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.

Day Three: We arose at 6:00 to get out to our first gig. This gig consisted of three workshops and a show, which was exhausting, however, we did get a very good picture out of it! After those shows, we ate lunch at the school and drove cross town to another show where we did yet another show and workshop. Finally, we rented skis on the way home. It was a very busy day.

Day Four: We slept. We skiied. We ate a "Mountain of Love" (Secret VQ recipe)

In other news, a friend pointed out that my photo has poped up again on gizmodo. Of course I guess since these things just get into the wild there is no stopping them. Oh well, at least you all know the truth!

That's the news, the next day or two we will be taking it easy: Bumming around town, hiking up by the NOAA, indoor rock climbing, and performing traditional VQ traditions. Our final show is in a coffee shop on Friday, so some good resting to be had before that!

Not sure if today is actually day two, maybe three? I can't tell yet. My day got off to a great, albeit still surreal start. I checked my email this morning to find that the only email I had was from a Thai college reporter who wanted copies of my Gender Neutral Housing photos. Very odd. But hey, now I can say that I've been published internationally.

Carrying on from where I left off yesterday, we got to the tour house and I was once again stunned. It is amazing (see pictures). Just a great place to spend tour. From the stories I hear it sounds like I've been spoiled silly on tour houses. So far no one has gotten sick from the altitude (Just over a mile, so not bad). I am however somewhat sick with some kind of allergies or sinus infection, but the show must go on!

Last night, we went into Boulder to "Illegal Pete's", for burritos. They were ok, but the steak was no Chipolte (Although they have those here!). After that we went to the most quaint thing I've ever seen. It was a teahouse that was shipped over from Tajikistan. In a sister city trade, Boulder got this tea house in exchange for an internet cafe. It was just amazing to see (no pictures, Sorry!)

We finally made it home and rehearsed for our corperate show and workshop today at Tier 3 communications which turned out to be a very...interesting experience. It was a lot of fun to get to watch someone that wasn't us perform. Plus a bunch of lawyers doing improv is just hilarious.

We also went and found another geocache on top of a nice vista today and I cooked some hamburgers and we hung out tonight. REALLY long day tomorrow with lots of shows!

Well it's hard to explain the past 24 hours. It has all kind of been some type of surreal, absurd theater performance. New Haven suddenly decided to warm up to me...literally. The weather was great, sunny and 60+. It was also a nice treat to enjoy the town without my normal college routine. I took part of the VQ geocaching, which was great. And we all had lunch and dinner together. Dinner was a fiasco though. This is about where things got extremely weird...

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Since I know that everyone likes to stay up-to-date on my blog, I thought I'd take a second to alert you to RSS Feeds. If you don't know what an RSS feed is, it's basically a very lightweight summary of various sites, like a news ticker. It's extremely versatile, in fact, you can get headlines right in Outlook, on your sidebar in Vista, and probably somewhere on Macs as well. This way, you can see if there's a new post or photo without ever checking my site.

I have been wondering for awhile how to put RSS feeds into the sidebar on Vista. When you hit the configure button on the RSS widget, it doesn't show up there. Here's how to fix it:

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1. Open Internet Explorer

2a. Visit: http://www.charliecroom.com/gallery/index.php?x=rss
On that page, you should see a button up top that says add to my feeds. Click it!

2b. Visit: http://charliecroom.com/index.php?tempskin=_rss2 and do the same thing!

3. Now in your sidebar you can configure it to show headlines from my blogs! (Add the widget multiple times to get feeds from multiple sources, or you can "manage your feeds" and put them in a common folder)

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If you use firefox, you can visit the above sites and it will present you with a similar bar in yellow asking if you'd like to add it. You can use the drop-down menu and add it to various applications including Outlook.

Of course you can always just stop by the site whenever you like! It's always fun to see the rotating headers, and it's always fun to show the photoblog to friends Pretty pictures! Back to studying for me now, Spring Break....so....close...