Thursday, February 11, 2010

April Fools, on February 11th?

A few of you noticed the premium member hats theme up this morning, but when you tried to record finds on unlisted finds, it didn't work. Sorry about that! If you're interested in the whole convoluted mess, it started last December.... I was updating the code on Atlas Quest to display themes on the correct days throughout 2010. Some themes never have to be changed--holidays that are always on the same day of the year such as Christmas, Valentines Day, or Independence Day. I like those themes because it means no additional work for me every year. =)

Other themes need to be moved each year. Think Easter or Thanksgiving. So every December, I sit down and figure out where each theme is supposed to show up for the rest of the year. Sometimes there are conflicts I need to work out--this year, for instance, Valentines Day and the first day of the Chinese New Year both hit on February 14th. Which theme gets precedence? It's sometimes gets quite complicated. It usually takes me a full day to get it all worked out. I decided the Chinese New Year lasts a whole year--as long as I get that theme up at some point during the year, it's fine. =) Valentines Day doesn't really move around, so I'd let it keep the 14th, and push the Chinese New Year theme to the 15th. Except.... Well, drats, the 15th is President's Day. And the 16th is the discovery of King Tut's tomb. I wouldn't be able to fit in the Chinese New Year until the 17th. Hmm.... Well, I could put it up for the Chinese New Year's "Eve," and give it the 13th. I liked that idea, and that's what I ran with. =)

Last December, I also made the decision to randomize the premium member hat theme throughout the year. Never to show up more than once in any given month. So I wrote a little program to randomly choose several days throughout the year for the 'free listing day.' It popped out as February 14th. Well shoot, that's not going to work. So I backdated it to February 12th which was the closest date that didn't conflict with an existing theme.

All was well.... until a week or two ago, and I realized--I really need to create a Winter's Olympic theme. I didn't have any last December to worry about, but I went ahead and created one last week. The Winter Olympics starts tomorrow, February 12th, which now conflicts with the premium member theme I had selected last December. NO PROBLEM! I'll just move up the premium membership by a day and open up the 12th for the Winter Olympics theme. After all, 'free listing day' can be ANY day of the year. No restrictions where that one could land.

So I updated the code so free listing day shows today and the Winter Olympics theme tomorrow. Except.... I forgot one small detail--the code that actually allows the premium membership functionality to work. It was still set to work on February 12th, and I forgot to update THAT code to today.

So, for the first 11 hours of today, the free listing part of free listing day wasn't working. Sorry 'bout that. I put the blame squarely on the Olympics. =) I feel a little bad about that, so I updated the code that provides the premium membership functionality so it'll work today AND tomorrow. You won't see the premium hat theme tomorrow--the Winter Olympics theme will go up tomorrow--but the functionality for 'free listing day' will be extended through the end of day tomorrow (Friday).

In other news.... I spent much of last night updating the look of my blog. What do you think? =) Any guesses what part of the country the image across the top of the page is from? I started updating my Another Long Walk blog for my upcoming thru-hike, and since I was learning how to make various changes to it, I decided to update this blog at the same time. I like the new look. =) I was never particularly happy with the old look--the pages were always too narrow for my taste, and the header was awfully hard to read against the original map background I had been using. I find this layout.... liberating.

6 comments:

Stacy Christian said...

It looks good on you!

S

Anonymous said...

Pacific Coast and Portland, Oregon?
(That's my guess for your blog-top decoration.)

I like Valentine's Day so much that I've had that header up on AQ all week, and if you hadn't had your little "blooper" I might never have known this was Free Listing Day... except that I have no unlisted boxes waiting for it, this time.

Loved reading about it... both here and in the About Theme section on AQ.

Thanks, Ryan, for everything -- and an early Happy Valentine's Day to you and Amanda.

Blessings,

Hansenclan

Anonymous said...

Ditto, what Hansenclan said, would not have known. But I switched back to default just so if anything else were to pop up, I wouldn't miss it. And now am glad I did, after reading your blog. My guess is, any where you are. Nice looking blog. Clean looking, can't go wrong with white for a background for being able to read. You have email, concerning Valentine's Day. :-D

The Gillespie Tribe said...

I like the layout except for one little bug... the "About Me" section on the right keeps getting pushed to the bottom because either it is a bit too wide or the blog area is, but the two are not co-existing side by side for me =o)

Anonymous said...

Ooo, oo, I know pick me (raising hand)... it's san luis obispo
=i= winged gypsy

Ryan said...

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! =) Yes, it's San Luis Obispo. Due west of it, along the coast, is Montana de Oro State Park. The small body of water near the edge of the town is Laguna Lake. And there are about half a dozen mountain tops in this picture that I've planted letterboxes on. =)