Chaos Magnet

A net disaster

Sean McGrath points out NetDisaster. I wish I could use this as a screensaver.

Technorati tags: Fun | Humor | Humour | NetDisaster | Fish

How to get on Oprah

Not that I want to be booked on Oprah, mind you, I just thought that Top 10 Tips for Getting Booked on Oprah was an interesting look at how the whole process works.

[NOTE: Please remember that I have nothing to do with the Oprah show, or Oprah herself. I have just deleted several comments that included very personal stories and phone numbers and addresses. Because I can't tell whether the people at those phone numbers and addresses actually posted them or whether they were posted by scumballs playing tricks I've opted to delete them because I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that anyone involved with Oprah will ever read this page -- if I'm wrong about that, please let me know -- and the last thing I want to do is participate in someone's private information being spread across the internet for no reason. If you really do want to get on Oprah, please read the article and follow its instructions.]

Technorati tags: Oprah | talk shows | publicity

Should Bill Gates step down?

Here's an interesting thought: Bill Gates Must Go from Keep Trying (via Orbit Now!).

Opening a new window for comment links

OK, so today is my "tinkering" day. I finally got around to adding the "No Follow" functionality Moveable Type provides to help thwart comment spammers. (For those unfamiliar, it doesn't stop the spammers, it just eliminates any benefit they get by telling search engines not to up their rank just because I'm inadvertantly linking to them.)

What the plugin does is analyze every link in comments and trackback pings and add "rel='nofollow'" to them. I've taken it a step further and added "target='_blank'" so that the user also gets a new window when they click comment links, which has been bugging me since I installed MT.

So how does it work? Well, in nofollow.pl, add the following line to the nofollowfy() function:

        if ($rel) {
            $rel =~ s/^(rel\s*=\s*['"]?)/$1nofollow /i;
        } else {
            $rel = 'rel="nofollow"';
        }
        $rel = $rel.' target="_blank"';
        @attr = grep { !/^rel\s*=/i } @attr;
        '<a ' . (join ' ', @attr) . ' ' . $rel . '>';

The rest of the plugin does all the work, so it's that simple.

Technorati tags: MT | MT Plugins | Moveable Type | nofollow | Web Development

Feedback on the new design

OK, I can't stand it anymore. I've been staring at the same style on this blog for something like a couple of years now and I absolutely have to change it. I've put together a variation on one of the stock MT styles, here, which I guess will work. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no artistic talent and I can't afford to pay somebody to help me. And I've got a gazillion things that need to go on this page, so that makes it worse.

So ... if you have a moment, please check out the new design and let me know what you think. Too busy? Too plain? Are the links dark enough to read? Any suggestions...?

(I know some of the images are funky; that's because they're not the actual images, and they've been forced to the actual size they'll be when it's live.)

Also, please let me know if you see any browser weirdness. I've fixed the IE width problem -- I'll write about that later -- but if you see anything else going on, please let me know by dropping a comment.

Thanks, all!

Thanks for the prayers!

I said it in a comment, but I just wanted to come out here and thank everybody who's been holding good thoughts for my wife's dad, Ray. He's still got pneumonia, and he's not out of the woods yet, but he's been taken out of isolation and he's doing much better.

Thank you so much!

Please pray for Ray

Sarah's dad has been ill since before Thanksgiving, and we just received word that he's been moved from the nursing home part of the VA to the hospital because he has pneumonia. We're on our way over there now. Please pray for him.

Thank you.

Technorati tag: Personal

CSS hacks

I don't have time to write it up right now, but Top 2 IE CSS bugs confronted (hacks ensue) - The CSS Weblog - css.weblogsinc.com links to a couple of very good hacks to get around CSS problems in IE. (Yes, that means that I WILL get around to fixing that annoying overlap IE users see on this page.)

Nifty Corners: rounded corners without images

Here's a cool technique for creating rounded corners using only CSS and no images. Gotta get this page revamped...

How to write a best selling fantasy novel

A while back, I wrote about Why Star Wars works, making the case that it's based on archetypical storytelling. Taken too far, however, you find find yourself falling into cliche. I'm almost embarrased to read the hilarious How to write a best selling fantasy novel. Almost.

The new Doctor Who

I've been hearingthat the BBC is bringing back Doctor Who since ... oh ... right after they cancelled it, I think. But no, this time they really are, and Warren Ellis has seen it. Apparently it's been released, intentionally or not, on the P2P networks, though I don't intend to grab it from there, seeing as how I finally have this machine working properly. SciFi didn't pick it up, apparently, but hopefully BBC America will. And if they don't, hey, there's always PBS, right? Man, wouldn't THAT be a trip; watching Dr. Who on PBS. They could probably drag quite a few of us into pledge week via memory lane that way ...

