This weekend was a fun weekend. I was going to say we did not get much done, but when I thought about what to write today, I realized that we did quite a bit. We just hung out on Friday, but got up pretty early on Saturday so we could buy Christian a suit. We found one at J.C. Penneys in the mall at Crossroads. It is perfect. After that, Kelly, Christian, and I had a banana/chocolate milkshake, a hot chocolate, and a coffee (respectively) at the Barnes and Noble so Lorena could shop for her dress. Kelly read while Christian and I used the wireless internet there to work on our computers. Lorena found a great dress! It is perfect for her coloring and will be fun to wear at the wedding in Mexico in a couple of weeks. We will put pictures of the event up after it is over.
On Sunday, we went about an hour east of Raleigh to a meeting that included two of regular meetings. Afterward, we had a potluck. It was nice because we got to get a little better acquainted with some people we had previously just met in passing. Lorena made deviled eggs and a pasta/sausuage dish. We also took a pie. Of course, we stopped for an ice cream cone on the way home, then I spent a bunch of the afternoon catching up on homeschool corrections. We are in the big push leading up to the Mexico trip. Instead of giving them work to do while they are on vacation, based on some nudges from others and guilt feelings of my own, I have decided they should not take any homeschool to Mexico with them. Still, we are going to push hard before they go and then for a week or so after they return to be in a good place by Thanksgiving.
Kelly and Christian talked to their very good friend Hannah who was our neighbor in Albany for a long time yesterday. We all miss her a lot.
I made great progress on my Betty Blonde comic automation program. It is a program I am writing to help me process Kelly’s comics for publication on the web. I had already written the part that takes the individual scanned frames, adds drop shadows and titles, and accumulates them into a single comic and and accompanying thumbnail. This weekend I added the ability to upload the comic and the thumbnail to the appropriate directories on our website. I think I will just add a rudimentary GUI to that part of the program and call it complete. Before I wrote the program, it took me about five minutes to scan in the panels, then another fifteen minutes to make the strip and put it up on our server. It still takes me five minutes to scan in the panels, but I can build and upload the strip in about thirty seconds now. That helps a lot. The next step will be to write a program to automate some of the daily posting. It currently takes me about ten minutes to do the daily posting. I hope to reduce that by at least half, if not more.
July 31, 2004 – La boda de Tony y Martha (Photos)
August 5, 2004 – The patio is poured
