News from Great Castle Wilson

Author: adminmcq

  • Who’s house is this anyway?

  • Context driven parsing

    I thought I’d record this here, because it’s such a great example of why context is important when recognizing text…

    Consider this:

    I suspect almost anyone who sees that image would parse it as a date, that is “13 December”. Of course, once you see it in context, at least the Tim Horton’s regulars would know it said “Black Decaf”.

  • The young lord surveys his domain

    He’s starting to lose the puppy shape.

  • Friends

    They’re still learning how to play together, but it’s clear that they’re friends now…

  • Apologies

    I realize the site has been down for a couple of days. Things continue to be quite complex/random here.

    Thanks to those who let me know. Apologies again for the downtime.

  • Lucas

    As many of you know, there’s a new addition to our family: Lucas.

    Things have been very hectic here for the last few days. We had a health scare with our adult dog, George, but it seems we’re mostly through that now. In any case, I don’t really have time for a full post tonight, but there’s a short clip of their first meeting on YouTube

    And here’s one more picture…

    Yes, he crawled between Deb’s feet while she was cleaning up and fell asleep. 🙂

  • Building a Static Website using IBM Cloud

    Update 3: Apologies to anyone who gets to this page, but I no longer maintain this pattern, and I doubt it will work any more.

    Update 2: Another round of updates to make sure the URLs and other content match the correct IBM Cloud branding.

    Update: I have upgraded my project to be a new IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery toolchain and updated the Deploy to IBM Cloud button below to point at my new repository. Learn more.

    Somebody asked me the other day if it was possible to build a simple, static website using IBM Cloud. With a bit of thought, I managed to get one going that used the nginx buildpack, but it turns out there’s an even simpler solution. On the CloudFoundry community site on GitHub there’s a “static file” buildpack that is just what you’re looking for. Given this, it’s just a handful of steps to get a static website going:

    1. Create a toolchain at IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery, with a repo and a pipeline.
    2. Create a manifest file with the buildpack: set to the static file buildpack
    3. Pour in some html content
    4. Configure the pipeline to deploy the app
    5. Commit your source to the repo

    Ok, even though that’s pretty easy, it might be a bit hard to get right if you’ve never done it before. So here’s an even simpler solution…

    Just click this button:
    Deploy to IBM Cloud button

    🙂

    That will take you through all the steps above, setting you up with a toolchain and all the tools you need to work with on IBM Cloud, along with example starting content for your website. It also takes care of deploying the site so you can see it running right away. All you have to do is edit the html files to be what you want, commit them to the repo, and you’re done.

    It even works if you don’t have an IBM Cloud account yet (although you’ll be asked to sign up for one).

    Now that’s simple!

    (… Ok, it’s not quite that sample. IBM Cloud uses API keys to access its services, including Cloud Foundry deployment. You’ll need to create one along the way. Luckily, that too is part of the flow that happens when you push the Deploy to IBM Cloud button above, so it’s *almost* that simple.)

  • Sometimes the simple shots are the best…

    A field not far from my house.

    Compressed to post in the blog, but otherwise unretouched. Taken with my iPhone.

  • A new machine, a new era.

    Just a quick note to say that I have upgraded to a new machine. I had been using a Mac Mini to host GCW for many years, but the hard drive in the old beast is starting to sound like the gerbils are getting tired, and I thought it was time.

    I know no one would guess I had given up on the Mac universe, so without further ado, here is the new beast…

    It’s a 27″ iMac, with the 3.5 GHz i7 and the upgraded graphics chip (780M w. 4Gig of RAM). I must say, it is amazing. It’s actually fast enough to play PC games under Parallels with completely acceptable framerates even at high detail levels.

    And so, it’s the end of an era: I am getting rid of my gaming PC. I’m also getting rid of the Mac Mini I was using for the server, and the MBP I was using for music. Believe it or not, at the end of this process, I will have just the one iMac in my home office, plus a station to hold my work laptop when I bring it home. I’m not sure how long I can stand it, but that’s the plan.

    In any case, I have once again transplanted Great Castle Wilson to new hardware. This move was more difficult than previous ones, since (for some unknown reason) I was unable to load the mysql database directly by importing the records from the old site. Instead I had to use the export/import capabilities built into WordPress, which at least appear to have been successful. This is the first time I’ve tried this though, so if you see anything wrong/missing, please let me know.

    One note: So far of all the old blogs on GCW I have only gotten this one going. I don’t think the others get many visitors, but I will get around to moving them eventually.

  • Psst… Track 8?

    Not sure how many people downloaded the [HBDI]:four album, but for those that did if you were sharp eyed (eared?) you would have noticed it was missing track 8. I have since rectified this omission and the complete album can be downloaded by clicking on the album title on that page.

    The missing track is called “New Dream”:

    (If your browser doesn’t support in line audio. Click here to play or download it.)