foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

YAY! We’ve made some developments.

Instead of one ‘minifig’ (that’s what you humans call us eh..?) per letter, we’re now assigning a set of words per minifig. One minifig can memorize the assigned sequence (we do have good ‘memories’) and jump from one key to the other faster.

And faster it was.

We hit some problems though.

Like this one with the SHIFT key.

Bob: “Hold the key! This one’s a capital letter.”
Peter: “Too heavy for me. I can’t hold it down that long.”
John: “I’ll help. I’ll help.”

The major setback though was when Willard, in charge of the BACKSPACE key, slipped.

Rod: “Double Js some backspace please.”
Willard: “MY Backspace!”
Willard: “UGH.”
Bob: “Move your arse, Willard. Release the BACKSPACE.”
Willard: “My back… my back. He… eelp.”

It’s the BACKSPACE… so we have to do things all over again.

Willard will be fine. No worries.

HELLO AGAIN.

You have no idea how long it took us to post the previous entry.
But we’re getting used to it…
And we’re getting a lot faster too.

Yes we’re taking over this… this whatever this is.
You see Mr. WildFire moved some of his stuff from his bigger ‘puterbox to a smaller movable ‘puter and decided to estivate on a cave somewhere to work on ‘TheFramework’.

He left this black ‘puterbox open to grab some stuff stuff I think. We’re still figuring out those things.

We do hope it’s pron-related.

To give you how we operate things… here are some pics.

That’s me directing the letters for the writing and jumping process.

The Transfer Team.

It took an hour for this team to figure things out. But one blacktron was good with hieroglyphics.

If we can find a mirror we’ll show you how we’re taking these shots. There’s only one camera in here.

We’ll find a way to elevate this cam too, to get better angles. For now we can only provide near to the floor shots.

Later.

Oh by the way… my name’s Bob.

Hello world.
TEST.

» Calvin Hsia: How does EventHandler work? IConnectionPoint!
» Craig Boyd: VFP Database Backup Made Simple
» Craig Boyd: Properly Registering Sedna’s DDEX Provider
» Rick Schummer: VFP 9 RTM/SP1/SP2 – One Machine

qs while doing her VFP researches pointed me to this site » VFPSERVER.com.

Now if only we can have an ENGLISH version of that chm file…

With approximately 100 days in the VFP Studio countdown… Craig Boyd enlightens us with this VFP Studio Code Editor ScreenCast.

Also from SweetPotatoSoftware:
» VFP Application Updating Made Simple
» VFP Uploading/Downloading Made Simple

FoxPro.warps » VFP: GDIx and ReportListeners / Form Event Sequences

Foxpro.catalyst will turn four tomorrow. That is of course if I could finish this post before midnight.

After that ‘accidental’ redesign of the OUTPOST FORUM, I planned to work on some templates for this site.

I was into it when for some weird reason I accepted two rushed five day projects, so I’ll be postponing the re-design for awhile.

Four years ago, my first post was a test scribble of course followed by a post linking to FoxProHistory.org.

Thanks for reading… : )

wOOdy’s Visual FoxPro code snippets at MSDN CODE GALLERY. (via Rick Schummer)

Also… let me relink to this » SEDNA at CodePlex.VFPX.

OUTPOST FORUM 1047

After the crash we’re back.

It’s a case of me trying to fix some cgi-bin files at the wrong time.

Had I opted to wait longer… things would have been solved faster.

I think my ‘wait for the problem to go away’ attitude got snagged somewhere last Thursday.

But then again if I opted for the easier path, you wouldn’t be seeing this new interface… : )

And since my hands were already dirty, I decided to upgrade some 2 year old cgi/perl scripts.

I’ve been using some of these scripts for years now and I saw movements from their respective sites after a long time.

I’m talking about YaBB 2.2 (Two years in the making) / BoardMod 2.5.6 (Previous release was dated 06/10/2005) and GreyMatter 1.8.1 scripts (The one I was using for pixelnews prior to the update was still 1.2).

