I was chatting with MickRip on teh IRC trying to get ideas on how to find competent fellow php programmers so they could criticize my evolving framework in a month or so. He said he googled for all his answers -- so do I. Next step was looking into some forums. And wouldn't you know it? The first thread of the first forum I found had me so sidetracked that I wouldn't think of it again for several hours.

BEHOLD!! Homer Simpson drawn using only CSS and some font character set!! --


If you go to the page you can click a button to watch the shapes come to life one at a time. And according to one of the forum members it doesn't render so well on linux OS ubuntu --


This kind of got my brain whirring.

Quote from dude's site (translated to english) --
"After doing Homer CSS I was challenged to do a JPG to CSS image conversion tool. It is a proof of concept really. It takes a black and white jpeg and returns an html copy of the image created with text and CSS, just like homer was. Enjoy!"

Here it is in action --


Oh? I can have picture go many dots for play too? And then it hit me -- I want to scatter them dots and make them come together all animated like in teh browsers! =D

I don't mind a cryptic interface. If the file has to be named "image.jpg" in the same folder to work then whatever. But it kept crashing with my own image. I opened his example of Che Guerra (you know his family is trying to collect royalties?) and my image in Paint Shop Pro, then in Photoshop CS3 and then finally in GIMP. Well it was gimp that finally told me that the original image was a JPEG1.0 and my image was a JPEG7.0 -- wtf? I've never even heard of different JPEG versions before! =X And as far as I could figure out not one of these applications were capable of saving a JPEG1.0 lool.

My next step had me finding a little app called Batch PSD to JPG. A step less cryptic, it's auto-naming convention was rather hideous. So I opened my image up in Photoshop once again and saved a .psd, converted and viola! I had one ugly ass html file to play with now.

First off, all spacing is based in 'em' rather than pixels. 2nd, everything is put in a div positioned up and to the left from the top-left corner using the div margin while all the dots are position with padding. 3rd, this html is just plain-ole div crazy!

So I hopped off a php script to parse, copy and rebuild the html so every dot had a unique id tag --

<?php

function stripmargin(&$str) {
  return str_replace('<div style="margin-top: -420px; margin-left: -180px;">','',$str);
}

function em2px(&$str)  {
  if ($a=strpos($str,'em;'))  {
    $b = substr($str,$a-4,4);
    $str = substr_replace($str,round($b*100).'px',$a-4,6);
    print $b.' ';
    $str = em2px($str);
  }
  return $str;
}

function cutdivs(&$str) {
  if (strstr($str,'&bull;</div></div>'))
    $str = str_replace('&bull;</div></div>','&bull;</div>',$str);
  if ($a=strpos($str,'"><div style="font-size:'))  {
    $str = substr_replace($str,' ',$a,14);
    $str = cutdivs($str);
  }
  return $str;
}

function adjustpadding(&$str) {
  if ($a=strpos($str, 'position:absolute;padding-left:'))  {
    $l = str_pad(substr($str,$a+31,3)-180,3,' ',STR_PAD_LEFT);
    $t = str_pad(substr($str,$a+49,3)-420,3,' ',STR_PAD_LEFT);;
    $str = substr_replace($str,$l,$a+31,3);
    $str = substr_replace($str,$t,$a+49,3);
    $str = substr_replace($str,' ',$a+18,0);
    print $l.' '.$t.' ';
    $str = adjustpadding($str);
  }
  return $str;
}

function legible(&$str) {
  return str_replace('><div',">\n<div",$str);
}

function id(&$str)  {
  static $c = 0;
  if ($a=strpos($str, 'px;">&bull;')) {
    $str = substr_replace($str,' id="dot_no_'.$c.'"',$a+4,0);
    $c++;
    $str = id($str);
  }
  return $str;
}

$f = fopen('out.html','r');
$g = fopen('b-knox.html','w');
while (!feof($f))
  fwrite($g,id(legible(adjustpadding(stripmargin(cutdivs(em2px(fgets($f))))))));
fclose($f);
fclose($g);
?>

YAYS for recursively self-referencing functions! This was a fun exercise any ways.

Ok -- I got my dots in slightly more malleable state. And so now the animation. I've hardly fiddled with jQuery since I found out about it. Read a lot but haven't really done anything worth noting. I really don't know jack about Javascript but, boy-o-boy, did I learn the hard way from syntactical nightmares tonight!! =O

The only really gripey thing I had with jQuery was trying to do math on strings. When you ask it for the position of an object it returns with something like "122px" and so if you add, say, 24 to that you get "122px24". I felt like a spoiled brat -- with php you get an error message when your syntax is retarded but Javascript just kind of stares at you blankly. "I'm teh borked." it tells me with telepathy.

