The Lucid Developer

After Dark

2008-06-04T09:53:00.003-07:00

These where both taken about 40 minutes after the sun has gone down. I was just out playing around.

What am I doing here??

2008-06-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

I recently was on a photo shoot for a friend of mine and came across a perfect shoot, but didn't have a model to stand in it for me. So I grabbed the next best thing. My brother who just happened to be the one that lets us onto this location. Included are the two treatments, the original color and a black and white.

That which is lost is now found.

2008-05-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

fo·cus[foh-kuhs] Pronunciation Key -Pronunciation noun, plural
–noun
1. a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity: The need to prevent a nuclear war became the focus of all diplomatic efforts.
2. Physics. a point at which rays of light, heat, or other radiation, meet after being refracted or reflected.
3. Optics.
    a. the focal point of a lens.
    b. the focal length of a lens.
    c. the clear and sharply defined condition of an image.
    d. the position of a viewed object or the adjustment of an optical device necessary to produce a clear image: in focus; out of focus.

Last weekend I had my inlaws in town. It was a great time and we had lots of wonderful family outings. During there visit my mother-in-law saw a few of my photos and commented on wanting a few of them for Mothers day. So in the spirit of sharing I took her to my computer to show her a few things I didn't have prints of. In that process she saw a picture that I had never really liked or given much thought to. Because so many people have liked it I figured I would share it with you.

Post processing:

Slight Orton Effect added
Adjusted the lighting and color balance
Added a darkened halo effect to draw the attention to the flower.

Shot information:

    Camera: Canon EOS 10D
    Exposure: 0.05 sec (1/20)
    Aperture: f/4
    Focal Length: 29 mm
    ISO Speed: 400
    Exposure Bias: 0/2 EV

Breaking up an Address (Perl)

2008-05-01T08:10:00.001-07:00

con·vo·lut·ed Pronunciation Key - Pronunciation[kon-vuh-loo-tid]
–adjective
1.twisted; coiled.
2.complicated; intricately involved: a convoluted way of describing a simple device.

Still working on this API. For some strange reason they require that all address be submitted to them in parts. So for example 164 N Cherry Lane would have to be submitted to them as:
Number: 164
Direction: N
Street: Cherry
Type: Ln

Other then the reasoning behind this boggles my mind, I pressed forward and found a wonderful perl module to accomplish the desired task. See my sample code below.


use Geo::StreetAddress::US;
   my $full_address = "164 N Cherry Ln, 84660";
   my $address_parts = Geo::StreetAddress::US->parse_address($full_address);
   my $xml = '  <address streetno="'.$address->{number}.'" streetDir="'.$address->{prefix}.'" streetName="'.$address->{street}.'" streetType="'.$address->{type}.'" unit="" zip="'$address->{zip}'" yearsAtAddress=""/&rt;'
;

Make sure that you include city/state or Zip. Without it it will return undefined every time.
Thats it kiddies. Good luck and I hope that you never have to build an api for this client.

In Deep Waters with Perl API's

2008-04-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

clar·i·ty [klar-i-tee] Pronunciation Key
–noun

1.	clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.

2.	the state or quality of being clear or transparent to the eye; pellucidity: the clarity of pure water.

For those of you that don't know what an API is. Then please move onto a post about photography, because this will mean nothing to you. But if you do lets jump in with both feet.

Last week I was asked to write an API with another software Client. I don't like to name names so we will keep it on the low down. But there instructions where this:

The general process for making a request of an XYZ system is:
1) Gather information from user
2) Construct an XML data structure for request with REQUEST root element
3) Open HTTP 1.1 connection to XYZ ‘service’ URL
4) Send XML request to XYZ with content type “text/xml”
5) Get XML response from XYZ
6) Close connection

I figured that with perl this was going to be easy. So I create a perl script to do this. I was going to use my good old tools LWP and just submit a STRING over as the content of the lwp::useragent. Here is my code:


my $xml = '
SOME XML HERE

SOME XML HERE

SOME XML HERE

';
my $cgi_url= "http://THE_URL/DIR_OF_SERVICE";

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(keep_alive =>1);
   $ua->timeout(10);
   $ua->env_proxy;

my $response = $ua->post($cgi_url, Content_Type => 'text/xml', Content=>$xml);
if ($response->is_success) {
  $c->log->dumper($response->as_string);
}  else {
  $c->log->dumper($response->status_line);
}

Every time that I ran this code I would get a 200 code response and NO body back from the other service. So onto trouble shooting the problem. Here are a few things to keep in mind when working on an issue with a third party vendor api:

Always Assume that the problem is in your code and fix that first.
Start with the simplest of things.
Warn, Warn, Warn the crap out of your code.
Don't go changing the core of your code until you know it isn't a problem with the vendor.
Contact the vendor to have them check there end of the code.
When all else fails goto lunch.
After lunch if you still don't know what is wrong then change how your doing it.

