Does anyone know how to set up an RSS feed for a custom design?
October 5, 2007, 5:20 AM
Welcome to my world, where I’ve wanted to have an RSS feed on my Journal for at least eight months or so. Yes, eight months. In moving that direction, as well as making all kinds of other site upgrades, I changed hosts and converted to PHP, for one.
So now I have this snazzy mySQL database and my little custom design, and I’ve been having the darndest time trying to get a working RSS feed. And before anyone asks, yes, I’ve tried the various content management systems out there, and for purposes of Schumin Web, hated all of them. The Journal does not run under Blogger, WordPress, etc. It’s my own design.
My previous attempts at setting up an RSS feed for the Journal came from my attempts to follow directions from here and here. In the end, what did I get? A pile of unusable code, lots of errors, and some very bad words out of me.
So I am obviously having issues with getting this to work. So… can anyone help out? An RSS feed for the Journal is one of my most-requested features, as it turns out, so this is kind of important. But I’m kinda stuck…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
I get this feeling I’m going to be backed up to my fiftieth birthday…
October 4, 2007, 1:36 PM
I get this feeling that I’m going to be backed up to my fiftieth birthday with the Web site at the rate I’m going. Seriously. Right now, I have five projects going on, and a sixth will be added soon. I have the restoration of Transit and Today’s Special (these are more than restoring the status quo), and I have the Borf show, September 15, and my recent weekend with Katie. The last three are all going to be part of Life and Times. Then add “October Rebellion” to the list, which is about the upcoming World Bank/IMF march that I’m going to be attending, also for Life and Times. So that ought to be interesting.
Right now, only the Borf show is in any advanced state. The new Transit Center is still “vaporware” at this point, and then as far as Today’s Special goes, I’ve gotten MediaWiki set up, but not much else. For September 15, the narrative is totally written but that’s all there is so far, and then the weekend with Katie narrative is in a very early stage. Then of course “October Rebellion” is vaporware, as the event hasn’t even happened yet. That last one is going to be a logistical challenge for Big Mavica, since it’s going to need to be recharged possibly faster than I can feasibly recharge it. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll have to make use of that electrical outlet like I found on Rohr 1297 (if this makes no sense to you, I go into more detail on it in a yet-unpublished photo set narrative).
So, yeah, I feel like I have lots still to do. But one way or another, we’re going to get through it. Hopefully it will all work out in the end. After all, a lot of it is Life and Times, and that’s a LOT of fun…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Four days and counting…
September 24, 2007, 2:33 PM
I am excited! In four days, my friend Katie is coming to visit me up in Maryland. She’s going to be taking Amtrak from Charlottesville to Union Station, and will be staying three nights. It’s going to be so much fun! I’m taking the day off on Friday, and so after I spend much of the day cleaning and scrubbing and making the place look really nice for Katie’s arrival, I’m going to hop on the Metro and ride into DC to go to Union Station to meet her. We’re going to have such fun, too.
Otherwise, I finally finished College Life last night, and so now it’s all back together and looks goooooood. It’s designed a little differently than it was before, with a left-hand menu like Schumin Web. And it’s also up to my current design standards, which required a bit of retrofitting. But we’re done. I’m tickled.
And now, the next thing to do is a small update on the discussion forums, and then Transit Center. That’s going to be fun. Transit Center is not going to be a simple restoration. No way. Transit Center was incredibly cumbersome to handle before, which is why updates were so few – because it was too much of a pain in the butt to deal with. Now, I’m rewriting everything from scratch.
So all in all, I’m excited about this weekend, and in the meantime, I still have plenty to do…
Categories: Katie, Schumin Web meta
I will be so glad when College Life is finished…
September 22, 2007, 4:38 PM
You’re darn right I’ll be glad when College Life is finished. As you may know, I’m still converting the site to PHP following the crash on July 18. I’ve been working in College Life, and I’m “over the hill” as far as that restoration goes. We’re now officially on the back half.
Still, this has proven to be more of a challenge than the larger main Schumin Web site. College Life involved a moderate redesign, and all of the photos were retrofitted with black borders that Schumin Web has had on all photo sets from the Million Worker March on. The menu was also repositioned, and there were other minor changes. It’s still going to look like College Life, though, but it incorporates design changes that various people suggested. The reason for all the headache is because I’m bringing the site up to my current design standards. Thus along with moving pages and what have you, I also did a considerable amount of recoding. Yeah, fun, ain’t it? A lot of stuff has to get changed. But it will look and work well when it’s done.
