2015 — 18 November: Wednesday
Today's treat — for which the omens currently look OK, so I'd better grab a bite of breakfast fairly soon — is a little morning country ramble to blow away some cobwebs. Chaps need treats. And tea.
Meanwhile...
... returning, briefly, to one of yesterday's themes, just how cool-looking is this Python-based "Kodi" Media Stub Generator that Brian has been cooking up for me to hone his visual GUI skills? I just type in a Title and hit "Enter":
Assuming it finds a match for the Title (the purpose behind those Next and Previous buttons), my next onerous task is to type in Location, Purchase Date, and Price and click the mouse on "Create Stubs". Brian's Python slithers off to the same online DB that Kodi will later use and scoops up just enough data to generate all the episode data-stubs that Kodi will need. The purpose of these stubs is to simulate or "fake" the presence of actual video files, named in precisely the way that enables Kodi to retrieve all sorts of data about each episode when data scraping. Stub generation takes far less than a second. Kodi's subsequent data scraping can take a lot longer, of course.
At my leisure, I simply fire up Kodi itself and point it at the new stubs. End result? One of yesterday's TV Series acquisitions1 is fully and effortlessly catalogued for me. Brilliant.2 I watched Episode #1 last night, by the way, and enjoyed it a whole lot more the second time around. (Having seen it many months ago with niece #1 on one of her visits.)
Right! Time for some of that fresh air. TTFN.
[Pause]
For the drive to and from — and the six-mile hike-and-a-chat along — one of our easy, largely unbusy, safe-for-wet-weather, road-based walks. It was pretty windy, but remained dry for the duration. Not a single cobweb remains. Anyway, that was followed by a shower, the laundry, and the making and consuming of my tasty crockpotted lunch.
And the inevitable cuppa.
Now, where was I?
Although I was naturally...
... paying much closer attention to all the useful information on the Kodi Wiki page of tips for successful file naming I still couldn't help pondering how they had generated their undeniably attractive breadcrumb trail... I mean, gradient shading, rounded corners, what's not to like?
If I spot good-looking examples of stuff on web pages I scan the HTML source to see if I can, erm, adapt it for use here in Technology Towers. Without, that is, undue effort or breaking my underlying philosophy. Purely out of semi-professional interest, you understand. So I took a deep breath, pressed Ctrl+U, and in I dived, swimming around until I was certain I'd found the relevant chunk of code. Yikes! Not a pretty sight, trust me. It's browser-specific for a start. Nested in a tabular structure. Starts at line 117, if you're curious. (Though, if you use a different browser I suppose even that might be different.)
I shall stick with my simple-minded code at the top of this ¬blog's web page:
<div class="breadcrumb"><a href="/~david/index.html">molehole.org</a> > <a href="/~david/diary/retiring.html">Vague diary</a> > </div>
I defy anyone...
... to read this piece on NY subway lines without being reminded of that lovely 1950 SF story "A Subway named Moebius".
You can even get your hands on a simulator. (Link.)
Satisfying...
... though it is to pinpoint, and successfully "profile", some of the TV items in my collection, it's still more than faintly shocking to realise, for example, that my DVD of the BBC production of "The Barchester Chronicles"...
... (bought in April 2005) is of the 1982 production! I just do not understand where the time has gone.