Category: Pulverbatch

March 19, 2005 /

I need PHP to go up one level of a directory, then go back down several more, to include a file. I don’t know how to do this, but I’ve been getting around it by using a URL instead of a path; now Dreamhost is turning off the option of using URLs in include statements, for (good) security reasons, so I can’t do that anymore.

I also absolutely can’t find a way to do it the path way. It won’t work with an absolute path from the root directory, nor from the highest web-accessible directory (I’m in a Linux / Apache environment, if you hadn’t guessed). I can’t use ..s to ratchet up, or do any other kind of relative movement I can think of. Does anyone know how to get what I want?

Actually, Lisa, I think you’re the only PHP programmer who reads this, so maybe I should have just emailed you. But I might be wrong.

Update 0224 hrs: Never mind. I found out how to do it, but it doesn’t help, since I need to have Apache parse the file (a NewsBruiser portal CGI, if you hadn’t guessed) before I grab it, and an internal include obviously doesn’t do that. I’ll have to use the curl library, once I figure out what it is.

And I know I’m a bad programmer for going with this setup in the first place, but I had the choice of frames, meta refreshes or dumping a load on PHP, and it was rocks and frying pans all over.

Its name was Ivangrad

March 12, 2005 /

Last night I updated my resume for the first time since 2003, since this month is the first time it’s actually changed. I wrote it as HTML rather than a Word file, because I don’t like the latter, even if it would guarantee me the magic resume qualification of fitting everything on one page. My career counselors in college were psychotic about this, but since I’m not mailing any hard copies at the moment, I don’t think it matters for this one.

I uploaded the resume to the site, but I’m not going to link it, since it reveals my physical location. Maybe if you’re mad foxy clever you’ll figure out where it is. And no, I’m not getting a new job any time soon.

The point of this entry was that I only realized this morning that the color scheme I used for the document was the same as the exterior paint on the first house where I lived, in Georgetown.

Let’s see if LJ picks it up this time

March 10, 2005 /

Don't blog on me blog, verb / To noisily and simultaneously void one’s spleen, stomach, bladder and bowels.

In case you can’t read the text on the second one (which would be the back), it’s the Devil’s Dictionary 2.0 definition of “blog,” so of course this would be pending Mr. Knauss’s approval.

Seriously, if I got a couple dozen of these printed up, would anybody else be into it? I know my bitter, self-mocking iconoclasm is somewhat uncommon within my circle of readers, but there is a time and place for the ironic acknowledgement of one’s own participation in an overhyped and crass medium of expression. Like, say, concerts.

March 9, 2005 /

It occurs to me that I really don’t care about my GPA. This is literally the first time in my life, or at least in my living memory, I’ve been able to say that. I was always ashamed of my Cs in Handwriting, and since fourth grade I’ve been straining for As (and, since junior year of high school, usually getting Bs). Right now I want to get through my two classes, finish a project and graduate. All that matters is passing.

Of course, that project may be the lurker below. I had a solid setup with a professor at the beginning of the semester; it sounded like work I’d enjoy, and there was even compensation involved. All we had to do was wait for the company that wanted the code to sign off on the contract.

It’s March 10. Guess whether they’ve done so. Guess also whether the aforementioned professor appears to care, beyond a little guilt.

I’m going in tomorrow to talk to my advisor and find out what I need to do to get the DBCAC site approved as my final project. It’s for a nonprofit organization, and the work is easily as complicated as what I would have been doing otherwise; I’ll even write a paper about it if they want one. The quiet assumption is that MS students get a rubber stamp on their project requirement by building a professor’s resume, but I tried that and it didn’t happen. I’m not going to let someone else’s short attention span keep me here another semester. School has ceased to interest me, and I’m going to be finished in May, one way or another.

March 5, 2005 /

“[M]eaningful self-expression is not just a tool for success in the academy and the professional world (though it is that, too), but an essential component of finding and living our call to be human.”

Beautifully written and perfectly described. Sean’s a better diarist than I, and he’s the teacher I’ll never be, but this excerpt from one of his letters says exactly what I try to say whenever I discover a new and interesting human: clear thought and writing are rare, and powerful, and of tremendous value in the world.

If I read your blog or friend your LJ, it’s because I am fascinated by your finding and living of the call to be human.

Pokéblog entry from today, in class

March 2, 2005 /

I know how to hash things in programs, despite the fact that the applications of hashing got like two weeks of coverage total in my almost-six years of comp sci study. Therefore, every time I’m sweating a bad O(n^2) algorithm and suddenly realize that I can use hashing to significantly reduce its average-case complexity, I feel like some kind of mighty computer genius. But I’m not. I just know how to hash things.

Possibly the reason I feel this way is that nobody else with whom I’m working on said algorithms–including my professors–seems to understand what I’m talking about, like most of you right now.

February 28, 2005 /

Whoops. I don’t think anybody saw that, but if your RSS aggregator did happen to grab it in those fifteen minutes, I apologize for yanking it back out of sight. Send me an email telling me who it was about and I’ll give you a consolation prize.

Everybody else: don’t worry about it. Nothing to see here!

Let’s see if I can out-geek the Forge

February 23, 2005 /

All RPGs currently implemented on computers (including consoles) take the form of applications: behaviors written with an end in mind. But pen-and-paper RPGs aren’t applications. They’re operating systems.

Discuss! Or don’t.