Category Archives: tech
Lens update
12 weeks.
I took Jenny’s advice and called the head of repair at Penn. He returned my call within about half an hour, after checking with the factory. They apparently had been waiting on backordered parts. But given the length of time so far, he says they’re trying to replace it instead, at the same price as the repair.
On one hand… nice. On the other, it makes me nervous. The quality difference between one lens and the next, even of the exact same model, can vary. And I loved the quality I got out of the original. Tack sharp with saturated colors.
We’ll see. Nothing certain yet, anyway.
bad customer service bad
So…
after recently discovering that no one really knew what they were doing with my camera lens, I got a call yesterday about my other big toy that’s been in for repairs — the laptop. While replacing the case which had been cracking all to hell, they apparently damaged my screen. And since they’re doing all the repairs locally, they have to order in the part and take another 3 days.
Breaking stuff seems to be the easy part. Getting it fixed… not so much.
out for repairs
It’s come up in several discussions with friends that they don’t always bring their cameras into questionable areas, or places they could get damaged. It’s reasonable. But for myself, my choice was always to bring the camera just about anywhere. I’d rather run the risk — especially since these are often the more interesting situations — and get some great shots. Cameras can be repaired, but moments can’t be relived.
Though honestly I wasn’t too worried about having my camera out in a nice hotel room in downtown Atlanta. But even so, while at Dragon*Con, a rather large, solid, intoxicated man landed on me, and knocked my camera to the ground.
A 3 month old lens. Ultra-wide angle, so not exactly cheap. By the next morning, when I went to pick up the camera, I noticed the lens body separating into two pieces. And it’s been getting slowly worse ever since. As of this afternoon, the auto-anything was dead. I couldn’t zoom, and it was still sagging.
Took it into Penn. $150 estimated repair, though that’s just their average for this kind of lens. 4 to 6 weeks wait. And even then, I won’t be surprised if it’s not salvageable.
Eh. I’m not really too upset. I did get plenty of wonderful shots that night with the lens. And none of the damage was intentional. Even in his drunken state, the first thing the guy worried about was wether he’d damaged the camera. It sucks, but life goes on.
facebook filtering
Several people have asked me how I block various people from seeing some parts of my facebook feed, so…
1 – Go to your full contacts list. “Friends” -> “All Friends”
2 – Create a new list and name it whatever you want
3 – Add the people you wish to hide things from to this list
4 – Now go to “settings” -> “privacy settings” -> “profile”
5 – Take any section you wish to filter from this list, and choose “customize” from the pull-down menu
6 – at the bottom of the resultant window, under the “except these people”, type in the name of the ‘bad people’ list you created earlier.
That’s it. I just mostly filter out potentially offensive stuff from my work contacts.
progress
I get a lot of benefit out of continually learning how to use my tools better. Today’s example:
I recently watched some tutorials by photographers using Lightroom. Picked up a few things I didn’t know. And because of it, discovered a few other variations that were even better. I knew this stuff in Photoshop, from back in college. But — as is the point — Lightroom has a much better interface for doing it.
Here’s the original RAW photo, from the recent shoot with Lea. Blown out, yadda yadda yadda. Won’t bother going into why it is this way… but it just is. A lot of missing details, though you could tell it was a beautiful look.
Thankfully, by shooting in RAW format, you preserve a lot of information that would have been lost in a JPEG. I lowered the exposure, and recovered a lot of detail. Still a bit light, but much better. Really pushed it, though. To the point where the boundary on the face between the light and dark has gone slightly yellow. But still a stunning woman.
After watching the Lightroom videos, I have been moving away from strictly relying on the exposure/black/fill sliders for color correction, and relying more heavily on various features of the Curves. It gives me much greater control over individual light levels in the photo. Transitions are much smoother. More details are preserved. And as I said, the interface to do all this is very intuitive.
I think this last photo is the best so far.
This — of course — is also why I tend to be so reluctant to pursue photography professionally. While I often think “These are some great photos”, somewhere down the line, I almost always look back and think “gawd… I am SO much better than I was when I did THAT!”.
EDIT:
Okay… this is what happens when you don’t proof on multiple monitors. New version, without the gray. (Thanks, Jenny)
smokin’ CF
Strange.
I tried copying some photos off a CF card I haven’t used in a while. This card has never been used with the newer card reader. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t show up. Then I noticed a “hot” smell, and when I went to pull the card out of the reader, it burned my fingers. It had been in there off any on for less than a minute total.
Works fine in the old card reader. No heat.
today’s moronic moment
I’ve been looking for years for a decent “To Do” application. Much as I hate the idea of it, I am much more productive at work when I have lists to keep me organized. (10 – 15 jobs at any given time, with various stages in each…)
Something that lets me create a list, with child items. Allows me to very simply prioritize items. Make changes on the fly with little effort. I want to be able to check off items, and collapse items for simpler views.
I don’t want feature bloat. I don’t like most of the “GTD” applications and ideas, because they’re more impressed with their lists than what they can accomplish with them; and they often rely on multiple interlocking lists. If I have to think about this list, it’s blown its point.
While I found a couple that seemed promising, they all either were too expensive or were not available for my version of the computer’s OS. So I’ve just kept the idea on the back burner for a year or so, assuming I would pursue it the next time I upgrade the OS.
Today… looking for a video program in my Applications folder, I realize one of the bundled free applications this computer came with (quite a while ago) was OmniOutliner.
Which does… you know… exactly what I need in exactly the way I want. Already licensed. Sitting ’round. Waiting for me to … well… you get the idea.
testing a little something
Just testing a little something. Click on the image, to see.
Navicat
I think I love Navicat.
I have used it as a desktop-based, graphical user interface for various databases. It can handle MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle databases. Has every conceivable option for connecting to said databases. (Most of my clients’ only allow for local access: no problem. VPNs? Secure servers? no problem.). No problem with any type of data manipulation.
It’s been great for setting up a staging server, and then cloning it to the final server.
But where it’s repeatedly really saved my ass is the backups. At the most basic level, it does great one-click backups and restores. But when you then add a scheduling capability that doesn’t even require the application to be running at the time, …
I’ve had hacking attempts on databases. I’ve had just plain fuckups. Today I had an ISP who corrupted every database when they upgraded MySQL. And with 1 click, the site was back up and running.
No… I don’t know anyone who works for Navicat. And they’ve never given me anything. If anything, I think they charge too much. But the reality is it’s worth it. When something works so well and is better than anything else I’ve tried, I like to share.
tilt
Taken walking home at 4:30 in the morning last night.
hard drive
to follow up…
I ordered a hard drive today, for the photo back-up thing. I went with a 500 gig external firewire 400 drive.
It also has USB 2, though I don’t intend on using it. When you’re dealing with long, large transfers of data, firewire easily outpaces USB 2, regardless of their specs. I didn’t go the SATA route because my main computer is a MacBook which doesn’t have an expansion slot for the appropriate card needed to connect to the drives.