I didn't follow any of these rules on this issue. Had I have I would have saved my self two days of programming. So when it was all said and done this is what I ended up doing. I contacted a friend that has also made an api into this same vendor but in PHP. Once I saw his code I noticed that he was opening a socket and submitting the info over. Had he been using Curl to do this I would have know my code was fine. Because useing LWP is pretty much the same as using Curl. So off to using IO::Socket. Here is the new code:

my $xml = '

SOME XML HERE

SOME XML HERE

SOME XML HERE
';
my $len = length($xml);
my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr =>'ROOT_DOMAIN_OR_IP',
PeerPort => '80',
Proto => 'tcp'
);
die "Could not create socket: $!\n" unless $sock;

if ($sock){
print $sock "POST PATH_FROM_ROOT HTTP/1.1\r\n ";
print $sock "HOST: ROOT_DOMAIN_OR_IP \r\n";
print $sock "Content-Type: text/xml \r\n";
print $sock "Content-Length: $len \r\n";
print $sock "Connection: close \r\n";
print $sock "\r\n";
print $sock $xml;
my $stuff ;
while (<$sock>){
$stuff .= $_;
}
close $sock;

$c->log->dumper($stuff);

When that was completed two days later, I got a 200 success and no body of the message. WTF. At this point I decided to follow my steps for trouble shooting the issue. So onto the simplest answers first. Maybe they can only get XML that doesn't have new lines. So I added
$xml =~ s/\n//ig;

Submitted the code and low and behold it worked. Got a response from there server.

THE PROBLEM:
There are two sides of this issue, mine and theres. Any good perl guy will have already caught my problem so lets start with theres.

There code will only respond when it received completed post, with a proper close. In other words if I say I am going to be sending a specific content_length then it will only respond if it gets it.

My problem is that when I was sending my $xml it would only send the first line tell it reached the first \n or new line. Had I submitted my xml one line at a time it would have been fine.

So todays lesson is, KISS. Keep it simple stupid. It could save your life.

Borders or not

2008-04-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

I decided to try something a little different on one of my photos. Borders. I don't know if I should or not. But I see more and more people putting them on, on there web photos. So I am going to give it a try. What do you think?

This was taken off a few trees in the back yard of a neighbors house. I had been looking at them for sometime and just wanted to get out and take a few pics. After words I did a little post processing on it to make it back and white.

Been a while (Mysqldump Replace into vs Insert into)

2008-03-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have posted. I believe you are going to see more then you have in the past. One reason is that I want to start posting answers to some of my biggest problems I run into here at work with programming. For example today I needed to do a mysqldump to move data from my development environment to my production environment. The problem was I only needed to do an update not a drop and replace. So I did a bunch of research and here is what I found.

If you use the linux command sed you can change all of your insert statements into replace statements like this..

mysqldump -u DATABASE_USER -p DATABASE_NAME |sed -e "s|INSERT INTO|REPLACE INTO|" > OUTPUTFILE.EXT

Flickr Explorer, The Quest.

2007-03-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

I have recently set out on a quest. That quest was to get one of my photo's on the Flickr Explorer top 500. I have finished Photo one's attempt and will be detailing what I did and where I went wrong. For those that haven't figured it out I didn't make it. Below is my photo I tried to get in.

My Flickr Account

2006-09-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

I set up a flickr account to display more of my pictures online. Go check it out if you are interested.

My Flickr...

More Pictures

2006-09-12T15:50:00.000-07:00

My family and I went out this last saterday and I took a few pictures. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Labor Day

2006-09-05T19:21:00.000-07:00

This last Labor Day I took little S out for some fun picture time. I am not the best photographer but I am getting better. The biggest problem is that most of my shots are film. But here are a few I took with our point and shoot digital.

Start up companies

2006-08-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

The other night I was at a friends house and found out that a mutuial friend was going to start up his own company. Well the first thought that came to my mind was, “wow, he has quite a road ahead of him. I wonder if he knows what he is getting him self into?”

Not that I don't love working for my self and starting something as wonder full as Ti 4 Tech, but I have to admit it wasn't the easiest to do. When we started out writing mlm software I never knew that it would take 3 years to just reach our six month goals. It has been a long and hard road. Had I to do it over again I think I would.

