I just (well, a couple of hours ago) finished putting in this nifty javascript that makes for large “title” mouseovers. Try it out on the links over on the right, or any link in this post; I added title attributes to them. I initially saw this on Kitta.net, on the colophon page. I though it looked really cool, so I took a gander at the javascript that does it. The comments indicated that I could swipe it for my own means, so I did just that. ...
I finally broke down and got a new DVD player; my old Panasonic one was starting to “No Play” most DVDs (including ones that I’d previously watched on it), and my newer RCA one was manufactured poorly, and the gears would start skipping when trying to access data near the end of discs. So I went over to my local CompUSA and picked up a Philips DVP642/37. And man is it sweet. It’s better than the Apex I had way back when (which has since gone the way of the dinosaurs): It’s DivX certified, and can play just about anything I want. DVDs work perfectly, of course (I even found the region-free hack so I can play any DVD). VCDs and SVCDs work like a breeze. CDRs with mpeg files? No sweat. And of course it can play DivX movies that are burned onto CDRs as well. If I had a DVD burner, I suspect it’d also play DVDs full of DivX files (handy for my collection of Twin Peaks season 2 avi’s). ...
I finally got all of the posts re-postified. I didn’t take the time to put in categories for most of them, though. Even the newer ones that used to have categories. I may go back eventually and put in categories for everything, but that’s really a lot of effort. I think I’ll concentrate my efforts on getting the stupid archive section on the front page working correctly first; then I’ll see about the categories… ...
I guess this is just the god of computers slapping me around for not making a backup. I still have my entire post database, but I can’t access it via wordpress. This is upsetting, to say the least. I’m in the process of re-posting them all, but it’s gonna take a bit of time. Especially since I’m modifying the timestamps on each one back to their original values. Memo to myself: make more frequent backups, dammit. ...
Graaaagh!
Ah. Much better. I just finished upgrading to Linux 2.6.7 (I was running 2.4.23 previously). I didn’t opt for 2.6.8 because of that nasty problem where non-root users can’t burn CDs. But everything just fell into place. I did need to make a few tweaks to a couple of files, but by and large there were no huge problems. Until I got the right driver loaded for my USB controller (the module filename had changed to uhci_hcd), my mouse was going WAY too fast for me; it was almost unusable. ...
Wow. Just when I thought there wasn’t anything funny left on that Interweb thing, I found this. I found it in a roundabout sort of way; I was on someone’s random weblog, and they linked to Neil Gaiman’s journal. He had a link at the very bottom (at least, that’s where it was when I was there about 10 minutes ago) to the Morbid Tendencies site, specifically to their “Bunny of the Month” club. ...
Having just finished Octopussy and the Living Daylights, I think I can safely say that the Bond books (those 14 masterworks of espionage fiction by Ian Fleming) are far and away better than the movies. Now, this isn’t to say that the Bond movies aren’t good; they do an adequate job of presenting the Commander’s stories. It’s just that there’s a certain something when it comes to books; in my mind, there’s more possibility for description and character development when you aren’t hampered by a 2-hour running time and the necessary reliance on verbal communication and expression. ...
A few months ago, I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d probably never get my system to do accelerated 3D graphics while still having both monitors on. All that has changed thanks to Google. And a bunch of mailing lists and FAQs, and other linux hackers who have the same video card. For reference, I have a Radeon 7000 (or Radeon VE) dual-head AGP video card. And Unreal Tournament works great. I’m still having some problems getting Half-Life to run in Wine, but that’s mainly half-life’s fault: I can’t get it to run in 24-bit or 32-bit color. ...
Well, not me, per se, but the site. I mean, Ian Main is a masterful coder (see my previous post), but the blue & white just isn’t me. I thought for a while that I might just desaturate the images, and convert to an all-grey profile that looked sort-of like “Human Condition”, but I decided in the end that doing so would just be a half-measure. What I really need is a completely new design. I like the minimalism that humancondition provides, but there are some things (mostly things I can’t adequately describe) that I don’t think capture what I want to present. Since I’m not much of an artist, and I definitely don’t want to do something cheesy like have a giant fanart of some anime or manga, I think I’ll stick with simple geometrics (like the current slashed lines and gradients). I’m sure I can hack the current stylesheet enough to make it do what I want (especially with the web developer extension to firefox), it’s really just a matter of figuring out what I want to do (have I said that already?) . . . . ...