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My cousin John, in Michigan, emails me all sorts of interesting things. Today he sent one about Chinese watermelon carvings, oddly enough. The carvings in the photos were so intricate, so delicate, that I thought I’d share them with you.

Impressed, I ran a Google search on the topic and found articles with instructions on fruit carving, a brief explanation on the art of fruit carving (and other solid objects), even how-to books on the subject available for online purchase.

One of the URLs piqued my interest: “thaiwave.com.” OK, now I’m wondering if this was a really bad joke in the wake of the tsunami. It turns out to be a link to Benjarong Magazine online, a tourist magazine serving Thailand and Southeast Asia.

So I began to wonder: how is the area doing since the tsunami? How are they progressing with the cleanup? We saw all sorts of news coverage on the devastation of the area, including some awesome amateur video footage taken during the event, but now it seems as if the media is suddenly enamored with the historic elections in Iraq — and has no idea that anything at all is going on related to the tsunami (what tsunami?).

Surely, the mainstream media can be fickle at times. Radio and television news services are so oriented to “Now!” that it seems as if they forget that these things have a longer lifeline to them: a past, present and future, if you will. Politicians tend to exploit and manipulate this “Now!” culture to their own advantage, using out-of-context quotes and sound bites to mangle memories and alter opinions (remember “I actually voted for it before I voted against it”?).

I love the Internet. It’s different: it remembers. It holds all sorts of information gathered over a period of time; you just need to look for it. Pull up the information on whatever topic and make up your own mind. Powerful stuff.

So, my curiosity already piqued, I thought I’d dredge a few things up:

I explored the Benjarong Magazine site menu, and found a photo gallery on the progress of the cleanup operations in Phuket (pronounced: “poo-KET”), one of the hardest-hit areas. There are some awesome images here; give them time to load. New images are posted daily.

Hotel rates in the region have taken a plunge. Phuket-hotels.com lists generic rates and availabilities for the area, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, find the link that says, “Last Minute Hotel Discounts,” directly beneath the “Print this Page” button. The link will take you to LateStays.com, with the Phuket area already selected and displayed. Rates are in Thai Bhat.

If I’m reading it correctly, hotel rooms are currently being discounted some 30 - 60%, if not more, during peak American tourist season, obviously reflecting decreased demand — yet another casualty of the tsunami.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have seen cleanup cost estimates reaching into the billions and time estimates reaching well into the next decade; I wonder how the tsunami will affect the Southeast Asian economies — from a lack of tourism and from businesses shifting suppliers to alternate companies (and countries) because of tsunami-related infrastructure damage and difficult travel.

We may never know the answer to this; the tsunami may well be the single, most expensive natural disaster in history.

My wife and I took a little time out of our day today to go down the West Side Market. It’s an easy trip from most areas in Greater Cleveland, and one of my favorite Saturday afternoon activities.

I don’t get to go very often these days. In fact, I haven’t been there for almost 2 years, after having shopped there for almost 20. Things have changed somewhat in my life in recent years, and it’s harder to find the opportunity to go.

Some things at the market have changed; some things haven’t. They put garage-style doors behind the vendors in the produce area, placed new doors on the main market hall, and upgraded the stand signs. The people haven’t changed a bit, however, as they can’t be upgraded. (You wouldn’t want to, anyway, even if you could, as the vendors there are top shelf.)

I got a chance to catch up with my old friend Pat Hearn, the originator of the market web site (boy, has that changed!). I found out that another old friend, another vendor, has been in a rehabilitational nursing home for the last year with a staph infection. Other people have moved around a bit, from one stand to another; either they finally went into business for themselves, or they went to work for another vendor.

For the most part, however, it was just as I remembered it all, and pleasantly so. We purchased a couple of wonderful pineapples, a dozen beautiful oranges, a bunch of strawberries, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a pound of lunchmeat for me (rotisserie turkey, at $5.49/lb., as compared to Giant Eagle’s pan roasted turkey at $8.99/lb. — and half the quality). We also intended to buy some fresh salsa, but the stand had run out of stock.

We’ve been looking at beef briskets lately, as we have a dynamite recipe for the slow cooker that involves a brisket, some ale, and a couple of other things. Giant Eagle and Topps, the local grocery chains, have been offering briskets between $4.59/lb. and $5.49/lb.; West Side Market prices ranged today from $3.19/lb. to $4.29/lb. The Market’s briskets were all well-trimmed USDA Prime, not the fatty monstrosities offered at the chains.

We didn’t buy any meat today, as we have a freezerful of pork chops, chicken breasts, smoked sausages and lean ground beef to last us well into 2006, perhaps even 2007 if we don’t have another blackout. Well, maybe not, but…

All in all, it was a nice trip, one that we should do much more often, and one that every Greater Cleveland resident should do just for the experience. It’s awesome.

I thought about reposting my old posts into my database along the parameters of my last post last night — a lot. As you read this post, please keep in mind that I was away from my computer whilst cogitating a solution.

