Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Sat, 2005-02-05 (Feb 05)

Considering Cameras (part 1)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Photography,Tech (General) — David @ 05:09

I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while. My current, an Olympus D-450 Zoom, functions excruciatingly slowly, and only has 1.3 megapixels of resolution. It was top of the line for a consumer camera when I got it five or six years ago, and I’ve taken thousands of pictures with it (over a thousand in Holland alone last year). But it’s now old enough that it’s available on “eBay”:http://www.ebay.com/ for $50 or less.

I’m by no means a professional photographer, or even in the “amateur” category really. I don’t have time to develop those skills. But I like to pretend like I know what I’m doing, and maybe learn something when I have time. It’s an area of interest.

So, I want a camera that rocks, at a cheap price. Yeah, who doesn’t? :-) Well, my style tends to be, “develop composition mentally over a wide subject angle, test composition through camera (mainly LCD but occasionally viewfinder), shoot quickly before subject moves.” I take lots of pictures, fast. I don’t wait for the “perfect shot”, if needed I’ll take several in a row of the same thing to see which comes out best (quality-wise and in composition).

This style really seems to fit a point-and-shoot camera better than an SLR-like (or SLR, if that were in my price range). But I want the flexibility of as many manual controls as possible in case I want to do something a little more advanced, and have the time to set it up.

Also, because of my quick-composition and multi-pictures tendencies, I like to take some wide-angle shots in addition to closeups of the same thing, making a long and fast zoom very helpful.

I’m looking at three cameras, when I can afford one. I’ve been eyeing the “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM for the longest. Earlier tonight I found three others that do that thing I hate — turning an easy decision into a much more subjective and time-consuming one! One is the “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM, another is the “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM, and the final one is the “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM. All those links are to reviews at a very awesome site, “Image-Resource.com”:http://www.imaging-resource.com. Another good site with lots of info and in-depth reviews is “Digital Photography Review”:http://www.dpreview.com/, which has info on most, if not all, of the same cameras I just mentioned.

Anyway, I’m going to go through each camera and give some highlights on why I like each. Then I’m going to go to sleep. And later, at a yet-to-be-determined time post more as part 2 of this post.

