I beg of you, name the freakin’ thing Atom so we can get on with it!

I mean really… come on!

Unless you live in California, you can’t vote in the recall election. If there is one. I think they have to vote on that. (And besides, Asa isn’t running.)

And if you think voting for the next President of the United States will have some effect on things, well, ok, I guess you can believe that…

But right here, in our midst, is a way for you to voice your opinion, and have it heard! Yes people, it’s time for NameFinalVote!


Sep 25, 2003 11:30 am · Comments Off

RSS enclosures in AmphetaDesk? Sure, why not… It doesn’t actually do an automagical download when you sleep, but I don’t really need that feature anyway. What it does do is display the enclosure link along with the description, allowing you to get the enclosure easily. About 15 minutes of early morning hacking produces a new version of the minigr skin for AmphetaDesk. (See screenshot)


Sep 24, 2003 8:36 am · Comments Off

My co-worker (who is forced to worship at the alter of Microsoft and support Windows servers) alerted me to the fact that Windows counts it’s uptime in seconds. Meaning that while my Linux box tells me something like this: up 27 days. A Windows box, were it able to stay up more than a day, would display something like: The system uptime is 86400 seconds. He thinks this is because Microsoft doesn’t expect their boxes to be up more than a few minutes anyway…

But just in case you actually manage to keep your Windows box up and running for more than a few minutes, and don’t want to have to use the Event Viewer just to see the uptime, you can try this perl script: uptime.pl

All kidding aside, I do manage to keep my Windows box running for days at a time, and once a week I reboot it when I get sick of seeing system error dialogs…


Sep 23, 2003 3:15 pm · Comments Off

How freaking useful? The List-o-matic creates and formats menus using valid HTML and CSS.

It’s a must see tool.

And it’s proof that ASP isn’t completely useless!


Sep 19, 2003 12:38 pm · Comments Off

WaiZilla is a way cool project:

WaiZilla will hopefully be an Open Source implementation of an accessibility validation tool. Open source meaning it doesn’t cost 99 dollars.

The project is underway using XUL for its implementation meaning that it will work on Windows, Linux and Mac with no alteration.

More info at the WaiZilla blog, until waizilla.com is functional…

I still don’t understand how some people choose to do web development with IE… Testing? Sure, but development?


Sep 19, 2003 12:31 pm · Comments Off

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy


Sep 19, 2003 12:19 pm · Comments Off

If you’re a CLI junkie using Mac OS X, do yourself a favor and quit using Terminal.app. Replace it with iTerm! iTerm 0.7.7 was recently released. Tabbed terminals, my friends… it’s the only way to command!


Sep 17, 2003 1:27 pm · Comments Off

If you consume milk, this should frighten you, Sour Grapes Over Milk Labeling touches on what is done to many dairy cows. Even the ones who are not given shots of some mad-scientist created hormones are routinely injected with drugs, and fed a diet of crap. Cows that produce organic milk are fed only organic food, and graze on land that has not been treated with chemicals. If given the choice, would you drink the milk, or eat the meat from a cow that was raised on chemically laden food, and is routinely shot full of drugs, or would you prefer the goods from a cow that was treated well, and raised free of such abuse?

Personally, we get only organic milk, often right from the farm. The farm thing isn’t an option for everyone, but you can find organic milk in a number of stores. (Someday, when you own a share of a cow, getting good milk will be easier.)

Farmer Bunting is hopeful though:

Meanwhile, Bunting believes the way to remain a dairy farmer and keep his sanity as well as the family farm is to sell milk products like yogurt and curd directly to customers rather than through stores. He will soon apply for a license from the state to do so.

“The price of milk is so ridiculously low you simply can’t wholesale your milk,” he said.

If Farmer Bunting were an organic farmer, I’d wish him luck. I know some states make getting a license difficult for the organic farmers because they want the milk to go through the government machine known as ‘processing’ so they can see some of the profits…

(Note: There’s a chance that I’m not 100% correct on all of this. Usually I am, but I thought I should add a disclaimer this time…)


Sep 16, 2003 12:16 pm · Comments Off

A quick followup to Spam King: Julius Caeser. Reader Jonathan Louie suggests that the unrelated text might be in there to throw off Bayesian email filters. though he doesn’t think that the strategy will work, based on what he knows of Bayesian filters…


Sep 16, 2003 12:00 pm · Comments Off

In case you were wondering, I’d suggest that In the Beginning: A video on Weblogs History be retitled to “In the Beginning: A video on Blogger History” as it seems to suggest that the fine folks at Blogger somehow invented weblogging.

While Blogger helped popularize weblogging/blogging. I don’t think they invented it. Don’t worry, I take the same view of Apple. I’m fully aware they did not invent GUI computing, but they certainly popularized it.

(And people wonder why Dave freaks out so often…)


Sep 15, 2003 12:40 pm · Comments Off

Remember when I saw something strange in the plain text of an HTML email message? Sure you do… It’s happened again.

When viewing the message as HTML, it’s some crap about mortgage rates, but when viewed as plain text, you get this little bit from free papers on Julius Caeser:

Caesar knew that the Republicans believed rumours about him wanting the throne.19 He also realised the dislike of them towards him: “How can I doubt that I am heartedly disliked, when Cicero sits waiting and cannot visit me at his convenience? Yet if ever there was a good natured man, it was he… I am perfectly sure that he detests me.” 20 In order to dispel the rumours…

It’s as if people who don’t use HMTL email are being discriminated against. I mean, what if I want to fire my boss, or want some enlarged body part(s)? I’ll never even be given the opportunity. Instead I have to learn something educational about P.T. Barnum, or Julius Caeser. Sheesh!


Sep 15, 2003 11:33 am · Comments Off

A small update to the minigr skin for AmphetaDesk. Changed a link, and added 1/2 a line of code, which is really pure hackery, and will be fixed up properly when the next version comes out. (Right Morbus?)


Sep 11, 2003 2:08 pm · Comments Off

As for my request about IM clients, I’ve been told to look at Proteus and Miranda. (Proteus is for Mac OS X, and Miranda is for Windows.)


Sep 11, 2003 1:53 pm · Comments Off

I should have mentioned this the other day, in the same place I mentioned TexEdit. There’s an app called Text Reader. What does it do? Well, you open a text file, and it can read it aloud, or save it to an AIFF file. (Saving to an MP3 might happen in the future.) There’s AppleScript ways to do similar things, but this is a bit easier for most people.

Now, onto what I need. I need a command line application that can convert AIFF files to MP3 files, without the presence of QuickTime Pro. I’m sure there’s some open-source app out there that’ll do this and will compile on OS X right? If you know, please let me know.


Sep 11, 2003 1:44 pm · Comments Off

In a certain workgroup I happen to be involved in, we’ve implemented IM using AIM. So while I personally would like to see our own Jabber server implemented (you know, security, control, and what not) for now AIM will do. The presence part of IM is something I find very interesting…

On to clients! For Mac OS X I use Fire, but for you poor Windows bastards there’s always Trillian. I’ve not personally used any version of Trillian, but I’ve heard a few people say that Trillian Pro is quite good. As for my own Windows box, I thought I’d try out Gaim. Gaim has a Windows port, which includes the GTK+bits, so it’s not a difficult install, and the features seem fine. (Again, I’m not an IM guru, so don’t take my opinion too strongly.) Gaim will do fine for those rare times when my Mac is unavailable.

Are there any other AIM/IM clients for Windows I should check out? (Open-source is preferred) Let me know

Next on the to do list: perl aimbots


Sep 10, 2003 2:05 pm · Comments Off

Archives

photos: