Archive for May, 2008

So it’s the Sunday of memorial day weekeend, otherwise known as less than a week to Valhalla Faire, 2008. I’ve completed the TV spots I was supposed to do this morning. Going to drop off the remaining posters and flyers that I have with me with Swallow, then hit Harvey’s to make sure the banner is going up today.

So far the weather is sunny and great today, though the forecast is still for rain on and off for the next few days. There’s no snow here at all (like there was the last two years) in the weeks before the faire. At the moment (and yesterday afternoon), it was only up on the very tops of the peaks as you come over the pass, but even that is pretty negligable.

Need to pick up a copy of the weekend paper to make sure that the program is set and looks correct, and will then head back down the hill.

I wish actually that I was at BayCon though, it seems the gang had a killer time, and it’d be nice to be at a few events like that which I don’t have to think about ‘biz’. Great photos so far by Dalisar, and now looking forward to seeing the rest of the sets by the other resident Photogs. Still hoping to make it out to visit this evening for a while, though I’ve no idea who might still be around by that point. All the main costume effort will have gone into last night’s events.

Anyone have any clever costume suggections for me for ‘09?

Pity they didn’t come to collect him 7 years ago when he lost the first time around…

From today’s Press-Democrat (Santa Rosa):

“Calling all Renaissance Faire frocked maidens and burly goblet
swillers. Your moment has arrived. The latest Adam Sandler movie,
‘Bedtime Stories,’ is shooting a 14th century Renaissance Faire scene or
two in Calistoga this summer. Casting calls are being held from 1 to 6
pm today and 10 am to 4 pm Saturday at the Calistoga Village Inn and
Spa, 1880 Lincoln Avenue, 942-0991. They’re looking for paid extras, 18
and over, able to spend a full week in mid-June when the production crew
relocates to Calistoga from Long Beach.”

It’s a user-defined-function to split a given string into ‘words’. In this case I’m delimiting words using commas and spaces. So ‘Smith, Fred’ (with a comma AND a space) will be separated into ‘Smith’ and ‘Fred’.

For convenience, it returns a table with a ‘pos’ column, representing the position in the original text that the word was found.

Hope this helps someone out there.

CREATE FUNCTION SplitWords(@text varchar(8000))
RETURNS @words TABLE (pos smallint primary key, value varchar(8000))
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @pos smallint, @i smallint, @j smallint, @s varchar(8000)
SET @pos = 1
WHILE @pos <= LEN(@text)
BEGIN
SET @i = CHARINDEX(‘ ‘, @text, @pos)
SET @j = CHARINDEX(‘,’, @text, @pos)
IF @i > 0 OR @j > 0
BEGIN
IF @i = 0 OR (@j > 0 AND @j < @i)
SET @i = @j
IF @i > @pos
BEGIN — @i now holds the earliest delimiter in the string
SET @s = SUBSTRING(@text, @pos, @i – @pos)
INSERT INTO @words VALUES (@pos, @s)
END
SET @pos = @i + 1
WHILE @pos < LEN(@text) AND SUBSTRING(@text, @pos, 1) IN (‘ ‘, ‘,’)
SET @pos = @pos + 1
END
ELSE
BEGIN
INSERT INTO @words VALUES (@pos, SUBSTRING(@text, @pos, LEN(@text) – @pos + 1))
SET @pos = LEN(@text) + 1
END
END
RETURN
END

Here’s a revised version of the trailer for Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse, which explains the show’s concept much more clearly and features a lot more ass-whuppin’. Plus, parachuting and assassining. The show’s central conceit — that these “Actives” are blank slates who can be programmed to have any skillset or emotion — comes out really clearly. Plus it gives a hint of one of the show’s main sources of conflict. Those of you who had a tepid response to the first version should check this one out. [Whedonesque, via Damon/Zeitgeist]