I wish my friend all the luck in the world.

Family File

2006-07-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I felt so helpless. I watched the news and saw the destruction that had occurred, and I wanted to do something.

It was horrible to hear stories about those who were missing, and to see their families crying and holding a picture—if they still had one. I noticed so many of the pictures were extremely out of date—there were baby pictures for children who were five years old!

Why was this? If I lost my child or my husband, which picture would I end up holding?

Everything these people owned had been destroyed and they went with the first picture they could find. They did the best they could with what they had, to try to bring their loved ones back.

And so the idea behind Family File was born. Family File is a free website that provides resources and tools to help protect and save lives. It provides a secure place to keep current pictures of loved ones and their vital information for use in case of an emergency.

This site, www.thefamilyfile.org, was created in the hope of saving lives. Family File offers parents the comforting assurance that if something were to happen, even as unexpected and disastrous as Hurricane Katrina, they would have everything they need in one place.

I invite you to visit the website. Check out the background and security information. Take a few seconds to create your own account, and insure your family’s preparation. And then, help us get the word out—the more people that know about and use it, the more children we can all help save. Please forward this letter to your family and friends.

Erin Maughan,

Founder of The Family File

www.thefamilyfile.org

(While Family File is free, donations are welcome for the site maintenance and growth.)

Stress Relief

2006-07-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

STRESS

1 : constraining force or influence: as a : a force exerted when one body or body part presses on, pulls on, pushes against, or tends to compress or twist another body or body part; especially : the intensity of this mutual force commonly expressed in pounds per square inch b : the deformation caused in a body by such a force c : a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation d : a state resulting from a stress; especially : one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium stress> e : STRAIN, PRESSURE stress to the point of collapse -- Joseph Shoben>
2 : EMPHASIS, WEIGHT stress on a point>
3 archaic : intense effort or exertion
4 : intensity of utterance given to a speech sound, syllable, or word producing relative loudness
5 a : relative force or prominence of sound in verse b : a syllable having relative force or prominence
6 : ACCENT 6a

There has been alot of stress in my life as of late. With my company growing and me writing more code then I have time it has been hard to find a way to relieve some stress. One of the things I have started doing is taking care of my garden. Yes I have a small garden that produces wonderful goodness in the form of food. But what it really does is makes it easier to get through a week.

I have also been working on a side project that has been alot of fun. Check it out www.thefamilyfile.org.

A simple Question Mark

2006-02-09T07:26:00.000-08:00

Simple (sim-p&l)

Inflected Form(s): sim·pler /-p(&-)l&amp;r/; sim·plest /-p(&-)l&st/

1 : free from guile : INNOCENT
2 a : lacking in knowledge or expertise b : STUPID; especially : mentally retarded c : not socially or culturally sophisticated : NAIVE; also : CREDULOUS
3 a : SHEER, UNMIXED b : free of secondary complications < style="font-style: italic;">4 : free from elaboration or figuration
5 : not limited or restricted : UNCONDITIONAL
6 : readily understood or performed

There are things in programming that we find easy and there are things in programming we can hit our head against tell we are bleeding. Recently one of my developers had just one of those days.

So let me tell you the tell I like to call "The life of a question mark".

There once was a question mark that lived in a small warm program. He was happy there. Only on rare occasion was he asked to come out and preform some minor function or enforce some small rule. He lived a happy life. For the programmers that used him, used him sparingly. He was forgotten, but happy. Tell one day a new young developer decided to try something he had never tried before. This developer tired as he might but he just couldn't get his code to work as expected. Every time it would return the last result in line and not the first. Oh how this developer tired. Two days of sad and tiring code was written and rewritten. But at last it just wouldn't work. This developer asked the other developers around what he could add to make this cod work. But none knew. But little question mark knew his job well, he could see that the young developer needed just him. But how could he tell him. Then one after noon while looking in a book he found another developer had used the little forgotten question mark. So he figured he would give it a try. And low and behold, our little friend was the answer all along.

Perl snippet:
$var =~ /(.*)/ig; WRONG for this usage
$var =~ /(.*?)/ig; Right

Time Line's

2006-02-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

Time Line (tIm-"lIn)

1 : a table listing important events for successive years within a particular historical period
2 usually time·line /'tIm-"lIn/ : a schedule of events and procedures

There is no word in the English language that brings more anxiety to me then "Time lines". When you hear it you know a few things. One, that your client doesn't think you are doing it fast enough. Two, your clients feels you need more accountability. Or Three, someone doesn't feel that your doing everything in your power and need to do more.

