Chaos Magnet

Back to the hospital

Ferret's back in the hospital. Yesterday we were on our way to pick them up for the weekend -- well, Sarah and Marilyn were on their way, I'm just too swamped -- and he spiked a fever of 104.3, with a pain in his side. Kathy called an ambulance and Sarah picked up the kids and headed to the hospital. They got the fever down, but they're doing tests to figure out what the pain is. The kids are here with us. Here's hoping they're right about him being out of the hospital in 3-4 days.

Disney blocks Fahrenheit 9/11 distribution

This is kind of a difficult one for me to take sides on. I don't like Michael Moore, because I feel like he's an opportunist who'll stir up trouble wherever he can.

On the other hand, I hate Bush more.

Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, about the censorship that took place after the terrorist attacks, is clearly not going to be a pro-Bush piece. It's also the winner of the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Apparently that's not enough to avoid Disney from prohibiting Miramax from distributing the film.

Disney says it would violate campaign finance laws. Moore says it would anger Florida Governor Jeb Bush and endanger Disney's tax breaks.

We'll see how it plays out.

Tips for concentration

My doctor won't prescribe me anything for Adult ADD unless I get tested, but he can't tell me what I need to do to get tested. That's OK, I don't really want to take meds for it anyway, I just want to concentrate better. Especially when I'm trying to get started on a book, like I am now.

Monsanto sues over fugitive seeds

Chemical giant Monsanto has spent years developing "Roundup-Ready Grain" -- specifically canola seeds that aren't killed by herbicide -- and charges farmers $15 an acre roualties to plant it. They also require farmers to buy new seed every year, rather than simply saving seeds from the previous year's crop. But when some of these seeds blew on to Percy Schmeiser's farm in Canada, Monsanto sued Schmeiser over it. The Canada Supreme Court ruled for Monsanto in that they said Schmeiser couldn't use the seeds, but they said that Schmeiser did not have to pay hundreds of dollars in Monsanto's court costs.

Time travelling

Here's a sobering thought. Every time you look up at the stars you are, in a sense, looking back in time. After all, if a star is 100,000 light years away, you're seeing it as it was 100,000 years ago. Now the Planck mission aims to measure "first light" or the oldest radiation in the universe.

Panda phone

I'm a big fan of the outrageous Irish chat show host Graham Norton, and I've really missed Doggy Phone, a speaker phone that basically talks for the person on the other end of the line. Now you can buy a Panda Phone for your cell phone! Wish I could get this for my regular phone.

Oh, and Graham is coming to the US! Let's hope Comedy Central doesn't tone him down any. I mean, we're talking about a guy who once featured a guy who played a fabric piano with his ... um ... well, let's just say nobody would be talking about Janet Jackson anymore.

Schizophrenia -- more common than you think?

Phillip K. Dick was always terrified that he suffered from schizophrenia, which alters your perception. If you're not familiar, it's not the same as Multiple Personality Disorder (or Dissociative Identity Disorder) but rather a medical disorder in which you experience things that aren't there (such as seeing, hearing, or even feeling things) or believing things that aren't real, most commonly of the paranoid variety, such as thinking everyone can hear or see their thoughts, or that there is a vast conspiracy against them. Yesterday someone whose sister was just diagnosed posted to Slashdot asking about Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions? and the ensuing discussion is absolutely fascinating. I never read Slashdot comments -- until now. Schizophrenia is exacerbated by isolation and lonliness, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised at how many Slashdot readers -- probably more isolated by choice of profession than the average -- admit to suffering from the disorder.

I'm not saying that nerds in general or Slashdot readers in particular are crazy. Please don't generalize my comments.

But at the risk of sounding like I, myself, need to be evaluated, let me ask a Phillip K. Dick-esque question:

How do you define reality?

Prayers needed

Diana Jones is a wonderful person and an aquaintance of mine. Her son, Rick, was shot in the chest by an irate driver last night at about 10:30pm. The bullet bounced off his rib, nicked his liver, and lodged near his diaphragm. He's currently hospitalized in critical condition and could use all the prayers he can get. Here's the details, from First Coast News. (In this case, I hope they'll forgive me for copying and pasting.)

CLAY COUNTY, FL -- Police are looking for the person who shot a man in the chest while his wife and teenage daughter were in the car.

Friday night at 10:00pm, a man was shot at the intersection of Brannen Field Road and Old Jennings Road in Middleburg. The victim was in the passenger side of his pick-up riding with his wife and daughter.

Investigators say the victim got out of the car and exchanged words with the suspect. That's when the suspect pulled out a gun and shot him in the chest.

The victim's wife drove them one mile up the road to a gas station on Blanding Boulevard. He was airlifted to Shands with critical injuries. Investigators tell First Coast News he is awake and giving them information about the suspect.

The suspect is described as a white male with a medium build. He was wearing a baseball hat and white t-shirt at the time of the shooting. He was driving a light colored, possibly beige or off-white, four-door sedan.

Investigators believe the suspect's car has front end damage on the left side, possibly a broken headlight. The suspect hit another car as he tried to flee the scene.