I went with 500 gigs, because while still being obscenely large, it was a bit more stable than the 1 TB drives. Most reviews on the larger drives make them still sound a bit flakey, which is reasonable considering how new they still are. Even so, I’d guess as a strictly photo-archive, 500 gigs will hopefully last me another year or 2. I calculated that the largest my photo collection could currently be is 140 gigs, but I think realistically it’s gonna be somewhere between 20 and 40, not counting thumbnails and crap.
I picked up a reasonably-well-reviewed drive from Newegg.com for $120 including shipping.
big hard drive
I take a lot of photos.
(duh).
But they pile up on my computer for a month or so, and then get backed up to DVD. At which point, I don’t access them very much. Call it frustration with having to dig up the disk and look though it. Call it “out of sight, out of mind…”. But I just don’t go back to my old photos often.
So I was thinking maybe I could get a huge external hard drive, and try to dump ALL my photos on there. I mean… just now I found a 1 TB gigabit ethernet SAN drive for about $200. That would hold me for a little while.
Thoughts?
(I really do tend to find I get much more use out of things when they’re accessible.)
marsedit
new version of marsedit… just testing everything
Something I did know: Mail, under Panther or Jaguar, had a habit of not deleteing all my email off the server. As near as I could narrow it down, it seemed to be a matter of Mail not deleteing anything off the server that had been moved out of the inbox before it was done checking mail. (And I have many scripts that sort and move mail upon reciept.)
So occasionally I’d need to go into the preferences and clear all the mail off the server, assuming it was all old and duplicated.
Something I did NOT know: Mail in Tiger (OS X 10.4) allows you to do a GetInfo on the mail folders, and one of the options in the resulting window shows you the headers of all the mail sitting on the server for each mailbox, and even allows you to individually or mass delete the messages.
Nice.
Though all the messages seemed to be from just one day a couple weeks ago.
domain names
Thought I would post this out there, since unless I had needed to renew my domain names, I wouldn’t have discovered this.
Do you use RegisterFly?
Registerfly, a domain name seller, is in the process of going out of business the hard way. I don’t know all the causes, though i saw something about deceptive marketing and such. But ICANN has pulled their accreditation. After various lawsuits, it appears registerfly is giving up.
Godaddy is assuming control of all domain truly registered with Registerfly. But Registerfly originally was just a reseller. All those names are defaulting back to the original company. (Usually eNom).
Of course, if you’re like me, you may have used Registerfly’s spam-prevention service which replaced your email addresses in the whois data with a temporary address. But that service is no longer functioning, and I can’t change those addresses in my whois data.
eNom, thankfully, has a process where you send them screenshots and a copy of your license and such, (not very secure,… but what are they gonna do?!). They were very clear and helpful so far. And godaddy seems to be doing their best as well.
Registerfly has been a bitch throughout the entire thing. They’re still taking orders but not fulfilling them. As of last night, their site still says nothing about any of this. They’ve disconnected and unlisted all their phones, and are not answering email.
Secure Mac Email – Part 2
I wrote before about using a secure connection to retrieve your email, using OS X’s Mail.app. The biggest problem was properly importing the secure certificate.
Well, it worked faithfully for me, right up until this evening. The certificate expired today, and a new one was issued. You cannot, however, import the new certificate without removing the old one. The existing certificate does not reside in any of the keychains that show up by default when you open Keychain Access.
After a bit of searching and misinformation, here was the solution:
- Open “Keychain Access”.
- Under the ‘File’ menu, select ‘Add keychain…’
- Navigate your way to the ‘System’ folder at the top level of your hard drive. Inside there, go to ‘Library’, and then go to ‘Keychains’.
- In that folder, open the ‘X509 Anchors’ file.
- When this keychain loads in ‘Keychain Access’, look through the list and delete the existing certificate.
From this point on, follow the steps in my original post to import the new keychain.
Why iPhoto stops working
Of all the boneheaded…
iPhoto — my photo management software — isn’t allowing me to drag more than one photo at a time. But I need to drag all my recent photos to a new folder where i can sift through them. What does the problem turn out to be, preventing me from dragging more than one photo at a time?
“If you’ve disabled or removed the font Helvetica, you won’t be able to drag a selection of photos in the Organize pane, though you can still drag a single photo. “To drag multiple photos, enable and/or replace the Helvetica font.”
– Apple.com
Of all the boneheaded…
*ping*ping*ping*ping*
Boohiss. I was thinking of going to MoCCA this year, but it turns out it’s the same weekend as my Texas trip.
So, last night, I found out that, despite my best efforts, the magnets in my stereo speakers have been affecting the screen on my TV. (It became apparent, when I removed the speaker, and the picture went to hell). I then proceeded to somehow snap the pin off my admittedly beat-to-hell power adapter for my laptop. When I fell asleep talking on the phone, I bent the frames on my glasses. And after being woken up by a redundant request for information from a minor client, I noticed my cat was bleeding.
But for some warped reason, I was in a fairly good mood all day. In good cheer, and very mellow. If I had been depressed or down, this kind of day would have just wiped me out. As it was, aside from falling behind in work, it was the best day I’d had in a while. I ran to the Apple store first thing and picked up a new power adapter. (My conscience wouldn’t let me claim it as a warranty repair, since I had practically destroyed the thing previously). I took Pixel in to the vet, and she had, as I suspected, another ruptured anal gland. (Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is). My glasses were fixed with a pair of pliers. And the TV righted itself overnight.
Life balances out. Well… except for my checkbook, which took a more than substantial hit.
dual screen mac mini
Mac mini enthusiasts have been looking for a way to get dual displays working with their computer for the last year. Well, we have some good news to report! Aniel of Firefall Pro has posted some pictures and information about his Mac mini setup with dual displays. He’s using Matrox’s new DualHead2Go video solution to split the signal between two 17″ Westinghouse LCDs and extend the desktop.
SpaceShipOne Unveiling at the Smithsonian
pier light
truck
Valve
I feel a tune coming on
I ran into the prostitute in the laundry room today, talking on her phone. Someone mentioned that her and her roommate do laundry every day. That had never really occurred to me, but it makes sense. Especially this time of year, with the sweat and the juices, and the whatnot.
In addition to some johnny cash, marilyn manson, and patsy cline, I picked up Miranda Lambert‘s album yesterday, on the iTunes music store. (Gift certificates are our friends). My uncle had bought the CD–which is a pretty strong recommendation in its own right, as previously, the last album he’d bought was only available on vinyl and 8-track–and played it repeatedly while I was down there. She’s pretty good. Country, but not to the point of parody. She has a little bit of folk singer in her voice. And always a good sign: not all of her songs are about love. Looking over her website, it’s some pretty sickeningly blatant marketing by a record label. That journal sounds like it was written by an ad exec trying to sound like a 13 year old girl, not a 22 year old professional musician. But so long as the marketing doesn’t affect the music… we’re good.
Okay… political question: Do you ever wonder how a US President who lied multiple times to invade 3 countries resulting in over a hundred thousand deaths, can keep a straight face when acting outraged that the Iranian President may have been involved in taking hostages 25 years ago?