My ultimate challenge that took me forever was ::
1) randomizing the dot placement
2) getting the dots to gravitate towards their relative original position
3) recenter the relative original position according to window size
4) randomizing both dot color and z-index (how they overlap)
...and I could add a 5 now that I think of it to recenter when window is resized =x

After several hours of crash coursing teh syntax and a few tweaks to the html (including stripping the dots down from 350 count to only 256 yay 8bits) it looks like this when the dots are done moving from their random positions on screen ::



I invite you all to WATCH MY SILLY CSS JAVASCRIPT ANIMATION THAT LAGS A BIT so you can lag with me. AND ZOMG IT WYRX IN EVERY BROWSER EVEN IE6!!! =XXXX I TESTES IT ITZ TRUE!! =O=O=O=OOO

I was very inspired when I started this. Now I am exhausted but my brain is still laiejflaejfkliaelkeklakeslikaelkalefkalie!!!! =O

Total Runtime :: about 7 hours including this post
XP Earned :: confidence boost on trying new things

The camping trip last weekend was a good time even though I never could quite relax. I really don't know what that's about but I have my hunches (like I need to know I'm making money in a month or so). I've got a lot of work to do through this merry old Month of May (which includes turning the big three-OH SNAP). Time for some woodshed.

On the camping trip we did take a heartily six mile walk which obliterated our ability to feel like doing much of anything else. I had no idea how out of shape I am. I've been making a forced effort to enter yoga back in my life. Running out in the woods everyday sure is cool but I do decree that with some mental commitment the level of benefits may extrapolate?



Oh big flighty bird with yer hollow bones,
Where does your marrow go?
Your hollow mind zone?
With a nose tied to the moon
You won't see it rot so soon.



Humans could be out of balance. But when I see animals building things I wonder how far we have all fallen. Things like a nest, a beaver dam or a hive -- how absolutely necessary are they to a species survival? So weird, their engraved functionality to construct these things. When it's complete do they even remember that they built it?



I ♥ the Elitist Ant Eater Allegory presented in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher & Bach where the Ant Eater calmly explains to both the Tortoise and Achilles that he understands the entire ant colony as a single consciousness. He even goes so far as to say he can interact with it. Especially after the colony communicates to the Ant Eater that it wishes to have 'nervous disorders surgically removed' though the Ants have no consciousness of this desire at all. I wish people could see themselves as part of a colony in this respect. Yay elitism!! All hial O'Baragahma!!! (things are looking up for the Armageddon Obama antichrist campaign (i wish you could rearrange the letters in "armageddon" to read "ram a dead dog" because "ram dead ong" isn't the same and neither is "ade ram dong" loolz))

Between tangent thoughts I try to remember I am a classically scatterbrained multitasker. I don't care what millennials want to believe -- Our brains are not hyper-threaded even if our habits are. Stay on target. Stay on target. I can't -- I can't see him.

[insert pic of x-wing fighter running the death star trench here ---]


What I want and what I got are two different things. How is anyone much different, eh? I set out a while ago to make a living by exploiting my creativity. But I don't want to be making websites for other people. I want to be writing/performing music and making movies. Stupid ego -- thanx ALOT! =P It's ironic that I learned how to do webdev by trying to share music and film with others online. LOL

I have been getting some awesome work done this week. I'll save those notes once I reach a certain apex. I stopped at Plum Market on my way out of Ann Arbor to size up their employment offerings. I don't think I could do it without hating myself unless I worked less than 3 half days a week which wouldn't even be worth my time. I really miss living in Ann Arbor and walking every where.

...and following your bliss. One and the same or two very different paths that might intersect? LOL dunno. I think maybe my ego has me a little delusional...

I sent out a few "Baron Knoxburry summer tour EPIC FAIL" emails today. Of the 20 messages I sent out looking for gigs I got only one reply. It's all the way in Boston and I would be playing with Disasterpeace but it's just not feasible at this point. When I started thinking about how much effort would go into promoting this thing I realized there wouldn't be time for anything else through the whole month of May. That could be strategically really stupid.

littlemarph and I are still going camping. She still has her friend Josie in Roanoke dying to see her. I might still and try find gigs in that area and/or the Knoxville area which is really close to both The Smokey Mountains and DollyWood. Unfortunately, I believe I read on the Smokey Mntns site that leashed dogs aren't allowed on hiking trails and I know we can't afford Dolly Parton's amusement park!! xD But, at any rate, even if we go out that way we still shave about 1100 miles of my original trip plannings.

