Archive for February, 2007

2007.02.14

4th Season of Battlestar Galactica

This is probably the best news I’m gonna get this Valentine’s Day.

SCI FI Channel announced that it has renewed its Peabody-winning original series Battlestar Galactica, ordering 13 new episodes. Production will resume this summer in Vancouver, Canada, with an eye toward a January 2008 premiere.

Of course every rose has it’s thorn and this is no exception. A January premier? Half a season and not a full season? Hello! What are we supposed to do until then?

2007.02.14

Blowout!

I blew out a tire this morning. This sucks as I’m supposed to be going to Tahoe this weekend and that makes money mildly tight. The sucky thing is that because I have an all wheel drive Subaru, so I have to change *two* tires, not just the one. Oh well. Maybe the tires will do better in the snow.

2007.02.12

Maps for the Blog

In the process of recoding the site I’m taking the time to update the plugins. One of them is Yongfook’s most excellent Plug ‘n’ Play Google Map. He’s made a number of improvements that, if I weren’t so bloody lazy, I would implement. One that I did use, though, is that when an article has a link on the Cartography page you’ll see a nifty badge (like in the image) that will take you to the map and show you where I’m talking about (easiest spot to find it right now is the San Francisco category).

It’s these simple things that make Doug a happy camper.

2007.02.11

Site Template

I’ve got the new template up and running. I think I have the bugs and glitches fixed now. The code is now about 50% leaner than before which is great. I could probably clean up more (especially the CSS) but I’m done for now.

I also tracked down a problem where certain images were borked as mentioned here. I need to get on a Windows machine and confirm it’s fixed, but at least it is rendering correctly in Safari and Firefox. Apparently the new (2.1) WordPress doesn’t like it if you start a paragraph with a div and this is what I had been using to place the images in certain articles. I fixed it by changing them to span tags, which is better anyways given that they are embedded in a text field.

If you find anything weird with how the site renders (NOT with what I’ve written but just the layout) then please let me know!

2007.02.09

Internet Attacked!

The internet was attacked. This article wonders, Did anyone notice? Well, I noticed. We’ve had issues ranging from mail delivery to at least one person complaining that one of our websites led them to pr0n.

The fact brought to light in the article, though, that shocked me actually was about San Francisco.

…the initial analysis suggest that 13 percent of machines involved in the attack were located here in San Francisco, the site of the RSA Security Conference, from which I’m currently blogging.

It is so sad that this technological Mecca is INFESTED with zombie computers (sorry, ZADL, this is one zombie I will never compromise with).

C’mon, people. Get some operating systems that aren’t compromised 20 minutes!

2007.02.08

Recoding the Site

I’m undertaking to remake the code that renders this site. The HTML and CSS has been kluged together over five years though numerous tweaks and two platform changes (raw HTML -> Blosxom and then Blosxom -> WordPress).

The goal is to have the same functionality, generally the same look and cleaner, compliant code. It’s easier than I thought now that I’ve started and I’ve got a basic template almost complete. The difficult part will be inserting the copious amounts of PHP that WordPress templates require.

Once everything is up and ready I’ll let everyone know. Who knows, I might even release the theme to the public!

2007.02.07

I Got Tagged

(Note: I had written this much earlier and was quite happy with it. Then, somehow, the post vanished. I don’t know how. I’ve rewritten it as closely as I could remember!)

I got tagged. I guess that’s what I get for teasing Robert! For those of you who don’t know what it means to be tagged, here is an explanation.

This one is “five things you didn’t know about me.” Since Robert asked I will do this from his point of view so some of these things are known, but probably not to Robert.

One
My voice is artificial. At some point it started changing and got stuck in high pitch mode. In 11th grade I’d had enough, started seeing a speech therapist, and learned to speak the way I do now.

Two
I know the the guy who gave Kurt Cobain the drugs that he over dosed on in Italy that some think began the spiral towards his suicide. My friend was freaking out for weeks afterwards.