  • “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM
    This camera is awesome (second “review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilme550/ also available). It has nearly everything, the biggest downside is that it only has a 4x zoom, as opposed to the Olympus’s 5x. I don’t mind that it’s a 6.3 megapixel resolution (Olympus and Canon models have seven), six is plenty. A camera with five megapixels I might consider if everything else was awesome enough, but four or lower is a hard sell. It goes from point-and-shoot to full manual control, with lots of options. DPreview says that timing-wise, this thing goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.5 seconds, zooms from widest to maximum in 1.5 seconds, and takes a picture about 0.6 seconds after pressing the shutter release fully! That’s a speedy digital camera! All very suitable to my shooting style. Without the flash on, it’s also ready to take a second shot 1.5 seconds after the last, also excellent. My current camera takes 4-6 seconds to be ready for another, and it feels like an eternity most of the time, and it’s pretty bad in the other timing areas, too. But all these cameras here are faster than my existing one, so let’s go on. Oh yeah, it uses the xD Picture Card storage format: more expensive than most but not killer. Two other plusses include interpolated (before compression) pictures up to 12 megapixels from the 6.3 MP sensor, and (according to DPreview) “excellent color and exposure.” It’s also the cheapest of them all! Around $300; unfortunately a Fuji rebate of $50 just expired the end of January :-(
  • “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM
    I’m equally balanced between the Fuji and this Olympus right now (this one has “a review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc7000/ as well). For one, my current camera is an Olympus. Actually, that’s a downside :-) But DPreview says it goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.4 seconds, a full-shutter-release-press (in one motion) takes a picture in 0.5 seconds, and runs 1.7 seconds shot-to-shot. All of which are just barely on either side of the times for the Fuji E550. But, this thing is a seven megapixel camera. Downsides include low battery life (still sky-high compared to my current one!) and a two-second delay before showing the next picture when browsing through existing shots in-camera. The others here are supposed to be much faster than two seconds to pull up a preview. Note again, that in comparison my current Olympus D-450 Zoom can take 4-6 seconds to display a preview of a picture in the camera, which is again an eternity, especially when trying to “scroll” through the shots! Nicest thing about this one over the Fuji (I think) is that the zoom is 5x optical vs. 4x. It has a fast zoom, extending at startup in one second (not sure on speed while zooming but I would assume it’s equally impressive). Media is xD Picture Card.
  • “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM
    This one isn’t directly reviewed at DPreview, but the next model up, the EX-P700 (substituting seven megapixels for this one’s six) has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioexp700/ instead. The EX-P600 is about $80 cheaper than the EX-P700, and some of my info here is from the DPreview info on the EX-P700 instead of the 600. First of all, the timing appears to be very close to the above cameras, except it takes an extra second to turn on and be ready-to-shoot. Like the others (Except the Canon at 1.8″), it’s got a 2.0″ LCD display in addition to the viewfinder. I didn’t see the zoom speed mentioned, but shot-to-shot times were 2 to 2.5 seconds, a bit high. It’s got a 4x optical zoom, the minimum of these cameras. I haven’t gotten in-depth into this camera yet but it looks like a good backup option. Uses SD storage, just like my Treo 600!
  • “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM
    Also has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons70/ and it’s a seven megapixel model, like the Olympus C-7000. Optical zoom is only 3.6x, a downside. It does have lots of scene presets for different conditions, and looks cool, being the only black one of the bunch. DPreview says the camera is “not a particularly speedy camera” and focusing in low-light can cause a lot of hunting. Picture playback speed also suffers. Almost three seconds from off to ready-to-shoot. Shooting lag time is one second (higher than the others), and zooming full-wide to telephoto takes 1.8 seconds, admittedly not horrible. A good last choice with high resolution but less zoom and speed.

That’s it for my first roundup! I’ll follow up when I get the chance. And when I make the purchse, whenever I happen to save up the money (sooner if I get the Fuji! :-)

Thu, 2005-02-03 (Feb 03)

TiVo? Schmevo.

Filed under: Entertainment,Tech (General) — David @ 01:11

Tivo’s are cool. However, they’re not cool enough for me to spend money on. I’d rather have something better. One of the bloggers I read has an “article posted on Tuesday on the TiVo Home SDK”:http://www.ericburke.com/blog/2005/02/tivo-hme-sdk.html that seems to assume that Tivo’s must get more expandable and customizable because that’s the only way to do things. I don’t know if he’s aware of the alternatives or not. But if he isn’t, I let him know! And I liked my post enough to repeat it here:

Ever heard of “SageTV”:http://www.sage.tv? I put together a three-tuner computer system running Sage, I don’t pay TiVo’s monthly fee and I can add computer clients anywhere in the house that control the same unit with the same shows. I can add hard drive space. I can install extensions (including commercial detection that someone wrote that works reasonably well, and others that let me read RSS feeds, check weather…). And, they just released a Linux version to go along with the Windows version. I’ve never had a TiVo, but I can’t see the benefits over what I have.

They also have a device coming soon like a media center “extender” so you can put your server in a closet and just run this box near the TV to a network jack (maybe wireless? My laptop works fine as an 802.11g SageTV client) and plug it in. Did I mention it has a free TV guide subscription for two weeks in advance?

Apparently, although I didn’t pick it for several reasons, some people also like “BeyondTV”:http://www.snapstream.com for similar functions.

Microsoft even released their Media Center edition thingy as a copycat of all this.

Why do we need TiVo again? Well, maybe for the non-techies that don’t want the power I just mentioned…but isn’t that who these new TiVo features are geared towards?