Still want to hit Pittsburgh too if I hear back from Jonbro. =X

Money got tight all of a sudden. I should be fine so long as my Bush Stimulus Check and my State Tax Return show up by early June. Stupid money.

Counter Cosby got a gig at DirtFest up by Frankenmuth. I had to buy 25 $20 tickets up front to secure the gig. This is kind of an exciting challenge for us. We hope to sell 30+ to try and secure a better time slot among the festival's 5 stages hosting over 60 bands mostly local selling tickets like we are. blank75 was over while we were debating the details -- we ended up finishing our decisive conversation the next day over the phone because his attitude was so negatively obtrusive. The organizer I am dealing with seems like a real nice & level guy. Hey, the festival's website says they are having a beard competition -- how bad could it be? Hopefully we sell some merch!!

So things are both up and down -- so they are rather much the same and not all at once.

Like, somehow... my poor LittleMarph contracted my (possibly psychosomatic) chronic belching disorder. I have no idea how I feel about this. I've never met anyone else with this thing and now my longtime girlfriend is doing it? Just weird... wish I knew wtf was going on...

Last autumn I started building a fort for two reasons. 1) to have something to do outside and 2) to have a place where the wind was blocked. Well now I get to start over because some assholes toppled my fort. I'm not sure if it's the same asshole spray painting vulgarities on the trees or different assholes who were equally disturbed by the lack of graffiti sophistication. Anywho, here is two pictures melded into one for bonus visibility --



The other night, on my way home, I was going 59mph on M-50 through a work zone with signs saying 45mph which is crap. And just as I whizzed by Pentecost Junction a cop pulled up to the intersection and turned to follow me. Eventually the lights came on and I got pulled over.
"You know you are going 59 in a 45?"
"Well, yeah, I'm used to it being 55 and no one was working."
"I was talking on my phone while following you and looked at my speedometer."
"Oh, really? I figured you already had me so I'd just keep going the same speed."
(cop laughs) "Ah, damn he's got me already!" he mimics.
Did the information exchange.
(cop looks at my license) "Onsted? That's weird, I haven't seen you around."
"Class of '96. Lived in Ann Arbor 7 years, quit the factory, living in my parents basement trying to start a website business."
"You got anything illegal in here for making your websites?"
I started laughing because the first thought in my head was software on my laptop. I've never heard of a cop searching a car, finding a computer and searching it for warez before. "No." as I kept laughing and then the wait in the car as he ran my shit.
"I'm going to cut you a break." he said when he came back. "I've been stopping a lot of people on this stretch of road telling them to take it easy and you're out here trying to get your ducks in a row."
And then many thanks from me.

I don't know why people hate on cops so much. Sometimes I wonder if the people who feel that way aren't always acting like they are doing something wrong already when interacting with them. Maybe I have been letten go too many times or maybe most cops are actually nice people just trying to do their part to make their community a little safer. Dunno.

At any rate -- here is a duck vomiting because it can't find it's row...



Now that I have been home a couple days I feel caught up on many miscellaneous things. Maybe someday I'll get to the bottom of why it takes me so long to feel comfortable. In the meantime I will try and get a few hours of code before I take off for camping in the morning for two nights! LOLZ!!! \=D/

Every once and a while in Ann Arbor someone stops and says "What happened to your website?" Sometimes I don't even know who they are. I miss sharing ideas, opinions & links in that format... And it sucks when you've got a shitload of browser tabs open just because you want to share them. Firefox, being a memory hog, really slows down the whole system when you have 5 youtube videos open. =X







I've always found the Flying Spaghetti Monster Cult/Church rather humorous. My subscription to Rolling Stone -- not so much. But every issue has that one thing in it I find valuable even if it seems to never be related to music. The Noodly Appendage following is so strong that they got their deity & mascot standing outside the courthouse right next to Jeebus and his carryable crucifix. But I feel like it's missing some Subgenius Bob Dobbs....

Speaking of religion... some drunk guy calling himself Darth Vader assaults two members of the Jedi Church lol.....


"Not on the Test" is a great little folk ditty about the perils of our public education system. And a cute video.

hilarious interview with DMX :: elloquant rant on PC games & piracy


Ghostly Swim caught me a little off guard. When I think of [adult swim] inspired music the Danger Doom album is the first thing that comes to mind (which ttly kicks ass). Thank goodness it's a free download -- I can't imagine being an Adult Swim fan and buying this thing on a whim. One of the weirder partnerships in entertainment I have witnessed -- the attitudes, well, they just don't seem to line up together here for me. But I must congratulate friends both JDSY and Beninem for getting their shit well circulated here. =D/ I bet Sam of Ghostly Records is rather happy about it too.

