Geeking

About 20 minutes ago, I logged in so I can update my WordPress install by Subversion. I see this:

[dollar@cake ~/pxnet_html]$ svn up
U wp-includes/version.php
Fetching external item into ‘wp-content/plugins/akismet’
Updated external to revision 19778.
Updated to revision 6166.


Checking WordPress after that, I see that it is indeed WordPress 2.3, and just in time. I finished ironing out a few kinks here (UPDATE YOUR PLUGINS NOW) and there (Look at the new Plugins interface, now with “Update your plugins now” deliciousity) before I took the leap, and now, it’s official, with a nice green sticker on the WordPress.org homepage, 2.3 is here.

I had my first day of Dell training today. I found out that this contract will be on the rather interesting side, too, since we’ll be dealing with small to medium businesses, generally.

I just hate getting up at such an awful hour of the morning (read: 5 AM!), but if it puts the meat in the basket, I really ought not to complain.

Keeping it short and sweet tonight; take care.

How’s this for kicks?

It looks like the iPhone just went through a price drop (ALREADY), and Jobs is being kind in reimbursing HALF of the overpay price (The old price was $200 higher, remember) in the form of a gift certificate.

I’m still in the “WHY would I buy a six hundred dollar phone?” camp here, even though the phone is now only four hundred dollars, but I’m finding this whole thing to be truly funny.

I’m just waiting for the free suppository add-on to come with the iPhone (as well as the phone being usable on a carrier that isn’t AT&T) before I consider buying it, but I’d still be leery of buying it. It’d provide me with no features worth my time.

I finally caved in.

Since I wanted something else to play on my DS, and I came to the realization that we only live once, I decided to buy the R4 card for the Nintendo DS.

I simply wanted a card that had better compatibility than this Datel Games ‘n Music card I got at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago. Some of the homebrew stuff just does not run on the GnM all that well (DSLinux, for example), and I think it’s because of an artificially imposed bottleneck on the card itself.

So hopefully, I’ll be having some kind of fun with this thing next week.

I’ve noticed lately that whenever I attempt to blog a photo by phone, the post to this blog here fails. It’s getting annoying, despite everything I’ve tried to make it work.

I’ve tried release versions of WordPress. I’ve tried CVS versions. I am trying SVN versions. None of them get the blog posting on the first try, and that’s just totally annoying!
I’m just not sure who to point the blame at, though, because it might be my fault for mostly using CVS and SVN for WordPress, however, I haven’t tried on a non-SVN blog hosted on this domain.

I just wish I had a better way to make sure I could send an image from my Sprint phone and make sure it posts over to this weblog.

I’m also open for suggestions on how to fix my image blogging issue.

As a kid, I’ve had this fascination with languages of the world around me.

I once tried to take basic Spanish and French classes in the same year — I was in third grade. That act alone showed me an appreciation for people who have command of more than one language, because that year showed me how hard it is to learn a language solely by hearing it OR seeing it.

While checking my email accounts (goodness, I have many of them), I stumbled across a link where one can, for Free: Learn English with audio.
Given that English is my native language, I was inclined to toy around with the site, to see just how well it was done.

The home page is essentially bare, save for one Google AdWords box, and the flash object containing the flash cards (no pun intended), which I find to be a very good idea. Nothing says “Learn English” better than a gigantic flash ad for Verizon High Speed FiOS, right?

The Flash box on the page has five labels. Four languages are supported on a path to learn English: Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew. There is a standalone label that gives only the English, with no transliterations or translations of words to English, as well as the aforementioned language labels, whose contents come complete with a transliteration of the way the word sounds, as well as the audible enunciation of the words.

For example, I chose French.
For appliances, I see what we call a Stereo in English:
Stereo, sti’(r)io, chaîne stéréo
The first is the English spelling. The second is a transliteration of how we say it in English, and the last is the (familiar) French way of saying the same object. If I clicked on it, I’d hear the “sti’(r)io” as the enunciation.

It’s a pretty healthy way to teach the basics of words, though I admit, I don’t miss conjugating verbs with these cards (simply because I hated conjugating être in my French classes).

I can see how having a free resource to begin learning English as a Second Language from would be so useful.

[tags]ESL, English as a Second Language, Polyglot, Linguistics, Learn English, Contributors[/tags]

This is more of a joke, an aside, than anything else, but chew on this:

We seem to make an artificial flavor for nearly anything. Even artificial meat flavoring for people who are transitioning over to a vegetarian / vegan lifestyle from actually eating meat. Artificial flavors compose our lives in their own special way, if you look at it like that.

How do you think people would react if they were offered an antifreeze flavored soda?

It has to be done. After all, we have Brussels Sprouts flavored soda, as well as Turkey and Gravy flavored soda, soooo…

[tags]soda, humor, weird, antifreeze, artificially flavored[/tags]

It’s Monday. I feel supremely lazy, with only one thing to do (which is laundry, two loads) today.

I’d like Chipotle for lunch.
I’m being lazy, and not going to get it.

It’s just one of those days, with the weather see-sawing between sorta-clear, and sorta-rainy.
It’s nice to be lazy and get away with it, sometimes.

Oh, and gushi ? I did mention I would post my laptop specs for you, so:
Dell Latitude CPx H500GT, running on Intel® Pentium III at 500 MHz, ATI RAGE Mobility-M1 AGP2X at 1024 x 768 px, 256 MB RAM, 30 GB HD.
Internet access can be done in three ways: Samsung A900m as modem on USB, Xircom Ethernet card + Dialup Modem on Cardbus, and Realtek 802.11g card on Cardbus.

She’s not intended to go fast but she is intended to at least go.

So, when I got paid, I tapped a little into my savings, and burnt off my entertainment budget for the month in a single shot:

I now have an old Dell Latitude CPx laptop at my disposal.

I can finally blog a little more, from more locations, without having to constantly abandon my computer because time’s up. All I’m limited by is where I can connect from at the moment via Ethernet (or by my phone).

