Monday, 1st August, 2005

Check $cache for $hash

My RSS feed is annoying me. I was slightly embarrassed by the way it was over-zealously updating itself recently, and switched to a manual update — calling the script by hand rather than by a cron job.

But even then, it's still a bit clumsy.

My main gripe with it is how little information it gives you — if I write a whole new bunch of Stuff™, then it still only shows you the first heading I wrote on a particular day, rather than all of them.

Y'know — like the little boxes over on the left do

So I'm going to change it today — I figured that since I spent some time making each header into an automatic anchor (here, try it out: http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2005/07/27/#holiday), then I might as well use them in the RSS feed.

Here is the plan:

read each file

find lines that begin with "==="

$title = previous line
$text = next line
$time = the file modification date

if it's come via Flickr...
replace $text with the equivalent small Flickr photo

if this is a new heading...*
add this to the RSS feed

* This is the tricky bit. Somehow I've got to work out if this is a new bit of writing or not. What I'm thinking at the moment is that I need to be able to check the old feed for whether or not a heading exists — but making sure that if I use the same heading on two days (or perhaps on the same day) that it still knows it's new.

I'm toying along the idea of reading the old feed, and combining each $title and $text into an md5 hash — so that this from the other day turns from "Xtreme Crossdressing" and "(Transvestism to the Max!)" into d0cde2e5103f64a544d4d4059c794449, and show them all into an array called $cache.

Then I can do the same to the actual diary files themselves, and pull them into an array called $hash. Then I can compare the two arrays, and only add in the ones that don't appear in $cache.

It's inelegant, I know, and I'm not sure it's going to work properly. But when did anything I coded work first time eh?

one so dessicated it's starting to flake

You and your hoity-toity fancy language This is just a classic case of me using my own blog as a to-do list

Hope you get it working how you want soon

That may never happen. I can't seem to stop myself tweaking it

At the moment, it's all fine and dandy — I just need to do some cunning RegEx on the Flickr posts and somehow sort out the bugs in my automatic anchor creating thingy. There are non-alpha-numeric characters slipping through into the URLs, and so they don't quite work.

RSS Apologies

It must be dead annoying when I fiddle with my RSS feed and everyone's aggregators get flooded with a ton of things that are probably days old. So, sorry. It might happen a few times today — but hopefully that'll be the last of it

Do please let me know if it all goes screwy — it's working OK at my end, but I'm never too confident about these kind of things these days

Yep — sounds about right

Sleepy Murphy

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

I think he's missing his Mum

Bored

Meh. What a crap day.

I was intent on acomplishing Lots Of Things™ this week, but so far all I've managed to do is write a list, spend a good few hours logwatching, and watch a classic Channel Five afternoon film (which was actually quite good — The Sign of the Four, a Holmes gem )

I'm currently sitting here, waiting for rush hour to be over (about 6ish I reckon) so I can go and feed Murphy because I am a lazy-arsed-trannie who plans on driving to the other side of town.

But after that, I'm going to do something I haven't done for ages...

Yes yes, you're all very funny I was expecting something more cutting though — something like "Having a bath?" or "Eating some food?"

That's not George hon — that's Murphy (Kath's cat). George is dead.

We haven't braved the "Murphy Meets Biscuit And Tish" day yet — figured he needs a few more trips to the house on his own before that. A friend mentioned something the other day that seemed like really good advice — when he comes round first, we're not going to feed him for 24 hours, which may sound mean — but will make sure when we first let him out, he comes back.

Haven't done this for ages

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

What do you reckon? Too shiney? Too stylised. Not stylised enough? Badly lit? (Ack, I want a set of proper lights for Christmas)

Ta hon — yeah, not one of my better ones I dunno — I just couldn't seem to make it work tonight.

00059

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

How about that then? Better? Or worse?

It has to be said, I'm having a real problem with lighting just at the moment. That was taken with just a little bedside light, a clip-on spot-light, and the last remaining sunlight that was filtering through my bedroom window.

It's not ideal

It's also (as I'm sure every trannie who's ever stuck herself infront of a camera will know) not easy to take a good picture of yourself.

Ack, I dunno. Maybe next time I'll ask Kath to take them. That's the lot for tonight — I wanted to take more but it just wasn't working out.

(I did, of course, take more than that — but they've gone into a special "Siobhan is the only person allowed to see them" folder. To be used for things I couldn't possibly mention)