stocked that model and was able to upgrade the 750GB into a 1TB for no extra cost - I really do love the pace of technology at times!
After a little pondering as to where this new drive was going to call home, I settled on plumbing it into my main windows rig - well, it can’t physically fit into my server (already sporting 2.75TB) and my NAS box is out of the question since it requires a pair of drives.
Drive in, formatted, shared and filled with the current archives with little trouble… until the 700GB is swallowed up at some point. Though, with any luck, I’ll have the cash to spend on a better and more long term solution. Think I need to start a Drobo fund >.<
This might seem a bit lame to those who actually know what they’re doing, but I have been bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out how to grab and display more than one post in a category using the archive.php file.
I’m using the archive.php file instead of creating a specific category file because I want to keep the layout the same with the least amount of editing whenever I do need to make a change. Copy pasta maybe easy, but it soon gets tiresome and is needless extra hassle.
After some frantic “help!” posts on twitter (thank you @wpbeginner for responding!) and friendfeed plus a little searching of my own, all roads seemed to lead to this page in the wordpress codex.
Specifically, this solution:
<?php
$categoryvariable=$cat; // assign the variable as current category
$query= ‘cat=’ . $categoryvariable. ‘&orderby=date&order=ASC’; //concatenate the query
query_posts($query); //run the query
?>
Now, dumping this just before the while (have_posts()) : the_post(); line, ensuring you swap out ($query) with (’showposts=10&cat=’.$cat) will give you what you want - upto 10 posts of the category selected by the user.
Sadly, this will break the displaying of your tags, which simply won’t do! Off to the drawing board again!
My starter for ten was to try creating my own bunch of if statements to alter the query based on whether it was a category or a tag just before my while statement. No good, broke the whole page instead of just a specific functionality. Then a lightbulb flickered inside.
There’s already an if statement determining what to do based on the users actions right at the top… why don’t I just sneak them into there? I’m cutting down on additional if statements and making the code cleaner. So, I bodged together the code and got the following:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<div class=”item entry”>
<?php $post = $posts[0]; // Hack. Set $post so that the_date() works. ?>
<?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
Not bad for someone who only knows basic HTML and lacks any knowledge of how wordpress functions internally. Tho, as I said, it’s still prolly lame to those who actually know what they’re doing - but I’m not them, and this was my victory
If you know of a better way of doing this or if this opens the site up to a vulnerability, please let me know in the comments.
Well, last night I suffered the C:\ on my main rig corrupting, guess that explains why the system had gone a little wobbly before I tried to reboot it.
This means I’m spending the day on my macbook while I have the HDD connected to my server for a little data recovery using Arax Disk Doctor, which has saved my arse a few times now (at a reasonable price too! No, I don’t work for them nor do I get any kickbacks!).
So, everything I was working on needed to migrate to there which means I discovered something… the text editor that comes with OSX sucks balls. Seriously, it totally screwed up the html/php I was working on causing the development site for Vertical Slice that I was playing with to break and not load. So, off I went hunting for a real editor.
I finally discovered a free one (since there are so many simple apps that people are trying to charge $70 and upwards for on OSX, definitely a better ecosystem on windows and linux). The editor I eventually decided upon is called Smultron. Well worth grabbing a copy if you want to edit html/php on your mac without paying stupid prices.
Oh, yeah… I kinda let slip about the next bit of news. I’m working on my own site for Vertical Slice rather than using tumblr to power it. This way I’ll be able to control how things look. Sadly, I don’t have any skills with PHP and SQL so I went on the lookout for an opensource CMS that lends itself to vlogging and came up with nothing.
There’s plenty of them for creating video sharing sites, but nothing specifically for a vlog. So, having had some experience with wordpress and being unimpressed with podpress, I thought I’d get down and dirty with a basic wordpress site.
The result is a totally stripped down interface crying for some tarting up sitting over at dev.verticalslice.tv. I’m trying to learn how to pick out parts of a post and arrange them into the site in the order I want - which is proving to be a difficult task when you lack a brain capable of writing code.
At the end of this endevour, I plan to release the theme for free so that there is a theme out there for a simple vlog site without having to pay a fortune.
Why bother with this when tumblr is doing a good enough job? Well, partly because I’d love to have the freedom to mod the site as I wish and partly because a friend of mine is offering to host it for me since they’re starting up their own business as a GSP (Gaming Service Provider). Basically they’ll have some servers in a datacentre, set them up with game servers and then rent them out. They’re looking to launch the service soon. I’ll post a link when I can remember what he said they were called >.<
While I have been stuck on my macbook today, I have done a couple of things. The first is to throw my hat into the ring for the Rocketboom Talent Search.
I think I’ve made a solid application and could certainly pick up where Joanne left off, though a little nagging voice in the back of my head is telling me “you don’t really stand a chance”. I guess we’ll see, I totally loved my time writing for them and feel I could add so much more than the other applicants, but then I would say that.. wouldn’t I?