I’m glad this is the last straight restoration I’m doing. Transit Center is getting redone practically from scratch in order to institute a better system, and then Today’s Special’s going to be redone as a wiki. So work there will be quite different. After all, straight conversions are boring. Hours of work go into something that, when it’s all over, looks to the casual observer exactly the same as what you started with.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Score!
September 21, 2007, 2:53 PM
Look at this…
Continue reading…Categories: Schumin Web meta, World Bank
By my calculations…
August 22, 2007, 10:04 PM
By my calculations, I have twelve photo sets to go before the core site is complete, and I can start working on subsidiary sites.
Of course, those twelve sets are, with only one exception, multi-part sets. And with plenty of inside links that have to get updated. And of course, there are a lot of links elsewhere in the site that still have to be updated. The Journal is full of obsolete internal links. Absolutely chock full of ’em. That’s because the Journal was like the second section to go back up, and so the file structures hadn’t been determined yet. So I have to go back and fix all those links. Then I also can’t update anything related to Transit Center yet, because that site is going to undergo a total code rewrite (i.e. it’s being rebuilt practically from scratch), and nothing’s been designed yet for it.
The joys of building a Web site, no? But at least it’s not like we’re designing a completely new Web site, and have to actually come up with content as well. Content’s already made. We just have to build a new housing for it all.
It is nice to be able to show off protests again, though, since the Million Worker March is back up. That was quite an experience, and I’m glad that Google can finally pick it up again. The next photo set slated to go up is A16, directly followed by J20 and then September 24. Fun!
However, converting photo sets is not the world’s most exciting work. But it has to be done, so we do it. Then once I clear these twelve sets, I get to do something more fun – designing things. That’s because I’m moving to College Life after I finish on Schumin Web, and have to hammer it out again. Of course, then I have to convert photo sets again… (*yawn*)
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Looking back, I’m like, whoa…
August 16, 2007, 2:56 PM
As I restore all these photo sets, it struck me – my photography has evolved over the course of seven years of doing photo sets. The older stuff definitely looks like the work of a younger, less experienced man. Let’s just say that half the stuff that made it onto the Web site for some of those older sets (The Schumin Web Salutes America comes to mind) would never have made the cut today. Plus the way I covered some of it back then would never have happened today.
A good comparison is with the treatment of the US Capitol. Back in 2001, I covered the Capitol as part of “The Schumin Web Salutes America”. The writing was so-so at best, and it came off as a walk-around in a hurry (which it was). The focus was on the building, with tourists in place. Then compare it to the Capitol’s most recent appearance, as part of the J27 set. There, the Capitol’s appearance was incidental, but we told more of a story. In fact, the writing is often king in Life and Times sets. But Photography also tells a “story” as well, and more emphasis is placed on telling the “story” now than before.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta
Well, part of a Journal is better than no Journal at all, at least for now.
July 22, 2007, 10:41 PM
Many of you have probably wondered what happened with the recent site outage, and the current state of the site. Well, here’s the deal.
The site went down on Wednesday, July 18. The windows server that it lived on went down, and unlike most downtimes, it stayed down, and there was no word from my hosting people on what was wrong.
Now as it was, I’d had a long-term plan to switch the site over from a Windows-based system to a Linux-based system by way of a host change. The forums’ changeover to phpBB at the end of March was the first step in that process. So once the Windows server went down and stayed down, I just simply changed my plans a bit. Rather than make the cutover somewhat seamlessly, or in stages, I did the full cutover and now I’m redoing the site to run under this new system.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Seems I’m popular at Georgetown…
June 21, 2007, 7:58 PM
Seems so, according to one of our interns at work. This particular intern was at the Georgetown University library and was searching for me, and the browser just popped my site right in. Looks like they weren’t the only person with me on their mind that day. I thought it was kind of interesting. I would imagine that they were really surprised.
Meanwhile, today on the Metro on the way back from work, we had an operator who acted like he was our mother or something. “Step into the car. Do not push or shove.” Yes, mother. At Union Station, he said, “Do not run over the people in front of you so you can catch your next train.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if, when we got to Glenmont, he had said, “Remember to eat your vegetables and wash behind your ears.” You get some interesting folks in the cab, I’d say.
Categories: Schumin Web meta, WMATA, Work
Trust me when I say that carrying a large desk up three flights of stairs is not my idea of fun.
May 19, 2007, 11:44 PM
First of all, hello from my parents’ house in Stuarts Draft.
