Friday Flickr functionality

Flickr was very slow earlier this evening but it seems to be fine now. While running the script that scans the 10 Million Photos group to collect stats, I noticed that the Flickr API was failing at quite a high rate. The symptom was "Invalid signature" errors from API calls that were perfectly fine at other times. The script does retry the API call on error, but I think once it hits this error, the error will repeat a number of times until the Flickr server returns to normal.

Anyway, I was pondering this problem when I got the idea of a watcher script. So I wrote that this evening. It's a very short script that watches over the scanner script and checks the output. If there is any problem, the watcher script will simply rerun the scanner script on that block of pages from the group pool. Otherwise, it will move on to the next block. I think this is now robust enough that I can kill it in mid-run and it'll actually continue where it left off the next time. Of course, one might ask why I didn't just add that functionality to the scanner script instead of having two scripts running but there's always the next version.

Got word from Microsoft Developer Support that there is no 64-bit implementation of MAPI, nor are there any plans to port MAPI to 64 bits. This is in spite of the fact that the production version of Exchange Server 2007 is only available on 64-bit Windows platforms. So anyone with legacy MAPI applications to maintain is or will soon be SOL, or will have to resort to hacks like writing a 32-bit out-of-process COM server to handle the MAPI calls. I noticed that Outlook 2007 is still using 32-bit MAPI, but this is apparently a BYOMI (Bring Your Own MAPI Implementation) kind of thing because by default Exchange Server 2007 does not bundle any MAPI support, whether 32 or 64-bit.

And finally, I now see a downside to having a fuzzy accent rug on the living room floor. A few pieces of sticky tape landed in the rug and got caught in the rug fur, so I had to pick those out carefully. This rug is nice to sit on though, since I do a lot of miscellaneous craft and organizing work on the floor. (Desk? What desk? :) )

( Friday Five )

Grande Old Dame

Today, I went to The Grande Old Dame Turns 29-U geocaching event at Goodfellas Inn in East Fishkill, NY. It was a birthday celebration for Planet. We had birthday cake and also a sampler of appetizers from the restaurant. In addition, I ordered fish and chips for myself to fill my weekend fried fish quota. :)

Did some geocaching on my way up North. There was still snow and ice on the ground up in Putnam and Dutchess Counties, but the caches, at least the regular-sized ones, didn't seem any more difficult to find than usual. Of course, I had the benefit of following the tracks of some geocachers who were there earlier in the day.

After the event, we all went to do the "Gaos" cache, which was a night cache with a trail of reflectors to follow. The trail was rather slippery with all that ice and snow, but none of us fell off the hill or anything. Naturally, the locals were a bit puzzled as to why there were suddenly 11 cars parked at the end of that dead-end road at night and a police officer did appear on the scene to check things out. Fortunately, Worf's Pack was good at 'splaining.

On my way home, I used a Burger King coupon in Park Ridge.

Before heading out this morning, I checked my filing system (really just all the envelopes tossed into a filing cabinet drawer) and found that last 1099-DIV form that I was missing. The trouble was it wasn't in an envelope by itself. It was sent to me as an insert tucked in with the last quarterly statement of the year, so I didn't put in the special tax folder. So I should be able to finish the taxes soon. (Not that there's any hurry because there's still over a month to go before the deadline.)

( The caches... )