Food for argument.
I maybe shoulda gone out tonight. Kier tried to drag me out to Dollhouse, at the Black Cat. At the very least, I would have like a chance to see Kelowna, (smart, interesting, attractive). But after 2 seperate cover charges, the fact I almost never dance, and that it’s being held in the dungeon known as Backstage, I decided to stay home. I think God is on my side though. Ju7st as Kier stepped out of the subway, he got nailed by the biggest rainfall we’ve had in weeks. Told him that a storm which comes on so fast will dissipate just as fast. He didn’t believe me, and made a run for it. Within 5 minutes, it had pretty much stopped raining.
I was so very tempted to go buy an Airport Express today. So often when I’m working with my laptop on the couch, I want to listen to some music that I have on my machine, but I either don’t have it on disk or don’t feel like burning one. The Express would let me wirelessly stream the music to my stereo. Not to mention print wirelessly. But after spending 8 bucks at Radio Shack for a couple of AV splitters, I now have what I need to plug in my laptop from anywhere in the apartment. Compared to the $120 Express… not a bad compromise. Not to worried about the printing. If I’m printing, I’m gonna have to get off my ass soon anyway to mail, fax, or assemble something. Oh… the store? Crap. No less than 4 employees sitting around on top of the boxes talking, waiting 10 minutes before asking me if I needed assistance. (I couldn’t have cared one way or the other… but, you know… common courtesy…)
Today? Massive laundry day. Tomorrow? Massive kitty litter day. My life is so glamorous.
PGP in OS X’s Mail.app
I mentioned this a while back, and am finally getting ’round to it. I want to wipe out my iBook, and this was the only thing I couldn’t remember how to recreate, so bear with me, while I do it here. It is, as I remember, easier and more publicly well known that the whole SSI thing.
Pre-first thing is: you must, must, must have installed the BSD subsystem when you installed OS X. End of story. It comes on your OS X install disks, so no purchase is necessary. And it allows you to run oh-so-many wonderful unix tools. You will also need to be running system 10.3 or later.
Next: Download GPG (GNU Privacy Guard). It’s easy to install. You won’t see any new programs anywhere. It’s one of those ‘invisible’ unix apps that you access from the command line.
I already had a set of PGP keys, created with the official PGP software. If you don’t already have your own, you can use GPG to walk you through the process of creating and publishing your own keys. If you do have PGP keys, you will need to import them into your ‘GPG keyring’. First step is to export a copy from PGP, (File > Export). I then had to ‘clean up’ my old PGP keys, because they were generated long ago in a galaxy far, far away, under OS9. You need to swap the end-of-line characters to something Unix-compatible. There is an application at the above site that can do it for you, or you can do it from the command line with:
tr -d '\r' ‹ myMacOS9ExportedKeyring › myMacOSXImportableKeyring
You’re then ready to import. Now, in Terminal, you will tell GPG to import the cleaned-up keys. Type:
gpg --import --allow-secret-key-import < keypair.asc
With "keypair.asc" being the name/location of your cleaned keys.
You're done in terminal.
The program on the front end, for OSX Mail is Sen:te's GPGMail. This software will install a 'bundle' in Mail, allowing you to set your preferences, (under "Preferences"), and to encrypt and specify recipients and keys, all from a new message that you're composing. Very easy to install. Restart Mail once you're done.
This should all now work. I glossed over some of the details. But if you didn't understand any of it, you should probably stick with the standard PGP package. If and when I wipe out my iBook, I will update this article if need be based on that experience.
Sick, and bad tech
Didn’t accomplish jack shit, this week.
Since Tuesday, I’ve had this throat-infection thing. It tried to start out as the flu, but the muscle pain went away relatively quickly. The pain in my throat, however, kept getting worse. I was awoken at 4 in the morning on Friday, ready to go the the hospital, (because no doctor would be open at that hour). Instead, I finished a bowl of ice cream to numb my throat, and got back to sleep just as the sun was coming up. I wasn’t feeling as bad about myself though, because while eating, I’d watched a documentary on terminal salmonella caused by contaminated ice cream.
By the time I’d woken up yesterday, despite still feeling bad, there was a definite improvement. The soreness is gone today, but the coughing is still there. It’s that really pitiful coughing you get when your chest muscles can no longer really hock a good wad of phlegm up. I sound like someone who’s been smoking for 40 years.
All in all, a good reason not to go out tonight. Clubs are full of cigarette smoke and loud music, which must be talked over. And considering I still sound like Barry White every morning when I wake up, I don’t need the additional strain.
Good thing it was slow this week with work. Looks to be much busier next week.
Incidentally… I would like to thank all my family and friends for not wondering why I had dropped off the face of the earth.
Anyway…
Note to everyone in business out there, who must accept large files online: Get a real FTP site. If you have something you call an FTP site, and the address starts with “www”, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you want me to use my web browser, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Web sites are NOT FTP sites. Web (usually done via HTTP) and FTP are 2 totally different protocols. They have completely different feature sets. They have completely different software. You will note the difference in software the first time you try uploading that 80 megabyte tiff via that form on your website. I have never seen a web browser that gracefully, or even humanely, handles large file uploads. (And if it’s a small file, just email it). Frankly, they all suck at it. They crash. They time out. They never show you the progress. Whereas true FTP is industrial strength file transfer at it’s best. The better clients make the process almost second nature. You know exactly what is happening the whole time. I’ve never had an FTP client crash on me. They don’t choke, because they’re actually built to upload files. If something should happen to your upload, you can often resume it from where it left off. You know you need an FTP server, or else you wouldn’t be calling your web page by that name. So please… do it right.
Some politician’s website lifted an image from my ‘snapshots‘, for use on their own site. Only they hot-linked it, which meant they were leaching off my bandwidth. I dropped them a polite email, telling them they should have asked first, and would they please move it to their own server. And, you know, a photo credit would be nice. Their final solution? They lifted someone else’s photo. Someone really ought to remind them that the one thing a politician doesn’t want to get nailed with lately is copyright infringement.
Do you use iPhoto? Then go, go, go. Download Keyword Assistant. I’ve always liked the idea of keywording my photos. But iPhoto’s built in method makes it a tedious, difficult, time consuming process. It’s amazing how quick and easy KA is to use. I tagged my whole library in one sitting.
Volvo
SSL email using Apple Mail
Again, in the vein of posting information that took me forever to find elsewhere:
I decided this morning to switch from simply downloading my email through POP3 to using SSL, which is more secure. I use Apple’s “Mail” program to check my email, under OS X 10.3. When you switch to SSL in Mail’s preferences, every time you start your mail program, it will warn you that it doesn’t trust the certificate on the server. You can click continue to keep using it. But this gets old very quickly… clicking ‘continue’ every time you start up Mail. So you find out what the server’s certificate is, (from your provider/ISP), and add it to your Mac’s keychain.
