Tania.co.za

Yeeeeha!

Yay! I am supposed to put multiple Domino search options into a single "page" in a Domino Web application. You can't seem to get multiple Query fields into a $$SearchTemplate, so the only options I could think of were using iframes to "embed" other search pages, or to plak JavaScript onto a page, form or document. I could get the cut-and-paste JavaScript to work in a plain HTML document, but not in Domino, so I tried the iframe, but when the query ws submitted, it wasn't putting the results into the top target, in spite of the fact that this principle works in other contexts if you ensure that both the frame containing the page, and the framed page have the base target correctly specified. The results themselves, on click, did the right thing, but that isn't so surprising, since I have other results pages at the site which work on that principle already.

I discovered then that the reason I couldn't get the simple Javascript drop-down searchboxes to work was because the Domino pages, documents and forms were automatically generating their own <FORM> tags, and my own form code was being sandwiched in between, rendering it impotent. And then... I thought of simply closing Domino's automatically generated tag using Passthru-HTML, and it worked! By then opening another <FORM> tag after my own code, I can get the Domino form to work in addition to my own, so I now have complete JavaScript and Domino functionality!

This mystery has been baffling me for years and it is now apparently solved. What is pretty cool is that I can now have JavaScript in the site's layout template, and for this application, I don't even need any JavaScript in the page header. Well, I think it should work in all sections of the site, but I have only tested it in a form, not in docs and pages yet. Nevertheless, I am so glad I didn't give up today, as I had been tempted to do...

Maintenance report on last night's incident at Die Mystic Boer

A specific user had earlier been identified as malware, but could not be removed automatically. By 23:15 he had stopped responding to commands and had to be shut down. I did a hard reset and unfortunately that resulted in changes to his profile. (I think I broke his glasses, but I reckon his nose should still be functional.)

Misery

Iewers in 2006 of so het ek af en toe die blog van 'n Kaapse student begin lees, en dit het mettertyd my gunstelingblog geword. Ek het nou wel nie alles gelees wat hy geskryf het nie, maar dit was veral inskrywings soos dié en dié wat my gereeld laat terugkeer het.

Toe hierdie student op sy blog skryf dat hy by Ikeys opgeskop het en 'n Matie gaan word, het ek, omdat ek in Stellenbosch woon, besluit om vir hom 'n verwelkomingspartytjie te reël. Dit was nogal embarassing, want ek het eintlik gereken daar sal ander Stellenbosse bloggers wees wat graag saam sou kom kuier, maar ek het die dag swak gekies (dit was Joolnaweek) en my eie vriende het op die ou end almal uitgedraai. Met groot verleentheid moes ek my gas toe laat weet dat dit net ek en hy sal wees. Gelukkig het hy my per sms gerusgestel dat as ons nie van mekaar se geselskap hou nie, ons kan gaan afleidings soek. Ek het hom later in die aand Braak toe gevat en 'n blitstoer van Stellenbosch se studente-uithangplekke gaan gee.

Ons het daarna goed bevriend geraak, maar tot my groot teleurstelling het my gunstelingblogskrywer egter geleidelik opgehou skryf. Dreig en soebat het nie gehelp nie.

Toe dink ek aan 'n Stephen King-rolprent, Misery, wat ek jare gelede op televisie gesien het. Die verhaal handel oor 'n skrywer (vertolk deur James Caan) wat besluit het om af te tree. Sy grootste aanhanger (briljant vertolk deur Kathy Bates) is uiters teleurgesteld, en sy besluit om hom te ontvoer en te folter totdat hy weer begin skryf. Ongelukkig het ek dit nie in my om vir Sparrows aan 'n bed vas te bind en sy enkels met 'n swaar hamer te breek nie, maar ek het aan 'n ander plan gedink. Ek ken hom mos nou redelik goed, en mense weet dit. Ek kan mos begin stories oor hom skryf waarin ek die waarheid met 'n paar embarassing onwaarhede meng, natuurlik met 'n disclaimer dat heelwat van die vertelling vals is; maar mense sal begin wonder hoeveel daarvan wel waar is, en hy sal vinnig wil regstellende repliek lewer. So kan ek hom dus weer dwing om te begin skryf!

Maar toe dink ek aan die ander probleem: hy sou kon wraakneem, want hy ken my ook natuurlik nou ook goed genoeg om dieselfde soort verdraaide stories oor my te kan vertel!

Alternatiewe voorstelle sal dus verwelkom word.

Evangelie

Ek moes vandag 'n lang interne dokument wat Marius geskryf het, edit. Ek wou hierdie stukkie wat op bladsy 9 verskyn, met die wêreld deel, want ek dink die les in die tweede paragraaf is nogal nadenkenswaardig (is daar so 'n woord?):

"Die beginsels wat in hierdie dokument vervat word, asook die vragmotortoebehorelys en intstandhoudingslyste, sal mettertyd in 'n dokument, Pavatile Best Practices for Own Cartage, saamgebind word. Dit sal dan die Pavatile Transport 'Gospel' wees waaraan ons ons almal verbind.