In continuing to outfit my apartment in Silver Spring, I’m bringing my real computer up with me this time, and it will get set up in a little corner of my apartment. And then I’m going to have Internet service on Tuesday, so all in all, life is good. And the first week with my new employer was awesome. Now I’ve kind of caught onto how this whole thing works, and I feel confident. It’s not like the first day anymore, where my level of anxiety was so high that I could barely eat my cereal in the morning, and forgot the lunch that I’d packed.
So what does this have to do with the desk? Well, the original plan would have had me returning to Maryland with the computer in the Sable, and the desk in either the truck or the Sienna, depending on who went with me. Then in looking at the cost of gas to take a second car back and forth to bring this large piece of furniture to Maryland, we realized that it wasn’t exactly a worthwhile proposition. Thus we had a slight change of plans. My parents will put my computer desk of nine years to work for them. Translation: It’s staying. Meanwhile, I went to Staples and ordered a new desk. It’s identical to my original desk in almost every way, except that it’s a lighter shade of brown (I don’t know what you call the original desk’s color, but the new one is “natural oak”). And it’s getting delivered to Silver Spring. That satisfies everyone. No one, including me, really wanted to drag that thing up three flights of stairs. However, I liked the desk. It was sturdy and well-designed. I’ll happily put a new desk together on site after it’s delivered to my door, and I’m sure my parents will like the old desk.
Categories: Cell phone, Move to DC area, Schumin Web meta, Shopping, Work
In case this month’s splash page photo shocked you…
May 2, 2007, 9:07 AM
In case the May splash page photo shocked you, where I had considerably less hair than usual, I can explain. Like many men, I am slowly but surely losing my hair. I just have to look at my father to see what the future has in store for me.
This photo actually marks the beginning of what I consider to be a major about-face in what I’ve called my “hair policy”. You see, when it was only a little thin spot, I used the airbrush tool to fill it in. The result was hardly noticeable. Then as the hairline continued to recede, it became like what happens when people lie, as you have to tell more lies to cover for the original lie, and eventually it snowballs out of control. Likewise for the photos. I’ve been “fixing” the bald spot as it’s gotten bigger and bigger, and it’s not exactly been easy to do.
Looking back at my splash pages, my first chop job was January 2004. Then February 2004 was genuine, so you can see what I was covering. Then the next time you got to see the hairline untouched was for November 2005, where I accidentally “outed” my receding hairline in the Thnikkaman costume. I also let a genuine one go through in May 2006 with the elevator shot.
But now I’ve decided to go natural on here, since editing the hair has started to get somewhat cumbersome as it’s become harder and harder to hide it. And this is the right thing to do anyway, especially since even I wasn’t convinced that some of the airbrush jobs looked all that authentic. Some yes, others no. Depended on how much hair I had to give myself.
So now I’ve come clean about the hair. I feel better now.
Update: All of the photos where the hairline was manipulated were replaced with the original unmanipulated versions during a site overhaul in mid 2012.
Categories: Myself, Schumin Web meta
The challenges of trying to convert things…
April 5, 2007, 11:04 AM
My life is never dull. I am slowly but surely working to convert my site from one that operates on a Windows-based server to one that runs on a Unix/Linux/whatever-based server. I’m doing this because I seem to have hit a wall in my design. Everywhere I want to go requires a non-Windows server. So we’re converting. I’m going to eventually learn PHP and MySQL, and do it.
Some of you have already seen the forum, running on phpBB. The next thing I’m working on is the Journal, where it will be powered by WordPress. It’s going to look and feel mostly the same as before, though it will have this nifty RSS feed when it’s all said and done. I can phase in other features later.
Otherwise, I’ve been listening to my fair share of conservative radio talk show hosts. I still like Chris Lysy’s way of putting it: “Daily dose of outrage”. Lately, I’ve been listening to Mark Levin on podcast. I think I’ve been listening to too much Levin when I read the newspaper and they mention Nancy Pelosi and the term “stretch” comes to mind. Likewise all of Mark Levin’s other derogatory names for all the Democrats in Congress. And of course, I enjoyed hearing the talk shows’ reaction to M17 on the following Monday. I was at M17, don’t forget. I think the best comment was the accusation someone made of the anti-war demonstrators on Mark Levin’s show. They said that people were taking the Metro back into DC and marching around again to make the numbers look bigger. I find that kind of odd, especially since the Pentagon Metro station is on the south side of the Pentagon, and we were north of the Pentagon. I consider Pentagon station as kind of being required to pull such a stunt off, since Arlington Cemetery would have skipped half the march route. Also consider the fact that police were physically blocking the way to Pentagon station. Plus in DC, the Lincoln Memorial (the start of the march route) is not exactly near any Metro stations. Bottom line is, it’s impractical, and wouldn’t work even if someone wanted to do it.