Everything that I’ve said so far is easy to find online. And I did all that. I went to the Keychain application, chose “import”, and imported the text file I had saved the certificate to. It imported just fine, and showed up in the keychain just fine. But every time I started mail, it was still telling me it didn’t trust the server. It was ignoring the copy of the certificate that’s in my keychain.
And that drove me fucking nuts. ‘Cause every website I found, including Apple’s own support site, says simply to “Import the certificate into the keychain”.
After much surfing, cursing, and kicking of the cat to relieve stress, I came across this page on Employees.org. Seems there is a very particular set of steps you need to take in order to PROPERLY install the certificate:
- Download/copy your certificate and save it in a file. The file name needs to end in an extension that the computer will identify as a certificate. I used “.pem”
- Double-click on the file. This will launch the “Keychain Access” and open the “Add Certificates” dialog box.
- (For security reasons, you should click on “View Certificate” and compare the fingerprint and then click OK on the certificate viewer.)
- Change the “Keychain:” on the “Add Cerfiticates” drop-down menu to “X509 Anchors” and click OK.
- The system will prompt you for an Administrator username and password as this will modify a system file.
- Restart any applications that use the system certificate store, like Apple Mail.
Now your Mail should stop complaining about certificates.
Seems the missing step was the “X509″ bit. And the only way to make that setting was to follow this particular method of adding the certificate. It doesn’t show up if you simply use the “import…” option.
Anyway… my mom is out there right now wondering what the fuck this all means. Really… it’s a plot to make you feel old, Mom. Have you figured out how they get the movies on those little spinning disks yet? 
If I’m feeling ambitious or bored tomorrow, maybe I’ll describe how to release the built in integration Mail seems to have with PGP.
Images, Tables, and Mysterious Gaps
Along the lines of putting stuff up on my website ’cause it disappears from other sites…
I have occasionally had problems in some of my websites with unexpected gaps showing up under my DIVs or IMGs. No matter what you do… they won’t go away. Sound like your problem? Read on. There’s a link at the end to a prettier, more-original version.
Images, Tables, and Mysterious Gaps
Eric A. Meyer, Netscape Communications
Published 04 Mar 2002 (Feedback)
Revised 21 Mar 2003
Almost no matter when you started creating Web pages, odds are pretty high you have one or more designs based on the classic ‘convoluted tables and lots of images’ paradigm. Whether you’ve sliced up a logo so it fits in well with the design, or used tons of single-pixel spacer GIFs, the principles (and perils) remain largely the same. Back in the early days, this approach worked, because browsers would usually make a table cell exactly as wide and tall as an image it contained.
Fast forward to 2001, and the rise of standards-based browsers that lay out pages using HTML and CSS instead of their own private layout algorithms. Thanks to an obscure corner of the CSS specification, every design based on a precise layout of small images in table cells have become visual disasters just waiting to happen. All it takes is a modern browser and the right DOCTYPE, and kaboom!
The Components
Let’s take a close look at the breeding ground for trouble, and why this is a problem. We start with a simple case, illustrated in Figure 1: a one-cell table containing an image.
Figure 1.
Obviously most designs are a touch more complicated than this, but we don’t need anything more for our purposes. One image, one cell– that’s all it takes. There’s nothing apparently wrong with that example. There isn’t supposed to be, since it’s an example of how browsers have traditionally behaved.
Now let’s see what that same simple table looks like in a modern browser when the page has a strict DOCTYPE.
Figure 2.
Notice the added space beneath the image in Figure 2. The markup of both table and cell remains unchanged– it’s the rendering mode that’s different. Instead of ‘shrinkwrapping’ the image itself, the browser is now wrapping around the line in which the image sits. The image is sitting in a line because images are, by default, inline content. That’s all it takes.
How Inline Content is Constructed
In order to understand what just happened, let’s take a look at the construction of a line box, the placement of images within a line box, and the placement of a line box within a table cell. First a basic line box containing text, shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The most crucial part of Figure 3 is the baseline (represented by the blue line), and its placement within the line box. The baseline’s exact placement is dependent on the ‘default’ font for the line box (represented by the red box), which is determined by the value of font-family for the element that contains the line box. It isn’t possible for an author to change the baseline’s position directly, so wherever it ends up is where it will be. The space below the baseline is referred to as ‘descender space’ since that’s where the descenders in lowercase letters like ‘j’, ‘y’, and ‘q’ are drawn. Figure 4 shows what happens when we add an image to the mix.
Figure 4.
Note where the image sits by default: its bottom edge is aligned with the baseline of the line box. This placement can be changed with vertical-align– we’ll talk about that in a bit– but almost nobody ever changes the value from its default. Let’s take away the text, and leave only the image, as was done in Figure 5.
Figure 5.
So we have an image sitting on the baseline of a line box that contains only the image. Now consider what happens when we put that line in a table cell (Figure 6).
Figure 6.
And there you have it– spaces opening up where none have ever been seen before. It gets even worse with small images, like ones that are one pixel tall, as illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Now there’s all kinds of space unexpectedly opening up. It’s enough to drive a designer mad.
How About a Fix?
There is one obvious fix– stop creating designs that are dependent on tables and sliced up or single-pixel images– but it’s not terribly practical for many designers, and it sure doesn’t help fix old designs that are suddenly blowing apart in recent browsers. There’s another obvious fix, which is to make sure your document doesn’t trigger the ‘standards’rendering mode.
You can do this by using a DOCTYPE that will trigger either ‘quirks’ mode or ‘almost standards’ mode, or not having a DOCTYPE appear in your document at all. The lack of a DOCTYPE will prevent validation, and so is not recommended. For authors who are working with legacy documents, a ‘quirks’ mode DOCTYPE is the best choice. In cases where an author is writing a new document or trying to migrate a design to be as standards-based as possible, then ‘almost standards’ mode is probably a better choice.
Of course, documents authored in XHTML Strict or HTML Strict will trigger the ‘standards’ rendering mode, so we’re going to go through two basic ways to address the problem in strict documents, and a number of ways to call on these ‘fixes.’
Setting images to be blocks
The first choice, and one that will work for most graphically-intense designs, is to convert the image from being an inline element to a block-level element. Do that, and it no longer generates a line box, and so the problem goes away– assuming that the image is the only thing that occupies that table cell. In the simplest case, we might add a style like this:
td img {display: block;}
As we see in Figure 8, that works well in some cases but not so well in others.
Figure 8.
The thin red line shows that the single-pixel spacer GIF is now only making the cell one pixel tall, as the designer intended. Unfortunately, the buttons in the top cell are all now block-level and so end up stacked on top of one another instead of being shown side-by-side.
One potential solution is to add a class to any image that needs to be block-level and then write the rule to match.
td img.decoration {display: block;}
Depending on the design, though, that could lead to a lot of classes added for this one simple effect. This would be especially true if there are many single-pixel cells intended to create cool stacked lines, or something like that. If you have markup that lends itself well to this approach, you could class the table rows instead of the images. Thus you might have:
tr.decoration img {display: block;}
The result is that of only making the spacer GIF block-level, thus leaving the other images alone. This leads to the result seen in Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Alternatively, you could class table cells instead of rows, if that’s a better choice for you. In any of these cases, though, making images block-level could have unintended side effects if your table cells have more than just a single image in them, as in Figure 8.