Anyway, big Friday night church event this week, I’ll be setting up lighting/media stuff all day tomorrow (Thursday) and then I get a break Friday until about 4:30 pm. But by “all day tomorrow” I mean from 9 am to about 9 pm or so. All for a good cause! I’ll be glad when it’s over though. At least I’m off Saturday…I’ll need it, since it will probably take until 2 am Friday night to strike (that means “take everything down and clean up” in roadie-speak in case you didn’t know :-)

Wed, 2005-01-19 (Jan 19)

Comment Spam-Be-Gone: Thank You Google!

Filed under: Blog,General,In The News,Internet,Tech (General),Web Development,World News — David @ 00:29

“Google”:http://www.google.com/ has done it again: solved a major problem on the web. Fixed Comment Spam! It was a blindingly obvious fix, but only with the usual 20/20 hindsight :-) It will take a little while to make a difference in the number of comment attacks, until all blogs are updated to take advantage of it. The major services out there (including LiveJournal for some of my readers) have it or are implementing it right away, in cooperation with Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. Robert “brought it to my attention”:http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/01/18/no-more-spam/ from his blog and I checked out (as you should) this Google post called “Preventing comment spam“:http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html on Google’s official blog. All the gory (not really) details.

Very elegant, but it does require the major search engines, the reason for the comment spam problem, to implement ignoring the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all links they index. Fortunately, that’s exactly what has happened, and why this is even news!

So, Google, thank you once times a “googol”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=googol&btnG=Google+Search!

Sun, 2005-01-16 (Jan 16)

LibraryLookup

Filed under: Books,General,Internet,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 01:49

Another awesome library-related web tool (the first I mentioned was “LibraryElf”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/) is the “bookmarklet(Google for term to define)”:http://www.google.com/search?q=bookmarklet creation tool over at “Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html page. If you live in Indianapolis, Indiana (or in the county of Marion in Indiana), you can use his customize tool to “build your own bookmarklet”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html that lets you, when browsing Amazon.com or another similar web merchant, click this bookmarklet in your toolbar to open a search for that book at your local library! Easy way to save money buying a book that’s at your library!

This is very cool. If you go to the “Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library(IMCPL)”:http://www.imcpl.org/ you can just drag this link to your bookmarks/favorites/links bar, go to a page at Amazon (see “my LibraryElf post”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/ for some Amazon links), and click the bookmarklet to try it yourself! It seems that IMCPL returns the identical match in a list of search results, but it seems the exact ISBN match is the third item down, so click the third ISBN down in the results to see the actual book information.

Note that if you use his “custom bookmarklet generator”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html (which I did to create the link above) the values for IMCPL are:


Base URL: http: //catalog.imcpl.org/
Library Name: [whatever you want to call the link]
Vendor: "iPac" is the one you must select

(note: remove the space between the “http” and the “catalog.imcpl.org” above, I had to add it to get it to show up correctly in this post)

I provide this information because it was very hard to figure out that “iPac” was the correct vendor type, since it doesn’t mention that specific vendor anywhere on IMCPL’s site. Try it, you’ll like it!

Library Elf

Filed under: Books,General,Internet,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 01:02

In news important enough to deserve its own entry, I found a great new little resource over at “LibraryElf“:http://www.libraryelf.com/ that I found through a great little “post at 43 Folders“:http://www.43folders.com/2005/01/lazyweb_library.html. It gives you an RSS feed, and emails, with notifications of books due at the local public library here in town (they added ours, in one day, at my request!) and several others around the country. Granted, the local library already has reminder emails. But this site will not just email you, but text message your cell phone and provide a nice little RSS feed you can stick in your newsreader to let you know when what’s due, or overdue. With customizable reminder times (library’s limited to three days prior to due date), and the ability to notify you when holds are ready to be picked up as well!

For those with big families of book-checker-outers, or those with accounts at multiple libraries that ‘Elf supports, you can add multiple cards to one account and it will track all of them for you on the same system. Makes tracking all your stuff that much easier, even if they don’t let you place holds or auto-renew the books online through their system at the moment.

I’m thinking maybe if they allowed you to place holds on books you find in the library’s catalog (wait, I know the library lets you do this already through their site, let me finish!), but add them to an “interest queue” (see the second comment at that 43 Folders post above, which links to “Netflix for books or ‘interest queues'”:http://www.sauria.com/blog/computers/open_source/osaf/chandler/1129) that monitors when I return books and puts the next book or two on hold for me automatically. That would give the library more books on its shelves (so I don’t have to check out 30 books on a topic because I don’t want to forget to get them, then renew them up to the 15-times max unless someone else requests them). And me a more manageable stack of books to read at once, while letting me get to my “wish list.” But ‘Elf doesn’t place holds yet, so it’s a dream for the moment. Enough from, me go check it out!

Unrelated: “this is cool”:http://www.lazyweb.org/.

Fri, 2005-01-07 (Jan 07)

Brain Hurts Along with Eyes

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,Tech (General) — David @ 04:03

Ouch. My brain hurts. So do my eyes. Can’t focus. Must. Sleep. Why? Clock. Look. [snoring…]

Grrr…I just read “librarygal’s”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/ most “recent blog entry”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/150845.html and of course she challenged me to another one of those detested quizzes that I told myself I’d just do one of and never tough again! This time:


I am nerdier than 87% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

They go into more detail:

12% scored higher,
1% scored the same, and
87% scored lower.

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!.

So MIT, that’s here in town, right? Since I’m planning on going to college locally…somewhere…

Oh and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that librarygal’s post’s subject was, “another nerd quiz for david_itman”, but the last post was a geek post, not a nerd post. The distinction is “well defined”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=geek+vs+nerd&btnG=Search, if not ignored often. And maybe “not that well”:http://forum.defcon.org/archive/index.php/t-1069.html defined. Well-discussed, then. Or, opinionated. Or, I’m-tired-so-I’m-going-to-bed. -inated.

Update: If I had to pick I’d go with geek over nerd, personally, especially based on “this”:http://web.vee.net/stuff/geek-vs-nerd.html which is admittedly one of many opinions. Hard to tell if the above quiz was more for one or the other though. I’m going to have to say it meant geek and not nerd, though (probably since I scored so high or something…). Now really to bed (4:10 now).

Update again: Maybe I’ll switch back based on this article, “The Socio-Psychological Distinction of Nerds vs. Geeks”:http://www.earthsea.com/metrogamers/nerd-gee.htm. Blah. It’s 04:12:45 hundred hours as I click save on this now.

Wed, 2005-01-05 (Jan 05)

Geek Quiz

Filed under: Blog,Funny,Personal,Tech (General) — David @ 03:48

I really dislike online quizzes, but hey, some of them are good. Just following the example of “librarygal”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/149223.html and “fearless4jesus”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/fearless4jesus/18768.html. So here’s this one:

You are 41% geek
You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.
You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You’ll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!
Geek [to You]: I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!
You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

I do have a question. Does it make me even more of a geek if I’m insulted that it didn’t give me a high enough score? Heck, I even went back and answered two questions differently and it only pushed me up to 43%…

Stupid Chain Letters

Filed under: Blog,General,Spam,Tech (General) — David @ 03:13

Well a friend of mine posted an “interesting post”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/fearless4jesus/18676.html about internet chain letters. And instead of taking up a huge comment on her blog, perhaps I should inform all of my readers of the extent of my genius (whatever extent being able to search Google gives me…apparently a lot considering how few people can do this… :-) Says she, in part:

“There are tons of e-mail hoaxes out there and they stay there because people don’t know how to recognize them, and they tug at the heart, or use core issues to move people. They don’t hurt anything I guess, but I am tired of them.

“I got an email today that I was pretty positive was made up. It said something about James Dobsin starting this e-mail petition to protect Christian broadcasting. My first thought was, how in the world could an e-mail petition really work? My second thought was, I’ve seen this before.

