Category: Drive By Blogging

Drive By Blogging

School Begins Near Castle Nerda

image from Patch.com

It makes absolutely “NO” sense to me to start school right before the Labor Day holiday. Why bring students back just to give them days off? Why not just start the year uninterrupted? Warwick is the only local school district that understands that idea year after year. They are at the bottom of the list below.

SCHOOL START DATES (via Lancaster Online – No link – paid service)


Monday
• Columbia Borough
Tuesday
• Cocalico
• Lancaster Mennonite
• Pequea Valley
Wednesday
• Donegal
• Conestoga Valley
• Lampeter-Strasburg
• Lancaster Country Day School
• Penn Manor
Thursday
• Hempfield
Aug. 26
• Eastern Lancaster County
• Elizabethtown Area (first through 12th)
• Ephrata Area
• Lancaster (ninth districtwide and K-8 at Martin)
• Manheim Central
• Manheim Township (first through 12th)
• Octorara Area
• Solanco
Aug. 27
• Lancaster (10th through 12th districtwide and seventh and eighth at Hand, Lincoln, Reynolds and Wheatland middle schools)
• Lancaster Catholic High School
• Manheim Township (kindergarten)
Aug. 28
• Elizabethtown Area (kindergarten)
Sept. 4
• Warwick (first through
12th)
Sept. 5
• Warwick (kindergarten)

PHP Storm – A Small Rant

I like PHP Storm. I use it to write PHP pages and for the most part, it works rather well. Except that is, the debugging part. I’ve always had real trouble getting the debug function to work properly. I have to admit that most of the time, the problem is me.

Fast forward to this past week. I have been working on my computer since Monday trying to identify problems with MacOS Catalina, report them, and try to figure out how we are going to fix them.Part of tat process has been fixing MySQL (which broke really bad) and also working on getting PHPStorm to debug..again…sort of. The port for xdebug has always been 9000.

Until, whenever someone at Jetbrains decided to change it to 9071. I cannot tell you how much time I wasted trying to get debug to work only to find out that the port has changed! Why on God’s sweet green Earth would anyone do that? It wasn’t well publicized and I found the answer quite by accident. In a random post, someone mentioned trying port 9071. What the actual fudge?

Debugging in PHPStorm is great when it works and for now, it does. Of course, when I update the OS it will probably break again. I’ve tried MAMP and XXAMP. The idea is wonderful. It is a contained system that should not care about my constant OS upgrades. Well, I couldn’t get it to communicate properly. I’m chalking that one up to Catalina. There are a number of things that just don’t work right now and it is because of a lot of different things. Security has been ramped up but it also prevents developers from doing basic things. For example, good luck getting a new setup of postfix to work on any level.

Ok. I am done ranting now. I’m blaming travel fatigue and a daughter for making me well, travel.

Website Hiatus

Well, I’m still here. Not on the blog actually. Just busy doing all kinds of fun stuff. Sometimes, I forget to actually share those things on this blog. I’m including a small set of photos from random things.

What these pictures explain to anyone who knows me is that I really do go outside on occasion.

…and finally. This is my friend Christie. We’ve been working on projects since March. She’ll be leaving our area at the end of this month which is sad for me. She is a lot of fun to work with.

Christie – New Hair Style May 2019

Awesome Use of Technology

By using a brain implant, people who are paralyzed.

Three people paralyzed from the neck down have been able to use unmodified computer tablets to text friends, browse the internet and stream music, thanks to an electrode array system called BrainGate2. The findings could have a major impact on the lives of those affected by neurologic disease, injury, or limb loss.
The system uses an array of micro-electrodes implanted into the brain which decode, in real time, the neural signals associated with the intention to move a limb. The three people involved in the trial had electrode grids implanted over part of their motor cortex — the area of the brain that helps control movement — which picked up neural activity indicating they were thinking about moving a cursor on the screen. Those patterns were then sent to a virtual mouse that was wirelessly paired to the tablet.

via Engadget

Daylight Savings Time Saves 0.03%

There is a pretty good article in the local newspaper today about Daylight Savings Time, who thought of it, why, and how most countries would like to get rid of it.

Ben Franklin sometimes gets credit for coming up with the idea of saving time because of a 1784 essay for The Journal of Paris that suggested the French could save on the cost of candles by getting out of bed earlier to take advantage of sunshine. But the piece was satirical, and he never mentioned turning clocks back or forward.
Germany became the first country to adopt the measure, to save coal during World War I. France and other countries followed suit. The U.S. tried daylight saving time in 1918, but repealed it a year later. However, some states set their own daylight saving time, leading to confusion.
It wasn’t until the establishment of a uniform system under the Uniform Time Act of 1966 that daylight saving time became standard. It gained traction under the belief that electricity use inside homes would drop as people stayed outside to enjoy the later sunset. And, it was believed most people would be awake after the sun had already risen and have less need for lights.
The federal government also believed daylight saving time, which begins in spring and ends in fall, would prevent traffic crashes as morepeople would travel to and from school or work during daylight. Further, it was believed daylight saving time would reduce crime as more people remained outside during daylight when less crime took place.

via LNP (paid subscription)

An Explosion in Allentown

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A car explosion that rocked downtown Allentown left three males dead, including the likely “perpetrator,” officials said Sunday as federal authorities who are leading the investigation looked ahead to autopsies.
“We know there’s been a criminal incident,” District Attorney James Martin told reporters at a news conference Sunday. “We have a high degree of confidence that the perpetrator was probably killed in the incident.”
Authorities released no information about the possible cause of Saturday night’s blast, including whether it was a bomb, but Martin said, “Loads of us in law enforcement” are confident “this was A. an isolated incident and B. there’s no continuing threat.”

via LNP (paid service)
Allentown PA – September 29, 2018

INTJ Personality Types

I did not know this was a thing. I see some of myself in this personality type and also some co-workers, past and present.

INTJ’s are one of the most rarest personality types and form only 2% of the population. Here is a brief overview of the characteristics:
(I)ntroversion – They focus their attention inward and get their energy from having time alone
i(N)tuition– They rely on the information they get from within themselves. As a result, they tend to focus more on ideas and concepts rather than facts and details.
(T)hinking – They prefer to make their decisions based on their own logical reasoning and analysis rather than their own emotions.
(J)udgement – They orient themselves to the external world through planning and organization rather than going with the flow and having sponinaeity.

via Life Hacker

You can read the whole article here. Fascinating shizz.

Around the Twitter-verse – Monday Edition

Adding an important one…