This only cost me $200, and can seriously be reused over and over until I manage to break or lose this laptop.

Result: Getting connected often enough to actually download stuff for my personal entertainment, so that I can play offline = Saving money in the long run.

I am seriously happy.

[tags]laptop, internet, tethering, dell[/tags]

Just a quick heads-up here, but I’m being joe-jobbed by some slob who’s decided that he’ll take ‘benjaminkhoo’, add a few letters, and just snow his way across the internet using my domain name.

As a result, I’ve been getting more spam, less mail.

Do keep in mind that if I’ve requested email from your website, or am sending, you’ll be able to tell it’s actually me from a rather obvious method I use for mailing.

I’m curious, since I don’t have that many people to follow on Twitter…

Do any of you use the service with any sort of regularity? I’d like to be able to follow some others while I’m using it, since I actually like the service for what it is, and what it does.

What I would like to do one day soon is to write an indexing script in PHP, but it’s not as simple as I’m making it sound.

Instead of your classic “Here’s what’s in the directory, regurgitated onto your lap for your convenience” setup, I need it to do three special things.

The first one is that it needs to read subdirectories, and present them to users in a list, be it ordered or unordered.
For example, I have three folders: Movies, Wallpaper, Ringers.
The script would sit in the folder where those three folders sit. It would look in each folder, and for each file it found, it would generate a General Content Descriptor file, usable by Sprint phones, and dynamically served on request.
I’m thinking that to generate the proper mimetypes for the GCD, I’d start by looking at the extension on the file. To generate the content name, I’d look at the filenames, which should all be formatted in such a way that a separator won’t affect the file, but will make it easier to build the content, eg: ‘P_moss–Xial.jpg’, content name = “Xial”, content vendor = “P_moss”, version will always be 1.0.

I’ve sort of brushed on the second part of what I want it to do: Generate those General Content Descriptors. I’d like to do this cleanly, without actually spitting files onto the system, but instead, serve the file dynamically in some method. Hopefully this will be easy to do.

The third thing the script should do is be capable of serving the content both as a wireless markup language (WML) page, and as a normal HTML or XHTML page, depending on what the browser asks for. I do think this part would be a bit tricky, but in most cases, the browser requesting the page would be a WAP browser. I think that if I were to sniff the browser and see whether it announces it can handle HTML or XHTML, rather than sniffing to see if it supports WML, this would work. If it doesn’t say it can handle HTML or XHTML, I serve the watered down WML pages. If it announces HTML, then we get HTML and perhaps extra features.

I would need to learn WML first, however, and I’d need to relearn PHP, since I’ve just about forgotten it.
I need to find out what part of the browser to sniff to find out if it supports HTML or better, as well. I know that it can be done in PHP, since I did it once to serve XHTML 1.1 a long time ago, and water it down enough for Internet Explorer to actually view a page.

I don’t know if a project like this would benefit from database access. I somewhat doubt this, but if it does need one, I don’t want to require MySQL to be installed. I’d like something else that’s very light and can be used on any operating system.

For those of you who speak PHP, would an idea like what I’m considering even be doable, or do I need to change my angle of attack somewhat?

[tags]Sprint, GCD, WAP, WML, PHP, HTML, Content Delivery[/tags]

Just to let the lot of you all know here, I’ve got a Threaded Comments plugin working, finally, which should help in commentary and reply to anything I’ve posted. It’s fairly easy to use, since the system to trigger a comment thread is right below the comment box.. Simply select the comment you’d like to reply to from the drop-down menu, before hitting the submit button, and your comment will be properly nested and colored to make some sense.

Also, you may have noticed a link at the top to a message board.
This will be a bit of a soft launch, once I finish setting it up shortly, but it’s just to give a place to make off-entry commentary and talk with each other. I’m still ironing out the kinks in the message board however, but that’s fine. This is, after all, just a soft launch, to get a feel for how this message board works.
If you’ve registered as a subscriber to my blog, you should be able to use the board.

[tags]Threaded Comments, Message Board, Soft Launch[/tags]

Right now, I’m poking around in Damn Small Linux running in QEMU, sitting on a Windows box at the moment.

It’s about as close to having Blackbox on a system in front of me as I’ll be getting for a while, it seems, so I’m making the best of it.

The good thing is, I now have a private workspace within another workspace that I can toy with, and run some programs within. The bad thing is, it’s somewhat slow, and even slower still, because I have it on my USB stick, and I am emulating an entire computer on top of another one.

I think it’d perform smoother if I had an external USB 2.0 drive, but I haven’t found one at a good cost yet to bother trying that theory out upon.

I can’t complain too much, though. It actually, uhm, works.

Well, I’ve been playing with my phone too much lately.

I’ve found that the TV channels on Sprint aren’t too bad, but the [adult swim] channel was miserable, at best. That channel leaves much to be desired, because it’s not showing any shows, but instead is showing 30 second to 1 minute shorts of content that can be watched on a television. To spend $4 a month on this would be an insult to me, really. (However, the $5 I’ve spent on the ATAKU channel was soooo worth it. Evangelion, hoooo~)

The software is a mixed bag, though.

AOL Instant Messenger’s not worth paying for on this phone:
The menus for the application are inconsistent — too much hunting around to get things done. There’s not enough visual cues in the software — I have to keep looking around to see if I’m in the text box.
The settings for the program are non-existent. I can’t tell the bloody thing to turn off the vibrator when it’s receiving a message. This causes the battery to drain faster than any other application on this phone (it’s actually neck and neck with watching Sprint TV).

The paid games on Sprint are mediocre, really, but they could be worse.

I’ve also spent some time looking at other sites, such as Zedge, GameJump, and Cellufun.
I’m finding free games to play for my phone, which are ad supported, but the ads’re not too bad.

Ah, time to go to work.

Just a reminder, there’s only a couple of weeks left to help save Internet Radio as we all know it.