Fortunately most people that send junk like this don’t have my email address :-) But I’m well aware of the problem, as I work with a lot of people who have no clue. There’s not really an excuse these days, as you can Google search just about anything to find out if there are reliable sources that will vouch for something. It’s time-consuming for me to email everyone I get one of these from (like I said not many, but it still takes time!) to inform them (without insulting them) about the fact that they’re passing on stupid unreliable stuff.

I did a quick Google search just now (how’s that for proof-of–genius-concept? :-) and found some really informative links on the subject:

* “CIAC(Computer Incident Advisory Capability) Hoaxbusters”:http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
(this is a US government-run website…not that you can trust the government about everything, but I do agree with their stance on email hoaxes and chains :-) They tell you how to recognize a hoax and what to do with them.
* “How Chain Letters Really Work”:http://home.flash.net/~bob001/chainletter.htm
This is a great explanation of how those famous “send $5 to everyone on the list below and do a mailing” schemes make a lot of money in donations…but just for the originator! Enlightening if you’re not already aware.
* “The Paradox: Why I hate spam (and email chain letters and pyramid schemes and virus warnings and…)”:http://paradox.homeip.net/~janra/writing/spam.html
Good info…especially the parts about Bandwidth and Cost. It shows how it’s _not_ collectively harmless to send everyone in your address book the same thing and have everyone else repeat the same. It costs money on the Internet, along with commercial spam, and slows things down. By sending stuff like this, _you_ may be helping the internet get slower!
* “Chain Prayers”:http://www.truthminers.com/truth/chain_mail.htm
Quite interesting, and a site I hadn’t seen until now. Specifically debunking Christian Prayer Chain Letters, it give three example quotes from such letters and then provides a six-point analysis of why it’s garbage:

“Third: This is not a good witness. Sometimes God gives us one time opportunities to share with another person. Most of the time He gives us ongoing relationships THROUGH which we share the love and mercy of Christ by both our daily lives and our speech. Relationship building is important because then people can see God working within us, freeing us from sin. Messages like these can have the opposite effect on an unbeliever. It makes us seem foolish for believing that forwarding an email will prove our love for God.

I’ll let you read the other five reasons for yourself.
* “Chain Letters (and Anti-Chain Letters)”:http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/chain-letters.html
At first the information is similar to that provided by the above sites. However, there are some really good links down the page a bit, including a link to some “anti-chain letters” (“this one’s good”:http://www.perry.com/bizarre/antichn.html) and a very large section of “chain mail humor”. There’s some very funny stuff there, for example the ‘”Citation Chain Letter“:http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/citation-chain-letter.html’ (“Dear Fellow Scientist: This letter has been around the world at least seven times. It has been to many major conferences. Now it has come to you…“) and the “‘Why ask Why Chain Letter“:http://bears.ece.ucsb.edu/personnel/astornet/humor/humor7.html’, which asks such things as:

** “Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?”
** “If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?”
** “Why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM?”
** “If you’re in a vehicle going the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights?”
** “Why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM?”
** “Why do noses run and feet smell?”
** and, “Why is it that when you’re driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?”

Don’t worry, I didn’t repeat all of them :-) It’s especially nice since it says at the bottom that it originated in The Netherlands. I like stuff that mentions The Netherlands since it’s the only country I’ve ever been to outside the U.S. :-) There are even more good humor pages at that site, but you probably want to skip the one titled, “With sex all things are possible”. Yes, I realize many of you will read that one just becuase I said not to. If you don’t mind some explicit (but not pornographic) adult topics, it does have a bit of hilarity to be found, but probably isn’t worth the read anyway. Yet there are still those of you who will want to decide for themselves I bet. Curiosity killed the cat, but that saying hasn’t stopped anyone’s curiosity yet that I know of…you’ll have to find the link yourself at least. There’s one more hilarious piece I just read, called ‘”The Gullibility Virus Warning“:http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/gullibility-virus.html’. In part:

Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:

The willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking. The urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others. A lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true.

T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, “I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I’ve stopped using shampoo.” When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected.

Of course, forward that one to your friends at your own risk. It’s not my fault if it makes you friendless!

