05-08-07
I've been neglecting the log for awhile. Back in October I started playing with the Netflix Prize, which I don't have a shot at winning but it is an interesting programming challenge and I learned much playing with it. In order to process all that data I had to learn to manipulate memory and use pointers for huge amounts of data, things which should prove very useful; much faster than disk access which is what I set up on this server. In January I installed FreeBSD on the Toshiba P25 and I've been learning Unix by playing with it for the past couple months. Unix is similar in some ways to SuperDos other way to MSDOS, and in all ways to me it's still new and different. One thing I did which dramatically improved the server performance here was to EnableMMAP in the Apache configuration file and add MMAP entries for a number of key files there also.
09-25-06
The hard drive in the Toshiba portable which I use to develop this site went bad over the weekend. Bought two replacements off ebay this morning. I have fairly current backups so there shouldn't be too much trouble. This wasn't the huge .5 TB drive, that one is in a test server and is functioning fine. The brute force approach I mentioned before works, but the update cycle of 9 or 10 days doesn't. I've almost finished the changes undertaken to trim the index. Also I'm trying Linux as soon as I get those drives here.
08-29-06
I did not work on the website much this month. I ran out of steam on the computer programming for a little while. It has been busy at work. I've been taking apart cars and going home exhausted and otherwise it has been too nice outside to spend much time sitting still. Some things I mentioned in the previous posts haven't been finished.
08-05-06
The electricity has been down a couple times this week. Five hours the other day and eight hours last night. This has caused me some problems implementing the new search form. The program I've written to index the inventory needs to run uninterrupted for approximately nine days. I purchased a battery backup but it lasts only a few minutes and can't cope with the longer outages. I've been rethinking this approach in light of these difficulties. I may be able to trim the index considerably in order to reduce the run time.
07-02-06
In addition to the normal labors, I spent June learning some complex mathematics. I now understand triangular and pyramidal numbers, and even the polytope. I studied the generating functions for those sequences while attempting to improve the search form. So, after completely failing therein to find a subtle and ingenious method; I adopted a brute force approach which includes the purchase of a .5 terabyte hard drive...terabytes..Good God. I'll implement the changes this month. The search form will no longer require that terms be entered in "year make model part" order, and entry of invididual word portions of part names will work right off the bat. Alternative part names and misspelling correction will follow shortly. I still need to paginate the output.
05-25-06
Have changed many little things. Touched up the "ROPER" logo by softening the edges with The Gimp, a GNU image processor which I've also been using to crop and resize photos for the web.
The two little links to the right of the search bar on the index page were surprisingly hard to get right with just CSS and positioning a footer at the bottom of the pages was interesting. I may make some adittional changes to that. I converted to UTF-8 and all of the pages validated HTML 4.01 Transitional with zero errors until I added the advertisements. It annoys me that the ad pages don't validate. I've become a standards fan. A server shouldn't be forced to do browser detection in order to deliver well presented content. It is a waste of resources. Some of the proprietary effects are cute, but cute isn't very helpful if it's inconsistent.
05-19-06
Weather attack. I ran out to the car to roll up my window and was struck by a hailstone. No permanent damage.
I've been playing with Google ads for the past couple days. Pretty neat. I'm getting 600 - 700 page views per day. Apparently these are worth a couple bucks. Now I just need some hot nude models and my plan for internet domination will be complete.
Except, I tried the server from a friends house and everything seems to work really well except the photo tour. Even the 5 small thumbnails on the main subdirectory wouldn't load in a reasonable time. Maybe it was something with the setup on that pc. I'd love some feedback.
04-12-06
Finished the change to CSS. Also modified the search forms and the message board. More to come there soon. I'm really liking the cleaner look and hope you do too. Also the pages are compressed before they are sent now. There should be a notable improvement in speed.
03-27-06
Someone was in here Saturday morning to update the ADP/Hollander database. This person was informed to take all the terminals to password. Murphy, of Murphy's Law fame took this to mean "turn off all the computers". It does not. So we were down all day Saturday and Sunday. I was at home neck deep in this CSS stuff and did not log in or I might have caught it. It took me a good 5 minutes to determine what was wrong with the server this morning. First I thought the neat little wireless mouse wasn't working. The screen was black and I sat there puzzling over the intransigent device not considering that someone might press the power button on the web server. After all who would turn off the web server?
03-20-06
Over the weekend I worked on changing over to CSS. The new index page is nice but I won't put it up until everything is ready. It looks very promising. I'll do away with the image rollovers on all the pages and it will be a comparative cinch to make changes in the future. Those image rollovers are cute and work well here, not so well for folks on dialup. They really suck bandwidth without a good reason. Off with their heads! Also I've been monitoring the error log for 404 errors. I'm still finding some things I've missed. Instead of simply deleting sold inventory, which until now removed the page from the server, I think the sold item should be replaced with some kind of referral page.
03-13-06
Left out a comma and lost all the Jeep parts. Fixing that now.
03-09-06
Tried to tweak Apache today. I think I did more harm than good.