The second thing was to finally get my interview with the code monkeys finalised and uploaded. This was my first ever interview and was the first time for Adrian, the guy I interviewed, so we both had nerves, lost our trains of thought and plenty of giggles at the camera (which I had placed in a very poor location).
The important thing for me, at least, is that I have finally conducted one and learned a hell of a lot from the experience. I hope you won’t be too savage when you do watch it - you will watch it, won’t you?
So, aside from waiting to see how the talent search goes, I’m stuck with the horrors of reinstalling the OS onto my main system and setting it back to how I like it.
That’ll be 4 hours of my life I can’t get back again
As I’m sure some of you are aware, I’m trying to get my Vertical Slice project off the ground and generating money - with extra impetus since I lost my job back in Feb.
While creating a show that is watchable has been a challenge on a budget of almost zero, it pales in comparison to the biggest problem… getting eyeballs.
Even though the response from those who have watched it appear to be universally good, it still struggles along and pretty much never breaks 100 views on youtube - how can I be beaten by cats on roombas or trainwreck video shows? OK, so maybe I can understand the entertaining power of internet kittehs and human perversions of pain. That’s not the point!
A certain amount of this will be down to my sucky tagging - no matter how much I know, I just never seem to hit the right combo - but the overwealming amount is due to no-one really knowing of my name.
Which seems strange cause I have been on the net for over a decade, I’m active in social media places such as twitter and friendfeed yet I still remain pretty much invisible - off the radar to everyone.
Hell, even my main blog doesn’t get anyone reading it, (which brings about interesting questions of my sanity) so this mini rant of sorts will never really impact on any of it!
All of this tells me that it certainly isn’t a case of “if you build it, they will come” as they’ll never come if they don’t know about it.
But then, you also encounter the catch22 - how do you get known if you suffer from lack of radar coverage? I’ve tried submitting links to digg and mixx, but it just dies a death there due to the political nature of the place. Spewing it forth onto social sites turns up little, as do comment trawling and forums (even if I’ve been there for years), submitting to popular sites doesn’t even get you a response due to the volumes they deal with.
A chunk of this can be explained away by a lack of participation, but is it really participating when you click “digg” or add a “me too” comment here and there? It just gets swallowed up in a sea of numbers. Even where I’m active (FF, forums and twitter), I’m lucky if I get a single “like” or comment.
Which brings about the ultimate question, is it just me? Am I just uninteresting/annoying? Would this video show succeed with a more charismatic or pleasent on the eyes person behind it, promoting their bollocks off?
I think I know what the answer is, but the stubborn side of me will always give a middle finger and keep making them, even if no bugger will watch them!
Maybe this is the trainwreck I need to get attention? Or perhaps this could be an interesting project, charting how those with zero contacts attempts to build something on the net.
I’m pretty sure this won’t be the only whining outburst on this subject ;P
Yesterday we had a little bit of snow in Leeds. So, in between doing my job I randomly snapped a few pictures on my iphone and uploaded them to flickr . I just wish that it had been far heavier (I want several feet of snow!) and tht it lasted for longer than a day, as the snow has turned to ice now and there’s no sign of more to come
Still, I enjoyed it while I could… I made a tri-force in the carpark (should have taken a snap of that), failed to make a pac-man scene, had a quick snowball fight and chucked no longer edible grapes into the several inches deep drifts >.<
Since 2002, I have been diagnosed with a form of epilepsy that causes me to have a full tonic clonic seizure as well as partial seizures – they’re not called Grand Mal and Petite Mal anymore.
This means that when I suffer a partial seizure, I can suddenly stop responding and look like I am gazing into space, which is a strange sensation because it’s just like being in a temporal stasis, one minute you’re talking to someone, the next things have moved around and you suddenly become very confused as your brain begins to process everything once again.
I used to wonder what it was like to be held in stasis like the fictional characters Austin Powers, Dave Lister and John Spartan, now I have a good idea and could even suggest ways to make them seem a bit more realistic next time.
When I have a tonic clonic seizure it’s a full on drop to the floor, thrash about and foam from the mouth job. These types of seizures can really knock me for six. It usually starts off with such a strong sensation of Déjà Vu that I get the same kind of nauseous feeling as when I get a bout of vertigo. It almost feels like I have fallen into a world of my own where I’m not running to the same timeframe as everyone else… think of those sci-fi films where a person goes “out of shift” with reality, they can see everything but yet are seperate to it. I’ll also get a shiver because I just know that I have been there before and will begin to “predict” what will happen next. I say “predict” as it isn’t really seeing into the future, it’s simply a lag that is present in my mind because its functions are being messed about with due to the impending seizure.
