Walking in Lyford

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on June 19, 2009
in Just Plain Random and Photographs
. 0 Comments

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I’ve been taking a lot of Benadryl this week …

Put on my cowboy boots
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Rio Grande
In the middle of the pouring rain
JG Willacy, won’t you look down over me
Yeah, I got a first class ticket
But I’m as blue as a boy can be

Then I’m walking in Lyford
Walking with my feet ten feet off Simon Gomez
Walking in Lyford
But do I really hear what Walker says

Saw the ghost of Elvis
On ol’ 77 by the cotton gin
Followed him up to Vassberg Implement
Then I watched him walk right in
Now security they did not see him
They just hovered round my car
But there’s a foggy sunrise
Waiting for my eyes
Down by Willamar

Then I’m walking in Lyford
Walking with my feet ten feet off Simon Gomez
Walking in Lyford
But do I really hear what Walker says

They’ve got tamales on the table
They’ve got humidity in the air
Reverend Vandercook be glad to see you
When you haven’t got a prayer
You’ve got a prayer in Lyford

Now Grandma H plays the organ
At Mt. Calvary down on East Wood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I could –
Take a little photo
And I photographed all that night
And she said –
“Tell me are you a Texan child?”
And I said “Ma’am, I am tonight!”

Then I’m walking in Lyford
Walking with my feet ten feet off Simon Gomez
Walking in Lyford
But do I really hear what Walker says

Put on my cowboy boots
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Rio Grande
In the middle of the pouring rain
Touched down in the land of the Rio Grande
In the middle of the pouring rain

Autumn + Dampflok

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on June 8, 2009
in Photographs and Railroad Stuff
. 0 Comments

No, I’m not dead. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll go back to posting photos I’ve taken here. This past weekend I took Autumn to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, and this is one of several photos I took:

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Autumn on one of the steam locomotives at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. I really don’t know much about the history of this locomotive. I should ask one of these days …

I worked hard to get her to look at me for this shot, but she wasn’t in a “looking at the camera” mode right then. I think part of it was that she could hear the horn of the approaching BNSF train that I have photographed later on in my stream. In the end, I’m glad she didn’t … I really like the way she’s looking off into the distance here. In fact, of all the photos I’ve taken of her thus far, I think this one is my favorite.

Addendum: #5288 is a MLW 4-6-2 built in 1918 and owned by Canadian Government Railways (#516), Grand Trunk Railway (#1516) and finally Canadian National Railways.

www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/steamtown/shs3d.htm

Improved Dynamic TextExpander Abbreviations

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on March 25, 2009
in Geeky Stuff and Macintosh
. 0 Comments

Moments ago I figured out a way to make it easier to use input from a dialog box to add text to a TextExpander snippet. First, I created a AppleScript snippet that requests input from the user:

set currApp to GetCurrentApp()

tell application "textexpanderd" to activate
set userInput to text returned of (display dialog "Input:" default answer "")
tell application currApp to activate
return userInput

on GetCurrentApp()
	tell application "System Events"
		set _app to item 1 of (every process whose frontmost is true)
		return name of _app
	end tell
end GetCurrentApp

Now I can just embed that snippet wherever I need to get user input in a plain text snippet. I used @@textprompt as the abbreviation for the previous snippet, and then created a snippet with the abbreviation #func with the following content:

function %snippet:@@textprompt%() {%|}

Now whenever I need to create a PHP function, I can use that, and it will name the function for me and position the cursor inside the braces so I can continue coding. I’ve used the snippet in other instances to prompt me multiple times for input and build pretty complex expansions.

Cha-ching! I’m loving this. Now if I can write an AppleScript that will think for me …

(Note: I found the code that I’m using to find the currently active application at Daring Fireball.)

Dynamic TextExpander Abbreviations

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on March 25, 2009
in Geeky Stuff and Macintosh
. 0 Comments

Ever since I discovered TextExpander a few weeks ago I have been wishing I could get it to dynamically expand abbreviations. What I mean by that is I’d like something like

#func-get_text

to expand to

function get_text() { }

I’ve finally figured out how to do something along those lines using the AppleScript snippet support. The following bit of AppleScript will prompt me for a function name, and then use the result in the snippet:

tell application "textexpanderd" to activate
set funcName to text returned of
	(display dialog "Function Name:" default answer "")
tell application "BBEdit" to activate
return "function " & funcName & "() {%|}"

(Note: The bit above starting with ’set funcName to …’ and ending with ‘… default answer “”)’ should all be on one line; otherwise the script won’t compile.)

If you want to create a TE AppleScript that prompts you for something, the “tell application “textexpanderd” bit will bring the prompt to the front. Then you just have to activate the application you were using again; since I’m always doing my coding in BBEdit, I don’t have to dynamically figure out what app was active.

The nice thing is that TE still sticks my cursor where the “%|” is even though it’s an AppleScript snippet!

Uh-Oh, Bridge!

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on March 8, 2009
in Historic Bridges and Photographs
. 0 Comments

Back when I lived in Black Mountain, I used to love to take drives down NC 9 between there and Bat Cave. There was a beautiful old single-lane steel truss bridge that crossed the Broad River just off of the road. One fall I took some photos of the bridge.

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Last week I was playing with Street View on Google Maps, and noticed that NC 9 was available in Street View. So, I thought it would be cool to see what the bridge looked like.

Well, this is what it looks like today.

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I’m glad I was able to take some photos of it to remember it by.

As my two-year-old daughter would say, “Uh-oh, bridge!”

Screen Shots of my First AIR App

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on January 22, 2009
in Geeky Stuff and Software Development
. 0 Comments

She’s not much to look at, but still pretty impressive considering that I’ve put less eight hours into building this from the ground up. I’m really impressed at how quickly it’s come together given that I’ve been learning the framework through the whole process.