Technorati Tags: Dr. Who | Doctor Who | Science Fiction

The dangers of only getting part of the story

Here's an interesting fact, culled from How the Mafia Works:

In the early 1900s, organized crime had so thoroughly infiltrated Sicilian life that it was virtually impossible to avoid contact with the Mafia. Dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia using harsh, often brutal methods. But when U.S. troops occupied Sicily during World War II, they mistook the many jailed criminals for political prisoners and not only set them free, but also appointed many of them as mayors and police chiefs. Before long, the Mafia had a firm grasp on Italy's Christian Democrat party.

Technorati tags: Mafia | Crime | Italy

How to do a low-level format

I am now the proud user of a Windows 2000/Linux dual boot system. Not that it was easy, mind you. At one point my 160 Gig drive was reporting that it had two partitions: 82 Gig and 534 Gig. Obviously that was wrong. So Support told me I'd need to do a "low level format" but of course I had no idea how to do that.

So, they told me I needed to download a debug program. I did, then I used it to create a floppy that I could use to boot the machine. Just using fdisk (which was on the floppy, I guess) didn't work, so I had to run the following script:

A:\>debug <enter>
-F 200 L1000 0 <enter>
-A CS:100 <enter>
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 <enter>
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 <enter>
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 <enter>
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 <enter>
(80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 )
xxxx:010C INT 13 <enter>
xxxx:010E INT 20 <enter>
xxxx:0110 <enter>
-g <enter>
Program terminated normally
-q<enter>

NOTE that I have no idea whether this script is particular to the Dell Precision 370 on which I was running it or whether that's the normal way to "overwrite the Master Boot Record with zeros", which is what support tells me that script does.

Definitely a "use at your own risk" kind of thing. Even if it works, the results are a completely blank hard drive. (Well, as far as the OS is concerned.)

More stock photos

This one's only a buck a piece for royalty-free web usage: istockphoto.com. Seems like good stuff there. A little closer to the collections you buy than stock.xchng, but that makes sense. Also, not quite as friendly.

Technorati tag: photography

Cutting Edge Physics Cutting Edge Physics for Us All

Oh, what I wouldn't give to have time to go to Huntsville for the "Physics for the Third Millennium: II" conference at the beginning of April.

Today's Hubble image

I've actually run out of room on this page for new stuff, no matter how fun I think it is. Like Today's Hubble Image:

I have no idea what you're seeing when you look at it; it changes periodically. But at least I've got it here for when I figure out where to put it. Here's the code, as described by HubbleSite:

<a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/"><img src=
"http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/latest_thumb.php" width="80" height="80" alt="Latest News from HubbleSite" border="0" /></a>

Technorati tag: Hubble | space

Modern-day slavery begins to get noticed

I'm glad to see that the issue of modern-day slavery is beginning to get addressed. Tomorrow survivor Beatrice Fernando testifies at a hearing on "Combating
Human Trafficking", being held by the House International
Relations Committee at 11 a.m.

Technorati tag: slavery

Bork, bork, bork!

OK, one more language-related post. I just couldn't let this go. Google is available in dozens of languages. In fact, if they don't have your language, you can volunteer as a translator, and once you've translated enough of the page, they'll add it. Apparently someone has translated Google into "Bork, bork, bork!", which as far as I can tell is the language spoken by the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show.

Hehehehe.....

Technorati tag: humor | google | muppets

Automatic translation: the code

Improbulus posted the code for auto-translating Webpages/blogs, and it's really, really easy. She posted a Javascript version that works for anything and a non-Javascript version for Blogger. Here's the non-Javascript version for the Movable Type Individual Entry Archive template, which uses the $MTEntryPermalink variable:

<div style="border-style:none; font-size: 1; text-align: center; margin: 10px;">
<!--
//By Improbulus, http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/
//Movable Type version by Nick Chase, http://www.nicholaschase.com
//licensed under Creative Commons License
//http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
//with thanks to redryder52, http://truckspy.blogspot.com/ -->

<!-- German starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cde&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">Deutsche</a> | 

<!-- German ends here -->

<!-- Spanish starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Ces&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank"></b>Español</a> | 

<!-- Spanish ends here -->

<!-- French starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cfr&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">Français</a> | 