Rather than waiting until it’s too late to tell our government that they’re out of their fool minds here, please spend a few minutes of your time, and have a read over at SomaFM’s website, on how you can help to save Internet Radio.

It can be as simple as a phone call, or a written letter, but please don’t forget to do your part to help save it.

Thanks.

So, here I am, at the Public Library, wishing I had a cheap old laptop of my own and one of those wireless cards for it to use.

I’d like to be able to spend time talking with my friends online, but yeah, it’s annoying to do it from my phone (not to mention very difficult, thanks to T9), and also is impossible to multi-task on the phone. I’m used to talking to several people in one go, and on different services.
Some friends use AOL IM. Others use ICQ. Still others use Yahoo! Messenger or MSN, or Google Talk, or…
Then there are my friends on IRC.

I really just want to find a very cheap laptop, so I can actually have something to do on Sundays.

That has to come later, though. :-/

Well, I’ve been with AOL since mid-March this year, and I’ve had to use the AOL services, software, etc. since I started there.

After using it for a bit, I’ve become acclimatized to it, and might even risk saying that “I like it”.
I’m liking the beta version of Webmail for AOL, since it actually seems to work, and makes sense. It’s got a bit of AJAX to it, but not enough to turn me off from it. It responds nicely to Firefox, and, well, it’s got a leg up on GMail at times, I must say.
If that 28/7 timer that we use could be changed, I’d be happier, but even then, that’s fine, and it makes sense: If you didn’t bother to save an email within a week after opening it, it’s not likely that you needed it for anything.

The AOL 9.0 software itself, I may never get used to, but I can try to, at least. I’m used to tabs, rather than a multiple document interface, but some people like their MDI more.

I’ve had to grow a tolerance for Internet Explorer as well, since I started, simply because most users are not aware of browsers other than IE.
I’ll never love it, but it can exist for now.

No time like the present to throw out an off-hand reference to Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, while talking about my phone.

As some of you may have noticed in a previous post, my phone was stolen while I was in a homeless shelter. I had a normal habit of placing my phone next to me in the bed while I’m charging it up, basically sleeping with it on the charger.
After about two months, someone decided it’d be fun to steal my old Samsung A640.

At first, when I went into a Sprint location (on Kennedy Blvd. and Himes Ave.), they not only didn’t want to work with me, but they also breached account privacy by not going through a proper validation step for the account. That is, they didn’t ask me to provide identification, AND they didn’t ask me for the account password to prove that I am who I say I am.
They simply turned off the phone, and didn’t bother working with me. They could have said, “Since you didn’t have the full insurance,” (another gripe for later), “the only way we can offer a discount on the price of the phone is by renewing your contract for two years.” That alone would’ve pacified me. No, the girl was rather rude in her portraying that I would have to pay full price on the phone, and there wasn’t really any other option.

I was seething mad after that in the first store, and didn’t trust that they had even done anything, so I went to another Sprint location in WestShore Plaza. I met a rather nice guy in there, and he was much more on top of things. He actually took an effort in validating who I was before confirming that the phone had been deactivated, and I hope that the higher muckity-mucks at Sprint know to reward him for that, since I ended up calling Sprint several days later.

I called Sprint on Monday morning to just close my account.
Since the cost of replacing the phone would be more than the cost of terminating the account early, I called in, and made my complaint about that one Sprint store, gave kudos to the other, and then asked for the cancellation department.

I get a rather nice gal on the other end in Cancellation (probably labeled ‘Saves’ internally, since she did her best on this call to keep me), and I explain to her just why I was cancelling my Sprint account (the privacy issue*, the fact that at this point the cost of early termination is lower than the cost of replacing my phone with a decent one from Sprint, and a bit about how the insurance plans were portrayed to me when I bought the phone, which all pulled things together in how I wanted to just cancel and get it over with).

She asked me to hold on, so she could relay the issue to a supervisor.
She and the supervisor basically apologized for the problem, and asked if I’d be willing to stay on with Sprint if I could get a discount on a replacement phone, since I also told them that I was considering coming in the next week anyway to try getting an upgrade to a better phone (read: they saw dollar signs there).

I listened to their terms and conditions on it, which they boiled down to actually (zOMG) make sense in a short period of time, while offering full information.

I was interested, so I accepted.

Sprint is mailing out the replacement phone, and all I need to do is go make a payment for it.
I won’t disclose the amount of the payment here, but I’ll say this much:

• It beats paying full price for this phone!
• It beats paying Sprint the cancellation fee, and then buying a prepaid phone or buying a MetroPCS phone (which I was reconsidering).

The week’s beginning to look a little better, especially with the phone replacement I’m getting:
I’ll be receiving a Samsung A900m to replace my old Samsung A640. (You can compare them side by side at phonescoop.com by following this sentence.)

I just need to bide my time now.

I think I should go see the doctor in the morning about the headaches I have at work, and see if he can recommend the replacement of my monitor, a CRT, with a flat screen display.

I can see this one refreshing like mad, and it makes my eyes want to bleed with the level of pain I’m subjected to at the moment. It’s pretty darned annoying, too.

Good thing I can type with my eyes closed, though. I’m pretty much blogging blind at the moment, in order to give my eyes some relief between calls.

I should also ask about the carpal tunnel and an ergo keyboard note, but right now, the headaches are more major.

(Copied from my post on the [tag]Robinhood Fund[/tag] forums. I intended a short gripe there, and ended up putting what I wanted to put in my blog over there. For posterity’s sake, and for preservation purposes, it is also posted here in its entirety, behind the link.)

When homeless are sleeping in the same [tag]homeless shelter[/tag], you’d think they’d give each other the courtesy and watch out for each other.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting at Hyde Park United Methodist Church, waiting for breakfast, and I thought to myself, “Why do I pay fifteen bucks a month for internet by phone?”

It makes sense in my head: The cost of a newspaper each day is 25¢, and $1 on Sundays.
That comes to $2.50 a week. Spread over a month, the average cost is about $11.
That does come out to be less than my internet, but I do lose a lot of content.