I won’t even discuss virus hoaxes here, I need to get to bed and they deserve a post twice this size of their own (whether I’ll ever write the post…who knows?). Basically, check “Google”:http://www.google.com and your favorite reputable antivirus vendor’s website before passing on any virus warning you receive in email.

Sat, 2005-01-01 (Jan 01)

Blog Website Tweaked

Filed under: Blog,General,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 08:14

Well, instead of writing a post about how great the New Year’s Eve parties I went to were (they were great), since 2:30 am (when I got home) I’ve been hacking away at this website, getting some plugins added, upgraded, and some manual tweaks set up. I won’t bore you with too many details, but indulge me for a minute as I’m rather proud and it was fun.

First thing I did was add a couple of behind-the-scenes plugins, and I also upgraded the “Post Teaser”:http://turnipspatch.com/projects/post-teaser/ plugin that I enabled the other day, from version 1 to version 2, and I tweaked some settings. Then I wrote some added functionality that I’ll probably submit back to the author! Basically the (wow that was some cat screech I just heard outside the window!) new version fixes some bugs and stuff, and is more efficient.

The settings I changed had to do with how the “number of words, approx. reading time, link to post” text read, and also how many words (approximately) to have each post show before cutting it off and sending it to the post page to finish. I think I ended up setting it at 400 words, which seems to show a lot of posts in their entirety and the others it gives a nice, long preview of. Keep in mind that 400 words is a “suggestion” and not a cutoff point, it actually auto-cuts off after a full paragraph, never in mid-sentence, it just chooses the paragraph closest to leaving 400 words in the main preview.

Then I saw that some posts had a “more” link already manually hard-coded (such as the “‘isn’t it time someone saved you?'”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2004/12/25/isnt-it-time-someone-saved-you/ post, but you can’t tell what I mean except by viewing it in the “December Archives”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2004/12/, 4th post down), and it was kind’ve weird to have it say “okay that’s the whole post with x words” right below where it said “click for more”! So I grabbed the “PHP”:http://www.php.org/ source code for that plugin, figured out how it worked (I’ve never worked with the “WordPress(WordPress Blog Software)”:http://www.wordpress.org/ “Plugin(WordPress Plugins Information Wiki)”:http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=Plugin%2FAPI “API(Application Programming Interface)”:http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=Plugin%2FAPI before), and modified it to show a third possibility where a post already has a “more” link manually added by the author. In that case it just shows a summary of the “intro word count and reading time” with a link to the more page and a reminder that there’s more to read. It was a simple little hack, but I really like it considering that I don’t know much PHP (“Perl(Practical Extraction and Report Language)”:http://www.perl.org/ is my language all the way. Go Perl!) and I wasn’t familiar with the plugin or the API previously.

Then, I happened upon a little hack that I set up so that when you view a post on it’s own page, it has “next post”, “home”, and “last post” links, complete with titles, showing up at the top. I wanted to do that originally, because before he switched to WordPress I saw “Robert”:http://robert.accettura.com/ doing it (I think MoveableType does it automatically). But I couldn’t figure out how, and now I did. And I like it, so it’s staying. Try it out.

Then my challenge was to set up a “Live Preview”:http://www.chrisjdavis.org/index.php/2004/03/15/live-preview-for-comments/ plugin I’d seen the other day that let commenters actually see a preview of the post as they were typing it, keystroke-by-keystroke. I saw this in action on the plugin’s demo site, and it rocks! Go ahead and try it out on a post…I did find a small bug in that if you use the “blockquote” HTML tag, Internet Explorer stops showing the preview at that point. Stupid IE. But “Firefox”:http://www.getfirefox.com/ does just fine with it and looks great. Everything else seems to work in IE all right though.

Tue, 2004-12-28 (Dec 28)

Bomb on a Plane

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,Hardware,Tech (General) — David @ 06:04

Reading a “post over at Slashdot”:http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134143&cid=11197391 and someone mentioned this:

There is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that someone on the same plane as you has a bomb.
There is a 1 in 25,000,000,000 that two people on the same plane have a bomb.
So always take a bomb with you on the plane, then you’re pretty sure you’re safe.