Three
Since Robert wrote quite a bit about art in his past I’ll let everyone know the reason I don’t have much art in my past. When I was in 8th grade I had a teacher named Mr. Michael O’Brien who told me if I came back the next year he’d flunk me outright. I’ve never forgiven him. It did lead me into music and writing, though, so there was a trade off.

Four
In my senior year of high school I joined the drama club and was voted Best Debut. I still have the trophy. I guess my Dad rubbed off on my; he used to participate in community theater!

Five
When I was a kid I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I read about them, studied them, built models and even took footage of F-16s with an 8mm camera! Then one year I had to start wearing glasses and I was devestated. I knew that to fly those kinds of planes you had to have perfect vision. So using kid-like rationality I would thow away my glasses in the neighbor’s bin hoping no one would notice I had bad vision. I always lied to my parents who I told I had just lost them. Sorry Mom and Dad…

Who shall I tag next? Unfortunately some of the more interesting answers would have come from people who aren’t blogging. So… Mookee (because I can’t wait to hear his sarcastic responses), Molly McGee (for the secrets!), T3HCH0RT (because he needs to write something!), Taylor McClish (for the danger!) and Annemone (for fun and insight).

Tag! You’re it!

2007.02.06

Why I’m Paid Less Than My Manager

Now I understand why I’m paid so much less than my manager(s)!

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.

Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows, Power = Work/Time

Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have Knowledge = Work/Money

Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work/Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, The More you Make.

I like comment number 8 at the site from someone named Christophe; “This also demonstrates the superiority of intelligent design over science: you don’t need any knowledge to perform efficiently, but you need an engineer/scientist to demonstrate it!”

Brilliant.

2007.02.05

Are Mac Users Snobs?

Mac users are definitely snobs, at least if you’re Charlie Brooker. I have to admit that the ads Apple is using are really irritating but I don’t get the snobbishness. I guess the ads in Britain are a bit different, though. I do love how Mr. Brooker keeps meaning “Windows” instead of “PCs”. It’s a simple slip up, but when it comes to it a Mac is a PC, too.

Still, I love the idea that I might be a snob (30% snob!); I’ve never been in a position where I could consider myself elitist. I mean, I consider myself better than the majority of humanity but no one believes me so it doesn’t count. Mac people aren’t really snobs, even if Bill Gates thinks Steve Jobs invented the world.

Mac people are just like anyone else really. They are serious sometimes, sarcastic at others, innovative and intelligent, and not afraid to poke fun at themselves while camping out overnight to hear the keynote at Macworld. Even Microsoft, that bastion of the PC, makes Mac software. It’s true Mac users don’t have the latest or coolest games on the market, but then again that’s what game consoles are for.

I think ultimately Macintosh users are no more snobs than anyone else. And in the case of Mr. Brooker, we’re only snobs because he’s so inferior that everyone else looks superior. And he hates that.

2007.02.04

It Is Far Less Clear…

The BraceletBack in college I used to work at the Front Room Campus Coffee Shop (now gone and replaced) with gTodd to earn money and force myself to wake up in mornings so I wouldn’t miss classes. It was that “psychology” thing where I wouldn’t get up for class but I would get up to pour Ethiopian Yrgacheffe for grumpy professors and hung over students.

I have many fond memories of the Front Room. I used to play open mic nights there, play ERS, studied, wrote, collected AE flyers, and met all sorts of interesting people.

Of course there was a lost and found, and one of the more curious items we found left behind was the bracelet pictured above. It says, “It is far less clear what lovers do,” and is obviously hand engraved. We held onto it for some time and finally I claimed it as my own. I wore it around the back of my hand rather than around my wrist which was far more comfortable than you’d think. It stayed on my left hand for many years.

I never learned who made it, or where the quote was from, but I still have it and pull it out occasionally. It holds a lot of nostalgia now as I wore it at a point where I was rather gothy and punkish. As Mookee once wrote:

But now those days have past
Should have known they’d not last
But I still think about those fine days

And somehow it seems
They were only in my dreams
But the memories are as real as today