For $4 less, I lose search engines, online phone books, constantly updated weather, access to various weblogs, email on the go (Gmail), instant messenger access*, and many other tools that I would need Internet access for, on top of the fact that I can access just about any news source out there from this phone. I’d also lose a fair bit of portability: You can’t really fit the daily newspaper in your jeans pocket in a normal situation. You can fit most phones in your pocket.

Plus, you should ideally dispose of a newspaper in recycling bins, which seem to be few and far in between here.

It made me stop, and say to myself, “Wow. I’ll stick to the $15. Thanks.”

I finallly decided on changing the name of this weblog, as my birthday nears (that’d be tomorrow for those of you in my time zone, or at least still on 31 March 2007), for a few good reasons.

1. I stopped taking French in 1999. It’s 2007, and I’ve forgotten most of it. I still like the language, but yeah, dead sticks, and all the words they say about them.
2. My initials fit into the title perfectly (JLH, that is).
3. Sometimes, I act like my blog’s name up there. Just like a human, that is.

It’s been an interesting half-decade here, with Eau Salée Lunaire as my blog’s name, but this is more of a “get back to the roots” movement for me.
The content’s not going much of anywhere, and hopefully, neither will I.

Happy Birthday to me, and welcome to my weblog.

I was reading my email this morning, trying to ignore my instructor’s “musical” choices before 7 am, and I got this email from TigerDirect.com.

In the email, they mentioned that they received a really nice deal:
CA Anti-Virus 2007 with 2GB USB Flash Drive, free after rebate.
I was jaw-dropped when I saw that, because it’s just that nice of a deal.
Spend $50 to get the software and stick, then get that $50 back in rebates.

There are some limitations that apply (Sales Tax is charged if you’re in Florida, Illinois, or North Carolina), and shipping for the item by itself is a relatively modest amount. The offer ends on March 31st, so don’t let this slide past you.

Okay, so I’m all about saving what money I can, given my circumstances.
I also have friends all around the world (Wales, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Australia, and yet more places than I could really name at the moment), and a very special person who happens to stay in Canada that I’d love to talk with on the phone more often.

The only problem is, for me to call Canada on my cellphone, I’d pay 35 cents per minute if I dialed him directly! This is where the guys at Pingo enter the picture.
They offer low calling rates all over the world (including cheap phone calling cards for Vietnam and other countries in Asia, which is important for a lot of people I’ve met recently) with an easy to use service. In fact, Canada’s only 1.8 cents per minute.

Right now, it only costs me my regular airtime to call Canada, thanks to my Pingo calling card.
That’s a huge savings for me!
Now, if only I could time it better to actually stay on the phone with my friend for more than a couple of minutes…

[tags]Pingo, International Calling Card[/tags]

Just a short entry to let those of you reading me from anywhere on the internet about a few new features added either to this blog, or done around the entire domain.

1. Zookoda support. — You are now able to subscribe to my weblog by email, and receive a once-weekly update each Saturday morning of what has been posted here.
2. New theme! — I am trying out a new theme for now, which looks fine, but I do need to give it a weather eye about HTML validation (which I will do next week, once I’m done setting things up the way I want it, so I can verify whether it’s the plugin, or the theme at fault, in one swell foop).
3. Yearly Archives! — Don’t go back and read those old things. The LJ entries, I’ve discovered, weren’t imported quite the way I’d expect them to be, so they look like poop (heh heh heh).
4. Gallery2 update! — I finally got with the times, and updated that to the latest stable version. I just need to get in and svnSlim it down, since svn (and CVS, I understand) adds a lot of bloat to any given software package, due to the nature of how svn works.
5. Araiya Light! — Betcha didn’t know I have an oekaki (though it’s pretty much dead at the moment). I’ll see about getting that up to date sometime in the coming week, since I’m sure there must be a new version of the software or the applets involved.

I’ve been surprisingly productive on my own website, despite the fact that I don’t have a permanent connection to the internet. I guess it’s because I know I only get so much time (I’m racing a clock of two minutes right now, for example) to get things done, and get back to the Salvation Army in time, so I work harder and faster, to do things better, and it makes me stronger.

Anyhow, explore around, and feel free to email me if something happens to be wrong on this site. See the About the Author page for contact data.

Okay, so I’m on my USB stick at the library, looking for a good way to have at the internets in Firefox, without being so conspicuous.

I found an extension called Split Pannel [sic], which basically lets me open something in a frame of its own, side by side with what I’ve got going right now.

So, my browser says it’s at FurAffinity.net at the moment, and I’ve got ESL sitting here in a split panel, posting about my experience with it.

Likely, I can probably get away with Meebo that much easier as a result, since I can now squeeze it down into that bit of space.

There’s a small issue with this extension, in the sense that it’s not quite so intuitive, but it’s still worth it.

Also on my list of interesting extensions would be Locationbar².
It makes the location bar much easier to read by adding in clear delimiters for the URL, as well as changing the colors appropriately: For example, the domain is green. Each folder (subdirectory) underneath it is black. Anything that is a query string (think: google.com/?search=The+Internets as an example) is in grey, adding to just how easy it is to distinguish things in the address bar.

What would you consider as an interesting extension for Firefox?

(With credit to GigaOm.)

I was checking my news reader this evening, since I decided to not go back to the shelter immediately after work. I came across one header in my reader that caught my eye, and caused me to frown for a good few minutes, simply because I’m not sure how to react. The gist of this header is, Microsoft now has their hands on TellMe.

For those of you unfamiliar with TellMe, they started years back as a voice-driven system that allowed users to navigate menus on a phone, to perform various actions, and to gather information. Here’s an example call flow I use when calling TellMe (1-800-555-8355 / 1 (800) 555-TELL):

TellMe: Hello, and welcome to TellMe! Main Menu. Here are all the features that you can choose from…
Xial: Weather.
TM: Weather? Got it. To return here at any time, just say “Main Menu”. / Weather. Say a City and State, or Enter a Zip Code. For example, you can say “Dallas, Texas”.
X: Three Three Six Seven Two.
TM: Tampa, FL. To stop this forecast, just say “Stop”. At 6:12 PM, it’s 76 degrees, with a gentle breeze. Tonight –
X: Stop. Main Menu.