During the instances of Déjà Vu - which as I said, are very strong and profound sensations that affect my eyes (a strange vibration on them), stomach (that dizzy and nauseous feeling), ears (part of the dizzy sensation) and spine (shivers and my hairs standing up) – I can suffer a few partial seizures, but not always. To others I become confused, not sure of where I am or what I am doing but to me I’m in this strange “temporal disruption” and I’m trying to figure out and process what is happening to me. After all of this, I might or might not suffer a tonic clonic seizure.
Then, I’ll come through and it’s almost as though my brain has simply reset itself. Sometimes I’ll think that I have gone to bed and feel quite annoyed that my sleep has been disturbed, I’ll not know who or where I am though I do hold some vestigial knowledge of who I am as evidenced by some of my reactions to questions by medical staff such as “do you know who you are or where you are” with my response being “ask them” *points to parents* one time. I have no knowledge of what happened in the run up and it can take a good 30 mins before I start to remember what happened just before. If you want to know what it’s like when coming through, the closest I can describe it in words is when you first wake up which is prolly why I often think that I have gone to bed.
My first seizure was easily the worst I have ever endured, my bladder emptied itself and I bit down with such a force that I shattered my back teeth!
Thankfully I have only averaged about 1 of these a year and they are the really scary part of my affliction; this is due to the nature of my epilepsy.
Up until my first seizure, there hadn’t been any history of this condition in my family and since I have developed epilepsy at the tail end of/just after puberty, I resorted to reading any information I could find on the net. With the help of this info and a few comments from doctors, I can only come to the conclusion that the accident during a driving lesson the day before where a car rear ended me as I was waiting at a round-about caused some trauma to my brain as the back of my head bounced off the pretty solid headrest. This trauma then leads to my developing the seizures and a diagnosis of having epilepsy.
During the following months I was subjected to numerous tests and all came back inconclusive, they had no idea what causes my fits, just that I have them – It’s one 21st birthday present I would like to exchange!
So, after the doctors shrugged their shoulders at me and simply dished out some medication and long list of things I can’t do anymore I was left to fend for myself in a world littered with fresh dangers and only a medication standing between me and my “normal” life before.
Despite this rude interruption to how my reality had been running, I decided to not let it rule my life. I have seen a few people who live in such fear that a seizure will strike when they are doing something that all they are willing to do is wall themselves off and play it safe, never experiencing new things because of the chance of seizure during it. I am eternally thankful that my epilepsy is not photosensitive, but at the same time I have the curse of the unknown. Because of this very fact I simply approached a “we’ll see” attitude and found that my loved ones worry more about my epilepsy than I do!
That’s not to say I completely ignore my condition, as I have altered my approach to things a little in order to accommodate a constant monitoring of what I’m doing so that I can link it to any seizures or simply as another form of looking around before crossing a road. Basic safety awareness really, but I refuse to let it rule what I can and can’t do and will keep on living. I suppose I might take a different attitude if I suffered a greater frequency of seizures or if I had a more common trigger to them, but I would still try to live without letting it hold me back, I’m stubborn like that!
Over the years, I have been able to pin down the majority of my “triggers” using what is known as my “halo”. A persons halo is the sensation or aura they experience in the run up to a partial or full seizure and can be used to both learn more about your specific form of epilepsy and as a warning that what you’re doing might not be safe to do or might even be a causal effect.
I have already described my own halo earlier on and each one is different in its specifics for everyone who is a member of the epilepsy club!
From what I can tell, my epilepsy has a number of triggers that all work in tandem to bring about a seizure.
These are:
• Sleep deprivation
• Stress
• Constant high environmental temperature
• Lack of food over a long period of time, specifically lack of sugar
That’s not to say one of these on their own will bring about a fit, it needs to be a combination of them to break my tolerance level.
Now, this is the first I have mentioned tolerance level but this is the key to my recurring seizures and to how to control them.
The medication I was put onto simply raises this level beyond the threshold of the triggers mentioned above, however my confidence in the dosage is quite low due to the first time I needed a repeat prescription and the doctor commented “this dosage shouldn’t have any effect” and promptly doubled it.
Ignoring the fact that it has successfully controlled it, he increases a drug that has noticeably damaged my short term memory (unless that is another problem rising from my car accident), which coupled with their inability to determine what causes it leads me to rarely taking the pills as a consequence.
I am fully aware that I can do this due to my extremely low frequency of seizures, and I will take one if I know that I’ll be encountering a lot of my triggers (such as going to a hot country) yet beyond this I just don’t take them.
I do feel extremely fortunate that I my epilepsy isn’t the daily battle that others face, and to those who face such an existence you shall always have my utmost sympathy.
For me, it’s a time bomb without a display kinda thing where it’s the fear of when it’ll happen that holds the most impact rather than when it strikes – a biological terrorist so to speak.
If your epilepsy is similar to mine, don’t let the fear of a seizure stop you from living your life, we got it easy compared to the epilepsy others deal with on a day to day basis. On one level I feel lucky to have firsthand experience of such a strange experience, yet it is still a curse that always lurks in the back of your mind.
