Category: Uncategorized

Elated by Grammar Captive’s recent success in getting the Mecab parser to work I have updated Grammar Captive’s Credits menu to include a credit to the people at MySQL responsible for the Mecab parser.

To the same menu has been added a section for Technical Assistance with credit going to Chris Barnett.

In order to avoid confusion the section entitled Revision has been renamed Text Revision. Finally, my good friend Prof. Dr. Peter P. Baron was added to this section under the new subtitle German.

The Mecab Parser is no longer macabre.

After several months of dysfunction the corrupted newsletter database has not only been restored, but the Mecab parser is now fully functional.

This means that Japanese newsletters can now be searched in the same way that the English, French, and German versions of the newsletter can be searched. Simply type in a Japanese word and the newsletters in which it is contained will appear.

In addition, the search engines for Q&A and Podast queries has also been restored.

How was the above achieved? It was not by magic.

Apparently the Mecab parser will only work when the default language of the entire table is set to the language of the parser. Previously, only the columns were set.

Will other new developments follow soon. It is unlikely, as a stable podcasting environment has yet to be found. Maybe in the fall of 2019.

Roddy

While waiting to rebuild the MySQL data table that houses the Sevengates Newsletter the dysfunction in the Sponsor Overview pages has been repaired. The following panels are now fully functional: Your Data and You, Sponsor Overview, Event Profiles, and Splash Panel.

The Word Cloud functionality will remain dysfunctional until the MySQL data table has been restored, and the lack of correspondence between the number of Unique Visitors and Total Visits in the Graphs and Charts panel remains an unsolved mystery.

The corrupted MySQL data table appears to be related to the overall performance of the site. This problem is currently under investigation.

Roddy

In an effort to make the multilingual letter data table searchable in Japanese Grammar Captive installed a Japanese language parser built for MySQL. The result has been a corrupted data table and a complete breakdown in one’s ability to view any of the newsletters no matter the language or edition.

It is likely that the entire table will have to be rebuilt.

Roddy

In “celebration” of the New Year Yahoo closed down a free service that sustained Grammar Captive’s WordPress RSS feeds. A new free service has been found and the feeds have been restored.

Other than the several projects that were still under way at the end of the year, no further development is being planned until a suitable place to podcast has been found and podcasting can begin.

Roddy

One can only hope that this New Year ends on a happier note than the year just ended.

For the moment, I can only write that Grammar Captive will move forward. How far, how fast, and to what extent is momentarily difficult to say.

Important is that significant progress was made last year, and there is some reason to believe that the same can happen this year.

I wish you well in the year ahead.

Roddy

This year is finishing with great disappointment, for the fall launch of Grammar Captive did not occur.  This said, much good did occur this past year despite tremendous setbacks.  And, the good news is that I have not lost hope.

Roddy

CRON Scheduler is now fully implemented, and thanks to its seamless integration with SwiftMailer that I also recently installed, Grammar Captive not only receives notification that a scheduled job has been executed in a timely fashion, but it also receives a copy of the job’s output for easy to use verification of proper execution.

Hooray! Hooray!

What is left is the Matomo interface.  Likely a more time-consuming task.

Roddy

This has been a week of research and experimentation.  Both the Mecab parser and CRON Scheduler are installed, but putting them to work has proven to be no less challenging.

Hopefully, the cloud cover will break before the end of next week.   In the meantime the weather in Seattle is cold and clear — an absolutely beautiful fall day in the northern hemisphere.

Roddy

After several weeks of intermittent study, research, and experimentation Grammar Captive installation of MySQL’s MeCab parser has finally been achieved.  What remains is its implementation.

The MeCab parser will allow Japanese visitors to use the Grammar Captive custom search engines to search single Japanese words and phrases in Japanese text.  Without the parser MySQL treats entire paragraphs of Japanese as single words, and the result is a failed search.  The solution is just around the corner.

Work on the CRON Scheduler continues.

It is hard to believe that this fall’s scheduled podcast launch has failed, but circumstances simply do not permit, and I will now shoot for the spring of 2019 — the Year of the Boar.

What is cool is that I have not surrendered and continue to push ahead with site development.

Roddy