2008
12.20

AGU Fall Meeting 2008

I just spent a week in San Francisco to experience all that is the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting – where over 16,000 participants come to share knowledge and make merry. Of course, on Monday, after making a presentation of my research on a poster, I proceeded to lose my voice. I remained thus for the rest of the week, rendering it almost impossible to “network” or really even “communicate” until now, when I find myself in the San Francisco airport, waiting for a flight that’s 2 hours delayed. You can probably tell I feel really good about the trip in general. Nonetheless, San Francisco is a nice town, and it seemed like a place one could really enjoy. But the real bonus is that it completely facilitated the more important part of my trip, which is to spend the holidays with my family back in Colorado. All’s well that ends well… assuming I don’t spend them in this airport, sigh.

2008
10.18

Fall in Berlin

Here are some random scenes from Berlin. I hoped to send these pictures as updates whenever I spontaneously took them. This desire would have been realized with technological help such as my friend Aaron recently alerted me to. Alas, I’m not that plugged in yet. Instead, here you have my random spontaneity in bulk condensed form. Enjoy! :)

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2008
10.06

Poznan

I’m in Poznan, Poland!

Poznan, Poland

I’ll be here for the next week for another summer school (like in Karthaus) until Friday. We’ll be learning about paleoclimatology and using isotope records as proxies. The most fascinating part so far was the train ride from Berlin last night. I was on a train that looked like it came straight out of James Bond in the 60s. It was dark outside and we made stops in remote places, but of course, I had my guard up for when Jaws would arrive…

A friendly traveling companion

A friendly traveling companion

2008
09.28

Getting multiple wordpress blogs into one place.

1. Change the upload location to a folder in the main directory of the sub-domain. The example here is kitsquilts.norova.com

I made a directory at kitsquilts.norova.com/wp-uploads

In the Settings >> miscellaneous section, I changed:

Store uploads in this folder to: /home/norova2/public_html/kitsquilts/wp-uploads

And the (says it’s optional, but necessary) full html path to: http://kitsquilts.norova.com/wp-uploads

Now all future uploads should be directed to this folder. All old uploads are still pointed to the old upload folder, so I need to actually edit the MySql table itself to clear up the inconsistency.

Then in the MySqlPHP menu, I performed the following two queries:

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘wp-content/uploads’,'wp-uploads’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘wp-content/uploads’,'wp-uploads’);

…as per the instructions of this guy.

Then it turned out, there were some leftover inconsistencies from when I had moved mom’s site from a sub-dir (wp_kitsquilts/) to the main site (/). Basically “wp_kitsquilts” appeared in many MySql tables. So I used the following commands, in this order to clean them up:

UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value, ‘/wp_kitsquilts/wp-content/uploads/’,'/wp-uploads/’);
UPDATE slimstat SET resource = replace(resource, ‘/wp_kitsquilts/wp-content/uploads/’,'/wp-uploads/’);
UPDATE slimstat SET resource = replace(resource, ‘/wp_kitsquilts/’,'/’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘/wp_kitsquilts/’,'/’);

I figured out which tables to edit by using the phpmyadmin search commands to search for the strings “/wp_kitsquilts/wp-content/uploads/” and “/wp_kitsquilts/”, so that I could then replace them in the tables with the appropriate values. Now all of mom’s old uploaded pics show up just fine, and appear in the gallery the way they should – finally!

2. Get all of the wordpress files back into their own handy directory.

I went to the main directory of kitsquilts.norova.com and collected all files and folders that pertained to wordpress, except for index.php. Then I moved them to a subfolder called “wordpress0/”. I updated the “home” and “site_url” fields in the MySql table to reflect the new locations. I also edited the line in index.php which loads the wp-header.php file, making sure it pointed inside the directory “wordpress0/”.

So far, the uploads for mom’s site will be in an independent directory outside of any wordpress heirarchy, and all of the wordpress heirarchy is contained in its own folder “wordpress0″.

3. Set up multiblog config files for calling up mom’s site. Basically just make a VUSER as per the multiblog instructions. Then make a mb-config-kitsquilts.php config file with mom’s database and login info.

4. Create a symlink to www.norova.com/wordpress/ on mom’s subdomain using add_symlink.php:

<?php
symlink( ‘/home/norova2/public_html/wordpress/’, ‘kitsquilts/wordpress’ );
?>

2008
09.28

Voting abroad

Will it count?

Will it count?

2008
09.18

Pics from my visit to the Hintereisferner Glacier on the border of Italy and Austria!

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2008
09.14

Today we were supposed to go on a field trip to the nearest glacier. First up a cable car from about 2000m up to around 3200m. Then we would hike along the ridge above it until we found ourselves with a spectacular view of Hintereisferner, which I think is one of the longest glaciers in Europe. This didn’t happen, since the entire valley was covered with fog and it has continuously rained from morning until now.

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2008
09.13

Karthaus 2008

So I’m now at the Karthaus Glaciology Summer School. I’ll try to upload pics frequently over the next 2 weeks.

As I’ve learned so far, every night there is a five course meal, with wine included, just set out on the table in bottles. And lunch, there are 3 courses. And we have two coffee breaks between lectures with accompanying fresh warm pastries. I guess all the calories go into all the thinking we’re doing?! :)

Well of course I had to add some pics from the meals since yesterday. They even changed it up for lunch – the first day without pasta… instead it was a nice cheesy risotto. But we also studied quite a bit today, so I added some pics from the lectures too. But on our short day today (which just ended at 4pm), the weather isn’t quite ideal, with continuous slow rain throughout the day. We’ll see if our hike on the glacier is possible tomorrow. But we’re supposed to go up to 3200m or so and have some expansive views of the glaciers in the region. Now if someone will just lend me a hat!

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2008
08.30

Our first stop after Athens was Samos, one of the larger Greek islands. It’s located in the Eastern Aegean, actually just 2km from Turkey at one point.

Samos, Greece

Like many of the islands, it is mountainous and home to several beautiful beaches. The food did not disappoint and it was a good choice for our “hub” island. We left Athens at about 6am and arrived 40min later armed with a rental car and some phone numbers for some hotels. We didn’t plan anything else out in advance (note: only recommended if you’ve a handy Greek to succor you). The rental car was pretty crucial though. There was minimal bus service and most interesting things were far apart.

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2008
08.30

Our first stop was Athens for a few days. It was hot, and quite a shock after the past few months in Berlin. But much needed. To me, traffic seemed chaotic. To everyone else, it was just the summer lull. We ate nice, home-cooked meals and went out for Greek coffees. We also visited some of the sites, although I’m saving a visit up to the acropolis for another time. All in all, I was quite impressed with Athens and I’d like to get to know it better.

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