Of course, while we have a single-pixel spacer cell in Figure 9, there is still unwanted space underneath the navigation buttons across the top. Getting rid of this space could be as easy as putting each image in its own cell and making them all block-level, but let’s leave them all together in a single cell so the can illustrate another approach.
Using vertical alignment
The other main choice is leave the image inline and alter the vertical alignment of the image with respect to the line box. For example, you could try the following:
td img {vertical-align: bottom;}
This will cause the bottom edges of the images to be aligned with the bottom of the line box, instead of the baseline. As we can see in Figure 10, this has the intended effect: the space underneath our navbar images is gone. However, the decorative cell is still too tall, and other images are misaligned with respect to the text around them.
Figure 10.
Again, we could class images, cells, or rows in order to narrow down the focus of the effect. However, the styles shown above won’t overcome the problem of one-pixel images, because the line box surrounding them will be the height of the font-size for the table cell, and so won’t shrink down. The image will move to the bottom of the cell, but the cell won’t ‘shrinkwrap’ the image. In addition, any other image which is shorter than the line box is tall will still have space appear around it– as happened with the red spacer cell. The one-pixel image in the cell is aligned with the bottom of the cell now, but the line box is back and it’s the size of normal text.
See, for example, Figure 11, where the font-size of the document has been raised to a large amount. The navbar images now have space appearing above them, and the red spacer got even bigger.
Figure 11.
It’s difficult to avoid this, because the images are (in this approach) still inline and so still participate in the creation of a line box. If that line box gets tall enough, space will begin to appear around the images.
Looking Forward To a Fix
Thanks to Mozilla’s thorough implementation of CSS2, the problem of inline images in table cells forcing open unwanted space has come to the attention of the CSS Working Group. There have been many proposals to fix the problem, but one of the most promsing approaches is the property line-box-contain, which has been proposed for inclusion in CSS3. Should this property be adopted, then any browser supporting it could emulate traditional ‘shrinkwrap’ behavior without risking other layout upset with the following rule:
td {line-box-contain: font replaced;} /* proposed for CSS3 */
There are other possible fixes contained within the current CSS3 Working Drafts, such as line-height-policy. Obviously, the sooner a solution can be found and implemented, the happier authors everywhere will be.
Recommendations
Absent support for CSS3, it is difficult to provide a clear set of steps for fixing every instance of these problems, because the best solution for a given document will greatly depend on its structure. If your document is uses transitional markup, make sure your DOCTYPE reflects that fact and does not trigger ‘standards’ mode. This will prevent browsers from using standards-based rendering, and thus all the image-layout problems are avoided. If you’re using strict markup, or you need for other reasons to be in ‘standards’rendering, then remember these guidelines:
Any image alone in a table cell (e.g., single-pixel spacer images) should be made block-level.
Any image in a table cell with other images should be vertically aligned with the bottom of the line box.
Any image in a table cell with other images and text should have its vertical alignment changed as necessary, if at all.
With a judicious mixture of approaches and a reduction of single-pixel image tricks– which, in a CSS-capable browser, are unnecessary anyway– it is quite possible to sidestep this strange effect of standards support. The best solution may be to ensure that images are always in a cell by themselves, thus allowing authors to make them block-level, but as always this will depend on the author’s design.”
beautiful content
The author of Airbag Industries is cranky again:
“But unlike the Kinkos copied zines of old …. the cousin to the zine, the blog, has in general has become rather stagnant and complacent in it’s form of post and comment, two-column centered with a drop shadow. I don’t consider any blog-based site free from this trap…”
– Greg Storey
It’s not the evil ’blog ruining the world. Blog software comes with default templates. You can’t have it any other way. If MovableType has been downloaded a hundred million times, you can be sure ninety-eight million of those people couldn’t create their own template if their laptop depended on it. And at least ninety-six million of those people don’t care what their journal looks like. You can’t really complain about the design aesthetic of those websites, since the don’t exist as designed objects. It’s like trying to convince me that my blue-jeans and t-shirts will never get me on the cover of Vogue.
Dozen’s of navigational interfaces have had their day. On this website alone, I have tried probably 20 or 30. A single, side-straddling navigational menu is the natural evolution. The single point of navigation, no matter where it is, is a result of the “least-common-denominator” effect. “People” can’t handle having part of the navigation here and part of it there. Having it run down one side or the other has some minor support from theories of user-interface, but is largely the result of the technical limitations of HTML and CSS, even today.
In the early days, I could get away with freaky interfaces, because people brave enough to go online expected to think a little about what they were seeing. But “online” is now a normal. A usual. A thing-that-everbody-is-doing. So while on my own website, everything is up for grabs, when I design for a client, they get what “everyone” expects. To give “everyone” something that they don’t know how to use it to be “doing it wrong”, because… you know… everyone says so. Mainstream clients need mainstream solutions. I have no intention of “getting funky” while I’m trying to teach people how not to die of AIDS.
(God knows I encourage people to “do it wrong”, ’cause what the hell is the point of going through life knowing what to expect?. But everything in it’s place.)
But frankly, the web has always been a matter of content over form. If you’re lucky, you find a way to make the form of the content attractive… but you’re always trying to convey content. The earliest sites were just people saying “this is me, and this is what I like”. Then people started elaborating on what they like, and creating fan sites. (My earliest website had a page devoted to Janis Joplin). Then people put up portfolios and resumes. And so on. And so on. The evolution of the web has always been a matter of finding ways to share more content, in terms of technical capability and sheer quantity.
You give me a beautiful, innovative, awe-inspiring website that only has naked pictures of Dick Cheney… and I ain’t having anything to do with it. But if you have nothing but blank pages with pictures of Angelina Jolie… I am so there.
Surveillance Blimp over DC
Door Pull at Ren fest
Crane Deconstruction
Search
And for all those who don’t really care…
I have implemented the search capability on my journal. You can now do key word searches that span the past seven or so years worth of entries. Just click on the link for “Journal” and the box is right at the top of the page.
For those of you who’ve found it…
I don’t know who sheppard dwayne caulder is. If he is related to me, you’d be better off searching my family site.
And I don’t think I ever wrote anything about teeth.
Spam
About six months ago, I started getting hit by spam in the comments on my Journal, my snapshots, my art… everything. It recently got to the point where it happens 2 or 3 times a week.
First of all, someone should really tell these idiots that NOBODY reads my website. And certianly not the comments.
But I had heard of MT-blacklist, all over the place. I checked it out and found it was very easy to install and configure.
It’s pretty intelligent in the way it functions. It blocks comments that have web addresses containing certian blacklisted words. And while the spam comments can be utter gibberish, the links have to make sense and be readable, leaving them open to this kind of blacklisting.