It’s very much like holding a meaningful conversation with a computer, like the start of the technology we’d think of seeing in Star Trek.

TellMe’s been working on their VoiceXML Platform for years now, and even had a section long ago called Extensions, where people could actuallly publish their own VoiceXML applications to those calling the TellMe service on their phone. One could experiment with much of the apps published, and easily spend a half hour talking to the phone just playing a game (I was guilty of this — someone had done a VoiceXML version of Dope Wars / Drug Wars I would spend hours a day just playing game after game of this, because I was addicted years ago), or trying out ideas that ended up making it into the mainstream TellMe application in some way, shape, or form.

Finding out that Microsoft now has a hand on TellMe has me slightly wary, since it is Microsoft, after all, but, given the details that are published at GigaOm, this just might be a good thing.

[tags]TellMe, Microsoft, VoiceXML, GigaOM[/tags]

Okay! Zookoda has granted me broadcast permissions, so I can now officially run that mailing list.

Right now, the confirmation pages are generic, because I don’t have a minute to actually put together a real page here on my site, so forgive me for that. However, it is a subscription based mailing list, that you must opt in to receive content.

It should mail out early on the mornings on Saturdays, so you’ll get a weekly drop of everything that I’ve said here.

Warning: Hotmail might choke on the email, since it’s UTF-8, and Hotmail seems to have issues with that, according to the guys at Zookoda.

Sign up, and let me know what you think.

Well, I’m sitting at work right now, in the breakroom. I’ve got my new badge on my hip, and I’m sitting at a Windows 2000 box (it’s true: without a patch, Windows2000 will not update its time to meet the correct time), writing up this post.

I’m somewhat nervous, but I’ve got this momentary calm rolling through me, letting me know that gee, it’s gonna be okay after all. It’s just me being a nervous wreck.

Heck, given that I work for an ISP, I get access to the Internet at work, for free.

I admit, I’ll have to put all of my bias aside, to do what I was hired to do: Assist users in having a great experience with America Online. It won’t be difficult for me to do, but I have to remember to do it.

[tags]America Online, Stream, AOL, Technical Support, First day of work[/tags]

A couple of days ago, I decided that I needed a way to offer a subscription to my blog’s content for the non-RSS, non-LiveJournal crowd.

I had heard mention of an email marketing tool called Zookoda, which is a free tool that hails from the Great Down Under (that being, Australia). It’s an interesting tool that allows one to set up a mail list that can mail daily, weekly, or monthly updates of your weblog’s content in a fairly easy manner.

You’ll notice that on my sidebar, I now hold a subscribe box, as well as a chicklet to show how many subscriptions there are to my content on Zookoda. My feeding it will be slow for the next few weeks, as I start work, but it was remarkably easy to set up.

There are a few things that drive me a bit nuts, including the prolific usage of stuff we don’t really use in XHTML (<b> for example), and some code missing things that are important (alt attribute on images :)), but other than that, it’s really not bad at all. In a month’s time with Zookoda, I hope to be satisfied with the way it works, get many people interested in subscribing to my list there, and have everything the way I’d like it.

Recently, I’ve been reading Douglas Karr’s weblog, On Marketing and Technology (I saw what you did there, Doug ).
While making commentary on his Technorati Rank Plugin for WordPress, I ran across an entry that amused me to no end.

The entry featured a video of a man’s robotic beer launching refrigerator, which I think would be best if I let the video do its own explaining.
Although the video is on YouTube, the author earns a little money for his video being shown via MetaCafe, thusly, I’m going to embed their video instead.

Watch, Laugh, and Want one.

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - More bloopers are a click away

[tags]Beer Launching Fridge, Technorati Plugin, Douglas Karr[/tags]

In my homeless state, I have to either download things to each computer I sit at here in the public library (horribly inefficient — computers return to the exact state they were in when they configured them, so my downloads of Foobar2000, Firefox, and a few other used applications disappear at the end of my session), or use some sort of removable media to keep them in my hands.

I have a 512MB SD Card, which came with a free SD to USB adapter, allowing it to double as a USB Flash drive of sorts. As a result, I can carry around a copy of Mozilla Firefox, already configured to the way I like it:

Generated: Thu Mar 08 2007 09:19:57 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2 Build ID: 2007021917

Enabled Extensions: (Total: 9)
- Adblock Plus 0.7.2.4: http://adblockplus.org/
- All-in-One Sidebar 0.7.1: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/
- Greasemonkey 0.6.7.20070131.0: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
- Locationbar² 0.8.5.4: http://en.design-noir.de/mozilla/locationbar2/
- MR Tech Local Install 5.3.2.3: http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.5.2.070221: http://tmp.garyr.net
- Tiny Menu 1.4.2: http://firefox-extensions.arantius.com/tiny+menu

Installed Themes: (Total: 4)
- Crystal Lite 0.9: http://www.google.com/search?q=Firefox%20Crystal%20Lite
- Whitehart 2.3: http://dongato.dyndns.org/whitehart/

Installed Plugins: (Total: 11)
- Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 6
- Microsoft® DRM
- Mozilla Default Plug-in
- QuickTime Plug-in 7.0.3
- Shockwave Flash

In addition to that, I can carry around Foobar2000, and a whole slew of other applications that I find some use for throughout the day.

In the case of Foobar2000, it can be easily told to save its configuration in the application directory, allowing your settings to persist on your removable media between sessions. On top of that, there are plenty of components I can toss in easily to extend the amount of music I can play, among other things.

Right now, I’ve got foo_gep installed, so I can listen to SPC from the stick. Since SPC sets are very compact, I can have tons of video game music to listen to, which makes me very happy.

