Just when you thought you knew everything Yale had to offer, here come three of Yale's best kept secrets to help you make the most of your time online.

Yale File Transfer
I use this site probably once a week. It allows you to avoid those annoying email size limits by uploading them to a website and then sending a link to download them. I've used to to send tons of picture archives to YDN and a bunch of other stuff.

The best part of this one is that people outside of Yale can use it to send things to someone at Yale. It requires a NetID login. To use it click: "A Yale person who wants to send files...". Enter the recipient, and get started sending massive files.

Email Aliases
Perhaps the best thing I've ever found at Yale. In case you didn't know, my email is actually charles.croom, but through this nifty utility you can use up to three aliases. So I use charlie.croom, which means my email address is intuitive. I could also get chuck.croom, etc. For anyone who goes by a name different from their given name...this site is a MUST. It takes a couple days to go through, and you have to be on the Yale network to get to the site, but it's well worth it. Enjoy nickname.lastname!

Mailman Lists
How many panlists are you on right now? Heck, you probably don't even know all the panlists you're on. Panlsits are basically a collection of email addresses that get combined into one "panlist" nothing special. Enter Mailman. Mailman lists are the same thing, except you can specify a HUGE number of options. Prevent people not on the list from sending mail to people on the list, handling replies so that you don't get double messages, prefix all message subjects with [organization], digest messages (meaning people send 100 messages to the list per day, but these all get lumped together into a "daily digest") and tons more.

If you are sick of dealing with panlists, step up to the big leagues and try a mailman list. It's what YDN Photo, the VQ, and YDC use. Everyone on the list will appreciate the subject prefixing as they can immediately identify what the message relates to.

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Hopefully these power user tips will help make your daily Yale life less hectic. Let me know if there's any other tips like these that I haven't found out about. I'd love to hear about them.

So over the break I updated the Yale Drama Coalition website to have a reservation system! However, so that the addresses look pretty on posters, I wanted to use mod-rewrite, an apache webhost mod, to change the urls.

Basically instead of our Romance show url being:
http://www.yaledramacoaltion.org/view_show.php?show_id=31
it can now be accessed at:
http://www.yaledramacoaltion.org/romance
and
http://www.yaledramacoaltion.org/reserve/romance

Notice how those are much prettier (and easier to remember). Unfortunately, to do this requires some work at the top level of a website. It seems I accidentally got the file into my blog directory, so sorry to anyone who tried to get to the site in the past day.

Anyways, if anyone else is looking for help getting mod_rewrite to work, I found two very helpful resources:
this cheat sheet for mod rewrite was great and condensed all the information onto a single page!

Second, I was using the [R] tag for awhile, which literally redirects to the underlying page instead of masking it. The reason for this was that /reserve/ makes the page think it's in the reserve directory, so all the links break. To fix this I found a post on mod_rewrite forums which gave some solutions. Unfortunately, I've always used relative links, meaning I used the 5th option of a base tag to fix it.

Now everything's fine and dandy. This technique is great for search engine friendliness, is somewhat logical, and works better on print and when giving out the link!

Real information on my life to come later.

Again, I'd like to point out the new webcomic written by a friend of mine at Yale. For some reason, I find this particular comic to be the best yet! Enjoy:
http://www.qgmindpolice.com/comic/2009/02/24/you-first/

Just a quick note today that the Universe will probably end, or do something weird on Friday. How do I know? Well because I just discovered that on Friday, February 13th 2009, 23:31:30 UTC, the UNIX Epoch time will be. 1234567890. For those of you in the know, UNIX Epoch time is the number of seconds since since Jan 1st 1970 (I think). All time stored in databases and computed on computers are usually computed in this format. To add to the mix, it occurs on Friday the 13th. For full coverage of this event there is a link to a count up, here:
http://www.coolepochcountdown.com/

And an XKCD joke about it here (well not it, but UNIX time):
http://xkcd.com/376/

I'm off to New York to see Speed the Plow, till next time!

Link: http://www.qgmindpolice.com/

One of my friends next door just started a new webcomic I thought I'd share. He is a hilarious improv guy, and I can safely say this I will be reading this along with XKCD as often as possible. Enjoy!