Also… while I was working on the new outpost interface, I found some easier ways to do things in Photoshop CS 3 which usually takes me 15++ minutes to do in the pre-CS version that I have.

(Time spent for cursing not included.)

I’ll be sharing those things later… : )

…

OUTPOST FORUM 1047 released.

The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos.

Interesting.

So that is where the ‘apple bite’ came from.

…

WE are currently reconfiguring some parts of the OUTPOST FORUM and TheLair‘s PIXELnews. You might see some weird stuff po(o/p)pin’ out while we’re doing this.

OUTPOST queries are TEMPORARILY redirected here. We’ll redirect to the new forum once the UPDATE/UPGRADE/Tweaks are completed.

Poser 7 / Adobe CS2 / PaintShop Pro 5.02
Daz3D’s Stephanie Petite 3.0 / Irina 2.0

Rendered at 5AM after 9++ hours of coding.

CGSociety and 3D World released a list of Top 100 Greatest 3D Movies.

Also from the same site is a special feature on three of the top VFX films of 2007.

Happy 50th birthday… LEGO!

THE ANTI-REFLECTION / 1600×1200 / 803482 bytes
Adobe CS2 / Poser 7 / PaintShop Pro 5.02 / TY2 / Miscellaneous TY2 Freebies

Time-wise you can classify my artworks into two categories.

First… those that takes months (or years (and I’m not even kidding)) to finish containing 3 digit number of layers where the first digit is not 1 and is divided
into four to five 50+ MB PSD files.

Or the ones I create for three hours or less while waiting for something to finish.

The Anti-Reflection belongs to the second category.

I had fun anyway… : ]

“Sometimes when I look into the mirror, there’s this stranger I see, who won’t look back at me.” ~qs

I visited a client yesterday.

One of the few ‘they-just-call-us-once-a-year’ type of clients.

It’s either they really know the program so well that a programmer’s interventions are not needed or they’re not using the program.

Spent four hours on the road and bus… and just two hours in the client’s site.

Yeah… one of those provincial visits where the time consumed by transportation is much more than the actual client interaction itself.

Problem on site is not even programming related.

Hardware crashed… not my scope but I helped anyway.

Besides I need to update some modules.

Main database file shows a record of 1,445 records. They must be using the system.

I had the chance to talk to some heads too.

Two of our main problems with clients for the past year are administration changes without proper turnovers and staff changes, also, without proper turnovers.

Rode the bus home before the clock hit the 12 noon mark.

The bus ride home is always one of the interesting events of this visit.

The previous time I remember I felt like my pony-tail connected to the seat as if it was a cable connecting me to some moving Matrix-The-movie-like vehicle.

I felt like I was one with that bus which is not a bus at all.

Too surreal I can’t even describe it.

Yesterday… half asleep, I believe I saw three, not just one, but three buildings that seemed to have transferred from the right side of the road to the left side.

At least they were in the right side during my previous visit.

That was 11 months ago.

I’m quite sure those three huge buildings were on the left side of the road before.

As if in that span of time they have developed movable feet of some sort and uhm… crossed the road.

That and they were able to successfully mass-hypnotize the villagers in that place into thinking that nothing weird happened.

That everything’s all right.

You can’t fool me, you alien-beings-pretending-to-be-buildings!

I wear my psionic helmet protection all the time.

Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 ‘SEDNA’ Add-Ons released.

Leigh, still pining for that Incubus concert, pointed me last week to a nice blog that talked about teaching.

My first reactions to this were…

‘This is isn’t teaching… this is baby sitting!’

Beh-bee… sitting!

(Mind… is… fighting… The. Dark. Forces… that are pushing the fingers to link to that Babysitters pron dvd link. Must. Not. Link. Must… not.)

Babysitting.

Spoonfeeding… included.

With matching twinkidoos woochoo woochoo.

(And those endless-but-always-entertaining (to a two year old (not you (sadly))) Barney reruns.)

