The Coppit Family Daily News

The semester’s over, finally. It seemed long because I was teaching a new class in formal software engineering methods. The kids did pretty well, despite the difficulty of the class. Unfortunately the prep work for the class ate up a good chunk of my time.

Now I have to turn my attention back to research. We have a paper due in a couple of days, and a proposal due in January. I’m also trying to get some software development done over the break, and prepare for my class next semester.

This plugin allows the blog administrator to set an explicit ordering, spacing, and indentation of categories in the category list that appears in the sidebar. The administrator specifies the ordering in the new “Category Order” management page. There is also an option for placing the category post count inside the link.

A screenshot shows the management page.

The plugin overrides any ordering or indentation of categories created by the list_cats() Wordpress function. It works by dissecting the normal <ul> or <br /> formatted list that Wordpress creates, then reconstructing a custom </ul><ul> or <br /> formatted list based on the new custom ordering and indentation. Since the plugin modifies the display only, you can revert to the default ordering by simply disabling the plugin.

The plugin handles subcategories (by overriding the parent-child relationship), and the post count on categories. If the plugin fails for you, it is likelythat your category list HTML is somewhat different than what the plugin expects. In this case, please email the HTML snippet to the me and I’ll try to fix it.

Download it here: Category Order 1.8.0

Apparently there are some deaf folks out there that feel like being deaf isn’t a disability. As a result, there was and still continues to be some backlash against cochlear implants for children. They say that putting an implant in a child is committing “cultural genocide”. Emotionally charged terms aside, I guess I can see how the “deaf culture” might dwindle as more and more people get usable hearing at an early age. But given the choice, I’d rather have my child participate in the 99% culture than the 1% culture.

Let’s face it: 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. This means that these children start off at a severe communication disadvantage. Overcoming that disadvantage is hugely difficult, and has lasting lifelong impact. I got eye surgery to correct my vision, and wouldn’t hesitate to get an implant to correct my hearing. Why wouldn’t I want every advantage for my child?

I wonder how many proponents of “deaf culture” actually know what they’re missing. Perhaps if they did, they wouldn’t be so adamant that others support their “culture”.

In order to make kids safe from wierdos on the big bad Internet, I’ve password-protected posts about Christopher and pictures of him and other kids. In order to get access, do the following:

1. Go to the register page for this blog.
2. Create a username and enter your email address. The blog will email you a temporary password.
3. Use the password to log in. Enter any additional information so I know who you are, in case your username isn’t obvious. Also be sure to change your password to something that is easy to remember.
4. Wait for an email from me saying that I’ve given you access.
5. Afterwards, go back to the blog and you should see posts about Christopher. You should also be able to see pictures about him in the photo album.

I’ve released Category Levels 0.2.0. You can now remove categories from the category list in the sidebar, if the user does not have sufficient privileges. You can also customize the showing of padlock and user levels independently.

There’s still one outstanding issue: If you show the number of posts next to the monthly archives, the total will not be reduced by the number of hidden posts. I’ve submitted a feature request to the Wordpress folks so that I can implement this.

The hiding categories functionality requires Wordpress 1.5.2. The plugin should work otherwise for prior versions of Wordpress.

Get the new version here.

Quicktime 7 is out now for both Windows and Mac. One nice thing about it is that it supports H.264, which is a high compression codec for video. This is how I encode all my movies, so if you want to see any of them, download it here.

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Been very busy starting up a new course, trying to get two papers submitted, and doing service for my research community.

I’ll try to post a couple updates about the baby today, as well as some photos and movies.

Well, just about anyone who reads this blog regularly probably attended Steven and Tammy’s wedding, but I thought I would write a short note anyway.

They were married last Saturday in Eugene, Oregon. Dorothy, Christopher, and I flew up for about a week. Unfortunately, that was about all the time I could afford, since classes were starting. It was the first time in a long time that my Dad and his two sons were in the same location.

The day before the rehearsal we went crawfishing, where my Dad’s Louisiana background helped us with the cooking part. Steven threw a big crawfish boil, and a bunch of his friends and Tammy’s family joined us.

I had come up a day early from Coos Bay for the crawfishing, so my Dad and Brenda finally met Christopher the next day at the rehearsal dinner.

After the rehearsal dinner, Steven threw a big poker night. I think we had about 14 people playing at two tables.

The wedding and reception were very nice. Since I was in the wedding, the only pictures I got were the ones I was able to sneak when no one was looking. I’m hoping other attendees will upload some more pictures.

Unfortunately, Steven’s best man and reception DJ had to go to the hospital due to a flare-up of a pancreas problem. While we were sleeping after the reception, poor Steven and Tammy spent the night in the emergency room. The next morning Dorothy and I met my mom and Larry, Emo and Odishi for brunch at the hotel. Steven and Tammy eventually came down and joined us.

The new couple is in Hawaii now. I hear that Steven says it’s the best vacation he’s ever been on.

Last weekend Dorothy and I drove to C’Ville to visit old friends and celebrate our anniversary.

For our anniversary, Dorothy suggested that we stay at the Doubletree, the place where we had our reception and stayed after the wedding. She suggested that we go visit all our old haunts… our old apartment, Champion Tutoring (where we met), etc. I also had a personal quest to visit all the good restaurants that I missed being in Williamsburg.

On Friday we had lunch with Kristin + Norm + the Beekwilder boys, Kim + Glenn + Sophia, and David + Rebecca + the Engler girls. Needless to say, there were a lot of baby carriers and accouterments. We went to C’Ville Coffee, probably the best kid-friendly place to get lunch in Charlottesville. (It wasn’t on my list of restaurants, but not a bad place to eat.)