En soos met die Evangelie, moet 'n mens dit maar dikwels lees omdat dit in ons almal se natuur is om dinge wat maklik is om te verstaan, maar nie maklik en natuurlik uitvoerbaar is nie, te vergeet."

Changing the world: a pain in the butt

Just because I have been developing classification systems since childhood doesn't mean that I am naturally tidy. When I moved into my Stellenbosch flat in 2005, I was determined to live neatly without assistance, and I developed a number of workarounds for doing things that come naturally to traditional homemakers. I learned, amongst other things, that if I am too lazy to start clearing up, it helps to start with the dishes, because once the kitchen is clean, I can see my way clear to doing the other tasks.

However, if I am too lazy even to start washing the dishes, I have to use another workaround: I put on music that makes me want to dance. For this reason, I bought, inter alia, CDs containining David Bowie's Let's Dance and Dire Straits' Money for Nothing; and I eventually also extended my collection of rock music (which until last year consisted of Queen's Greatest Hits and nothing else).

On Sunday morning I put on a recently purchased CD by Evanescence. This proved to be so inspiring that I was soon doing grande battement, entrechat, rélevé,retiré and développé movements which normally do not form a big part of my dishwashing routine. I was unaware of the extent to which these movements involved the use of the glueteus maximus, and today, the largest muscles in my body are particularly stiff.

I don't imagine that there are many people for whom washing dishes is quite literally a pain in the butt, but I do wonder what the members of bands like Evanescence, Muse and Radiohead with all their soul-wrenching lyrics, rousing melodies and reverberating bass grooves would think if they knew that they their terribly serious craft was changing the world, not by rousing the people and bringing them out onto the streets to bring down governments or by opening people's hearts to eternal love, but by motivating the odd individual to clean up her house, and in so doing, to create an environment in which greater things can be planned and executed.

Mugshot

I don't like flashy cell phones. My luggage is boring and black. I like plain white crockery. But my big plain white mug was always being used by my colleagues, so I reckoned that (considering my colleagues are all male, and some of them drink Castle) if I bought a pink mug with a picture of Barbie on it, I could ensure that it would always be available to me when I got to the kitchen. (I like tea in a mug and coffee in a cup. Weird, I know.) But do you know how difficult it is to get hold of Barbie merchandise? The only thing I could get in pink had cats on it, and there was also a mug with a picture of a depressed girl on it, from Clicks. So I got this instead, which at least is the right size. Unfortunately, one colleague already told me that this mug is not girly enough to have deterred him from using it, without knowing its purpose...

Free t-shirts

I always wonder if they have this kind of thing in a size XS...

More snippets

Audiobooks from podcasts

Yay, I am so chuffed, I managed to make an audio CD from the mp3s I downloaded from the History Podcast at Podcast Alley! So I now have an easy way of extending my collection of audiobooks. Jaco told me it was easy, but I was sceptical until I actually just went ahead and tried it using Nero. One thing I found, though, was that some of the tracks are crackly and jumpy. I don't know if my low quality spindle CDs are to blame, but I would suspect that to be the reason.

The cheating story

Two of my students have cheated on their final assessment, and I can prove it. (This is, apparently, a very rare situation in my department and at this academic level.) The students do not know what evidence I have, and our silence about the evidence has elicited a flood of e-mails from the one culprit to my academic superior and to the administrator (and, of course, to me) in which, in attempting to refute our allegation, he incriminates himself more and more by actually inadvertently confessing to additional details which I did not have! In the last line of the latest e-mail (forwarded to me by the adminstrator this morning), he appears also to offer a bribe to me or to the university (whoever chooses to take it).

Our performance of Liszt's Via Crucis

I forgot to give feedback on this! We were good! I was proud of us. (Well, the baritone soloist made a couple of mistakes which he didn't make during the practice, but we didn't do anything noticeably bad.) The auditorium was only half-filled, and I think that was because nobody actually expected much from us, and we really did surprise them. I am by now convinced that a choir is merely an instrument, and playing it beautifully depends on the musician, which is the conductor. Compared to other instruments, such as, say, a piano, a choir takes a long time to tune. I'd say, give us another year, and we will be able to win some awards.

Our remarkable bodies (A tale employing remarkable logic)

Me: "Do you know what's amazing? When you accidentally pour petrol into a diesel vehicle's fuel tank, it's an absolute disaster, but if you drink milk and it accidentally goes down the wrong hole, you don't have to take time off work."
Marius: "Just shows you, milk is healthier than diesel."

