Well, it looks like all of the code from the testbed was recoverable off of Mtekktux’s hard drive. As was most of the temporary “pass around” folder. However, everything backed up from the laptop before one reinstalled Vista last fall is gone. The entire /home directory is what was corrupted. Everything else seems to be fine. Now off to resuscitate Mtekktux.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Well, last night the local file server and development testbed had a hard drive failure. Like always, one did not keep good backups of its data, and may have lost some semi important code. Mtekktux was slated for retirement this summer, had one completed the summer project. The funny thing is, it wasn’t the actual hard drive that died this time, it was due to an unexpected loss of power while performing a disk check. Tonight, the process of data recovery of the Ext3 partition will probably begin. Depending on how that goes, this weekend may see some development work on Breadcrumb NavXT take place.
The real downer is that Mtekktux was one’s local WordPress testbed. With it down, testing of Breadcrumb NavXT must be done on this blog. Due to this, the release of 3.4.0 will be pushed off until at least the 26th of October.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Want a breadcrumb trail on your website that behaves like the Windows 7 Explorer breadcrumb trail? If you live within the United States, or any of its territories, then you may need a patent use license.
US Patent Application No. 20080282199 covers all breadcrumb arrangements used on the internet that resemble those in Windows 7. This patent was filed in late 2008, and seems to be pending USPTO approval. While some of its claims cover features of Breadcrumb NavXT, Breadcrumb NavXT qualifies as prior art (Breadcrumb NavXT has supported hierarchical categories since 2.0.0 Beta 1, way back in November 2007).
This was found in the midst of research for implementing custom taxonomy support in Breadcrumb NavXT. In the next release, 3.4.0, taxonomy support will be completely reworked. This will enable support any flat and hierarchical taxonomy for post organization and archives. The former was implemented and in the SVN Trunk, the latter is a work in progress at the moment. Note that the SVN Trunk should be considered volatile at this time, and may contain code that does not fully work.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Four days are all that remain of summer. After that, it is back to school, again. The summer internship wrapped up today, hopefully one will be back with that company on a full time/permanent basis next spring. Unlike the previous two summers, one really is not ready to resume classes. Not that one really looked forward to classes before, just now one really does not want to deal with the inflexibility of the U.
What the U did that is bothersome is they moved a Tuesday/Thursday class to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday time slot, with just over a month’s notice. This was in the middle of the summer, and a full three months after one had signed up for the class. Of course, there is a scheduling conflict, otherwise one would not bother complaining.
The lecture was moved to a time that cuts into half of a lab. And, that lab section is the only one open. So, switching to another section is not feasible with anything short of divine intervention. One more or less told the student services person to take care of the problem–they broke it, they should fix it. The only response received was “I’m working on it”. That was two weeks ago. Pretty poor customer service in one’s opinion.
Oh, and shortly one will start the project work log for Pandora–a media recorder/server.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
The past few days have been quite rainy for the Twin Cities, around four inches of rain have fell in the past 48 hours. Tonight, a storm popped up north of Lake Minnetonka which produced a few tornadoes as it has made it’s way east. Before one actually knew a weather event was going on in the area, the cable internet dropped out. However, Windows Media Center was able to get a National Weather Service Tornado Warning message, and display it over playing video.
When in this “Warning Overlay” mode Windows Media Center will not record live TV, or allow the guide to show up with the arrow keys. Once the warning expires, Windows Media Center removes the overlay and restores normal functionality. It is not clear if this is the intended behavior or not. The apparent intent is to keep the user at the current channel. However, this does hinder the ability of the user to tune to a channel with more weather information if not already on one.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]