…

The way we view teaching differ.

These views differ from one person to the other… from one place to another place.

If you’re a student, probably teaching for you is different when you’re an actual teacher.

It must be.

Then again it depends on if you’re a lazy student or the other. That is… a lazier student.

Now if you’re a teacher it depends also whether you’re still that renegade fresh out of college aspiring to change the world.

Or… that veteran-tired-of-changing the-world-nothing-still-happens so-let’s-just-give-them-all-passing-grades so-everyone-can-be-HAPPY!

Then the view that most of us tend to overlook… the ADMIN/OWNER-of-the-school’s point of view.

(Yes… in CAPS LOCK (And yes I do use that CAPS LOCK so forget those petitions to remove that key in the standard keyboard lay-out (Go strain yourselves, shit-err-shift-lovin’-humans)))

To these admins, failing grades lead to less enrollees… less enrollees lead to less income to cover the expenses.

Less income leads to fear. Fear leads to to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

I won’t even delve into the profit part.

Not all admins really.

We’ve worked closely enough with around 25 private and semi-public schools/universities for the past 9 years to realize that there are still those who are wiling to sacrifice income for a better quality of education.

Good luck to them.

To us database programmers working for schools and universities, we see those teachers only as records.

A row in the database file.

Until they start bitchin’ and whining and doing that I know it all attitude.

That and their endless delays in submissions of records with erroneous IDs/Names that fvcks up the spag-recursive powered checking of our systems.

Back to that blog.

After reading that one… I searched Parcel (my primary PC) for a file I made eight years ago.

TeachingPrinciples.txt

I scribbled that fresh out of college.

Fresh from the sufferings and tortures endured during my own comsci student life.

It’s blood I smell… and ‘Revenge’ chants were still vibrating in my brain. (With matching rubbing of palms and evil grin)

Probably those growling ‘Seek-For-Revenge’ howls were the ones that subliminally triggered me to accept that junior database programmer job for TheUniversity’s computer center (later renamed to MIS).

I can teach part time in the same workplace… in between coding.

I’ll get my chance at ThatRevenge.

Payback time, baby.

Payback time.

Before I drag you more into this revenge mindset let me post the un-altered contents (except for the hyperlinks and minimal comments) of that file.

Please note that these were my views/principles/way of life 10 years ago.

I was in my 20s then… still aiming to change the world one starfish at a time.

That of course and the quest for TheRevenge.

Probably if things permit, I might be accepting a teaching gig again.

And I might still be following these things.

TEACHINGPrinciples.txt circa 1998

Never lecture what can be read in the book… clarify some parts but re-lecturing what is already there is pure bullshit. (Yes I cursed a lot in text files back then.)

Some questions must not be answered by the teacher unless the student has spent one week without sleeping trying to solve the said problem.

Considerate teachers produce lousy students. Period.

Only wimps check attendances and uniforms.

Two words: TOUGH LOVE. Sometimes you have to punish them for them to learn… you can’t bring a soldier to war by baby-sitting him/her in his/her training… college ground is a training ground and believe me… it’s a war out there.

Give more than enough time for a given project but don’t remind… it makes no difference… they’ll still be doing it at the last minute.

Give extensions and stretched deadlines as much as they can possibly be given… hehe i’m quite soft on this one… but i was asking for much extensions when i was a student… it’s about time i give something kind for that kindness shown to me before.

Challenge them… even to the point of de-humanizing their souls.

People first before subject matter… college doesn’t really mean you’re teaching the subject matter alone.

Always believe in that ‘Smooth seas do not produce skillful sailors’ notion… as well as John Patrick Mason’s (Sean Connery) ‘Losers always whine about their best winners go home and f-ck the prom queen‘ line. (From The Rock)

Others including you have done it before… there’s no way an impossible problem can’t be solved.

… and always make them smile even if you’re doing the things mentioned above.

Tough love… it is.

Previous scribbles in this part were erased by format-lovin’ obsessive compulsive three-eyed aliens.