24-XII-2015.
This morning sGradlj.com reached a milestone - 100.000 visits this year. Last year it was 68.700. And there's still a whole week to go. This could also be the first month with more than 10.000 visits; my statcounter.prg predicted (based on the assumption that the to-date average would hold for the rest of the month) even 11.000 for a while.
David hasn't failed to deliver an appropriate christmas greeting to all of Firriver. At least it wasn't deer fucking this time.
In the lončar, aka launcher for Feds, I reduced the number of possible messages, basically letting it go if nothing serious happens, just launch the app silently. Any messages would be logged... and the fuckup is that it's all local, including the log. And we can't get into the local, only on the server (unless the user allows remote connection from the server into his workstation, which was rare and complicated). Then I somehow talked it into writing the logs to the app's logs directory, but then various police states of clinics came up telling us that the app must not write anyhting into its directories, it must all go into either local directories (um, a note in Notes is due here), or into the database, or into the location designated for accompanying files, which is cut into directories assigned per patient. Endless upending, whatever you come up with, they soon invent a reason to declare unsafe. Here, today at a belgian clinic we found out that the users have no right to write into the common log directory. And that's written only when there's an error, and serves only our troubleshooting, and it served perfectly several times already, we weeded out several errors by that. It doesn't make sense that an app shouldn't have the right to log its error.
Jan: did you try to communicate it to them?
me: what, the frustration? that the app can't access its own logs directory? that's not even ridiculous anymore, that's malicious. And I can't write a new exe either, the previous one was stuck in memory, can't see it in open files, can't see it in task manager.
And so the error logs will go into private directories of the user, which is worse than useless, it's unreachable.
Don't know how we found the new one, but I know how we got to the idea to get it - the old knitting machine was repeatedly getting stuck and became practically defunct. It would need a precise mechanician, and a thorough cleanup, it's been through periods of fierce use since 1972, it was about time to modernize. To avoid repeating the technicolor shit we had with the previous swiss machine, this one is a purely mechanical job, done smoothly with hundred little tricks, has even some punch tape reader, so it can do quite complicated patterns via this mechanical programming. So on 26th we drove to Zemun to see the lady from which we'll buy it. Their apartment is... more complicated than the machine itself. Someone seems to have used the space between two yard buildings to turn into a long corridor, which ends with a winding staircase*, which is so tight they should teach claustrophobia 101 in it, and then then another corridor back to the yard. This one goes straight, just veers vertically, the middle third is one or two steps above the ends.
She callse the machine vilhelmina, and we decided to keep the name. It really knows a hundred tricks, and she gave us a fifteen minute crash course on its wonders. I recorded just two minutes of it, I had the little Lumia with me, too bad I didn't start right away. Carrying it through the corridors was tough, and the staircase was worse. At least the saxo is small and nimble, so the snug yard was big enough to maneuver out of.
Then we visited Lena, there near SIV, brought her bacon and eggs. Went for a stroll through JUBC, the clouds thinned a bit, the sun appeared, first shyly, then we even sat in full beam, on a bench, for a cigarette break. Perhaps we went to „Cactus**“ to dine. On the way back it got rather foggy, so I told her to shoot a few scenes. Came home by dark, and the fog just stayed. Judging by the shots, it wasn't horrible, can see three road stripes far.
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* Not spiral staircase, that's impossible. Spiral is flat, never goes up. Helic[oid]al was the word you were ploughing through the geometry for.
** which, of course, can't be called „Kaktus“ or same in cyrillic (unthinkable!), must be „Cactus“, nothing else is acceptable here, engrbian is almost the official language.
Mentions: Notes on grammar, spelling and other witchcraft, David Berton, engrbian, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), saxo, sGradlj.com, statcounter.prg, vilhelmina, in serbian
24-XII-2015 - 19-X-2026