Snippets

Ag, jong, ek het al weer te min tyd vir skryf... Net 'n paar brokkies...

Are you curious about who is to blame for eNaTIS, the new National Traffic Information System that has frustrated citizens so imensely and causes such a loss of productivity in all sectors of industry? These are the culprits... (If you're an employee of Tasima, don't tell your friends. Say you're doing under cover work for the police, and you won't be lying.)


Dirk Winterbach en sy krygsvroue nou die aand. (Ons het dié aand saamgeëet. Die vroue het nie geëet nie, hulle het net gestort; dit het ingereën.)

The Angel, the Devil and the Door to my Flat

Well, evidently it is not my "art" that the thief is after.

Last night I intended going to sleep early, so I wrote a do-not-disturb note and put it on my door.

Not long afterwards there was a knock from one of my neighbours, Sponskop (as another neighbour dubbed him), a youthful and very broke wannabe drug dealer and small-time trader in other contraband who had moved into the building sometime this year. (I say "wannabe", because apparently he hasn't actually managed to sell anything of note since his arrival.) I saw him through the peep-hole, but didn't bother to open the door, because, after all, I felt that he should have respected my note. Sponskop had actually already been there earlier in the evening looking for the angel (another neighbour), and I didn't feel like entertaining his compulsive requirement for favours again. I went to bed, but at half-hour intervals (and once when I was fast asleep and had all the lights off) there were knocks at my door again.

This morning when I left for work, I saw that my note was no longer on my door.

Possible explanations:

1. I have a crazed fan, who collects not only my cartoons, but also everything else I produce. This stalker removed my note; Sponskop therefore saw no note and decided to push his luck by again begging me for a lift, money, a telephone or whatever other vehicle he required to lay his hands on some ganja.
2. Sponskop is illiterate. Having knocked a couple of times, he concluded that the note may have something to do with my not opening the door, and took it away to someone who could tell him what it means.
3. Sponskop is the stalker; the other knocks were from neighbours who came to tell me that he stole my note.
4. Sponskop needed paper to write a note for the Angel; and, being a petty criminal with little sense of conscience, he decided to steal mine.
5. Knowing that the angel has a habit of popping by for coffee late at night, the devil himself came up from hell and decided to interrupt my rest by removing the note. The other knocks were thus from the angel.
6. When I opened my door to put up the note earlier, I had accidentally opened a portal to an alternate universe. The note is still on the door in that universe.
7. The universe I am in today is the alternate one. I am supposed to be in the other one.
8. I am in both universes, living this day differently in each of them.
9. There are more than two universes. In some of these universes, Sponskop has not even moved into the building at all. By opening my windows, my bedroom, balcony, bathroom, cupboard and fridge doors at the right times, I can gain access to any of them.
10. This blog entry is a figment of your imagination.

This Sunday: Liszt's Via Crucis & Bach Passion Chorales

Tygerberg City Choir conducted by Rudolf de Beer (one of South Africa's finest choral conductors -- and South Africa boasts some of the world's best)
Also with baritone soloist, organ, cello and narrator.
Sunday 20 May at 16:00
Endler Hall (Victoria Street, Stellenbosch)

You can get tickets at the door, or phone 072 382-9525 to book (when I checked last night, about half the seats had already been booked).

To the best of our knowledge, Liszt's Via Crucis has never been performed in South Africa before. It is not a very "ordinary" piece of music. (If I can think of something I can compare it to before Sunday, I will update this posting.) It is about Jesus making his way to the cross.

The Bach chorales are better known, and are interspersed with the longer Liszt work. (Mixing compositions was a more familiar practice in live performances in previous centuries than it is today for this type of music.)

The choir is pretty big (too big to fit onto the choir stands in the Endler along with the soloists), so we are spread into a more suitable alternative formation for this performance. Many of the choir members have been members for decades and have toured Europe. I'm a soprano, and this is only my second year with this choir (been in other choirs before). I have always had quite a good range, but at the moment it is "moving south" (losing some high notes and gaining some low notes), so I am going to request to sing tenor if I stay for the next season.

Re-creation

When you have as much work as I have, a rigid regime is the only way of ensuring pockets of ligitimate freedom. Over the past three months or so, I have been sliding slowly into inefficiency by stealing time I don't really have, and my work has been suffering the consequences of less than favourable sleeping patterns. So, since yesterday, I have been slowly taking decisions to ensure greater effectiveness. I have an addictive nature; I rely on routines or rituals to keep me pleased; and I constantly have to deal with the fact that I easily become addicted to specific people. This week, I hope to redesign my rituals to include more re-creation and less recreation (read Stephen Covey -- I couldn't be bothered to explain the difference right now).

I'll be back.

(Sorry if I sounded like a your-therapist-my-therapist New Age self-improvement 40+ divorcee... eeew.)

I wonder