I started out by thinking that the simplest method of doing this would be to create an extra field in the database that would hold the original post date, then write a PHP script that would reflect that date rather than the actual post date for that entry. Eventually, therefore, I could just overwrite the post date column when everything was set proper, delete the new column and be done with it.

Then I thought about publishing it as a WordPress hack. Then you’d need an install file that would save the old scripts and replace them with the new scripts that you’d use while reposting the old posts; which begat the need for an uninstall file because when you eventually upgraded WordPress, because WordPress might choke on the upgrade because the database was different than what it was expecting…

I even went so far as to take a sheet of paper and a pen to write the pseudocode for the hack for the better part of an hour.

Eh! Too much to do, to much to worry about, and not an elegant solution for installing what I saw as adding 4 to 8 lines of MySQL statements to the existing scripts. Beyond that, all of that jacking around with the database might have unpredictable — even potentially distastrous — results. It was great thinking about it, though: a thoroughly wonderful mental exercise; I know that I could do it if needs be.

But needs don’t be.

All I really need to do is edit the timestamp. This function is already built into the WordPress “Write” page; I don’t need to do a thing but copy-paste the posts and then change the stamp. This lets me repost the old writings at my own pace — without a disturbance to you, Dear Constant Reader — which is what I was looking for in the first place.

No jumping through hoops.

No writing useless code all night and drinking an overabundance of coffee. (But I love coffee!)

No pulling my hair out — if I could grip it in the first place.

No getting hinky with the database.

No zizzing and dripping like with the tropical fishes.

All that worry for nothing; the answer was right under my nose the whole time. Not that I feel like a fool; not at all: when all else fails, read the owner’s manual. Problem solved.

So it goes.

Just a few quick notes on the redesign, if you’ll allow me to strut my stuff…

I’m in love with this “new” design. Truth be told: it isn’t new; it’s about 8 months old, almost as old as the site itself. I started redesigning this site right after I cobbled together the old design.

I say I “cobbled” the old site together because that’s exactly what I did: I cobbled it together. It was full of enough hacked code, workarounds, patches and other stopgap measures in the CSS file alone to sink the proverbial battleship without a round fired or torpedo released. Last weekend’s fiasco finally sunk that ship. Think Bismarck.

You could see it the other day when I had only one HTML page visible, that being the root index page: the footer, in such a small document, “released” itself from the other backing elements on the page, creating an unsightly gap between the elements; it also shifted dramatically to the left, below the content area, from where it belonged, which was under the nav menu. I actually had to crop the menu in order for the page to look even slightly presentable.

Of course, I knew this right from the start. I started redesigning as soon as I first published, because I didn’t completely like the look and feel — and the resulting CSS errors and hacks.

This redesign, however, is different: no hacks; no workarounds. Just straight, plain, valid XHTML (1.0 strict!) and CSS that works in all browsers and platforms — yes, even Internet Explorer, versions 5 and up. Of course, there are a few things that don’t work in IE, but you’ll have that…

The layout is fully liquid. By that, I mean that all of the main page elements are resizeable depending on the size of the open browser window; they’re built in percentages rather than hard-coded pixels.

One neat feature of the new stylesheet: If you resize your browser, you’ll also notice that the image at the top of the nav panel actually resizes as well. If, when the browser is in a smaller state, you drag the corner of the browser window to another size, you can actually watch the image change with your browser size. As I learn PHP, I’ll actually create an image rotation script that will change that image for each day of the week, then change to another set of 7 images the next month.

The image in the background is a map of Cleveland circa 1835. Coming from one of the oldest families of the city of Cleveland, I wanted this site to look old and new at the same time, kind of moving forward while winking at the past. I’m not sure if I accomplished that; you be the judge. The background image should be fixed in all browsers and not move when you scroll the page.

The masthead image will stay for a little while, but look for it to be replaced at some point: I have too many digital photos of this fair city to go to waste; all I need is to work them into an acceptable format to fit the masthead. Those, too, might rotate, but at a different interval. Perhaps monthly. Or maybe a tiny Flash applet like the PGA Championship site, only smaller. No decision on this at the moment.

As I learn PHP, I intend to create a couple of WordPress enhancements to give the nav column even more functionality. No comments yet as to what I intend: I have to leave something for the element of surprise…

By the way, not all of the links on the nav panel work: the page links to the site don’t yet exist, but will soon, as the template needs a few minor tweaks for each page before they post; the site area list of links will also change somewhat, too, as I don’t need that many sections to this site. Most of the external links are functional, however, with the notable exceptions being a couple of the validating services. All in due time.

The accessible stylesheet isn’t ready for prime time either, but that should be up relatively soon (maybe this weekend), as I only have to copy the current stylesheet and reverse 4 lines of code.

As for the archive of old posts: I have figured out what I want it to do, and how it should work, but haven’t yet figured out how to do it. For you WordPress users/coders out there, here are the requirements of the hack/plugin that I need to create:

• 1) it will post to page ‘archive.php’ instead of ‘index.php’;
• 2) posts on ‘archive.php’ must be hidden from the ‘get_recent_posts’ script;
• 3) show the original post date, not the re-post date;
• 4) show up on the calendar;
• 5) the ‘archive.php’ page will list the post title, original post date, categories, and the first sentence or two (or a summary) with a ‘more’ tag at the end linking to the full permalink.