Anyway… it’s free. It works damn well, (having blocked every attempts to spam my site so far). So try it. It’s not just for kids anymore.
Come to think of it… this could make a very cool email spam filter. Hmmm…
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Enola Gay – Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Enola Gay – Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Concorde – Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Enola Gay – Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum
burn baby burn
I would like to congratulate Dell on making a move that Apple computer made only 5 years ago, by removing floppy drives from their new computers. Or more precisely, phasing them out. So only 7 years after floppies were truly obsolete has the first major IBM-compat manufacturer started dropping them.
Of course, the article I read this announcement in was actually more blatantly an advert for USB key drives. Forgetting that it was misleading and highly questionable, it was a Yahoo ‘news’ story, so what did I really expect.
(I haven’t bothered linking to the Yahoo article, because their articles only stay online for about a week).
Do USB key drives have more momentum than CD drives? Damn right. Now you wanna mention why? You know… CD technology has been around for over a decade. The market is essentially supersaturated. Whereas the key drives are so new, that despite being a geek, I don’t know anyone who’s actually bought one. They’re horribly overpriced still, and are only good if you know you’ll get the drive back, or simply need it for personal use.
I’m keeping my CD-RW.
Stupid Spam
If you have to finish all your emails explaining how they are not truly Spam, then they are Spam.
If you base your defense about how they’re not Spam on legislation pending in Congress, you’re stupid. Congress can talk about killing whitey and shafting the spics. Nothing they say matters until it is passed as law.
And what fucking possible good can there be to your product if you have to lie, cheat, and deceive people to even get them to read about it. Americans are sheep and will put up with an obscene amount of advertising, but don’t screw with their minds and not expect them to come after you with Pa’s shotgun.
personal information manager
I was just reading an article about potential ways to ensure digital device user’s privacy, even against TIA-like systems.
Mainly what they propose is use of one-way encryption similar to UNIX psswrd files.
But as I sat there reading it, I was wondering why we even need to go that far? What you really want to do is prevent the buildup of information in central databases to begin with.
So why do we have to rely on central databases?
On the web, most sites store a cookie on your computer to identify you with a record in their database. Why can’t it work almost in reverse.
When you connect to a service, wether it be a web site, a toll booth, a check out counter, or a library desk, the service provider supplies an unique identifier. Your personal digital device then pulls up all it’s records on said service. If you need to send them money, your device makes an Electronic Funds Transfer. You have control if your device needs to send out personal information. It knows your preferences and desired set-ups.
Even customized advertising would still be possible under this arrangement. After all, the holy grail of advertising is knowing your customer so well that you can show them ads that really interest them, rather than taking pot shots or best guesses. Your personal device can tell the service exactly what things you are interested in, and possibly even items you are actively seeking out at this time. That is advertising I can get behind. (Any time I don’t have to sit through a commercial for maxi-pads, I’m all about that).
I thought for a second that maybe it makes your information too vulnerable. What happens if your information device was damaged or ran out of juice or something? But hell, this can all happen with the existing centralized databases. Very likely, you wouldn’t be using just one info device anyway. You would have your computer at home. And maybe one in your vehicle. ANd a mobile one in a jewelry of some type. And they would redundantly back each other up via a Bluetooth type technology. And the issue of theft is easily bypassed with a dead-man’s-switch of some type. The moment you can no longer prove your identity to your info device, it stops providing any service with information. In fact, the very next time it is attempted to be used, it sounds an alarm.
Imagine a device as simple as a watch or bracelet. Lets face it; the amount of info you truly need to run your day to day life can now fit on something as small as a button.
You could drive right through toll booths without ever stopping.
You could walk into a store, find something you like, and walk right out again, without any kind of checkout procedure. It would scan a chip on the purchased item and your info device would automatically send the store computer the correct amount of money. And if you tried to walk out without a info device, the doors would just plain refuse to open for you. Anyone who didn’t wish to use such a system could go through a check out where the purchased items would be deactivated, to allow them to successfully bypass the door.
Find the books you want at the library and just walk out. As you leave, the chips on the books let the library know what is leaving. Your devices start reminding you to return the books in the appropriate time. And if you wait too long, your device purchases the book with your money and has it shipped to the library, or refuses to allow you to remove anything else from the library until you resolve the issue.
Imagine the utter simplicity of it all. No huge databases anywhere, outside of maybe the banks. And I’m sure if I thought about it long enough, I could solve that issue as well.
I really like the idea that you become responsible for your own information. Right now, wherever you use any of the current systems that provide similar functionalities, it is at the cost of giving up some personal information to an outside source. Why.
No profit-minded company will ever offer such a service. But imagine what people could do.
Just my thoughts on reversing the trend of people becoming numbers in a system, and instead remaining individuals, even in a highly ‘advanced’ civilization.
a little metal pin.
There are some people I will not understand.
Among them this day are Technical Support staff. This is a truly humbling admission since I am one of these people myself.
My consistent experience with people in these jobs leads me to believe they are all deaf. Any other explanation would require them all to be incredibly conceited.
Note: there is never a thing about computers I have not been able to teach myself. Somehow my piss poor parents sent me to computer classes on summer in the mid-80s. Since then, it has been non-stop poking and prodding, My first exposure to Macs was in high school where we did strange things to them that our teacher couldn’t figure out. In college, I taught myself HTML and Unix at a time when Lynx was the only real web browser. I remember telneting into a CD store years before Amazon.com ever existed. I maintain a $50,000 computer network as a part of my job.
There is nothing mysterious about computers. It always has been and always is a matter of understanding why a computer does one thing, and the rest progresses naturally.
But I mention none of these things when I call technical support. I try to defer to the ‘expert’. I state the facts ass I know them, hoping the Techie will interpret my data and provide me with a solution.
Not a chance.
The first step is to ignore every test I have ever done, and proceed to talk me through the most menial of possible tasks. Thirty minutes later when they’ve finished with the tests I spent five minutes completing 3 days before when the problem first appeared, they present me with the most insane of possible problems, and almost innevitably suggest wipeing out everything and starting from scratch,
These are boys reading from manuals. They wouldn’t dare skip ahead a few pages, for fear of their very slide-rules.
I have told no less than 10 companies about my problems with my computer’s hard drive. I point out the exhaustive series of tests I have performed, and the time I spent on the phone with the manufacturer of both the computer and operating system, who could not find any problem on their end. The hard drive is locked up in a world of its own and will surrender it’s secrets to no man.
And I always leave off by pointing out it appears as though a pin has broken off on the jack. Just a little metal stub left.
and ten companies or more have now told me, each one a different story, how it must be something else wrong with my hard drive.
look me in the fucking eyes. try to stay with me.
a
little
metal
pin
has
broken
off.
no I can’t test your hard drive because nothing can read the drive. and no i will not take it to a PC somewhere to get test results for you… thats what I’m fucking paying you for. And if one more of you fuckers feeds me a line about the high costs of CD burning for data recovery, I am going to shove the whole fucking drive somewhere uncomfortable for you, and maybe then you can count the pins.
empty inbox
oh I am so emailed out.
