Jul. 10th, 2002

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It turns out the Linux box at work does have the graphics library installed for PHP, so I installed Terracotta on that machine and it appears to work fine. I even found a minor bug that I think I may report to the developers (an embedded '&' character in a file name will prevent it from being deleted).

It was another busy day.

The client I spoke of yesterday called in response to my e-mail to say that they'd erroneously sent the assignment to my 'backup' e-mail address (the one I use when I am not sure of being able to access my home server). On the one hand, I suppose, I should have checked that address; on the other, I'm sure I could beat myself silly with things I "could've" done to make up for the shortcomings of others.

Fortunately, the client was not kidding about the job being a two-pager; I took some time out of the morning to translate it at the shop, and after checking it about a half-dozen times (remembering my previous forays into the area of Translating Away From My Desk), I was satisfied with the result and sent it off.

* * *
Lee is well and truly sick, with the crud that I think I had soon after returning from Houston, and which Drew had soon after I'd recovered.

* * *
Yesterday, Galina questioned the presence of the scanner at the shop, saying that nobody had asked for anything to be scanned since we bought it, so I put it aside. Today - you guessed it - I got a call from a gent who wanted some pictures scanned and put on disk.

Putting the parts together was pretty straightforward, until the time came to plug in the power supply. There was no graphic next to the adapter plug on the Hewlett-Packard scanner, and a little Web research showed that the electrical specification for the unit was "110-120 VAC" (gee, thanks HP!). All I had on hand was an adapter made by some outfit in South Korea that supplied 5.5 VDC with a positive "tip" electrode. Eventually, by examining every square inch of the scanner, I confirmed that said adapter was for the HP (or at least was appropriate for it).

The scans went quickly, and the HP software worked smoothly. For once.

The scans follow a lamination job from another customer who came in yesterday to have us put clear plastic on about 15 pages of photographs depicting his work (mostly in antlers and other animal artifacts). He was very pleased (both customers were, actually), with both the quality of the work and, I suspect, the price. In any event, I figure that between this job and a bunch of business cards and building permits done over the past several months, the laminating unit is about half paid for (the scanner has a way to go, though, as today's scanning order was the first of its kind).

I just need to get the word out about what services the store provides. Preferably on zero budget.

* * *
The kids are out at a birthday party, and once we were all home, Galina, Lee, and I watched most of the classic 1934 film The Thin Man, with William Powell and Myrna Loy (and Asta!). It'd been ages since I saw the film last, but this time, I noticed that it hewed pretty closely to the original Dashiell Hammett story (and I mean down to the incessant drinking that I hadn't really noticed the first time I'd read the story; if Nick Charles really drank that much, he must certainly have been an alcoholic). I wonder what the Mrs. Grundys of the world must have thought of this film in 1934?

Time to rest.

Cheers...
alexpgp: (Aura)
One of the minor tempests on the Web today is the issue of "deep linking," a practice that entails providing a link directly to a specific "page" at a web site. Some number of folks with Web presence (e.g., NPR) specifically want everyone to know that they will not permit such practices. I seem to recall there have even been recent court cases argued (e.g., in Denmark) where prohibitions against deep linking have been upheld.

(Actually, the deep-linking page that NPR had put up, saying that "linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited," has been taken down. I guess they didn't like the bad publicity.)

The argument goes something like this: the folks who don't want you to deep-link want everyone to enter at their site's home page, so that visitors can be regaled with the Full Monty, as it were, before allowing you to vector off to find a specific tidbit of information on their site.

Can you imagine what the effect might have been if book publishers had insisted, back when the practice was new, that scholarly references provide everything but the page number in a citation?

To me, there's not much of a difference between prohibiting deep linking and prohibiting the publication of page numbers in references. By providing a page number (e.g., p. 70 of this week's Time magazine), I am encouraging people who are likely interested specifically in what is on that page to ignore the rest of the issue. I mean, there's at least as much of an opportunity to click on another site link from a deep-linked page as there is to look at some other page than 70 in a paper-based publication, isn't there?

Of course, if you did try to get people to buy the idea of "you can cite everything but the page," they'd think you were crazy.

And rightfully so, methinks.

Cheers...

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