Peter Wooley’s Blog

For the past year or so, I’ve been archiving files in one particular manner: theFile_MM-DD-YYYY.html. Essentially, I do this to every file I need to make changes to, but may destroy with those changes.For nearly as long as I’ve done this, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could automate this process. I took a C++ course and tried to mash things up there — but it certainly did not work. I’ve thought of web apps (believe me), I’ve searched far and wide for a usable software package (particularly freeware) that would only add a ‘Duplicate’ option to the Context Menu, and found nothing. All I was able to find was bloated shareware or poorly written (and designed) freeware that did much more than I wanted it to do.Finally, today I realized what I needed: a batch file!Unfortunately, as of earlier today, I had no idea how to write a batch file. I knew you could use DOS code, but I’m not quite young enough to remember all the COPY, SET, REM and other commands.I was able to spend some time investigating via a search engine and was able to find out how to do what I needed!What I’ve ended up with is, in my very humble opinion, sweet. Utilizing seamonkey420’s Date Grabber I was able to create a batch file titled ‘archive.bat’ that allows you to archive a chosen file.In order to use this on any file, you’ll need to add a Context Menu item that allows you to run the batch file. In order to do this, download the file and store it anywhere you’d like, open up My Computer (or any windows explorer window), go to the Tools menu and choose the Folder Options menu item. Once there, choose the File Types tab and scroll through the list to a file you would like to be able to archive with two clicks (txt is a great one to test with) and select it. Now, look for the Advanced button near the bottom of the window and select it. Next, choose the New button: fill in the Action field with a description of this feature (I used ‘Archive’) and fill in the Application used to perform action field with the location of the archive.bat (via the Browse button). Click OK until you’re out of the Folder Options window and find a file with the extension .txt (if you cannot find one, you can create one, or use the above process on another filetype that you do have, perhaps .mp3 or .doc).When you’ve found the appropriate file, right-click the file, and if all has gone well, you should see ‘Archive’ (or the title you chose) in the Context Menu, and when you click it, the file is copied and the date is appended to the end of the filename, thus creating an archive!I’ve tested this with many file types (html, css, js, mov, fla, swf, txt, doc, psd, pdf, et al) and had no problems with them. However, this file and tutorial are given to you with absolutely no warranty If this causes any problems on your machine, you have my apologies, but please realize that if you use this, it’s at your own risk — just from one developer to another!If you would like to know more about what the file is doing, feel free to download the commented file and read throgh what exactly is going on. It took me a while to understand the code and syntax, but it was actually quite fun learning!If you do happen to spot any glaring bugs, or know of a better way to do this: let me know! Enjoy!I’d like to thank all the sites that I used in my quest for Batch commands and syntax:The Elder GeekB Brown TechRecipesTech TargetRob van der Woudeand Neil Turner, who reminded me I wanted to do this with his PNG Compress instructions

In roughly 12 hours, I have a term paper due for my Ethnographic Art (HUM440) class, and it’s on Basket Weaving. We’ve had nine weeks to work on it, and I’ve yet to finish it. I’ve tried, really.I should clarify that by trying, I’ve spent a lot of time intending to get started. I can say that I’ve gotten started. And what did I do to prepare? I opened OpenOffice, prepared my margins, type and everything else required for MLA (and yes, I had to Google that definition). I also prepared images that I can — and will &mdash use. As I’m without a scanner, I took a few shots, then popped them open in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I cleaned them up, cropped them, color corrected and exported for filesize. I’ve got all the pieces in a folder labeled ‘ethnographicArt_termPaper’. I’m so ready…Today, I got a great amount of other work done, I got some reading done and I even considered washing the dishes (Kara would have been happy if I’d actually done them).Procrastination is really an art and I’d hate to say I excel at it. The truth is, if I were any good at it, I’m getting worse. I am now dreadfully aware that I will not get this paper done (whether or not I continue writing this post). I’ve been putting so much focus on other projects that I actually forgot about this paper entirely. And, procrastination is not only having the strength to put off work, but also the ability to know when you absolutely, must start in order to finish just in time.Of course, maybe it’s not that I’m just procrastinating, maybe I have too much to do right now? Nah.There is the conciliation, however, that I can turn this paper in late, and that makes all the difference in the world.

