how now brownpau
From the noise outside my window I thought it was another protest march, but then I heard the guy on the bullhorn say something like “elephants,” so I ran to the window in time to catch a line of elephants plod by, scantily clad women atop them, a parade of marchers and drummers in tow. It was the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus’ Pachyderm Parade, going down E Street towards Gallery Place to set up the circus.
Update: Video here on DC Metroblogging.
Coming up from Waterfront Metro. A bright blue sky shines down from above the escalator canopy. I don’t remember the canopy being so clear.
(Canopy.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Next Sunday’s gradual, Pablo Casals’ “O Vos Omnes,” or, as translated to English on this sheet, “O Ye People.” Sadly I will be away from church and choir that day, so I won’t be singing the baritone part.
(VosOmnes.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
A rare photo of me in a (gasp!) necktie. Mobile self portrait taken in the choir rehearsal room at church immediately after service. Formal wear to look nice for my reading of the gospel today, the parable of the prodigal son. Today was First Baptist DC’s 205th anniversary celebration.
(MeInTie.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Having been banished from the bed, Pandora’s new lounging spot of choice is under my TV table, chin resting on the rollerblades that sit there, unused since the previous summer.
The vet got back to me last week, and told me that her urinalysis and culture came back negative for any infection. She had no swelling, no redness, no irritation, or any other indication of a urinary tract infection or other disease — which means Pandora’s recent evacuation displacement issues have been behavioral. Amy and I have realized of late that the beginning of her incontinence episodes coincide, to the day, with my purchase of an Air Wick device for the bathroom — where the litter box is located. It’s entirely possible that the strong odors of the Air Wick scented oil may have thrown off the cat’s normal odor-centric excretory rhythms.
I have discarded the Air Wick. We shall see what happens.
Scratched Metro pillar signage from when Rockville was the last stop on the Red Line, with Shady Grove stuck on over it later. Reflected in the pillar, a departing train and the walls of the station.
(Rohady.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
I’ve changed the main archive index template from raw, unformatted month and category lists to something cleaner and slightly 2.0-ier. The monthly links are now arranged into neat rows of months grouped by year (all Kottke-style), and the category list is now a weighted “tag cloud” of links (although strictly speaking, I’m not using MT’s “tags” function). Larger words represent a higher number of entries under that category. This was all done with Movable Type templating tags and a bit of PHP — no plugins involved.
Here’s how I did the code for the year-and-month archives, basically building an associative array of URLs and default-format archive titles, exploding each title into a year and month, then looping through and printing the whole array by month, printing a line break and a bold year each time the years roll over:
<?php
$month_array = array();
<MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled type=”Monthly”>
<MTArchiveList archive_type=”Monthly”>
$month_array[‘<$MTArchiveTitle$>’] = ‘<$MTArchiveLink$>’;
</MTArchiveList>
</MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled>
$month_array = array_reverse($month_array);
?>
<div class=”monthlies”>
<MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled type=”Monthly”>
<p>
<?php
$counter = 0;
foreach ($month_array as $title => $link) {
list($month, $year) = explode(” “, $title);
if (!$counter) printf(“<b>%s:</b>n”, $year);
printf(“t<a href=’%s’>%s</a>n”, $link, substr($month, 0, 3));
if ($month != “December”) {
$counter++;
} else {
$counter = 0;
print “<br />”;
}
}
?>
</p>
</MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled>
</div><!– end .monthlies –>
And here’s my code for the weighted category cloud, building an array of categories, each category a nested associative array of info: category label, URL, entry count, and description. (I haven’t entered any category descriptions yet, so that variable doesn’t really come into play, but best to be thorough.) The entry count is then divided by whatever divisor gives you a decent font size when added to the base font size:
<?php
$category_array = array();
<MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled type=”Category”>
<MTTopLevelCategories>
$category_array[] = array(
‘link’ => ‘<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>’,
‘description’ => ‘<$MTCategoryDescription encode_php=”q”$>’,
‘label’ => ‘<MTCategoryLabel>’,
‘count’ => <MTCategoryCount>,
);
</MTTopLevelCategories>
</MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled>
?>
<div class=”categories”>
<MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled type=”Category”>
<p>
<? foreach ($category_array as $cat) {
extract($cat);
$fontsize = floor(11 + ($count/15));
printf(“<a href=’%s’ style=’font-size: %spx’ title=’%s’>%s</a>n”,
$link, $fontsize, $description, $label);
} ?>
</p>
</MTIfArchiveTypeEnabled>
</div><!– end .categories –>
So that’s how I did it. MT and PHP gurus out there, let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong; I’m pretty sure I’ve done something wrong, unnecessary, or needlessly complicated, and I’m open to simpler code solutions.
Update: Encampment to Stop the War
Various antiwar groups with a little protest camp of tents on the lawn between the Capitol Reflecting Pool and 3rd St NW. The large yellow banner says ‘Cut Off War Funds.’
(Protest.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
(First full length entry in Brownpau Hates Podcasting, in which I review the podcasts of John Piper, Ravi Zacharias, RC Sproul Jr, and Mark Dever, while still hating podcasting.