03-07-06
Found several bugs this week. Nissan pickups in 1984,85 & 86 are messed up, similarly Chevrolet Tracker/Geo Tracker isn't quite right. I'll fix this weekend. I've been neglecting to account for the exchange parts which we inventory, many of them are a mess. I found a whole lot of the data dumped into one record, so I'll be spending some quality time this weekend editing the conversion file to bring those into line.
02-23-06
Finished the latest upgrade. I think just a couple bugs to work out. Planning to install over the weekend. All the inventory data and photos will be accessible through static pages without the iframe. This should help folks find us through the search engines. Our pages have been picked up by Yahoo and Ask.com just plain rocks. Lots of folks seem to be finding us that way. The hits we get from Google are fewer. Hopefully this will help. I think that I'm ready to tackle the online sales form now too.
02-17-06
Changed the coding system which referenced the inventory data. The server now uses the year, make and model names directly. This makes keeping up with the photos much easier. Last night I found the search form was broken when looking up parts for Chrysler Town & Country. I had worked around the "&" character when converting between the old codes and model name, that routine broke the newer version. We've been running for a month like that. It is fixed now and I hope I didn't break something else with the fix. The new year is off to a good start. The search engine gods have been pleased and sales from the web have increased, though I don't want to get optimistic. I'm working now on the pages which list our inventory by application, will link from there to the inventory and photographs so that the search form will be redundant, but still useful for folks who prefer it. I've become frustrated with the method I chose to apply interchange info to the inventory. It works but is too complex and unwieldy. I may contact ADP/Hollander to inquire about licensing their product. Also, I intend to purchase a better digital camera.
12-30-05
Taking the website down for the weekend. Upgrading the LAN here. Sorry if you missed us.
12-19-05
Fixed a minor flaw that became apparent in the latest Mozilla.
12-05-05
Some guys attempted to break in here at 1:00 am this morning. They pulled the power meter which cut off the internet connection I was using at home. I drove over & put a stop to that.
11-02-05
Overwrote this log with an older copy. Lost several entries.
02-03-05
Spent the last month tweaking the image handling & made the server easier to update. One button, I click one button & the entire inventory is posted on the web. Going to concentrate fully now on interchange info. This is going to be a big, big job.
12-31-04
The web server has been operating for 1 year. It's receiving hits from all over. Very many web robot hits & approximately 50 visits daily which must, judging from the log files, be real live folks. Happy New Year !
12-29-04
Problem solved. Obtained a newer version of Kermit for SuperDos. I've sorted out the records that are used by the website. Doing the other 20 or so fields while at it. May need that data later.
12-27-04
Murphy strikes again. I can read the file I need but can't transfer it completely from the SuperDos machine. The version of Kermit it uses apparently is limited internally. It will only transfer up to 65,535 sectors. The data file is much larger. I'm getting files of the correct size but duplicate data after byte #FFFFFF & triplicate after #1FFFFFF. Nothing is ever as easy as I think it should be.
12-25-04
Merry Christmas!
12-21-04
The record fields are sorted out. All the information comes directly from the original data file. No more making text files and I have unique, static record numbers for each inventoried item. Still need to rename all the photos & modify the routines that call them.
Next chore is adding 2005 model cars. This is going to be a big job. Gathering the data is no sweat but integrating it into the server is a problem. I've been pondering this from the start. New car models will change the codes used to call the data. I need to write a program that will recode the old and rename any associated files as it integrates the new models. Alternatively, it may be possible & even better to do away with the coding system entirely, using the year,make & model info directly as the reference. Disk space really isn't an issue and the long file name conventions are probably liberal enough. I remember considering this before & deciding to go with the code numbers, but can't remember why right now.
12-15-04
The records are 192 bytes long before decoding & I can partially read them with the Radix-40 routine. Turns out the uniquely numbered portion of each record is plain hexadecimal. This complicates things a little. The routine will need to decode part of each record, shift 1 byte forward, read some more encoded strings then read the unencoded hex.
12-13-04
Well it isn't just 6 bit, it is some base 40 coding scheme which crams 3 characters into 2 bytes & there are not 64 characters but only 40. Decoding goes like this, grab a byte pair(word), divide it's value by 1600 for the 1st digit, divide the remainder by 40 for the 2nd digit then that remainder is the 3rd digit. Use those values to assign the characters from the set & repeat.
12-08-04
Still working on record numbers. Transferred the raw files yesterday. They are not encoded in 8 bit but a 6 bit cipher. The 6 bit coding must be a space saving measure, allowing a one quarter reduction in file size but limiting the number of characters to 64. If it's raining this weekend I'll decipher the code page & determine field lengths.
10-21-04
Still above ground. The record number field is giving me fits. Everything would be fine if my record numbers were static. The data is entered into our Hollander system which assigns unique numbers but provides no method for recording them into the text files I'm creating. When I count & sort the data I'm making changes that effect the numbering.
Several more rows of vehicles have been photographed.
09-29-04
Using QSX's Screenshot Utility to fancy up the link pages.
09-28-04
Hindsight is 20/20. Found that I had neglected to provide a field for record numbers on individual parts; the necessity
didn't become apparent until I began pegging photos to inventoried parts of which there are more than one per vehicle.
