http://financialplan.about.com/od/personalfinancebasics/a/TopMoneyTips.htm
MUNY: Here’s a bunch of free tips about money!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Leave a Comment » | 
MONEY | 
Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TECH: Vampiring a website database
Thursday, July 20, 2006For many reasons, I often want to vampire an online site. I first tumbled to the concept when a certain online resource that I was using for my alumni research activities went offline for good. I was kicking my self for not having a copy. So I developed the technique of vampiring a website manually in a very organized fashion into a local copy. The problem occurs when you want to stay in sync sort of with it. That is can you come back to it a month later and find the adds and deletes. Changes are a much more complex problem. So here’s how I do it for the XYZZYX website.
(1) I use a spreadsheet to track the “database”. The first column is the web page sequence number and the second column is the entry number on the page. So the Fifth Sequential Page Seventh Item referred to Jones, I would represent it as “5”, “7”, “Jones”, and anything that was important to me.
(2) I’d open the Jones subpage and copy it to a text file (much smaller than HTML) saving it in a directory XYZZYX. If it’s going to be a LARGE number of entries, I may create 26 subdirectories A thru Z.
(3) I’d go thru the website db capturing data. When I revisit the database, since some most are too big to suck out at one sitting, I can then check key pages to see that the last entry on a page still lines up with my sequence number.
(4) If it lines up, I resume where I left off.
(5) If it doesn’t line up, I split the difference and check that page. In a 500 page database, I see I am out of sync when I try to resume at page 450. I’d go check page 275 and see if I was in sync there. When I find the discrepancy, I insert a new line in my spreadsheet for the new data and adjust columns 1 and 2.
Is this ugly, yup. Does it work? Sort of. It is posible to keep tabs on website data bases if you have an organized approach.
When you come back to look at it, you can spot check as above.
It is ESSENTIAL that you have an organized approach. It’s easy to become confused and frustrate yourself.
Questions?
Leave a Comment » | ALUMNI, JOBSEARCH, Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TECH: “OUTLOOK” does a lookout again!
Thursday, July 20, 2006(1) Apparently, LookOut (Microsoft’s Outlook’s evil alter ego) doesn’t honor the don’t send until flags. Argh!
(2) Apparently, Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has decided that now before I can click a link in an email, I have to say ‘mother may”. That’s is it turns off all links and it takes two clicks where one would do! Arghhhhhh!!!!
Leave a Comment » | Ranting, Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
Reinke Faces Life 