I have just . for the first time in at least 2 years, answered every single message in my email inbox. It is totally empty. All gone.
62 messages in 3 hours with only one break for an exploding computer.
So write me now… avoid the rush.
it worked
oh soo suhweet.
testing testing one two six
Just testing out a new program — Kung-Log. Should let me post to my movable type logs without using a web browser. Nice clean interface. Good basic features. And if it doesn’t work, you won’t see this anyway.
Apple buys Emagic
Looks like Apple is trying to put together a professional audio editing package, a la Final Cut Pro.
Microsoft Exec Warns Court of
Microsoft Exec Warns Court of Computer Frustration
Yeah. After all, the only computer systems that run well as open systems are… Unix, Linux, MacOS, OS2…
no wonder Microsoft appeals so much to the government. They both appeal to and encourage the average persons ignorance.
I find it extremely disturbing
I find it extremely disturbing that not only are there people still using Netscape and Explorer versions 3 to view my web site, there were actually a couple people using Lynx and NCSA Telnet.
If you don’t know what they are, that should tell you something.
And we wont disccuss those of you apparently using webTV
I am such a geek.
Oh yes…. I’m cool
I rock.
thank you… no…. no need to send flowers. Small bills will do.
upgraded to Moveable Type 2.0.
worked on the first try… no adjustments.
Damn thing works better than the old one too, since the pinging of Weblogs.com works now!
I am such a geek.
pop up downloads
Web surfers brace for pop-up downloads
No this won’t be abused.
has nayone given thought to the reason why advertising doesn’t work as well anymore. Every week there are stories of new methods of advertising online.
If you need a new method every week, there is something inherently wrong with the way you’re going about things. Or else people just plain are not interested in your product no matter what gimmik you use to try and sell it.
What disturbs me is that we are going to end up with the cableTV model eventually. We’ll be paying for access to sites that we find useful, and still subjected to intrucive advertising.
Personally, I have found a very old fashioned method to block 95% of all online advertising. Am I going to advertise what it is? Hellllllllllll no.
If it got popular, some ad company would find a hack around it.
And in case you’re keeping track, this article doesn’t mention the fact that Gator companies software that is downloaded automatically to your machine, wether you want it or not, was founf last year to be storing your personal internet information and sending it back to Gator. They only stopped it once the public found out.
AOL mail: OK for others,
AOL mail: OK for others, not itself
Is it any wonder this was published in a Microsloth publication?
bullshit
Could someone recommend a new ISP? I have completely lost any respect for Earthlink. I submit a complaint about their policy regarding their own spamming, and they send me an email scolding me for the use of the word “bullshit”?
And I quote:
The Dead Sea Scrolls
So now the archives return. They may not be pretty yet, but they’re there. And for the first time, they are almost a complete archive of all my online journals. (There’s a few from the mid 90′s if I ever find them, that have yet to be posted).
Man…it’s so pretty I could cry.
Gutenburg Lives Again
If this post goes through, then I have successfully migrated my online journal to a new management system.
Blogger was nice, and very easy. But it erked me having to rely on another web site. While Ev did an amazing job for one man virtually leading the revolution, blogger was never perfect.
So I’ve spent most of the last 24 hours installing MovableType, who’s greatest asset for my mind is that it operates totally within my account.
It isn’t totally functional yet. But it will be soon enough. For now, the archives are not functioning. And some adjustments need to be made to the template. But it was either post a work in progress or not post at all for an unknown length of time. And I know you’d all miss me too much.
Microsoft admits flaw in
Microsoft admits flaw in Passport
Yet another reason to never believe anyone who’s marketing strategy is “Trust me!”
How fitting is that.
How fitting is that. I was looking through documents on the CIA’s Freedom of Information Act web site. Clicked on a button labelled “your rights”.
Know what came up?
a blank page.
Blogger is weblogs for
Blogger is weblogs for dummies.
Right?
So why am I doing more handcodeing now than I have in years?
All the little markups and links in posts. Tweaking the templates so they work with blogger. learning PHP to add the commenting system.
I started doing web pages over 7 years ago. No choice back then to but to know HTML and hand-codeing. And Unix, since it was all done out of shell accounts.
But as of late, dreamweaver has been my friend.
Of course, bloggers getting me off my ass and starting my journal again also renewed my interest in creating web pages, and updating my whole web site.
We’ll see how this turns out.
I’m at work today.
I’m at work today. Which means of course, I am stressed. Unreasonable clients with their oxymoronic requests. Coworkers, traffic, bills, cold weather, bad food, long hours, …
life.
Okay. I’m pissed. One of my friends has given out my email address to spammers.
I probably have a thousand email addresses out there. I use a new one every time I sign up for a new service or newsletter, or purchase a new product online. Since I am the only owner of this domain name, they all get filtered back to me. This means, When I start getting spam, all I have to do is check the “To:” field to see what address it’s coming to, and thereby which service is selling my address (MP3.com being the worst offender). It also means if I get too much spam from that address, I can just block everything coming in at that address.
But this morning, a marketing letter arrived with my personal address on it. The address I only give out to friends and family. I don’t want this shit starting to show up there. It’s not like spam is hard to catch… the authors are usually about as subtle as a hurricane. But still…
Realistically, I don’t think anyone gave out my address. Most likely it was pinched when a friend sent me an online postcard or something. But there it is.
Anyway…
I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Not quite as … epic as I would have expected from such a famous book. But still good. Pretty damn funny in some parts. I read those last few paragraphs, and can’t imagine how some of my friends live their life in such a haze.
Someone linked to my site. hot damn. I’ve had a web site for 7 years now. And for all i know, there may be a shitload of links to it, out there. But this is the first one I know of from a stranger (at least I don’t recognize her). From her writing, she is a college student in Pennsylvania, and much more eloquent than I am.
Much better than being linked to by webpagesthatsuck.com. (Link to stranger removed… site no longer exists. 4/20/2011)
(See … this little paragraph is here just cause you can’t end a blog with a link or it screws up your whole page).
Okay… blogger just went
Okay… blogger just went skitzo on me, resulting in my post from yesterday getting zapped. Bah… gives me a chance to rewrite it later I guess.
Could anyone tell me
Could anyone tell me why this was linked in my browsers tool bar? I can’t even remember the last time I went to macwarehouse. But this link has been there forever now.
Great, now I’m a digitalslob too!
Hot fuck’n damn. Got
Hot fuck’n damn.
Got the comments working here in my journal. Means all you people who normally insult my writing to my face can now let the whole world know how you feel by posting your comments right here.
Let no one every
Let no one every say my boss doesn’t appreciate his employees. Walked into my office today and handed me a whole box of Cat5 cables.
So I will be able to wire the office.
guheez.
bah… sue me for
bah… sue me for not posting. I have been traveling virtually every weekend this past month. Texas, New York, etc.
Just so happens now I have a free moment at work (read: bored silly).
so get this… I pull a CDrom Drive out of the trash at work, test it, and sold it last night for $20.