---

Booking the June tour is coming along slowly... I still haven't confirmed a single date! =X I made my own electronic presskit page hoping it will HALP POLEASE!!!!

Well, first off, lemme say that I discovered the blog coding horror a couple months ago and reading it helps my mind. Jeff Atwood's sporadic rants seem to be just teaming with random general knowledge. That's probably why his readership is so vast I imagine.


I spent a lot of wasted time trying to conceive a php form handler. I kept thinking 'this couldn't be that hard' but I was merely daydreaming. The main problem is I have yet to catalog all the potential options a form handler might need. Without such a map there is no chance of accumulating a form's architectural data so it can be utilized for the three stages :: input, validation & execution. I want flexibility and client-side administrative setup. What I've got is a big mess that doesn't work beyond directly editing database records. Well, that's a start.


But I moved on to better things... well, things that actually show progress over an afternoon.


I just finally finished writing my new php mp3 infos-getter & tagger. ID3v2 is such a pain in the ass. And wouldn't you know it -- Atwood covered that mess too. I'm still not totally satisfied with this library however (leaving it maybe a version 0.67). There is an ID3v2 frame for embedding pictures in the mp3 itself and although I wrote the code to do so I can't seem to test it without installing iTunes. Lol. Both Windows Media Player and Winamp don't make use of this option. But that's the main gripe about this crazy style of tagging -- about 20% of it gets accessed by the average mp3 player. Lol.

Another thing that I need to figure out is scanning for the average bitrate. Variable bitrate mp3s are cool and it shouldn't be that hard. But at present, when I calculate the length of an audio frame, I have only about an 88% accuracy. I followed the specs. Maybe give it another whack soon. But I can't be scanning through an mp3, averaging bitrates, if I can't properly find the first byte of the next frame. =X


Next up (besides some little stitches for clients) is constructing some kind of nodal system. It's the one thing I really like about Drupal. Every page has an ID and it's accessed by website.com/node/# or you can create a namespace that instead of using the number. That's not really what I want it for.

First off, 'node' is already in use with a popular CMS so I think I'll call them 'ent's, short for entities (or Tolkien race of ancient tree humanoids). My use isn't aimed at easy access URLs, my framework already kind of does that in a way. But what I want is a lightweight way of accessing objects of various classes in order of their creation. This is actually a really simple idea. There is only a little bit of redundant data like a date or timestamp. But if the head designer of flikr claims a little redundancy to reduce processing then who am I to argue? So then making a call for different objects over different tables won't necessitate using SQL joins which are not only syntacticle nightmares but also eat up extra CPU.

Then each object could have it's normal, full view and an ent view.


I'll keep slots and swatches for another day...


Ah, but users... Atwood's article Do Not Listen to Your Users and the follow up UsWare vs. ThemWare gives the gist of what I have slowly been learning. A user can make both crazy claims and feature requests. I am pending the BotB 2.0 code adventure. I'll be starting it in about a week. The whole point of the upgrade is to adopt the framework I have been inventing for obvious reasons such as speed and scalability. The main thing is to keep it in the spirit of UsWare -- BotB was built out of my own desires to see such a website exist -- I wanted to use it, to be a user on such a platform. I was pleased when others decided they liked using it as well. My favorite part of the pending upgrade is how many users are telling me "Just make sure it still looks the same." They still want the clunky interface! xD

But one thing about users -- the vast majority are useless for scripting expansion code. Part of this could be my fault because I am so stingy with my source. But it's kind of like asking a random person in their running car how their carborator works -- they probably don't know (I'm not even that sure beyond it mixing gas and air).

Which brings me to more Atwood like Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats which is a great rant about statistics showing 50% of humans are not properly wired to understand programming.

"Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the first programming course. Experienced teachers are weary but never oblivious of this fact; brighteyed beginners who believe that the old ones must have been doing it wrong learn the truth from bitter experience; and so it has been for almost two generations, ever since the subject began in the 1960s."

mad lol xD

And then with Why I'm The Best Programmer In The World --

"At the 1972 Turing Award lecture, Edsger Dijkstra delivered a paper titled “The Humble Programmer.” He argued that most of programming is an attempt to compensate for the strictly limited size of our skulls. The people who are best at programming are the people who realize how small their brains are. They are humble. The people who are the worst at programming are the people who refuse to accept the fact that their brains aren’t equal to the task. Their egos keep them from being great programmers. The more you learn to compensate for your small brain, the better a programmer you’ll be. The more humble you are, the faster you’ll improve."

hahahah I have quoted Atwood's quotes. =X


Being kind of awkward and slightly nihilistic works for me. I have spent so much time reading and daydreaming since I quit the factory. It's just nice to get slapped some dharma once and a while even if it isn't all that spiritual.

here is a very rough draft for June --




and a couple pics from last Saturday at the Bassment --





...thanx to DJ TacoPunch for le pics! He also called me Berrypusher.

