I’ve got a lot of stuff to get out of my brain and onto the blog, so please bear with me and read these following not-necessarily-related blurbs: (Now separated with —- in case you want to skip to the next one)

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Disk-space usage is getting better, thanks to two developments:

1) I’ve written up a couple of perl scripts. The first script looks at each of our photo album directories, lists the number of files in each one, and then calculates the total amount of space each of those is taking up. It then calculates a ratio of total bytes over number-of-files, and then prints out a list of the directories sorted by the ratio. In effect, this shows me the directories that have relatively few, relatively large files. Once I’ve got that list, I use my second script on the files in the directory to reduce them using ***ImageMagick|http://www.imagemagick.org/***. Using this technique, I’ve saved a few hundred megs of space on my account. I can probably save more, but I haven’t gone through every directory as of yet. While it would be very easy to combine the two scripts so that my entire list of albums would be processed at once, I’d rather have the manual control that the current arrangement provides.

For the technically inclined, you can view those two scripts:

***PhotoRatio|http://prwdot.org/code/PhotoRatio.txt*** — calculates and lists the file-count to file-size ratios in a given directory
***PhotoManip|http://prwdot.org/code/PhotoManip.txt*** — takes a list of files as standard input, and runs given commands on each one (in this case, setting quality to 80)

These were done rather hastily, so they do work, but aren’t terribly refined. Feel free to mess with them if you like, as long as you know that if there any improvements that could be made, I have probably already thought of them… just haven’t implemented them because of time. 🙂

2) The second reason is that our web hosting provider, ***Site5|http://www.site5.com/***, has once again revised their ***plans|http://www.site5.com/services/comparison.php***. We can now get even more storage space (2 GB) for LESS than we’re already paying. They just keep getting better and better!

By the way, if anyone is looking for a TERRIFIC hosting company, check them out. If you sign up right now, you can get an account with 1 GB of storage space for only ***$9.95/month|http://www.site5.com/services/specials.php***. I highly recommend them.

No, I get absolutely nothing from Site5 for mentioning them here! I just had to share this because after being a customer for a year and a half, I can say that they are a great company to work with, they really know their stuff, have great support, and great prices to boot.

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Out of code and into books. I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with libraries during my short 25 years. I spent many hours in my childhood at the library, browsing for and finding new books and periodicals. I took advantage of the ***Mount Vernon Public Library|http://www.knox.net/*** quite frequently up through High School, finding fun and interesting books to read, both in the fiction and non-fiction categories.

After high school, my next library experience was ***Jenks|http://www.gordon.edu/library/*** at ***Gordon|http://www.gordon.edu/***. While in college, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to read for pleasure, and most of my time in the library was spent on research. The library came to be associated, for me, with work, study, and general unpleasantness.

After I graduated Gordon, I didn’t set foot in a single library. Perhaps there has simply been too much on my mind (graduation, moving in and out of apartments, starting jobs, getting married) to think about it. Or perhaps it was a latent aversion to walking through stacks of books, engendered during my time at college. Whatever the case, that was three years ago.

Then, a month or two before today, Becky signed up for a library card at the ***Beverly Public Library|http://www.noblenet.org/beverly/***. I’d always been curious about the local library, but never took the time to venture over there to check it out. Finally, on March 30, I took a trip to the library with Becky and signed up for my very own library card. I’ve reconnected with the forgotten joy of being able to browse books at my leisure, and take as many as I want for free, as long as I return or renew them within three weeks in good condition.

The BPL is just a short walk from our apartment in downtown Beverly, and it’s surprisingly very nice. At the moment, I have two books checked out, “Crypto: How the code rebels beat the government, saving privacy in the digital age” and “Rocket Boys: A Memoir” (later remade as the book and movie “October Sky”). I’m reading Crypto at the moment, and enjoying it a lot. I may or may not get to Rocket Boys before it’s due, since I’d like to read the ***book|http://prwdot.org/?p=archives/001685*** Becky just finished reading. Maybe I’ll read Rocket Boys first… or not. We’ll see.

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While we took our walking trip to the BPL, I also shot some photos for those of you who haven’t been to visit us. This walking photographic tour shows the ***route from our apartment to the BPL|http://gallery.prwdot.org/our_neighborhood***. I hope you enjoy this little peek at our current city of residence.

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In other local news, Becky and I were excited to find that a new ***Subway|http://www.subway.com/*** franchise has opened up in Beverly, at 386 Cabot Street. The closest one, previously, was located at a rest stop on Route 128 north of Beverly… to get to it, we had to drive across town, get on 128, go to the rest stop, continue north on 128, take the next exit to turn around, and come all the way back. Now we just have to drive less than a mile! There are TONS of sandwich shops in Beverly, of varying quality. ***Quizno’s|http://www.quiznos.com/*** is certainly superior to Subway in terms of taste, quality, and variety, but it’s more expensive by a couple bucks on average, and the closest Quizno’s is in North Beverly, more than three times further away. The mom-and-pop stores have good quality subs and very reasonable prices, but don’t have the same variety as Subway, don’t accept debit cards, and don’t offer any types of incentives, special deals, etc.

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Now that my mind is on food, I should also mention that yesterday we had a wonderful time in South Boston with the Lowe family. This is the fourth Palm Sunday in a row that I have spent with the Lowes, and the second since Becky and I have been married. There was a lot of great food to be had there, and very good company. We had fun playing with the twins, talking to the family, and looking at lots and lots of photos courtesy of my laptop and ***iPhoto|http://www.apple.com/iphoto/***. In fact, we were there for almost seven hours. 🙂

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Tonight we’ll be driving down to Hyannis so that Jeremy and I can continue our weekly ritual of watching ***The Shield|http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/the_shield/***, taped from the previous week, while the the wives hang out. Maybe it’s crazy to drive two hours down and two hours back just to hang out for a couple of hours, so call us crazy if you want. Some friends are just worth being a little bit crazy for. 🙂