God bless Capitalism.
Did I mention how pissin hot it’s been here as of late? I actully used my air conditioner if that tells you anything. It’s like walking into a brick wall when you leave the building.
And here I sit in my black pants.
C’mon. Doesn’t anyone want to pay me to eat, drink, and take pictures of swimsuit models?
PrimusDSL sucks. Go ahead…
PrimusDSL sucks.
Go ahead… sue me for libel. I’ve got no money to lose.
But damnit… when you’ve been working for a month to move a DSL line to a new location, things out to work. I shouldn’t have to call them to learn that three days ago they found out nothing would work, which was itself 6 days after they should have known weather it would work or not.
And since Verizon, nay Bell Atlantic, is controlled by people scared of the internet and what it will do to their business, it takes all but an act of God to get them to do anything regarding DSL service.
Fuck em all.
Okay, so my previous
Okay, so my previous attempts at keeping (what are apparently now-a-days called) weblogs have been miserable. But it is usually due to the amount of work it took to manually post new sh*t up. I looked over several blog services, but I like this one because all the files are stored right on your server, not the company’s.
We’ll see where this takes me.
my apartment, washington, dc
When I was a kid, like 6 or 7, I wanted a watch. Just seemed like a kewl thing to have. Especially the big black plastic ones. But my parents had to be practical. I could have a watch once I learned to tell time. The nerve. I can remember staring at the kitchen clock trying to get the system. Which hand meant which.
Of course I eventually got it. Parents couldnt trick me. So they bought me my watch. I opened the package and looked at it. A brand new digital watch.
note the sarcasm here
But technology had its grip on me.
Just finished watching some show on ABC. Actually a thought provoking discussion too. Talking about wether humanities moral development has kept pace with his technological growth.
I think the easy answer is no.
Major changes have just been coming along too fast, far surpassing anything in known history. I I think we’e just scraped by. Two atomic assaults. Four world wars. Civil rioting every few decades. (by the way, if you havent kept track, its getting to be time again)
So the current revolution is computers. Granted, it was a slow-ass revolution. Theyve been working their way into our lives for 40 years now. But we’re at the stage now, where theres not a single thing other than simple human expression that isnt involved some way with computers. Look around you. Everything.
I mean, screw the Y2K hype. It might bankrupt a few small companies. And cause some general disorganization for a while. But come on. When my answering machine stops working, I dont think it will turn the 60 year old lady that lives next door into a cannible.
But technology is part of life. Period. The lengths some people will go to avoid this thought is amazing. I read a quote by Annie Defranco a while back where she said "I dont do computers. But it doesnt really matter, since I plan on dropping out of society soon." um…. huh. First of all… she’s a musician. Has she looked at musical equipment lately? from production to playback its all digital. And no one but no one in the US can avoid computers. Ted Kazynski… tech hater extrordinair…. infamous Uni-bomber…. do you think he ever realized those mail bombs were sorted by computers at the post office, and delivered in vehicles with built-in computers.
Of course, Im sure the irony that he was eventually nailed by modern technology and forensics didnt escape him.
Next on Jerry Springer: I want my equal rights as long as I dont have to deal with you!
my apartment, washington, dc
so I fudged the date a bit… bite me.
ug… i need to get some sleep. but who needs to be conscious at work… is no fun.
you know, i have a beautiful girlfriend. She doesnt totally believe me yet. But that may be a good thing… women who know they’re beautiful are ussually bitches.
did i mention i finally got my Yosemite. this thing kicks ass. never seen anything faster. And the case is just funky. Industrial designers went nuts with this one. gotta love the clear power cables.
the weather is finally warming up. its now quite spring yet, but winter is no longer in the air. I love it personally. being able to walk through the park in a sweatshirt and jeans. watch the animals start coming out. (notice the attractive women wearing less)
so it started raining suddenly tonight. been dry all day. and a few minutes later, i heard this roar tat didnt sound to far away. Now maybe ive watched too many Discovery channel specials, but the first thing that came to mind was ‘tornado’. so what does this genius do? I go to the GLASS window to check.Im still here so i assume you know what I saw or didnt see.
Im even boring myself so Ill go now.
my apartment, washington, dc
so i found myself thinking yesterday (always a memorable occasion). If ya look at it, apartment buildings sure look like dorms for old people. You pack a bunch of people into one building… with the shared laundry, mailroom, etc. The differences though are welcome. Private bathrooms. Youve never really had the communal restroom experience until you had to use a stall after a 300 pound drunk korean. And Ive yet to hear latenight panting coming through my walls from the neighbors. Not to mention my kitchen is the size of my college dorm room.
anyways…
i love computers… what they can do. And I enjoy video games all the more. But no one can tell me they dont affect you. Besides the obvious waste of time. Every time I finish playing a game, my mind is spent. I cant concentrate worth shit on anything. Very annoying.
The internet is an amazing thing. I knew about the last set of attacks on Iraq before they anounced it on the radio, by catching a blurb on the CNN homepage. We proceeded to watch live RealVideo footage of the attack. Or when I ordered christmas presents, and the company gives you a tracking number for the package: I was able to find out exactly where the package was at any given minute, and knew when it was waiting for me at home, even though they hadnt put a slip in my mailbox yet. But why cant this wonderful tracking and high-speed updating keep all those presents I ordered from coming in late?
I think I better go eat while this video game wears off.
work, washington, dc
It can be interesting working here. We’re less than a block from the white house. THE white house.
I went for a walk at lunch today. From the road blocks and security, Id say Bill and Hillary were going for a stroll. The Secret Service was as conspicuous as ever (while my spelling remains a disaster). The guy on the corner was preaching Judgement Day, starting with the presidency. Personally, I hope my God has more important things on his mind than who the president is screwing.
I’m scared… downloaded some new microsoft products today – Explorer and Outlook – and they were good. Isnt this one of the signs of the armageddon? I may just have to break my own ban on Microsft products on my personal computer to install Outlook.
Spent some time looking at the new Macintosh G3′s… with the new cases (Yosemites). They are suuhhhhweet. Decked out with enough hardware to make John Wayne Bobbit jealous, and a funky case that puts even the iMac to shame.
This week alone,
I think ive gotten 3 or 4 comments from people around the world on the site i did for work. Now if I could just get credit for it… help starting my freelance web design business.
I’m gonna try to
go back to work now… it’s a slow day though… I may be back.
(yes, i do love
those triple dots "…")
Gannet Multimedia Lab, RIT
I would love to make this part of my web page a little simpler. You know that menu of dates that you choose from to get here? I just wanted to make it into a pull down menu where you would select the date, and click a button to see that page. Sounds simple right?
Yeah, whateva…
I checked every HTML tutorial I could find, and any WYSIWYG editor I could download. Nothin helped. I’m sure I could do it with CGI scripting, but I am in no way a computer programmer. I am just little ol me…a graphic designer who knows HTML.
Translation:
I’m screwed.
Anyone out there willing to help me with the scripting or another suggestion?