As you probably know we used Google Docs to collect all the addresses of people we wanted to send announcements to. So, we have all the addresses in a nice spreadsheet format, properly formatted, ready to go. We thought, hey, we could probably save ourselves some time and hassle by just taking this spreadsheet and the stack of envelopes down to a printing company and have them use a nice font and print the addresses right on the envelopes. Well, you'd be wrong to think that apparently. After several in person visits and phone calls we've determined that these companies, with their thousands of dollars worth of equipment, are unable to perform the job of a $30 ink-jet printer connected to a crappy computer. We did find one place that was willing to do the job, for 4 times the cost of the announcements and envelopes.

All I wanted was some ink arranged in specific patterns! Is that really so hard? Well, no, it's not. So, now I'm doing it myself. After 40 minutes making sure the addresses looked nice and would print correctly I was ready to go. And now I'm just sitting here waiting for them to print. Seriously, in the year 2009 companies are unable to print addresses onto envelopes? Where does all the junk mail come from! SOMEONE must be able to do this cheaply.

Anyways, that was my complaint for the day. While Jess is having her bridal shower, I'll be printing envelopes, putting announcements in them, sealing them, and putting stamps on them. What a great party.

And for all the complainers about how printed envelopes are lame, the fancy font makes them look fine and is saving hours upon hours of tedious work. Who scrutinizes the envelope anyways?

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My lab on campus just moved and we now have a room dedicated to meetings and such. Unfortunately, the whiteboards haven't actually been installed yet. There was one leaning up against the wall vertically and my lab partner and I filled it trying to figure out exactly what we needed to do for the lab. We wanted to use another one so we designed to take another one and lean it up against the wall next to it. Unbeknownst to us those things are actually incredibly heavy. Well, we got it into position to raise up the end that would lean against the wall. Each on one side we lifted it up, then I slid my hand down the side to get a lower grip and keep lifting. Turns out that the threadings on the screw holes aren't cleaned off. So there are razor sharp metal edges sticking out the back of the board. I felt it slice my hand, but didn't realize that I was actually bleeding until I went to wash off the marker ink stuff and the paper towel came away with a red streak.

It kind of stings a bit:

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Django is a web framework for Python. I love working in Python; it thinks like I do more so than any other programming language I've used. Getting entirely frustrated with working in PHP I decided to give Django a whirl. Django will power the new version of the Board which is in progress.

I started a side project this week (as mentioned in the previous entry). In 72 hours I was able to develop and deploy a (basically) fully operational website. This includes time to configure the server, style the website nicely, and do research to learn how to do several tricky little pieces of magic.

The motivation behind this system was that for our wedding registry we wanted to include items from several places, and rather than registering at many different stores we wanted a more centralized solution. Enter myregistry.com. Myregistry.com is pretty slick and has a lot of promise, I really like a lot of the way they do things for your registry. However, in order for guests to view the registry they must provide their name and email address. I find this entirely intrusive and obnoxious. I sent a message to their support explaining why harvesting email addresses from guests for advertising is obnoxious. Then, since they have no intention of changing this practice, I decided to create my own web registry system.

Behold: ARegistryFor.Us This is what 72 hours with Django can do. Pretty darn impressive if you ask me. And, of course, that isn't 72 hours of programming, that's 72 hours of life. It's a well functioning registry system. It's not quite ready for multiple users, but it is designed with that intention, and with some more small tweaking should be ready to fly.

Some of the slickest features:
1. The fancy text of our names is created automagically when the registry is created in the system. It's user-customizable, as is the URL of each specific registry.
2. When you add an item you provide the URL of an image, the system automagically grabs that image and scales it to the right size.

Things I'd like to add:
- Auto field guess: give the system a URL of the item and have it guess at the name, price, etc. I'm thinking I'll use Beautiful Soup to help with this.
- Welcome Page: give each registry a welcome page that they can have a slide show on or something.

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My laptop died yesterday. I was using it in class and when class ended I closed the lid and carried it back to the lab. When I opened it up again it was turned off (it's not supposed to do that), and now when you press the power button all that happens is the fan spins for a few seconds and then nothing. The power lights stay on, and the battery charges just fine. It would seem that the motherboard or processor just decided to stop working. So now I'm laptop-less.

This is inconvenient and annoying. Most of the data that was of any importance was already backed up in at least 2 locations except for a side project I started 2 days ago. So I bought a drive enclosure for $30 and now I have (effectively) a 60gb external hard drive. Luckily I had no problem getting the data off safely, the hard drive is perfectly fine.

Since the problem is probably the motherboard there's no point in getting it repaired. I paid ~$600 for the laptop ~4 years ago, it would cost ~$350+ to have the motherboard replaced.

So, I guess I'll live sans-laptop for a while. Perhaps a new one will be a Christmas present to myself this year, since I'll actually have a little money after I start my real job in July.

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Jess says I can't have a pet kangaroo.

 

 

But I still want one!

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