Changing history

by on August 11, 2014

Let’s look at a small sample from the table where I currently track changes. The 2 pages listed here are for Romanian Air Mails from 1961. As of today, those are pages 539 & 540 of the Romanian stamp album, but as other pages are inserted, these numbers will necessarily changes. The columns are as […]

WordPress and page templates

by on July 28, 2014

In the WordPress universe there exist page templates – and different templates load under different circumstances. This was how I generated Table of Content pages and album pages inside of the WordPress site. Let’s start with a template for an empty page: In order to generate a table of contents, we’re going to make some […]

Accessing album pages

by on July 28, 2014

When I first started working on the stamp collection web site, pages were accessed through a php script that read HTTP GET variables and generated the album page based on the content of those variables. Example: kevinsstampalbum.com/StampAlbum.php?CountryCode=RO&PageID=477 As I started getting occasional questions about some of the pages, I thought it might be interesting to […]

Perforations and normal forms

by on July 25, 2014

The process of normalizing data necessarily includes some discussion of the concept of “atomicity.” An item of data is considered “atomic” if it cannot be decomposed into smaller pieces of meaningful data. But this concept is a bit fluid, since the achievement of atomicity changes with respect to how the data is actually used. Here’s an […]

Easy buttons

by on July 25, 2014

What I really need is that “easy button” or maybe some pixie dust, but the world doesn’t work that way. So let’s start with where I am and what changes are already started. The stamp collecting site was inspired by Jim’s Stamp Album, and originally contained stamps from Israel only. In the early days, the […]

Extreme programming

by on July 25, 2014

So let’s start by talking about extreme programming (XP). As I understand it, one of the major components of XP is “relentless refactoring.” My approach to solving problems has always been the same: First, break big problems into increasingly smaller problems Second, solve the small problems one at a time My own term for this was […]

I’m revising my stamp collection site…again

by on July 25, 2014

I’ve been using a modified WordPress theme and a lot of php hacks into the WordPress database to maintain my online stamp collection at kevinsstampalbum.com. However, I’ve decided to update the site, remove all the WordPress stuff, and make the site a single-page web application. And I’ve decided to document the process here. So hopefully […]