If you don’t get the embedded video, just jump this way

here’s the whole photo set.

The show was a great success, from several perspectives. It not only raised the funds needed, it brought together a whole bunch of folks for a night of good music and worship. Good times indeed.

Come enjoy a night of Contemporary Christian Rock!

Vision is a collection of local Christian musicians who are coming together for a good cause. The show starts at 7:30 and includes performances by Taylor Martin, James Vore, and The Mission, and guest speaker Marvin Fullilove. Vision is family friendly and all are invited. Bring friends!

Although the concert is free to attend, donations will be accepted (and very much appreciated) to benefit Robert Vore’s Eagle Scout Project. All proceeds will go towards the construction and installation of brand new benches for several gathering areas at Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Don’t miss performances by Taylor Martin, James Vore, and The Mission and guest speaker Marvin Fullilove!

Hmmm.

(btw, I’m StevenVore on Twitter if you should care to follow.)

Python is the new BASIC.

- Dave Winer

I think I’d say that it’s the new (Turbo) Pascal, but I agree with Dave. Fast (enough), available, and easy (enough) to learn. There’s no excuse not to get out and start programming if you’ve got any thought at all of doing so.

The road wasn’t in horrible condition, but it was bad enough — there were several potholes that needed repair and were getting larger each day. I’d even considered going out and marking them with traffic paint then calling the city management office, but before I got around to it the “road work next week” signs went up.

Traffic is of course down to one lane, and the road is long and curved enough that the sign guys can’t see each other. Apparently they don’t have radios, so there’s a pickup that leads traffic one way, then turns around and leads the next set back. As you can imagine, it’s not the most efficient operation. Combine that with the mess of dug-up road parts, tar and dust, and it’s certainly a road you’d rather avoid.

From what I understand, Rucker Road itself is also going to be getting some work done this week or next, so traffic in the whole area’s going be be interesting for a while. If you have alternate routes, this would be a good time to use them.

8:00pm, Wind Ensemble concert

The first thing needed is the connecter to allow Python to talk to a MySQL datbase, mysql-python. The setup program for the newest version, 1.2.2, didn’t want to run for me and the hints I found around the ‘net didn’t seem to apply, so I downloaded version 1.2.1_p2. There was still some work to do to get it to install though.

To install the connector, MySQL needed to be installed locally first. Sun now owns MySQL but fortunately there’s a Community version available for download free of charge for personal use.

Once that’s installed, it’s back to the MySQL-Python connector installation. Several sites had notes which helped me find that setup.py tries to call mysql_config but can’t find it, so I edited the line from ...popen("mysql_config... to ...popen("/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config...

The setup program gave me another error, this time because I don’t have gcc installed - to complete the build it needs to be able to call the C compiler. Back when I set up my PowerBook I’d not installed that part of the developer tools, so I had to dig out my OS X disks and do that. Then finally the setup worked cleanly:

python setup.py clean
python setup.py build
python setup.py install

Now that all the bits are in the right places, I’m finally ready to start getting some code going. I added permission to my databases, creating a new user that has remote access, and used that.

# use the connector library
import MySQLdb
# connect to the database, using the correct username and password
conn = MySQLdb.connect (host = "vorefamily.net", user = "my_db_username", passwd = "my_db_password", db = "my_database") # look in your wp-config.php file to find the right database
# update the fields, using an SQL call
conn.query("""UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'closed' WHERE year(post_date) < 2008 """)
# close the database connection
conn.close ()


It’s not long or fancy, but it does exactly what was needed at the moment. I’ll build more of a wrapper around it later, to make it more flexible, add error checking etc.

An evening of forensic work while watching a movie with my family, followed by some light development this morning… success. And, perhaps more importantly, it gets my system back to a place where I can start digging into larger projects I’ve been thinking about.

Last Year, the 2.2 million people and 2100 businesses of Sydney, Australia turned off their lights for an hour — for some just a symbolic gesture perhaps, but it’s estimated that the measurable result was a 10.2% energy reduction across the city.

This year there are 24 cities world-wide participating in Earth Hour. Here in Atlanta, I know that lots of people are planning outdoor parties this evening. I don’t know how much the measurable energy savings will be, but it’s certainly a good opportunity to get together, enjoy the springtime blooming around us, and talk about the event and what it can mean to us.

Earth Hour isn’t just about reducing energy use for an hour. It’s about thinking ahead and talking about what you, your neighbors and your co-workers can do on a more long-term basis.

For the skeptics in the audience, think of it this way: saving energy isn’t just some goody-goody save-the-planet global warming thing. Saving energy also means saving our families and businesses money — and that’s something I’m sure we can all get behind.

There it was on the menu at The Vortex - the Double Bypass Burger. This big hunk of meat is covered with bacon and cheese, surrounded by two fried eggs and then the whole mess is set not on a bun, but between two grilled cheese sandwiches. Oh, and it’s served with tater tots. How can you resist?