I don’t know if it’s being up at 5:30 in the morning or not that makes that hilarious. Probably, but I’m pretty used to this schedule after 1.5 weeks at it. Just getting to be bedtime, now, as soon as I go find a snack. Already ate some leftover ham a few hours ago while watching TV, but I’m hungry again.

To prevent a complete waste of space: “ZipZoomFly”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ (one of the two best, and usually cheapest (hence, best) online stores for computer stuff, the other one being “Newegg”:http://www.newegg.com/) recently got some “Refurbished Seagate 200GB IDE”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560-RFB hard drives in, for only $112.50 with free 2-day shipping (their usual shipping deal). Very good price…although the “new version”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560 they sell for $125, which dropped from $127 a few weeks ago but was as low as $117 a month or two ago.

That particular hard drive is my favorite out of all the hard drives I’ve used personally. It’s the quietest, most reliable, and best of all has a FIVE YEAR warranty, something you can’t get anywhere else on that kind of drive. Go Seagate! I’ve got two of those drives, and a Hitachi Deskstar 200GB that I like all right (I have to RMA one of the Seagates and the Hitachi though, but their failures one right after the other within three days in the same computer less than two months after the purchase of both may or may not be the drives’ problem…I bought a new motherboard and processor just in case, and treated myself to the “3EGHz Pentium 4 with HT, an 800MHz FSB, and 1MB of L2 cache”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80661-1 while I was at it, so I can’t complain except for the money :-) But hey, a motherboard for $74.49 (the “AOpen AX4SPE-UN”:http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-137-041&depa=0) and 3 GHz processor for $186.90 (it’s dropped by ninty cents since then at ZipZoomFly and it’s three dollars more at Newegg) isn’t a bad deal at all, especially when you have (more…)

Tue, 2004-12-21 (Dec 21)

Coding “In the Flow”

Filed under: Programming,Tech (General) — David @ 02:03

Quite an awesome article, which I recognize well (even though I don’t get to do much coding by day at the moment), was posted called “‘Cringe from crossing a concentrating coder'”:http://liw.iki.fi/liw/texts/flow.en (linked from ForeverGeek’s “Coding Concentration”:http://forevergeek.com/geek_resources/coder_concentration.php post).

If you can’t tell, I like examining the reasons and methodologies behind what causes both me and others to do the things we do, the way we do them. Fascinating stuff. The article above is very good introspection along the lines it covers. I’d comment more, but it seems to speak for itself.

After some further reading, another link at the same site is pretty funny as well: “‘Important programming truths'”:http://liw.iki.fi/liw/texts/programming-truths.html

Fri, 2004-12-17 (Dec 17)

Shark Tank: Computer Support Humor

Filed under: Blog,Funny,Internet,Personal,Tech (General) — David @ 04:30

Shark Tank his hilarious. You need to read it if you’ve ever helped anyone with computer, or even thought, “man, that person needs to get a clue–and by the way, ha ha ha ha ha!”

It’s really the only humor “blog” (it’s got an RSS feed) I read consistently and completely. I’m starting to read “Dilbert”:http://www.dilbert.com/ regularly though…used to read a lot of Dilbert but just forgot and got busy for a while. Still funny if not a bit recognizable sometimes. Actually I’ve got a pretty darn good setup at my current job, and I think trying the same thing somewhere else would resemble Dilbert quite a bit more, so for now I read Dilbert in a spirit of thankfulness (that I don’t have to deal with it that bad).

I’m in a funny (‘ha ha’-type) mood, at least underneath the, “I’m so tired I should be sleeping rather than blinking my eyes trying to get them to stay open long enough to finish typing this sentence” mood that comes from staying up ’till close to 4:30 in the morning :-) The funny part probably comes from the fact that I’m finally on vacation (read: “not at work” rather than “out of town”) for over two weeks! I don’t have to be back at the office until January 3rd! Of course I’ve still got to be there those three Sundays during that time, but three days instead of the usual fifteen (and that’s on a normal, 40-hour week…what is that again?) isn’t bad.