Combined with kode54’s foo_osd, which is currently configured to show me what’s playing, and how long it’s been playing, I have no reason to switch away from Foobar2000. This is why I’m still in love with this player.

[tags]Foobar2000, kode54, foo_gep, SNES Music, Video Game Music, Portable Applications, John Haller[/tags]

I’m giving myself three minutes to vent on things.
This session, it’s about code.

We’re in the AJAX and XHTML age.
Please spend a little more time on going through your code, to make sure it can pass through a validator.
Missing one or two things, but generally getting the rest right is to be expected, and doesn’t bother me.

What gets me is the ampersand.
People seem to forget that in XHTML, the ampersand needs to be escaped, or changed into an entity.
It’s not just the ‘&’ by itself now. It’s now an ‘&amp;’ when you’re putting links in that perform queries, like the social bookmark plugins generally do.

Please, please, just remember to do that, and it’ll spare me an extra five or twenty errors per page when I try to validate it.
Thanks.

[tags]XHTML, PHP, WordPress Plugins, Ampersand, Valid Code[/tags]

So, I’ve run Project Wonderful’s ad boxes for a couple of months now.

I went to look at my balance, and I see that I’ve earned fifty cents.
I’m not displeased whatsoever by this, simply because I have been host to some ads for products I would buy (if I had money), and to a couple of web comics that I’ve just about completely read from end to end (Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight, and The Book of Biff, to be specific, and offer a free plug, at that).

What I am displeased by is the colossal lack of respect for web standards these ad blocks present on my ‘blog, and are almost singlehandedly responsible for my inability to validate my ‘blog with the [tag]W3C[/tag] Validator.

I think that in a week’s time, I’ll have to sadly part with the [tag]Project Wonderful[/tag] ad blocks on my blog, simply because it’s spring cleaning time, and I’m cleaning up the code house, so to speak.

There are other things that irk me, and they’ll be prodded upon, as well.

I’m at the library this morning before I go to my appointment at 10:30 today, checking my email, and making sure that the spammers aren’t goofing up the blog with their crap. I had one ‘comment’ to moderate, which was spam, as usual.

I went to check the stuff that Akismet had protected me, and noticed that Akismet has blocked (a bit past) its 20,000th spam comment on this weblog.

I can remember when I used to have to delete spam manually, and the ungodly amount of false positives that I managed to get with everything else in place. While I’d really rather put something in that would spare this server the trouble of even processing these stupid messages in the first place, I’m grateful for the protection that I get by even using Akismet in the first place.

[tags]Akismet, Automattic, WordPress, Spam Protection[/tags]

(psst. hey. I’m sitting in the public library, running firefox portable off their hard drive. I was absolutely sick of IE, and IE doesn’t perform so well with the sites I needed to visit. tomorrow, I’ll remember to bring my USB stick and run portable firefox off that, so I can also work on blending it into their default environment. they’re not even running IE7 on these boxes, so IE lacks tabs, which I really, really think are necessary in a broadband environment. there’s so much to do, that trying to keep track of several open windows, especially with alt-tab disabled, becomes a true nuisance. I guess that tomorrow, I’ll set the stick up with portable firefox properly, and give it an IE skin to help it blend in when I run it. heh heh heh. :D)

A short while ago, I posted about [tag]Giveaway of the Day[/tag], a site that gives away an application on each day of the week.

I was very gung-ho about it, and even had their feeds on my sidebar to show visitors the goods.

I removed their feeds a while back, when their site’s outage was taking out my blog (bad plugin design, I guess), and I was considering whether I would place their feed back here. The reason I was considering this, instead of automatically doing it is, there hasn’t been much of a variety in software submitted, and very little was making me say “wow!” on their releases.

On the software side, a lot of the apps they were releasing had freeware, or open source alternatives that I use on a normal basis. For example, today’s giveaway (Premium Booster) is stuff that I can duplicate with Piriform’s CCleaner, which is free (though that’d be something worth donating a little cash to).
Some of the software was plainly useless (Elprime Clock Pro comes to mind — Windows has a system tray that has a clock in it. Most alternative shells have at least one good analog clock widget, for those who absolutely need one), and to see that the software has a price tag is somewhat disturbing.

On the games side, unfortunately, the majority of the released games have either been some variation on matching bubbles (I love puzzle games, and Sky Bubbles Deluxe was happiness. The rest of the games in this same vein were mediocre), shooting bubbles (There has been at least one Bubble Bobble clone, and at least one Puzzle Bobble clone), and almost no engrossing RPGs to draw in the geekier crowds.
While it’s good for the children (They get something fun to play nearly every day, and can rarely tell the difference in games), it’s not so good for the adults who still play games.

Watching the commentary on each piece of software there is getting a little annoying, though. It’s always a “This sucks! I can do this for free!”,without any sort of meat to the comment.

Right now, it is my hope that Giveaway of the Day starts to grow again, and gets titles that are worth their weight in the price asked for them normally. The lack of variety in applications is making the site stale, and unappealing enough to warrant me not talking about it frequently.

Things I’d love to see for free, even for a day:
Khaled Mardam-Bey’s [tag]mIRC[/tag]
RitLabs’ [tag]TheBat![/tag]

Both are software that I’d love to see appear on the list.
I’d also welcome similar applications, but the point is, it’s nice to offer software that people become dependent on. It’s easier to hook the willing into buying the software willingly for replacement purposes.

Winter is near its end, and many people have received computers as gifts for the winter holiday season.

Some of them may be complete novices to computing and may not understand the importance of, or not even know the first thing about backing up important files and folders on their computer. Others may be of the “Ah, I’ll do it later…” group, constantly putting off backing up important content. I know the latter group quite well, as I used to be one of those types.

Some of these users might not even know that there are Free Online Backup Services available to them, such as the one offered by IDrive.com.

IDrive is a free, two gigabyte online storage solution that is able to do automated backups, taking most of the work out of your hands. Simply define folders to the application for safekeeping, and let the program do the rest.