Investigators say two men driving a Dodge Ram Pick-up may have inadvertently seen the shooting. The Sheriff's Office would like to hear from them (904-264-6512).

You can also call our partner, First Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.

Cold Turkey

I guess that being in your 80s gives you the perspective to see what the rest of us would see if we ever slowed down enough to pay attention. And being a famous author gives you some license to say it out loud. Kurt Vonnegut is both, and proves it with Cold Turkey, a piece about peace, kindness, power, addiction, and fossil fuels. Interesting.

Walking the tightrope

It's okay to find yourself out of balance at times. What's not okay is watching a year go by without making the kind of significant life changes that will bring you a greater sense of balance.

Just came across this thought in an excerpt from Walking the Tightrope: Solutions for Achieving Life Balance Without a Net. Anybody who knows me can tell you that I've been out of balance for many years now. (Note I said "out of balance" and not "unbalanced". That's another conversation. :) ) I'm trying very hard to take those life-changing steps, but it's tough. Still don't have the house sold, even though major, major, major deadlines are about to smack me in the face.

I frequently achieve seemingly super-human tasks at work, but getting my life together seems to be a challenge I'm constantly just a hair shy of conquering.

I shouldn't complain, I suppose. Lately I have made some great strides. who knows, I might even figure out how to pull this off.

Six Apart modifies MT 3.0 license

Via tima thinking outloud >Tima Out Loud, Six Apart has made some changes to the licenses that were such a controversy. First, they've changed the personal license from 3 authors and 5 blogs to 5 and 5, with the ability to purchase more of each for $9.95 each. Also, a "blog" is defined as a site, as opposed to a subsite, so most of the people who were pissed off that they would now have to pay actually still qualify for the free version.

The making of MetroSphere, Part 30: Overcome cross-site scripting limitations

Now on developerWorks -- The making of MetroSphere, Part 30: Overcome cross-site scripting limitations:

Unfortunately, not everyone on the Internet has good intentions. To prevent users from entering malicious code into submitted material, the designers of WebSphere Portal disabled the ability to submit HTML to the Portal through a Web form. This article explains how you can selectively allow HTML in user-submitted material.

Mozilla and the potential for interaction

Ever heard of XUL? It's a new way of building web applications in Mozilla (and the newer versions of Netscape). Kind of like a "super" form, with all kinds of interactivity available. I still haven't had time to fool around with it, despite a brief interlude when it looked like I might have to write a tutorial on it, but check out the Mozilla Amazon Browser, a very cool look at what you can do with it. This link is via Jono Bacon's Mozilla and the potential for interaction, which is itself an interesting read, considering the idea of porting applications such as OpenOffice to XUL.

Cool.

The hubbub over MT 3.0

OK, so Six Apart releases Movable Type 3.0. They remove the restriction preventing people from charging money to support it, and they still provide a free version. So what's the complaining about? Apparently people are ticked that the free version only allows 1 author and 3 weblogs. The "Personal" version allows 3 authors and 5 blogs, and costs (right now) $70.

OK, folks, a "personal" blog is, well, YOU. It's not you hosting things for your friends. It's YOU. If you want twenty seven different blogs, then fine, create them as categories and do different templates. If you want to use the free version to enable your friends to host their blogs on your server, fine, just install multiple copies of the free version. Its not that big of a deal. These people have put a lot of work into their product, they deserve compensation.

Get over it.

Why I like XInclude

XInclude, designed to make it easier to include part of one XMl document into another, has been a neglected specification for a long time. Now Bob DuCharme gives a good example of how it can be useful with Transclude with XInclude (and XPointer!). It still doesn't address the security issues, but OK, there you are.

Accessible JavaScript popups

If you're reading this blog from top to bottom, by now you've discovered that I'm doing a little bookmark housekeeping, saving some of my bookmarks for posterity (and future reference). Of course, from my perspective, this is the first of them, so I'll apologize in advance for me and in retrospect to you for all of them. :)

I'm one of those people who doesn't believe in memorizing anything that can be looked up. It's much more important to know that something can be done than how it's done. You can always look up the latter. One thing I am always having to look up is how to open a popup window from the browser, and Accessible Pop-up Links from A List Apart is a great tutorial. A word of warning, though: the defaults string needs to be all one line for IE.

California bans insecure voting machines

California's Secretary of State has banned the insecure e-voting machines that Diebold tinkered with after certification for the last election. California now requires that voters have the option to vote on paper, and has required a paper trail for the e-voting machines. A giant step forward! Time to lobby the other 49 Secretaries of State, perhaps?

Developing Movable Type Plug-ins

I've been thrilled with Movable Type, and I love the fact that people can add their own plug-ins. Now I've found Developing Movable Type Plug-ins, which looks like a pretty decent tutorial. One of these days I'll have time to try it out.

DOM and PHP

Now in the XML Reference Guide over at : DOM and PHP

PHP has support for XML built in, but as far as production code, it's limited to SAX. You can install the DomDocument module, but you do, of course, have to have access to the actual server in order to use it. Fortunately, for those of you who, like me, use an external web server and don't have that kind of control, there's a simple way to get Document Object Model functionality. ...