Sometimes it’s just amusing what the other side comes up with…
Categories: Greta, Radio, Schumin Web meta
Would you believe my site is entering its twelfth year?
March 22, 2007, 1:52 AM
Believe it or not, it’s true. Schumin Web completes its eleventh year of existence tomorrow, and so then the site will be eleven going on twelve.
As I say every year, I’m amazed to think about it. I look back at where we’ve been as a collective group (you, me, and the Web site), and I also try to look forward to where we’re heading.
I also find it somewhat funny to think about how my life was way back in 1996 when I started this site. I was a freshman at Stuarts Draft High School. I wore no glasses, but I did wear a retainer. I had great hair that I didn’t have to photoshop (remind me to elaborate on that later). I wore Airwalk sneakers. The Previa was running in tip-top condition as Mom’s car, and I rode in it regularly – as a passenger. Greta was only two years old. Washington DC was a city that was far away, and I could count on my hands how many times I’d visited it. My computer was a 90 MHz Pentium with 16 MB of RAM and a 1 GB hard drive running Windows 95. Bill Clinton was in his first term as president. I had a mild crush on my first-year Spanish teacher. I was too uptight to discuss fire alarms with anyone, but instead held a silent interest. My Internet service provider was America Online. My bedroom had white walls. My watch was synchronized with the master clock in the school office so I would know exactly when the bell would ring. Netscape was considered the hip Web browser.
I also look at how the focus of this site has shifted over the years. Originally, it was strictly whatever. I would make a page for something, and I would write about it. No sections, no sorting. Just add it to the menu and go. I would regularly update a page called “News of the Week”, which was basically about whatever was going on in my life. I would often grouse about school on there. The page was expendable, though – I kept no archive of what I wrote from week to week. Then later, we went to frames, which allowed me to keep the menu on screen all the time. I now consider frames to be a hideous concept, but back in the mid-1990s, they were the latest fad. They remained until September 1999.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Back from DC, back at work…
March 20, 2007, 11:11 AM
The first day back at work after a big protest is always a bit of a letdown. All that positive energy and excitement generated during the protest just kind of dissipates at work. I tell a few of my coworkers the story, and defend myself from the inevitable “so what did you really accomplish” questions.
And now I’m focusing on the follow-up work, where I consider my real activism to come out. The photo set. I’m not that great with public speaking or otherwise being put on the spot, though I do have my moments, like in a conversation about the Nationals and Metro service at A16, and my attempted discussion about the flag and the conservatives at J27. But then back here at my studio (read: my desk), that’s where I like to think I shine. There, I discuss the issue and other things in the context of the march. I have a great time, too.
So, yeah, I’m working on my M17 photo set, which has the working title of “March on the Pentagon”. I’m still in the very early stages of it, though, since I’ve not had much writing time on it at this point. I’m going to have to be clever with how I do mix photos and text this time, because I didn’t get the maneuvering room I usually have at these things. I was essentially locked in a tight formation facing forward, and it affected how the photos came out.
Still, returning to work after a big, successful protest is always a bit of a letdown for me. It doesn’t do that to me for smaller protests, but for the big ones, yes.
Categories: Anti-war, Schumin Web meta
And here we arrive at that point where we “freeze” the Web site
February 24, 2007, 12:20 AM
As I speak, the “master” version of Schumin Web that I have on my computer and do all my editing from is being migrated over to Dad’s computer as part of the move. This requires me to temporarily “freeze” the site, as it’s not wise to make edits to the site while I’m moving things around. Of course, the Journal isn’t affected by this, since it’s done server-side. However, don’t expect to see any edits to the site (and that includes the photo feature) until I’m finished moving the computer.
Hey, it could be worse. I think the snowman is a really cute picture, and at least we still have the Journal during this transition, so I can tell you all about what’s going on. By the way, moving to a new computer is a colossal pain in the behind, and now I understand why I haven’t changed computers in nearly nine years.
Otherwise, tomorrow I’m going to Harrisonburg where my friend Patrick Jarrett from Pittsburgh is coming down for a job fair. Patrick and I met online way back in the day, and then we’ve met in person once before, when I went to Pittsburgh with LPCM in 2003. So this ought to be fun. I’m also going to try to swing by Rocktown Infoshop at some point to get some more photos for their site.
Categories: Computer, Friends, Schumin Web meta