Need to restore content? Simply launch the application, and select what you need restored.

It removes the excuse of “Well, I’ll do it later…” from your hands, and is easy enough to teach anyone how to do.
(The best part is, there’s no sorting through stacks of DVDs to find the recent backup of pictures of your family to share. :))

[tags]Data Backup, Online Data Storage, Internet File Storage, IDrive, Internet Drive, Automated Backup[/tags]

The following is a little copypasta (that would normally go in an email) from the guys and gals at MoveOn.org, a group with a mailing list that I’ve been subscribed to for a while. They sent me an email a little earlier today, which mentioned that our country’s government is attempting to take another slash at public broadcasting (NPR and PBS), which is something that I cannot accept.

When I was a kid, I grew up on PBS. I remember Sesame Street (though Big Bird traumatised me as a child More, for another story.), Arthur, The Reppies, Nova, Nature, 3-2-1 CONTACT!, and numerous other shows that showed up on the two PBS channels we have here in Tampa (Channel 3, WEDU; Channel 16, WUSF). In fact, I admit that those were the two channels I enjoyed the most, because they were the way I thought television should be: unfettered by constant reminders to drink Cloaca-Cola, requests to join the Dyspepsian Generation (You got the right one baby, uh-huh), and lacking in reinforcement that sex is a requirement to be popular on television!

I’d like to help save this resource while it still exists.
If I ever were to decide to have children, I would love to have PBS around for them.

I never really got to listen to NPR as a child — I probably thought that it was too boring then, but the issue is, both NPR and PBS are public resources that many of us rely on for news, education, and entertainment. If we let the United States Government take a knife to their already limited budgets, this could easily spell the end of quality television and radio shows in our country.

Therefore, I ask you to help me out. Put your name to this, and show our Government that you want them to show respect to public broadcasting. Put the knife away, and don’t cut their budgets!

Thank you for your time,

— Justin H.

Hi,

President Bush just proposed drastic cuts to NPR and PBS. We’ve stopped similar cuts in the past, but enough is enough: With the new Congress, we can make sure this never happens again.

We need Congress to save NPR and PBS once and for all.

Can you help out by signing this petition to Congress? It’s really easy—just click the link below:

Civic.MoveOn.ORG, Public Broadcasting, Referral link

Thanks!

[tags]Save Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, United States, Government, Politics, MoveOn.org, Children’s Programming, Commercial-free News, Commercial-free Television, Petition[/tags]

I have been trying to get php5 up and running on my spare computer here (Pentium II, 400 MHz, 128 MB of PC-100, running FreeBSD 6) for the past two or three days now.

Unfortunately, it’s been a constantly uphill battle. I can’t get a damn thing done with it, due to the torrential amount of errors I’ve dealt with. As soon as I clear one batch of errors, another one appears.

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with trying to set this up, despite googling for answers (This includes using the special google.com/bsd search to focus my results a fair bit more).

Right now, all I want php5 for is to test Habari on my little box. Everything else that I’d like to play around with can probably be easily done from php4.

Instead, I get this:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/bz2.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/bz2.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/curl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/curl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gettext.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gettext.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gmp.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gmp.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/iconv.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/iconv.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/imap.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/imap.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mbstring.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mbstring.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mcrypt.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mcrypt.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mhash.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mhash.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mysqli.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mysqli.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ncurses.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ncurses.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/openssl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/openssl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pdo.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pdo.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pgsql.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pgsql.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/readline.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/readline.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/recode.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/recode.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/simplexml.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/simplexml.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/snmp.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/snmp.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sockets.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sockets.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sqlite.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sqlite.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvmsg.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvmsg.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvsem.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvsem.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvshm.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvshm.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dom.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dom.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlreader.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlreader.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlrpc.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlrpc.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlwriter.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlwriter.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xsl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xsl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/zip.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/zip.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: [tag]PHP[/tag] Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/calendar.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/calendar.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dbase.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dbase.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/fileinfo.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/fileinfo.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ftp.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ftp.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-[tag]debug[/tag]/gd.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gd.so” in Unknown on line 0
I’m rebuilding the extensions at the moment to see what will happen, but right now, it’s doing all sorts of irritate-the-crap-out-of-me.

What I need at the moment is:
A solution to the [tag]segmentation fault[/tag]ing that php5 is doing (also, where the hell are the logs for this thing?)
A way to get [tag]php5[/tag] and php4 to coexist, so I can at least move forward on that front.

I also need a temporary job that I can commute to and from via the bus system, since my car is in serious need of repair or replacement.

This ain’t my week, baby.

I’d like to preface this entry with a short note to Ryan Boren:
It’s not you or your fault, Ryan. You just happen to have posted the relevant entry to my rant in your blog, and the comment submission form there has some kind of unfounded hatred for me.

I’m logging in earlier this evening to approve a comment, and double-check a few settings that I wanted to change in WordPress, and on my dashboard, I see “In the Trunk“, coming from boren.nu.

Of course, being the kind of person who usually grabs WordPress from Subversion instead of the release tarballs, I go to have a look.

Before I continue, I should mention:

• I’ve had to use a ‘dirty hack’ (read: an outright file replacement of a core file that is guaranteed to be overwritten almost EVERY TIME I upgrade WordPress) to get Atom 1.0 support for Eau Salée Lunaire.
• I’ve been AdBlocking this new AutoSave script that WordPress uses while writing my entries. I don’t really like it, and would rather be able to just flip a switch to kill it.
• I like, and I dislike all the AJAXy features being added in to WordPress. While it’s nice to be able to reorganize the bar to the right of my entry box, to get things put in the sequence I like them (cats on the top and expanded, post slug underneath and expanded, post status following that, with the rest of the stuff folded, because I almost never use these and wouldn’t object to hiding at least the post timestamp when composing a new entry), and it’s nice to be able to reorganize the Sidebar widgets in a convenient way… There is still room for things to be desired.