Afterwards we stopped by the computer science department, where I saw my old advisor Kevin Sullivan and some other folks. We briefly turned their lounge into a nursery. We walked with Kim and Sophia, and Kristin and her boys to the corner for some frozen yogurt. On the way, we pushed our procession of baby carriers past the UVa chapel, where we were married.

For dinner we all met up at the Engler’s house for an impromptu cookout.

At the hotel, it seemed like there was some sort of “Tiny Miss” beauty pageant going on… Lots of vanity plates on minivans in the parking lot.

The next morning I dashed out to the new Bodo’s Bagels on the corner for breakfast. 10 years in the making, it was a running joke that we had to graduate from grad school before it opened. After we packed up, Dorothy and I met up with Dorothy’s dad and brother Daniel for coffee.

For lunch, we met our friend Anh at Thai 99. That’s the second restaurant on my list… I told them that they should open a restaurant in Williamsburg, so that I could fulfill my regular Thai cravings.

After lunch Anh took us to a new gelato place on the Downtown Mall. It was yummy. Afterwards, we said bye to Anh and drove over to Champion Tutoring, but our old boss Audrey wasn’t there since it was Saturday. We also stopped by our old apartment, but it seemed like either our standards improved, or the neighborhood went downhill–probably a little of both.

Finally, in the afternoon we drove out to Crozet to Glenn and Kim’s new house. There we met up with Nuts, Rashmi, and Mallige. After hanging out for a while, we all went to Crozet Pizza for dinner.

Photos of the trip:

More proof that the developer of autostitch knows what he’s doing… Compare the following two photos from two merged images:

Usually panorama programs are not smart enough to understand that part of an image changed between two photos that are being merged. As a result, you get “ghosts” at the seams where the software blends the two images. Here’s the merged seam that autostitch created:

Click on the image to see a larger version. Notice how Glenn’s head isn’t blended. Rather, the software chose one image to override the other. Kudos to the author. I really hope he gets someone to license his algorithms, putting some polish on the software.

Williamsburg Honda finally got our minivan in yesterday. Yay! Normally we would try to buy one that is a year old, but (1) we couldn’t find hardly any, and (2) the price was pretty close to a new one anyway.

Dorothy called me at the coffee shop, telling them that it was an emergency. (This was at 1pm, when our appointment was at 4pm.)

We traded in our old Accord (got $800 for it). Everything went smoothly… They even called our insurance company and had them switch over the insurance, and the DMV to switch over the plates.

Dorothy and I have been taking Christopher for walks every day. The past couple of days we’ve been walking in Colonial Williamsburg. I started a “Williamsburg, Summer 2005″ album for any pictures and movies I take:

* NOT FOUND *

Everyone in Dorothy’s family came into town this weekend for the 4th of July. Heather and Jeremy were here on Sunday with Willow, Christopher’s 7-month-old cousin.

Sunday I made faux risotto for the first time, which was a big hit. On the 4th we grilled chicken and corn on the barbecue. Then we packed up and tried to drive to Yorktown, but Colonial Parkway was blocked off–I guess they decided that they had had enough people for the day. So we turned around and went to Williamsburg.

I must say that the fireworks were better than I thought they would be. It was nice to be close enough to feel the explosions. (More than one kid was crying by the end.) Here are some pictures, and two movies of the fireworks:

Josh and Carmen arrived today. Gabrielle will arrive tomorrow. David and Jeremy will arrive Sunday. Daniel, who will probably drive in tomorrow, says it’s the first time in years that the whole Rodgers family will be in one place.

For a long time now I’ve been looking for the magical panorama software that will automatically figure out how different images fit together, then warp them and merge them.

Today I found it. It’s called AutoStitch. Just throw a bunch of images at it, and it will sort them out. It will even handle images of different sizes, up/down/left/right stitching of images, and (get this) images from more than one panorama.

There are two things it doesn’t do very well. First, it doesn’t automatically match exposure levels across images very well. The metrix plugin did the trick for me. It’s for Photoshop, or any program that can use Photoshop plugins (such as Paint Shop Pro). The second thing it doesn’t do is crop the resulting image. For that I just did it manually in Mac’s preview program.

Here are some panoramas I made:

* NOT FOUND *

As soon as I got home today, I downloaded Google Earth. The folks at Google have an awesome mapping interface. It’s like Google Maps on steroids.

Anyway, right when Dorothy said “Look up Area 51!” we got a knock at the door. Was it the CIA? Did they know we were trying to get info on a top secret aircraft testing facility? Would I ever get to tell anyone this story?

It turned out to be an Orkin salesman trying to get us to buy pest control. After he left, we still weren’t convinced. Maybe Orkin is a shadow company run by the CIA. Maybe they get rid of the natural bugs and plant electronic ones! And we give them full run of our houses!

Conspiracy theories aside, Google Earth is super-cool. Here’s our neighborhood:	For major cities, they have the shapes of the buildings. You can also tilt the map to get perspective, and fly around. Here’s Washington DC:
It will also show terrian. Here’s Boulder, CO, looking to the west:	And finally, Area 51:

So far they gubmint hasn’t come to snatch me fr0238 9 8 fj-a/sdf23

If you’re using a new web browser such as Firefox (any OS) or Safari (Mac OS only), you can tell the web browser to automatically check this website for new articles and display the results in a toolbar or bookmark list. See this webpage for Firefox instructions, and this webpage for Safari instructions.

Internet explorer doesn’t have this support built-in, but here is a toolbar plugin. I don’t know if it works well or not.

Of course, you could just set this webpage as your homepage.

Anyone can post comments by clicking on the “comments” link on an article. Right now I’m moderating them, so there may be a bit of a delay before everyone else can see your comments.

I can also give you permissions to post your own articles if you want. Just let me know and I will promote you and create a new category for you.

I’m back working today, after helping Dorothy for a week. I’ve got a couple of papers to review, and a couple to write.