Midway early, Oracle is playing nice

I got so caught up coding yesterday afternoon, I completely forgot to blog! The method described in "Life after Coffee" worked.. eventually. I was having trouble referencing the id in the array returned from the database. No idea why.. so I looped out all vars, and there was the ID! Woot! I was so excited I ploughed ahead until someone said "Why are you still at work? It's almost 6.30pm".
Finishing up that tool today, I see light at the end of the tunnel, I think we might just be able to complete it all before April! OK.. maybe that's going too far as I can't speak for design or front-end. :D
For my own future reference about getting back the ID:

if($db->query("select DBname.SequenceName.currval from dual")){
if ($got_id=$db->fetch()) {
//I know this next part is stupid long,
// but for some reason when I do "as the_id"
// $got_id['the_id'] doesn't work
//It also doesn't work with $got_id[0].. No idea why..
foreach ($got_id as $contents) {
$title_id=$contents;
// echo "The ID: $contents?\n";
}
}
}

Hopefully I can look up this post when I forget how to do this again. Sadly my blog has in the past been useful for this ;)

Onto things Stargate (and part of the reason I worked late) My boss got a call in the morning saying that for some reason Midway was on iTunes. That isn't something our team takes care of anymore, so he passed on the message to the proper people, but knowing that I'd be mighty unimpressed if he didn't tell me.. told me. YAY! I rushed into iTunes, nabbed me a copy before it got taken down. I watched it (while working) in the morning.. but wasn't as productive as I should have been. Ooops.. (hence the late working). I won't say anything about Midway until next week, so I can share in the fun with everyone!

I was reading some forums later in the day, and I noticed three posts about "who's fault it was". Since I'm not directly involved, I can't say who was at fault, but I'd like to clarify the process. Far in advance of an episode being posted to iTunes and to Amazon unBox, we (or SciFi.. not sure if the files ever come here) sends the raw files to an encoding company. They produce the proper encoded versions of the episode one each for iTunes and for unBox. People here make up a spreadsheet with all the "metadata" that each require (different sets of data for each). This data includes synopsis, air date, release date, release order etc. The spreadsheet is sent onto iTunes and unBox, along with the encoded episodes. It all gets incorporated into their automated systems, and everything is set to go.
A mistake at the encoding company meant that the episodes were ordered by their production number, and not by their air number. This is how episode 4 ended up being sent in place of the first episode. The spreadsheet was not read correctly, and the wrong column was taken for air order. I'm not sure what happened this time, but I assume that the air date was set wrong in either the spreadsheet, or when it was entered into the systems at their end. Since it only happened on iTunes, I assume the spreadsheet was correct, and something happened either at the encoding company, or at apple. There has been problems in the past with things going up on the wrong dates, not just with TV Shows, but with Movies.
To sum up, I don't know who was at fault this time, but saying things like "someone should get fired for all these mistakes" is quite annoying, then speculating about a process most people know nothing about is even more annoying. Reviewing the process to try and avoid errors in the future is what's probably going to happen.

In answer to a comment:
Elyse.. I finally fixed that bug where it wasn't showing image sizes on the admin site for the content person (I'll just call her Nancy from now on) when the images weren't small and big for the stills page. Woot! Happened to find another bug further down in the same set!
There are also Extra videos each for David Hewlett, Joe Flanigan, Amanda Tapping and Jewel Staite. Should be a new one appearing each week until end of season.

Last week's poll:
Do you think Ava Dixon will be a threat in the future?
Affirmative. - 37% - 1307
Negatory. - 40% - 1412
I don't know. - 23% - 835
Total: 3554

This week I just couldn't think of anything for a poll.. I'd love some idea's about what you all think? (Sadly no ship/slash ideas.. something legal might approve only):D


Dre, Steger and I enjoying Magic Mountain on Sunday (we're at the bottom)


Wonder Woman, AKA Steger at Magic Mountain


DH might pull a muscle :S