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saline · 03-24-2003, 07:54 PM

Hey everybody, do you know what I love? The internet. Know why? Because it's cool. I've loved the internet (or the intarweb depending on who you ask) for years now. It's so cool, it's a completely new world conainted within our own, larger than your antfarm but still controllable, sweet. I started HTML in ninth grade when I should have been paying attention to my Biology teacher (bad idea on my part). I spent hours learning HTML and becoming a better designer and at the time I wasen't really much of a programmer so I didn't mind all the repetative cutting and pasting and sitting there for hours doing the same thing over and over, it was still fun.

Then I started learning more, I learned to program and learned about CGI scripts and how big webpages worked and I realized I was the biggest tool in the world. But I've got a real big tolerance for self deprecation so I stayed the course and created the largest website I had ever administered before. It was a site for a small magazine (or zine). The person who runs the magazine wanted a place for news, back issues, guidelines for submitting and a way for people to subscribe. I was like, ok easy, uh huh got an idea, sure no problem and ok yeah I can do something for that. Next thing you know I'm neck deep in sloppy HTML and like two weeks behind schedule and I'm having fits over graphics and spacing and getting everything to display right.

Long story short, I did it, it took days and weeks and months but over time I got up an alpha and told the person I was working for "yay I'm done"! Then I did the sneaky procrastinator trick and kept working behind the scenes, without telling the magazine person, to get everything right. I updated the entire site, made the HTML completely sealed up as best I knew, solidified the few scripts I used and just generally ensured it would work for the majority of users (your mileage may vary).

I kept updating it for them and made changes over time and added a section or two and generally things go pretty well with the site. But very little changed in the way I was creating pages I had a template which I would go and fill in, by hand, every time. It was no fun any more and I was so tired of it my desire to update dwindled to almost nothing.

Recently I wrote a program to automate one of the most mind numbing tasks. On the pages with back issues we list the people who wrote for the issue each person in a different cell of a table. Well the magazine is a poetry magazine so the pieces aren't long, and it's a pretty big magazine so there's potentially six to seven people on every two pages. So it's a big table and was a big waste of time the way I was doing it. So I just took the format that I usually get the list of people in, and wrote a program to produce the webpage and write it to a file.

I'm working on making it a CGI script so I don't even have to do anything and I can finally get back to cataloging the bits of food I find on the floor of my room.

Anyway, the teaser for this week is to make my life easier! Or at least somebodies life easier. Find some tedious task and automate the sucker. There's lots of stuff you could do with HTML:

1) Write a program to search for a certain string and replace it within a text file (not just for HTML), or a group of text files.

2) Write a program which automates the creation of external Cascading Style Sheets which prompts the user to enter values for the background color, font, text size and other generally specified things.

3) Maybe a program that alerts the user of any potentially un-closed tags within an HTML document.

4) Or a program which creates tables where the user can specify the number of rows and columns and then go fill them in.

All of these things remove the grunt work from webdesign which is so nice after years and years of control c-ing and control v-ing.

This teaser requires some experience with HTML and will most likely require you know how to create and write to files. I can help with both HTML and making files in C++, python, Perl (but may have difficulty in Perl as some of you may have noticed) and I might be able to fake it in Visual Basic as well.

They're short, they're sweet and they're potentially super useful, lets see what everyone can come up with!

I'll post mine some time soon.

03-24-2003, 07:54 PM	#1 (permalink)
saline I am red. Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Cleveland, OH Posts: 139	What a waste of time! Hey everybody, do you know what I love? The internet. Know why? Because it's cool. I've loved the internet (or the intarweb depending on who you ask) for years now. It's so cool, it's a completely new world conainted within our own, larger than your antfarm but still controllable, sweet. I started HTML in ninth grade when I should have been paying attention to my Biology teacher (bad idea on my part). I spent hours learning HTML and becoming a better designer and at the time I wasen't really much of a programmer so I didn't mind all the repetative cutting and pasting and sitting there for hours doing the same thing over and over, it was still fun. Then I started learning more, I learned to program and learned about CGI scripts and how big webpages worked and I realized I was the biggest tool in the world. But I've got a real big tolerance for self deprecation so I stayed the course and created the largest website I had ever administered before. It was a site for a small magazine (or zine). The person who runs the magazine wanted a place for news, back issues, guidelines for submitting and a way for people to subscribe. I was like, ok easy, uh huh got an idea, sure no problem and ok yeah I can do something for that. Next thing you know I'm neck deep in sloppy HTML and like two weeks behind schedule and I'm having fits over graphics and spacing and getting everything to display right. Long story short, I did it, it took days and weeks and months but over time I got up an alpha and told the person I was working for "yay I'm done"! Then I did the sneaky procrastinator trick and kept working behind the scenes, without telling the magazine person, to get everything right. I updated the entire site, made the HTML completely sealed up as best I knew, solidified the few scripts I used and just generally ensured it would work for the majority of users (your mileage may vary). I kept updating it for them and made changes over time and added a section or two and generally things go pretty well with the site. But very little changed in the way I was creating pages I had a template which I would go and fill in, by hand, every time. It was no fun any more and I was so tired of it my desire to update dwindled to almost nothing. Recently I wrote a program to automate one of the most mind numbing tasks. On the pages with back issues we list the people who wrote for the issue each person in a different cell of a table. Well the magazine is a poetry magazine so the pieces aren't long, and it's a pretty big magazine so there's potentially six to seven people on every two pages. So it's a big table and was a big waste of time the way I was doing it. So I just took the format that I usually get the list of people in, and wrote a program to produce the webpage and write it to a file. I'm working on making it a CGI script so I don't even have to do anything and I can finally get back to cataloging the bits of food I find on the floor of my room. Anyway, the teaser for this week is to make my life easier! Or at least somebodies life easier. Find some tedious task and automate the sucker. There's lots of stuff you could do with HTML: 1) Write a program to search for a certain string and replace it within a text file (not just for HTML), or a group of text files. 2) Write a program which automates the creation of external Cascading Style Sheets which prompts the user to enter values for the background color, font, text size and other generally specified things. 3) Maybe a program that alerts the user of any potentially un-closed tags within an HTML document. 4) Or a program which creates tables where the user can specify the number of rows and columns and then go fill them in. All of these things remove the grunt work from webdesign which is so nice after years and years of control c-ing and control v-ing. This teaser requires some experience with HTML and will most likely require you know how to create and write to files. I can help with both HTML and making files in C++, python, Perl (but may have difficulty in Perl as some of you may have noticed) and I might be able to fake it in Visual Basic as well. They're short, they're sweet and they're potentially super useful, lets see what everyone can come up with! I'll post mine some time soon.