<!-- French ends here -->

<!-- Italian starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cit&hl=it&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">Italiano</a> | 

<!-- Italian ends here -->

<!-- Portuguese starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cpt&hl=pt&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">Português</a> | 

<!-- Portuguese ends here -->

<!-- Japanese starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cja&hl=ja&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">日本語</a> | 

<!-- Japanese ends here -->

<!-- Korean starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Cko&hl=ko&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">한국어</a> | 

<!-- Korean ends here -->

<!-- Chinese starts here -->

<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&langpair=en%7Czh-CN&hl=zh&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools" target="_blank">汉语</a>

<!-- Chinese ends here -->

</div>

Technorati tag: language

Supreme Court lets Jose Padilla rot

Let's see, you live in America, and you're an American citizen, so you think that things are ultimately fair. Oh, you're not naive, you know that there are people who are not entirely fair, or maybe some that are corrupt, or maybe some that don't have the public's best interest at heart. Maybe there are even some that will ignore your fundamental rights as an American. You might find yourself wronfully imprisoned. But it's OK, because ultimately, someone, somewhere, will set it right, even if your case has to go to the Supreme Court.

Guess what. Your mother was right.

Sometimes life just isn't fair.

Take Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber". (Please.) He's been sitting in solitary confinement for more than two years. Now, I'm not saying he's innocent. He might be guilty as hell. But he's been sitting in prison for all this time WITHOUT BEING CHARGED WITH ANYTHING.

Twice now, courts have ruled that he should either be charged or released. Reasonable, no? But he's still sitting in jail with no charges. And now the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case (via Building a Pyramid).

Scary, scary stuff.

"Automatic" translation of blog posts

Now here's a fun idea. The brain behind "A Consuming Experience", who unfortunatly doesn't have a name anywhere obvious, so I can't refer to it has figured out how to do "Automatic" translation of blog posts. Something to think about...

[Update: That would be a lady named "Improbulus", as I've since been chided. :) ]

Technorati tag: language

Speaking of Chinese

Here's a very thorough listing of resources for Learning Chinese ...

Technorati tag: Chinese / language

Time to learn Chinese

I've been thinking for a while -- especially after being reminded by a post of Bruce Sterling's -- that soon, if it hasn't happened already, there will be more Chinese speakers online than English speakers. (Which might explain all the Chinese-language spam I keep getting.) Scott Nance brings up the point again in a commentary on the rising Chinese juggernaught. He also reminds us of all the Chinese slang in Firefly, which as you know I loved. Interesting, I was just re-watching it this weekend, so I wish that I'd had Scott's pointer to the Firefly Chinese Pinyinary beforehand. It translates all of the Chinese in the series, which is pretty cool.

But seriously, I need to find me a good Chinese audio course for the car. I took German in high school and Russian in college, but I don't remember much of either. I've done the audio-tape route for Spanish more recently, and if I go to Mexico I'm probably at the level that I won't think everyone around me is plotting against me, but that's about it.

But if I'm going to stay competitive in this market, I suspect Chinese is the way to go...

Technorati tag: Chinese / language / future

The Suffolk Punch

Her'es something interesting:

Only 275 Suffolk Punches remain throughout the world, making them rarer than the giant panda. The Suffolk horse, most commonly known as the Suffolk punch, is the oldest and purest of the British heavy breeds, with records of its breeding dating back to 1506. All Suffolk Punches alive today are descended from a stallion – Thomas Crisp’s horse if Ufford foaled in 1768.

Technorati tag: horses

Webmaster's Color Lab

Ever been building a web page and wishing you didn't have to do the old trial-and-error in guessing color values? OK, maybe that's just me, but the VisiBone Webmaster's Color Lab not only gives you the hex values for the 216 "browser-safe" colors, but also enables you to choose several and see not only how they look next to each other, but also how text of each colorshows up on each of the other colors you've chosen. Very handy.

Technorati tags: html / css / webDevelopment / color

Free quality stock photos

I have no artistic talent. I freely admit that. (Heck, just looking at this site should tell you that.) So I'm thrilled to find Stock.xchng, which offers free stock photos. And quality ones, too. I was a little skeptical, at first, thinking that they were maybe pirated photo collections, but they're not. It's a community of photographers sharing their photos, and each photo has to be reviewed before posting, so there's no crap. Very nice.

When the chips are down ...

... the buffalo is empty.

Words to live by.

Yahoo releases web services API

Check it out over on the InformIT blog...