Note: This page is supplied for historical purposes and is not updated. Please browse my current home page http://kgraff.net/ for current material.
Thank you for stopping by my site. If you are looking for a Catherine, Kathleen, Kim, or Katie Graff (or Graf), it is probably someone else. I have a minimum of graphics, so this page should load quickly. Please feel free to choose your own background color and text font and color in your browser preferences. My aim is to make it easy to get to the information rather than look fancy. To test your web page for accessibility, try
Bobby.
My UW Milwaukee home page has information about projects I worked on for UW System. Toward the end of October 2002 I set up a dynamic web page generated by Perl scripts using the CGI module. It includes examples and you can view the source. In September 2002 I began putting up pictures on photo.net, founded by Philip Greenspun. Try this link for some of my Milwaukee pictures. More about Ling Ling, the cat helping me take the photograph above. My somewhat tongue-in-cheek frames page is still available. Seriously, I am looking for freelance work, so contact me if you are interested.
Check out what I am selling on eBay.
Sally M. Maddick is running for 4th District Alderman in Milwaukee. She has been a resident and community activist in the fourth district (Merrill Park and Concordia neighborhoods) for over 28 years. Local government is important. The primary election is February 17, 2004. Vote!
Early in 2002 I started working with Suzanne Rosenblatt, a long time client, on her family artsite. Her husband Adolph Rosenblatt, is an emeritus professor at UW-Milwaukee and a noted sculptor. Suzanne is a talented visual artist, writer, and performance artist and their children are also prolific artists.
As we added material, the site became multi-dimensional. For instance for Adolph's Neve Shalom We Are All Making Art sculpture, you can view photos of the finished work, click a link to learn more about school where it is on permanent display, read the story of how it was made in Suzanne's journals, and see photos Suzanne took of Adolph working with the models.
What started out as an on-line portfolio has become the story of the importance of art in a close-knit family.
During 2001 I worked with Pam Kai Tollefson re-designing her web site. The goal was to make the site reflect her talent and philosophy of design while providing contact information and promoting her business, apprentice program, and workshops.
Review: Critical appraisals of approaches for predictive designs in anticancer drugs, C. T. Gnewuch and G. Sosnovsky, Cell. Mol. Life. Sci. 59 (2002) 959-1023. (Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, CH) [view abstract]
BBEdit is great for editing a variety of source codes, but I have also used it extensively to set up bulletin board menus, recover text from damaged files, and clean up text files to import into databases. It has been a lifesaver for cleaning out nasty hidden characters. Export your data as a delimited or fixed length text file then use the Zap Gremlins feature to clean it up before you import the data back. BBEdit does grep search and replace too plus it includes a web-safe color swatch from
VisiBone. (Check out picking colors on-line by using Bob Stein's
Webmaster's Color Laboratory.)
Download Perl Now! While you are at it, download and have fun with Perl! BBEdit has been MacPerl-friendly for some time, for System 9 and earlier. Perl is an interpreted language that has very powerful text processing capabilities and runs on almost any computer OS. I have built servers to relay large quantities of data entirely in Perl.
The standard Macintosh OS X install includes Perl and allows running scripts in the Terminal application. While Perl's online documentation is quite complete, take a look at Picking up Perl too. Next try installing MySQL relational database using the convenient package and directions that Marc Liyanage provides. The BBEdit SQL language module from Runtime Labs provides syntax coloring for Structured Query Language. Once you are familiar with setting up tables and administering them in MySQL, install the Perl DBI module which provides convenient database access. It is available on the MySQL site and from CPAN. To get started, read A Short Guide to DBI by Mark-Jason Dominus. By using a combination of Perl DBI and CGI modules, just turn on Apache Web server and you have a really sweet development system for generating dynamic web pages on your OS X Macintosh.
In April 1999 I installed MKLinux on my PowerMac 6100/66 DOS compatible to get three operating systems on one computer. The 486DX card runs DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1. The 601 PPC processor has a dual boot into MacOS 7.6.1 or MKLinux. Some hints if you want to try something like this:
Alas, after many years of incredibly productive use, the video has gone on this system and the 6100 has been retired. It has been tough managing with just three working computers the past few weeks - sniffle, sniffle... Anyway, the 6100 is now an "organ donor" so if you need parts (including the DOS card, documentation, and all the licensed Windoze 3.1 disks), please contact me at the email address below.
I grew up in Western Pennsylvania. (If you did too and listened to Rege Cordic on KDKA almost every morning (Brick Throw, Bridge Leap, etc.), check out the Olde Frothingslosh page.) I graduated with a BS degree in Chemistry from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and graduated with an MS degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1972. I have been a resident of Wisconsin since 1984, first in Ozaukee County, then in Milwaukee. Although I am a scientist, I have been earning my living by programming and providing computer support for the past several years, from January 1998 through June 2001 at Extendicare Health Services in downtown Milwaukee and from September 2001 to August 2002 by UW Milwaukee at the WATER Institute .
Photo of Milwaukee River from Kilbourne Avenue bridge looking south.
It is with reluctance that I do this, but the amount of spam I receive is getting out of hand. The graphic below contains my email address.
16 February 2004: The address above appears to have stopped working as of February 12, 2004. Please use kgraff [at sign] execpc [dot] com instead.
April 2004: please don't use either of these email addresses. The ISP is randomly blocking email messages, so I can't guarantee what you send will be delivered. Please use this to contact me instead.
If you enjoy a good cup of tea while sitting in front of your computer thinking of yet more wonderful ways to use grep or catching up on the latest news at Slashdot, you can now order from the Upton Tea web site.
A correspondent passed on this slide rule site link during a trip down memory lane about what it was like to be a female Nerd/Geek in the 1960's. Enjoy!
In 50 years, the computer you are using to view this will be landfill, but your trusty slide rule will just be nicely broken in.
Now and again I get crazy and start writing stuff.
Last updated 16 February 2004
Copyright © 1998-2004 Kathy A. Graff. All rights reserved.