The application pulls data from an eXist XML database that powers one of my client sites using SOAP calls. You can’t actually edit the data yet, but it is possible to modify the configuration via the config window. I’m going to start adding some advanced search functionality and editing functionality in the next week or so as I have time.

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Tennessee “Intoxicating Beverage” Regulations

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on December 2, 2008
in General Stupidity and Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects
. 0 Comments

My brother has been perusing the regulations that describe what facilities may or may not serve alcoholic beverages in Tennessee.

There are some fairly interesting descriptions of what may qualify. For instance, this bit:

(L)  A resort containing all of the following characteristics:
  1. Has a restaurant, with a current overall seating capacity of 280, including outside dining service, and which serves over 75,000 patrons per year;
  2. Is located immediately adjacent to the Cherokee National Forest, the only national forest in Tennessee and the Cherohala Skyway, one of only twenty highways in the country designated as a national scenic byway;
  3. Is located along the scenic Tellico River, a tributary of the Little Tennessee River;
  4. Currently operates nine cabins, a river walk, and an open-air chapel and pavilion;
  5. After a proposed expansion will include at least thirty (30) cottages, a full-service health and wellness spa, a championship golf course, racquet club, adventure club for canoeing, kayaking, hiking, biking and other outdoor activities, an equestrian club, conference facilities, a hunt and fish club, crafts and education, and history tours; and
  6. Is located within a county having a population of not less than 38,900 nor greater than 39,000, according to the 2000 federal census or any subsequent federal census;

Wonder if they were thinking of one particular establishment there?

The whole mess is located here: 57-4-102. Chapter definitions. —

Recovered Memories

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on November 26, 2008
in Life
. 0 Comments

For whatever reason, I don’t have many memories of my life prior to the second grade or so … or at least any that I can definitely pin to that period of my life. Maybe two from my second grade year, one from kindergarten, and that’s about it.

Of those, only one is really, really clear. For whatever reason, I remember the events leading up to the death of my (Great-) Uncle Gene, who lived next door to me growing up. I clearly remember watching him climb into the back of the ambulance at his house that morning … and watching the ambulance pull away, and head toward Youngsville. I remember running to my bedroom at the other end of the house and watch it disappear around the curve. I remember that one of my parents told me that he wasn’t really sick, because they didn’t have the emergency lights on.

I remember the night my parents told me he died too. It was a cold night, and I was sitting by the wood stove, reading a book. It had something to do with a garden, and going back in time, and ice skating.

The memories, though not complete, are so vivid that it almost could have been yesterday.

Tonight, I “recovered” another memory.

My daughter woke up, and I went in to try to get her back to sleep. I laid down the bed and held her, but she was still restless. I started singing a nonsense song to her to calm her, and suddenly … I was laying down, with my father playing the guitar, and singing a song … something about sailing somewhere. Once again, the memory is so vivid. I can almost put my finger on the tune he was playing.

Makes me wonder if I’ll recover more memories as my daughter grows up. I hope so.

Sorry, ChattaBlogs …

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on November 19, 2008
in General Stupidity
. 0 Comments

It just came to my attention that I’ve been flooding the ChattaBlogs page with my Twitter updates (thanks for bringing it to my attention, DWord). It never occurred to me when I installed the TwitterTools plugin that this would happen. I’ve now installed an additional WordPress plugin to filter out that stuff from the RSS feed, so it won’t happen any more.

My apologies for the spam.

My Letter to Congressman Wamp

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on October 3, 2008
in Chattanooga, Economics and Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects
. 3 Comments

Dear Congressman Wamp,

Several days ago I was pleased to see that you took a strong stand against the bailout bill. You stated that “We simply cannot borrow our way out of debt, spend our way into prosperity or explain this bailout as anything short of an unacceptable intervention of the federal government into our private sector.”

Nothing about the revised bill that is now on that table changes any of that.

No amount of accountability will justify this sort of government intrusion into the private sector. No amount of accountability can justify an action like this, which attempts to subvert the natural process of the market by which businesses that make poor decisions reap the consequences for their actions.

There is no way around the fact that bailing out the institutions that got themselves into this mess sends a clear message to the financial sector that lending recklessly isn’t a big deal.

There is no way around the fact that institutions that did business in a responsible manner and lost business to the very institutions that are now in trouble will be penalized for their wise business practices.

Our government has been bailing out banks that loaned money recklessly since the aftermath of the War of 1812. Is it any surprise that the financial sector gets themselves into this mess again and again, when the government has shown a willingness to come to the rescue when the financial house of cards they have constructed collapses?

I am reminded of one of my mother’s cousins, who as an adult, spent most of his waking hours in a drunken stupor. He rarely tried to find a job, and when he did so, he naturally didn’t remain employed for very long. Yet time and again, when he needed money, or was in jail for some reason, his mother bailed him out.

In the end, Paul died in his singlewide trailer after he passed out on his bed and dropped his cigarette onto the mattress, and the building filled with smoke. Prior to his death, he had lost his driver’s license due to driving drunk, and his car had been repossessed.

Bailing out Paul didn’t help him in any way, shape or form. A wiser course of action would have been to let him experience the consequences of his actions.

Bailing out these failing financial institutions will not help either. Doing so will continue to send the same wrong message to them that we’ve sent for nearly 200 years: “Don’t worry, we won’t let you fail!”

It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense. I urge you to reconsider your support for the revised bailout bill, to vote against it, and publicly take the same sort of strong stand you took against the original.

Regards,
Jeremy Clifton
Chattanooga, TN