[sf-lug] Having fun with BALE; CABAL meeting Saturday (today)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Daniel Gimpelevich (daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us):

> I believe such dumps may be generated in the form of SQL transactions
> that may be replayed to recreate the database without separately feeding
> in the schema. A diff can be made against that for the templates, and
> against the static HTML for the group description section. I now notice
> the events are depopulated, so I'm not sure how much of this effort I'd
> be duplicating.

So, I'm sorry, but what do you want?

I've already suggested that you offer to set up a replica, and that I'll
be glad to furnish the means for you to do so, and that after that I
could give you a SQL dump of all of BALE's data for you to import.  
You didn't say 'Yes, please', and you didn't say 'No, thanks', so I am
left wondering what the hell we're accomplishing, here.  

I'm kind of busy.  If you want something, please say what you want,
specifically.

I know exactly how to bring BALE up to date, having designed and
operated the damned thing for dog years.  Step one is to mass-delete
events based on questioable templates.  I've just done that.  Step two
will be to update the 'groups' table, which is what provides the
seemingly fixed text on the page about the various groups underneath the
calendar, by reference to authoritative information out on the Internet,
if any, about each group.

One of my rules of thumb is that if I cannot get reliable, maintained
information off the Internet, generally I will not list the group.
Hence, the entries for Starship Augusta Ada are highly likely to go away
even though I hear they are still meeting at a pizza parlour in San
Francisco, because Heather cannot be bothered to have an informational
Web page.

There will doubtless be a number of other retirements of groups whose
ongoing activity I cannot find any more.  For example, the Internet
domain of the SF OpenBSD User Group isn't registered any more, and if I
cannot find any replacement presence, I am likely to remove the
information about it and assume it's all gone.


Step three is to update the 'templates' table based on the updates to
the 'groups' table.

Step four is to regenerate dated events based on the revised templates.

Step five is to update the 'notes' PHP include file to comment briefly
on changes.


I have yet to see you offer anything that actually helps.  If you can't
or won't help, I understand, and just stop.  

If you wish to offer help, say what.