It is hard for a company to decide whether to give time lines or not. There are major companies that do not give any launch date or time lines to the public. Blizzard is one of those such companies. They make such lovely games as World of warcraft and the starcraft games. They give time lines such as
"this year", "in the fall", "when it gets done", and "we can give you no times at this time". I with my clients could live with such dates. But no, I have such hard dates as Feb 1st in the A.M. . Some day I would like to not live and die but these hard and fast day. Because you never like to tell a client that you are not going to make there date. But that is the date they told there customers, so it makes you and them look bad.

Just keep it internal and life will be good.

Never eat cookies off your Yumm Yums.

Sick

2006-01-17T09:20:00.000-08:00

Sick ('sik)

1 a (1) : affected with disease or ill health : AILING (2) : of, relating to, or intended for use in sickness b : QUEASY, NAUSEATED c : undergoing menstruation
2 : spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt
3 a : sickened by strong emotion b : having a strong distaste from surfeit : SATIATED c : filled with disgust or chagrin d : depressed and longing for something
4 a : mentally or emotionally unsound or disordered : MORBID b : MACABRE, SADISTIC
5 : lacking vigor : SICKLY: as a : badly outclassed

I'm sick. Just plain and simple. But I am here at work again. In the life of a start up owner, you don't get time off for things as mundain as sickness. You need to be at work. Clients don't just lay down and say "Okay, we will work on that tomorrow or when you are feeling better." No they don't care. Work must go on.

Yesterday didn't help things. A small error in code cascaded into a huge full blown problem for all of our clients. Took hours to track down and fix. But it is all better now. But was not fun.

Persevere

2006-01-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

Persevere (per·se·vere)
To persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement.

Yesterdays hijinks in the office started off with the undertaking of screwing a white board to the wall. One might think that given the proper tools this would be a small and menial task. But not around here. "Proper tools" is a phrase best used on a job site where building done. Around here, the only building ever done is on a computer. So Screwing a white board to the wall can only be done with the help of three people, two inch deck screws, and a power drill better left on a different job site. The said party going about this undertaking asked for my help, but help I would not. But I would sit back and enjoy the show that was undergoing.

Asking everyone in the small office and using a little guilt/persuasions the said party went about his task. But the hard white board would not let these pesky long screws through there thick hides. Instead it almost cost a finger on the first go round. Had this been me I would have been happy letting the white board sit on my desk and fall on me once a week. But no, not my interoffice companions. This was a task they would not fail at. So off they go to rewrite more help. After a few tries and a visit to an office across the hall they find out that the best way to do this is just to use the screws drilled into the wall to hold it in place. Not to be drilled through the white board. So lesson of the day, persevere till it is done. Or just wait tell you have the proper tools for the job. I say go with the right tools.

Lucid

2006-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

Lucid (lu·cid)
1 : suffused with light : TRANSLUCENT
2 : having full use of one's faculties : SANE
3 : clear to the understanding : INTELLIGIBLE

This being my first post I thought I should explain a little on why I have called the site "The Lucid developer". Through out my professional career I have found that there are times that after a trial or struggle you have those moments of clarity, those "Ah ha" moments. This is about those. Most of them will be taken straight from the work place, but as a father of two perfect little children you will find that I have some incites into the life of a father. Now by no means do I feel I know what I am doing. I am just struggling through each day like the rest of you.

I have recently returned home from a trip to Seattle. On the ride home some very amazing things happened. I had on of those moments you can never understand utill your a dad. On the ride we where lucky to have the chance of running into the stupidest bunch of birds I have ever seen. As we approached them traveling at hight speeds I thought to my self. "Self, how come those pigeons up there on the road don't fly away." We got closer and closer until we had passed them. Had those birds not delayed to get there last few specks of what ever was on the road then I think they might still to this day be flying around. But low and behold they have become permanent fixtures in our mind of how the death of a bird can happen. Those silly birds made it about a foot off the ground before there little lives ended. Now I don't want to gross you out with detail. I may have gone on to long as it is. but lets say that when we arrived at the next gas station a careful examination of the grill of the car found that we had some deceased passengers. Now I have painted this picture to illustrate that moment. Not the one where I cleaned them out. But the one where I got back into the car and realized that when things happen dads jump in both feet and do what dads do. I didn't even think about what I was doing. Had it happen before I became a dad I think it might have bothered me, but not this time.

To the dads everywhere thanks for all the crap jobs you have done over the years.