So when I added a photo of one wheel on a car, that photo became associated with all wheels on the car. I fixed it, but it was tricky.
This will also be helpful if I decide to create an online sales form. Studying up on SHTML. Record numbers....doh.
09-06-04
Finally the latest version is installed on the main server. I spent some time cleaning up the html and am happy with the result.
The site now looks good in Mozilla/Netscape, Opera & IE. It should display nicely on pda's & cell phones too. I hope it loads faster. I need to log
on through a dialup provider & check it out. I completed the program in PowerBasic which writes web pages for my inventory data,
so now instead of 16 pages we have 16,000. I'm hoping to access all the data through text links eventually but for now we have links to lists
of inventory by year/make/model with the details such as price & part numbers still requiring form input. The
Used Auto Parts link under our logo may need explanation. Going to see how many folks click it.
08-26-04
Well, I didn't get much of what I planned to do finished this month. The main server went down after a power outage
& replaced that. Cleaned up alot of mistakes in the html and basically prettied things up alot. Found a good tool for making thumbnail images
Easy Thumbnails. Much better than making them one at a time.
08-01-04
These seemingly simple web pages now comprise a fully armed and operational battle station.
Hope you like the look of the place. Tried hard to give it a logical, easy to follow layout. In the works now are some
changes that should make the search form much more useful. First, instead of only lookup by exact year, I will
add a routine for entry of a year range. Secondly, going to finish the routines I need to inventory
cars directly for the web.
07-14-04
3:49 a.m. Our entire inventory is now accessible online. Still needs to be cleaned up & presented better
It works! It's fast, it is good. I have a way to inventory new cars into the web server that will (hopefully) allow better handling
of assemblies and faster lookup by using unique parts lists for each vehicle. Will see.
Lookup by stock number is nearly finished and will begin adding some interchange data. Interchange won't be comprehensive any time soon
but will be super easy to enter the data. Kinda curious to see how fast that goes. Going to start with vehicles I have here to compare,
and will be soliciting interchange info from visitors to the site. I'm up too late.
06-30-04
I'm transfering what's done so far to the main server. Almost done. It's amazing how complicated
this gets. Prepping the inventory data now.
06-24-04
Line-A has been photographed. The photo indexing system is operational. Now adding stock number
tracking to compliment the image lookup. Can lookup all photos, they are attached to the year/make/model &
part type requests. Going to change this so that the photos are attached directly to specifically inventoried parts.
06-06-04
Have been collecting data for the last month. Still working on the software too.
It's coming along nicely. I think it'll be the end of summer before it's ready.
Took alot of photos today. Photographed all of the cars on row "d" and some pretty things
in the field & woods. It's been a good day.
04-30-04
Have taken the inventory offline again. Rewriting some programs. Have been using
part types based on ADP/Hollander part number codes. Changing that.
Going to be a major rewrite. All the conversion utilities will have to be rewritten.
The upside is we'll have a file indexing system to which I can attach photos, inventory
records, web links, video files, just about anything for service over the web.
04-29-04
Now running multiple Apache servers. One just for testing.
04-24-04
Good news! BellSouth is reducing the price of their DSL service by $20.00/month.
04-23-04
Bought a MOXA NPort serial device server from Neteon.
Using that & a Linksys WGA11B Wireless B Game Adapter to connect
a serial port on the ADP/Hollander computer to our now wireless lan.
No more cables & can access the ADP Console from anywhere.
04-22-04
Portable computer hooked up running have all software installed. Everything finally stable.
Can log into Roper Motor Company from home.
04-01-04
Purchased a new computer, a Toshiba P25-S5092 portable.
Hopefully I can work on this site from home.
Also bought a Linksys WRT54G Wireless router.
03-30-04
Completed a very comprehensive list of automobile makes/brands/production years.
03-12-04
I've been pulling too many all nighters on this. Need a break.
03-04-04
Found a very useful tool XVI32 Hex Editor.
03-04-04
Have been busy. Still refining conversion utilities.
02-12-04
Have written some utilities to convert my inventory data from our ADP/Hollander system.
01-18-04
Removing the high res photos of our yard from the index page.
Folks with dialup shouldn't have to wait for stuff like that to load.
But if you'd like to see it & other photos then click Photographs.
01-15-04
Purchased PowerBasic. It looks promising.
I think we'll need the Power Basic Console Editor too.
01-06-04
Downloaded WebBasic, & like it.
01-04-04
Trying PERL. I'm sure it's great but I'm really getting too old for this.
12-29-03
Server up & running.
12-27-03
Download Apache Web Server.
12-20-03
Email working. Many thanks to the folks at MailEnable.
12-18-03
Still working on email have it working on our local area network, but not anywhere else.
12-17-03
Setting up email accounts.
12-10-03
Registering www.ropermotor.com with a domain name provider. Used Names4Ever because they offered a long term registration.
12-09-03
Our IP address is 68.157.244.56
12-07-03
DSL is online. Upgrade to Static IP.
12-01-03
Ordering BellSouth Business DSL.