I go to read this list, and find myself ticking off on my fingers every thing that I’m thinking about the new trunk changes:
* TinyMCE 2.0.9
– I’ll switch that off in a heartbeat in my profile. Raw XHTML or bust.

* Prototype 1.5.0
* script.aculo.us 1.7.0
* jQuery 1.1.1
– Lovely shiny AJAXy things. Will they make WordPress work faster? I’m living in a cloud of doubt, but we’ll hope.

* WP XML-RPC API (WP-specific API for working with pages, authors, and categories)
– I’m hoping to see an explanation of this, since I’m not entirely sure what this happens to be.

* Atom 1.0 Feeds
– IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME! (I actually said this one out loud. Very loud.)

* Atom Publishing Protocol support
– Won’t affect me adversely. I don’t have any clients that I use for this, and I doubt I’ll even find a client worth my time to use for it, either.

* Better MySQL UTF-8 support
– Yay!

* User cache streamlining
* Improved options caching
– Caching sounds good, especially when it works.

* Plugin sandboxing
– “O RLY?” I’d love something like that. YEARS AGO. There are plenty of broken plugins out there that won’t work for everyone. One might have a hidden PHP5 dependency. Another might require a blood sacrifice gained from a smashed coffee cup to the forehead.

What bothered the hell out of me on this whole list is, there’re two things that should have been implemented no later than WordPress 2.0, and one that should have followed right up or been on the list for 2.0, and yet these things won’t hit the table until WordPress 2.2.

Atom 1.0 should have been a major priority for WordPress, if they are such a major blogging/cms platform. After all, just how long ago did they deprecate Atom 0.3? (Here’s a hint: Mid-September 2006 = 1 year.)
It’s bad form, and a bold lie to claim that “WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability” (quote taken directly from wordpress.org homepage) when it takes SEVENTEEN MONTHS to get Atom 1.0 FINALLY into svn trunk!
I can understand a month, to give them time to solidify any other changes they might want to offer, but seventeen?
How much longer do the regular end users have to wait to even get this particular development!?

While we’re AJAXing up the place, it’d be nice to have a built-in mouse-over menu for all the stuff at the top, rather than relying on userland fixes (plugins) for this.

For users who have numerous plugins installed that offer options, or a small number of long-named plugins (Google Analytics, CC Content License being a pair of long-named ‘offenders’), clicking on “Options” and waiting for it to show that list of plugins is a bit slow, and not so friendly on the screen real estate. My monitor is 1280 x 960 pixels. I run with my fonts slightly larger to help my eyes, since I read text on screen all day. The result is, with the number of plugins I have, on top of the general Options that come with WordPress, the options bar actually wraps over to two lines. Aesthetically, it does not make any sense.

With all the nifty slide-a-block, fold-a-block AJAX that’s been thrown into WordPress, one would hope that they would actually add something that can prove itself to be genuinely useful, and add a toggle switch for those who could care less.
As much as I like being able to reorganize the bar of crap to the right of my post here in the WP Admin center, I do this perhaps once every few months! The order of these blocks could have been set on the options page, allowing me to set it and forget it, going on with my day to day life.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me miss the old admin interface — the one without alll of this browser-based detergent.

I have the distinct feeling that I will be adding to this in the future, once I feel like ranting on what else in WordPress is making me hate it.

“This was an incident where the deputy felt his life was being threatened and rather than using a gun he used a Taser,” Sheriff Don Fleming said. “When you’ve got a guy bigger than you, waving a baton is like waving a feather at him and we don’t want to shoot a student.”

The Archuleta family questions why deadly force was used and not a Taser gun which fires a disabling electric shock.

This is why I’m in favor of [tag]Tasers[/tag] and other, safer alternatives than a gunshot wound to the head.
Yes, Tasers still have a potential to kill, like any weapon, but it’s still not that bad. It’s more likely to disable you and keep you from getting yourself killed by a regular firearm.

There’s an appropriate time for any weapon. If the officer’s pretty much in range, and you decide to charge him, yes, he can taser you. If he’s a hundred feet away and you’re waving a gun, then yeah, he can shoot you with his firearm, because the taser is OUT OF RANGE.

I’ve spoken with several officers who carry tasers in my city. For them to be able to carry their taser, they have to undergo training to use it. Part of their training is to know what to expect if a suspect manages to get the taser out of their hands and zaps them with it. These guys and gals know what fifty thousand volts feels like.

I’d rather not take a hit from any of the stuff they can use, but I’d prefer pepper spray or a taser to being shot and wounded by a firearm.

Well, while I was digging around on [tag]HARTline[/tag], the local bus system’s website, I was offered a link to one of [tag]Google Labs[/tag]‘ projects.
It seems that one can now use the power of Google to plan out a bus trip here in [tag]Tampa, Florida[/tag].

It’s a rather useful tool. Just put in the two addresses or intersections nearest your destinations, choose a departure or arrival time, and Get Directions.

The service is laid atop [tag]Google Maps[/tag], and uses authoritative data from the Testing regions (there are a total of nine cities testing out Google Transit at this time) to show routes and scheduled times. They may or may not cover routes on detours, so be advised that this is only to be considered as a general guide on riding public transportation.

One of the nicest things about it is, although you are looking up bus routes in general, you can also switch it over to driving mode, should you choose to change your mind and drive or get a ride from point A to point B.

[tag]Google Transit[/tag] is the name of this new tool.
Hopefully, we’ll see more cities adopt it — I’d love to see PSTA jump on board, too.

Something to think about when you’re feeling homicidal:

1. Everything around you is a weapon. Even that glass of water.
2. Plan ahead to dispose of the corpses.
3. Have a plausible, concrete alibi to work with.
4. Don’t play Unreal Tournament or similar games if you’re bad at them, when you get these urges. They are likely to enrage you further.

If you can’t plan for numbers two or three, then don’t go on a homicidal killing spree.

Something to think about when you’re sharing a network with the family:

• Having access to their