After class this morning, Tyler and I walked down to Pioneer Place. After dining on our lunch, we hopped up to EB Games and were shocked to see two fellows standing with their arms extended, staring at a screen. We had seen a Wii display last week, sitting dark and depressed. However, this week, it was alive — alive with Excite Truck!The two aforementioned fellows appeared to be doing quite well with the Wiimotes, and we found out, after 10 minutes of waiting, why. There was a small group of people waiting to play when we arrived, but they soon trickled away. Tyler and I finally understood that the two players appeared to have no intention of leaving. The term “Hogging” came to mind. Thankfully, with enough patience, dead batteries and asking them how many more races they were going to play, they left — and we got to play.What can I say, I was just excited to try it out, but Tyler was quick to make a point of evaluating the Wii on its actual value, not just its (awesome) gimmicks. We both agreed that the graphics just really aren’t that strong, if we talked about textures, models and such. However, at least in Excite Truck, perspective, blur and general animation was beautiful.The obvious focus was the Wiimote. At first, it felt quite touchy, but within 30 seconds I (as well as Tyler) had the hang of it. Several people came up to us as we played and were quite confused, until they saw that we were actually holding the controller. One odd thing, was that there is an ‘A’ button (possibly a ‘B’ button), a D-pad and ‘1′ and ‘2′ buttons. That doesn’t really speak to me, but considering each game can use the controller in any numbers of way, I suppose I could get used to it.Overall, it just whetted my appetite to play a game using both the Wiimote and the Nunchuk — mainly Zelda! One thing I was not prepared for was how many people seemed surprised by how small it was and how the controller worked. I’ve been paying attention to its development for so long, it was surprising to me that others haven’t. For Tyler and I, though, we were quite happy to finally be able to get our hands on one and prepare ourselves for owning the Revolution (I know, I know, it’s called a Wii)!

Greetings all! I’m pleased to announce my second wooleyTip! In this episode, I’ll be helping eliminate a bug in Internet Explorer (including version 7!) that results in unwanted whitespace between list items.I should preface, another mysterious whitespace bug has been reported on before by designers far more intelligent than I am. However, their techniques did not work for my case, so I had to spend a little more time figuring it out on my own.I’ll set up the scenario, explain why I am doing it, and then explain what needs to be done.The situation I am in is using an unordered list as iconographic navigation. Each list item is on a new line, and not floated as is more typical in horizontal navigation. Then, each list item has an anchor tag which has had it’s display type set to block (display:block;) and a height and width given (height:28px;width:29px;). Beyond that, there is a span tag inside each anchor tag, which carries a text description of the list item. This span tag is meant to be invisible to users with styles turned on, but accessible for users which do not use styles.As many would do, I said my span tag to “display:none;” in order to hide it from view. I’ve found out that when you are using lists in this way, the hidden span tag causes a conflict in IE which adds two (2) to three (3) pixels of margin-type whitespace at the bottom of each list item. This can be a serious problem, but I was able to construct a solution.Instead of using “display:none;” to hide your span tag, you can actually use “visibility:hidden;.” This way, you hide the actual text and/or images inline. For it to work correctly, you’ll need to add the “overflow:hidden;” tag to the parent element of the span tag. In my experience tonight, this is the only way to ensure that IE6 (and lower) will not overflow the width or height of the anchor tag if you have a specific width or height set.If you have known about this problem (and it’s solution) or want to let me know I’m wrong, please let me know!

I’ve been neglecting the cleanliness of my internet directories and portfolio for quite a while now, so, after receiving a tip from an astute observer perusing my site, I decided it was time to get them back in the type of order I crave them to be in.In an attempt to calm the chaos, I moved several items from their not-so-temporary homes in the temp folder while also moving several project-related files to their proper place in the newly-created ‘projects’ folder. I’ve collected all the projects I feel are more tech demos than anything else in the demos folder.I also tossed a ton of old sites, backups and “what was I thinking”-type projects. I feels good to know everything now has it’s place, except for this hilarious video of a cat (thanks, Pete!), which still lives in the temp folder.In addition to this, I also cleaned up the rest of my web server, without invading anyone’s privacy — too much.

Over at IEEE Spectrum, they’re running a story about Blake Ross, the 20-year-old guy behind Firefox. He’s working on a new project he’s calling “Parakey.” The articles goes fairly in-depth, but it sounds as though it will attempt be a bridge between your OS and the web.I know, I know, it’s been tried before. However, I believe Ross’ idea may be on a right track. What he (and his companions) have conceived of is essentially using an actual program that resides on your home computer (not web-based) that does the web stuff for you. You’ll open the program, plug in your digital camera and Parakey will find them, copy them, make thumbnails and give you access to find them, tag them, and do anything you’d like. Then (presumably when you’re done) Parakey publishes those those photos online for you – thus removing the step of having to upload your digital photos after you’ve all ready taken them from your digital camera.Other examples were give, but I believe that a “one-stop” digital photo publisher is one of the high points of the idea. Granted, the user will have control over (for good or ill) the files they wish to show online and those they do not.Another interesting note is that this will not be entirely open source. Parts of it will be, but the way the product is being created is with profit in mind. Now, I am not going to say things like “he’s turned on the open source community!” or “he’s just being greedy.” No, he’s building a career – as far as I can tell. The idea that Firefox is not allowing a mint to be made by someone is absurd. I can only guess he’s working out a business model that can sustain (and grow) the service.My initial thoughts on this are that I may not be too terribly interested in it, but my gut tells me that those who do not relish in the difficulties inherent in coding for multiple browsers, installing and using Linux and assembling their computer’s tower from parts (such as myself) will gladly take a look at a product that may help merge the offline and online worlds.I’m not in love with the name, though: Parakey. Perhaps, like Phoenix (then Firebird, then Firefox) before it, it’s name will be risen from the ashes and changed into something else, like Parafox!