I have a feeling I’ll be really bored at some point during that time, but for now I’m just tired. The episodes of “Stargate: Atlantis”:http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/ I watched until 2:30am were good though; then I caught up on some news/blogreading, now I’m doing some blogwriting, then I’ll be doing some blogsleeping (not so much…to the blog part anyway, kind of hard to blog while sleeping).

Which leads me into another point: I was thinking earlier how I really find the usage of the phrase “not so much” very amusing throughout the Atlantis series (may be in SG-1, too, but I can’t remember right now. Okay now I can…I know in the first Atlantis episode, Gen. O’Neill is in the helicopter with Maj. Sheppard and they out-maneuver the Ancients’ missile and Sheppard says, “That was different.” O’Neill replies (in traditional Jack style), “For me, not so much.”). I know I heard the phrase in at least one of the three episodes I watched tonight (the first three new ones that are coming Jan 21, 2005…you’ll have to ask if you want to know why I have them already…I still have two more to watch but I figured I’d quit while I was awake). I think it was Maj. Sheppard who said it, but like I said I can’t remember. It’s just one of my favorite quotes right now (when delivered correctly), and I thought I’d mention it. And I not only thought it, but I actually did mention it, as you now know (unless you skipped to the end of the post without reading about it, which I must scold you for (why? I don’t know…)). I also love (nested (inside each other (in case you couldn’t tell))) parentheses…

Thu, 2004-12-16 (Dec 16)

Firefox Ad Hits New York Times!

Filed under: Blog,Mozilla,Open Source,Tech (General),World News — David @ 03:35

This may be one of the few times I can agree with something in the New York Times…figures it would be an ad :-) Anyway, over at “spreadfirefox.com”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com they’ve posted the “announcment about the ad”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/8769 and of course “Robert Accettura beat me to posting”:http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2004/12/15/firefox-ad-is-out-2-full-pages/ about it becuase I wasn’t at the computer to catch the post!

Check it out though, my name’s in the ad somewhere! Also…a nice surprise is that the ad is two pages in size instead of the promised/expected single page!

Update: I found my name in the PDF…it’s down to the right of the light “x” in Firefox at the bottom of the first page. About a third of the way above the center of the “x” and over a little ways to the right (not touching the “x” and separated by some names). The names are alphabetical, and my last name starts with “Sz”. So far I’m not directly giving it away on this blog though…some of my readers know me though :-) (If you do, please don’t post it in the comments…thanks.)

Tue, 2004-12-14 (Dec 14)

Firefox’s Google homepage…a ’suggest’ion?

Filed under: Blog,General,Mozilla,Open Source,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 20:57

Now that “Google Suggest Beta”:http://labs.google.com/suggest has been released, and seems to work really well…why not add it to the “Mozilla Firefox Start Page”:http://www.google.com/firefox that Google hosts? Then I wouldn’t have to choose between leaving the nice Firefox start page (my current choice) and Google Suggest set as my home page. Google can go ahead and add the Suggest technology to its main homepage, too, as far as I’m concerned!

Now if they would just listen to me…

Sun, 2004-11-21 (Nov 21)

Neal Stephenson: more books for me to read!

Filed under: Blog,Books,Entertainment,General,Tech (General) — David @ 21:08

Over at the BoingBoing.net blog, there’s a nice entry about Neal Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle Trilogy”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/21/neal_stephensons_sys.html of books that it looks like I might have to check out now. I really enjoyed his “Cryptonomicon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060512806/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2. Looks like these three are REALLY long though! Wonder how long it will take me to have the time to read them? Let’s just say I’ll probably check only one at a time out of the library! The books are “Quicksilver”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060593083/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, followed by “The Confusion”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060733357/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 and “The System of the World”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523875/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2.

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