Victor Sample Development Site

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Welcome to my development website. It appears there isn't much too see on this site; but, I use this site for development and testing of PHP programs for other sites. There is actually a pretty extensive back-office website that has restriced access to a few users.

I am a retired programmer that started my career in 1977 with The Montana Power Company in Butte, MT as a "scientific programmer". Initially, I did the programming for the gas and electrical engineering departments then more of the business end of The Montana Power Company.

I eventually went to work for TSI International - starting a 30 year career working for software companies. I was Director of Software Development for several international software companies before joining IBM as a development manager for a product group. I retired in 2007 and took a break from programming.

After returning to Montana I returned to programming doing volunteer work for many of the local non-profit organizations. In 2022, I joined 4 other community residents in creating a new community newspaper: MT43 News. I was asked to be Treasurer of the new publishing company and evolved into Treasurer, Managing Editor and Chief Technology Officer implementing the back office software.

Over the years I have programmed in many, many languages including assembly, Cobol, Fortran, RPG, PL/I, C, C++, Java, C#, PHP, Java Script and Python. For the last 10 years I have been programming mostly C#, PHP, Java Script and Python.

At one time, I was considered to be an expert on IBM's mainframe operating systems and in assembler. I don't consider myself an expert at anything any more just a very productive programmer that uses the appropriate language for the task at hand.

My intention is to chronicle my journey learning PHP, Java Script and Python.

PHP is much maligned this day while Python is widely loved language. I am not sure I understand why the love of Python. Python does have a very rich set of libraries to draw on; but as a programming language it feels like a very unsophisticated language developed by a programmer who just had an urge to create his own programming language.

Much is said about Python being more "natural language" like: easier to read and learn. HUH? I find it unsophisticated and clumsy.

But each to their own!

Saying Goodbye to Open Vistas Networking

Submitted by vsample on Sat, 10/14/2023 - 05:58

Today is the last day that I will have websites on the Open Vistas Networking server. As noted before, we were given 2 weeks (until October 15, 2023) to migrate all websites off the server.

It has been a hectic time. I found a new managed server web hosting service that will allow me unlimited websites, unlimited databases and unlimited storage. I have been able to replicate the website for our main business website on the new server. It was not without drama!

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Website Migration Headaches and Lost Sleep

Submitted by vsample on Mon, 10/09/2023 - 08:44

I live in a small town in Montana. For the last 10 years I have been creating and maintaining websites on a server owned/operated by a local resident. We have been good friends all that time and he allowed me great freedom on his server.

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website migration

migration

migration issues

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Adobe Acrobat Reader Snapshot Tool

Submitted by vsample on Thu, 09/28/2023 - 06:12

I LOVE the Adobe Acrobat Reader Snapshot Tool! I use that tool all the time. I maintain a number of websites and while posting the actual pdf is appropriate for many things, it is not always what I need to do.

If someone sends me an image as a PDF and I need to include it in a page, I need to extract the image. The Adobe snapshot tool usually works pretty well; but sometimes I need to extract text from an image embedded in a PDF.

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Drupal New Releases

Submitted by vsample on Tue, 08/29/2023 - 05:22

Seven or Eight years after I retired, I joined a local community service organization. The organization holds an annual "Fall Fest" event that had grown from a single day event in a small park featuring 2 vendors and a local musician playing music to a 3 day event featuring over 100 vendors and bands from all over the Northwest (and somtimes Nashville or Austin).

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JavaScript Promises

Submitted by vsample on Thu, 08/24/2023 - 05:35

I have been working on a newspaper appliction where the subscriber can have multiple addresses. In particular, a snow-bird subscription allows the subscriber to have multiple addresses and choose which address is the "active" printed edition deliver address.

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