That’s a little bit of work, but not insurmountable. In fact, in PHP, it should be fairly easy; it’s just a matter of getting WordPress to work along with adding a field to the post and edit page for replaced entries. I’ll post at the WP Support Forum and the WP wiki to see if anyone has tried to tackle this problem.

So why have I waited 8 months to release this? I wanted it to work. I wanted it to do everything I wanted it to do before I released it — which it doesn’t — yet (but it will).

I think, most of all, that I wanted to make sure I liked it.

I do.

Well, here is what happened:

On Thursday last, I posted a table within my post that broke the layout. The table bled out over onto the nav menu on the right, overlapping the content there and making it impossible to navigate the site properly.

To fix this, I edited my stylesheet. No problem; I’m an old hand at CSS. Well, here’s where the weather comes in: it was bitterly cold outside, and I, dedicated smoker, went outside to have a butt and came in with cold hands. I went to edit the stylesheet, and with one frozen, errant keystroke I ended up blowing away a small section of the stylesheet that broke the site even further.

OK. So far, so good. Then I decided that it was a good time to upgrade WordPress, and I’d finally bring out CB 2.0, which is the stylesheet you’re looking at now. WordPress has finally made it possible to have the program in one directory and the home blog page in another. Cool beans. I started to upgrade…

…and failed to back up what I already had on the server! Through what I can only explain as a royal comedy of errors, a routine software upgrade combined with the upload of two tested-proven documents (the new index page and stylesheet) became a major horror story to rival “The Shining,” “The Stand” or any other Stephen King epic.

To make a long story short: I ended up scrunching my database, had to blow it away and reinstall — with the friendly help from my host at Digital Space, and then re-install WordPress from scratch.

In my dreams, it was going to go off without a hitch. Reality, however, can sometimes be a rather strange bedfellow. So can logic.

Well, I guess I mean fantasy and illogic, actually: I didn’t back up my work. Period. I’m an old hand with computers, having had one in the home for over 15 years now; I’ve forgotten more arcane code than many users will ever learn, and this was the *first* lesson I ever learned.

Now it’s relearned.

So I have re-installed everything, added a few things, recreated my links and categories (if I’ve missed you, it wasn’t personal; just drop me a line), added my hacks, and started over. Fortunately, not all is lost: with the magic of Google, I have been able to retrieve many of my old posts from their cache, which I will soon repost in a special archive section — that is, if I can create my first — and totally unnecessary — hack for WordPress.

And with a spanking clean new design!

We’re a little early on this yet, as I have upgraded WordPress, so I don’t have all of my hacks and such working, but it is great to be back in operation again! Keep an eye…

By the way, why is it that whenever my site is down, my urge to write is at its highest? I have so many things to say, and all of it came up during the last three days when my site collapsed…

My bride and I went to see Kevin Spacey’s new movie, “Beyond the Sea,” last night.

My thoughts? Well, if you like Bobby Darin, you might want to see this flick. I have been humming Bobby Darin tunes since I left the theater.

I actually liked the movie. The photography, casting, music and choreography are all excellent, as I would expect from a Kevin Spacey production. I thought the idea of using the young Bobby to help the older Bobby tell the story interesting and clever. For this, it’s a movie worth seeing.

If you like Kevin Spacey, however, I don’t recommend it. Spacey is just a little too old to play Bobby Darin, even if he is a dead ringer for the late crooner in face and in voice (hell, I’m a dead ringer for at least three entertainers, or so I’m told — that doesn’t mean that I could play their part if I were an accomplished actor).

Further, the movie glosses over a few important truths about Darin’s life: his relationship with Bobby Kennedy (he sat vigil next to his grave until they covered the casket); his divorce from Sandra Dee was ignored; his relationship with Dick Clark wasn’t even mentioned. Even though the movie ends with a disclaimer about this partial fictionalization of his life, I think few, if any viewers would actually take the time to read it, and then would go away with false impressions about Darin’s life.

The movie was accurate as far as Darin’s brashness and temper, as well as his career account, however.

As far as Spacey’s performance, well… while I am happy with the release of a movie about one of the most talented performers of the last half-century, it is certainly not a tour-de-force for Spacey, and I think that he would have been better off leaving it alone, honestly.

As he says in the movie, however, memories are like moonbeams: you can do with them what you want. While this is certainly true, and Spacey certainly did what he wanted with the memories by taking the liberties that he did, I really think that the best advice I can give to Kevin Spacey for this movie is another Darin quote, sung several times during the movie:

“Well, the line forms at the right, babe…”

I love your work, but you let me down with this one, Kevin; get in line.

~~~~~

By the way, my bride is the ultimate Bobby Darin fan. She is also a Kevin Spacey fan. She hated the movie.

I will blog more often this year. I have been slacking off of late, mostly because I have been working 3rd shift. I hope and pray that this situation changes — and soon; until then, however, I will have to make a more concerted effort to write. This I pledge to do in 2005.