I went to the car dealership yesterday but I couldn't find my dealer. I was just looking for some answers to financial questions I had. Basically, I signed a lease for an average of 15,000 miles a year. This year I'm under but close and next year I'm hoping to travel & tour even more...

But the funny thing was they misunderstood me a couple times. The dealership people thought I was saying I already put 44,500 miles on the van in under a year. I thought I was speaking clear but I wasn't. They were all wide eyed and asking so many questions about the vehicle's continued performance. Then, finally, a big laugh. LOL

There is no easy way to renegotiate the lease contract for more miles. It's more like you can buy yourself out of the contract and pay the difference on the appraised value. Best to just wait and see when I actually use up 45,000 miles. With gas prices ever expanding maybe it's not something I need to worry about after all?!?!?

...just starting to book this Baron Knoxburry tour in June. The date at June's Pulswave in NYC is already booked up which is a big pile of puke. But this is a whole 3 weeks so what's one stupid lost date?!?! Starts in Cleveland or Pittsburgh and ends in Ypsilanti.

Today I successfully learned how to mine and scrape data out of myspace pages. Right now the code bot only looks through my own friends, gets some basic info and logs it into an organizable database. Doing this has given me a little light on myspace servers and their purposes. But what it's really for is easier self-promotions.
I haven't taught the bot to login as me though for two reasons ::
1) it's sorta unethical (not my ethics, myspace's (who could delete the whole account))
2) i;m not about to try and code text recognition code that will break a captcha LOL
...but this is all rather ideal for popping open a bunch of windows for posting comments without loading profiles first. I'm expecting a great improvement in myWhoring efficiency! =D

5 day tour was a success. We didn't loose money! \=D/

And, gawd, I thought the memories were a wash when I got home. Good thing I waited this long to try and write about, huh? Oh wells.... the short shorts version ::

Wed Chicago - Teresa cooked us scallops & mushroom dinner. The Mutiny was a tight little joint rumoured to be a shithole but was nicer, yet smaller, than the Pig. It also had the biggest urinal I have ever seen -- the President Taft of Urinals!!! =O Mad Chiller let us crash at his place, had the best pizza ever delivered and then the best breakfast - pumpkin hotcakes with cinnamon cream sauce.

Thu OshKosh - A basement party. Well, at least they tried. A keg of Natty Ice with a side of weak, non-caffeine but guanine Energy Syrup by the case. Later, while all drinking some in the van, I said, "I like how I can feel it forcing it's way through my gut and sealing the tunnel behind it." which made O'Neill gag. =D It was dangerous in this basement for my bouncing arounds, damn pipes and ducts and weird metal boxes all over. Plus we were surrounded by a moat of water as it was pouring outside (the weather kind of sucked the whole tour but we were nice, dry and warm). I think it was called Wad's House. We watched a delightful film one of them made Back to the Teenbot and hope to see it again. Then we were amazed at the Pizzazz used to cook frozen pizzas for us which was amazing for Wad & Company. There were 8 people watching us play including one member from the other band who played. xD

Fri Mineapolis - A youth center? I think we all had a place as dope as this while growing up. The stereotypical trenchcoat kid was amusing. We were def the oldest people there except a handful of parents. One dad really liked our lyrics (thank gawd) and bought a CD, teasing his kids with it. So many childrens -- mostly with bad stage presence just like people our own age! I can't believe what kids are listening to these days. What's next? Music to shit your heart out to?!?!

Sat Ft. Wayne - Back to the Berlin Bar which was the only venue to not receive the posters I sent out because that's not it's name I'm guessing. After the 11 hour drive it was nice this show was a lot more fun than the last time we were there. 4 people from that last show returned.

Sun Ann Arbor - Rau Haus always rulz!!!

Ok, I got the bug. I want to do this over and over again.

Baron Knoxburry tour and camping trip in June? YAYS!!!

Though I need to look into some solution on the van's mileage. I can only drive 450 miles over the next 6 weeks or I incur extra fees. Isn't 15,000 miles a year enough?!?!

Here's my niece I got to see for a couple hours while in Chi Town --


Now back to Ann Arbor!

phew