December 2005

Updated: Random Image Plugin for WordPress

New Features:
1) alt text can now be displayed below image as a caption
2) regular expressions can be used to filter for certain images based on src attribute #

Modern day revolutionary: For me, Firefox is a means, not an end. I want the world’s information and applications to run on a broad variety of platforms, beyond the control of a single organization. A competitive, standards-based, cross-platform Web is the best way towards that, and Firefox is doing a lot to help us get there, so every day I’m pleased to be doing my part. #

Holy crap, Marcia actually made a Venn Diagram of the men she met speed dating #

Yes! Blogging is like an MMORPG: Arguably the character I play on this blog is embedded in a kind of massively multiplayer online role-playing game — aka the blogosphere (Jon Udell) #

O’Reilly Couture: FSM sighting #

According to some bloggers: The Top 40 Bands in America Today #

Awesome. Porn site, powered by WordPress, using my Random Image plugin:

exgirlfriendsvideo.com ¡ENSFW! #

Updated: monthchunks plugin for WordPress

New Features:
1) When viewing monthly archive page, that month’s link is indicated in bold (and is not linked)
2) Years sorted in chronological order
3) Revised HTML output to allow for a more seamless replacement of wp_get_archives() #

Quote of the day: The best defense of the Wikipedia, frankly, is to point out how much bad information is available from supposedly reliable sources. (for Jason) #

New thing I did not know existed: Transparency International (Kind of like Amnesty International, except against corruption) #

I heard this This American Life program twice within a few days, a few months ago, and I was captivated by Nick Hornby’s reading a story (in the second act) that I couldn’t determine whether was fiction or not: Not What I Signed Up For #

There’s almost nothing that tickles me more than calling my dad and saying, I have an information need #

haha! botched building demolition (quicktime) #

New photo gallery up, finally! The Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands #

Geez: Mitchell Baker is, in many ways, everything Bill Gates is not. #

Neat: one-pixel color sampler camera box thingy #

Phrase of the day: wet signature #

Happy Birthday to me! I am officially 26. Bam! I am no longer a spring chicken. It’s the late-twenties for me. #

Jay sez: When you work with Goli, on some days that balloon is you. #

Awesome, this makes me wish I knew how to skateboard: Achewater Skateboard Deck #

An original creation: View Source in Tab Bookmarklet (toggles between source view in tab and the rendered html view, sorry kids, Firefox only)

Update: a friend of Kristina‘s turns my bookmarklet into an extension: VSIT. Except my bookmarklet still works better in WinXP at least. #

This is why I love Achewood #

I love the BBC: Scientists believe they have worked out a formula to calculate how “beer goggles” affect a drinker’s vision. #

Fun read: Kyle and Joy go to London #

Heh: Abe wins award #

Ooo! I like this one even better:

Methinks Squid Labs should get into the custom laptop etching business. #

Loving the song The National – Mr November right now! #

This is SO cool: inverse panorama photography

I want one! #

Onward christian soldiers: Christian conservatives wage war to put religion back into Christmas *rolls eyes* #

Why do I like Indie Pop Rocks SO MUCH? The Decemberists – California One Youth and Beauty Brigade #

To listen to later: Onion Radio News (via Brian R) #

Sarah sez “Watch this!” Seoul Train

In the riveting documentary, filmmakers Jim Butterworth, Lisa Sleeth and Aaron Lubarsky expose the life-and-death struggle faced by North Koreans who attempt to flee their homeland through China, a country that does not recognize their legal status as refugees.

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Phrase of the day: Sonoma Coma (alternative definition: how one feels after living in Sonoma County) #

corporatespeak I’ve been guilty of using lately, a lot: path of least resistance (must… banish… from… my… mind…) #

Artful representation of human communication in business: How is the project? #

Update to an old post: Strange status bar artifact on clean slate install of Firefox 1.5 #

Quote of the day: No matter how new age you get, old age’s gonna kick your ass (Utah Phillips) #

Spoonerism of the day: Wealth and Hellness Room #

Heh: WE will decide if and when to get pregnant. (not Target) #

Cool: Hmm, linked to from the blog of the American Prospect, “an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics.” #

Web design contest offers the potential winner a chance to fire missiles remote-controlled by computer at a US military base in Iraq. Yey! #

Funny thing of the day: rsstroom reader – toilet paper printer! #

Beautiful: Global map of countries with size relative to population

See other maps from ODT #

To read later: Boing Boing post about sitting/working on the floor #

OK? Lapis: A magical pet adventure…and stealthy primer on female sexual pleasure #

This is GREAT: The Shakespearean Insulter #

Blog name of the day: HREF Considered Harmful (I’m such a sucker for geeky jargon references) #

How cool is it that REI lists the GPS coordinates of their stores: REI Santa Rosa, Latitude: 38° 24.716′ N, Longitude: 122° 42.75′ W, Coordinate system=WGS84 #

Holy fuck! Post crap in Wikipedia, LOSE YOUR JOB! Jesus. #

I’m not sure in what non-app context I’d need functionality like this, but it’s cool to see nonetheless: iPhoto-like image resizing using Javascript (p.s. I need to play with dragging objects inside a browser) #

Neat: Strange & Unusual Dictionaries (via Corey) #

The Economics of Sexuality:

A man who is sent to prison finds that the price of sex with a woman has spiked – talk about a supply shortage – and he becomes much more likely to start having sex with men. The reported prevalence of oral sex among affluent American teenagers would also seem to illustrate price theory: because of the possibility of disease or pregnancy, intercourse is expensive – and it has come to be seen by some teenagers as an unwanted and costly pledge of commitment. In this light, oral sex may be viewed as a cheaper alternative.

(Though I admit skepticism of anything associated with the Freakonomics guys) #

So cool! Hands-free old-skool
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Help get SomaFM back online, send them a donation! #

Kick ass! Phrase of the day: radical militant librarians (from the FBI) #

Blogging from the Belly of the Beasts: HTML Tag of the Day: <q> #

A former colleague and wine connoisseur’s take on Sideways #

To read later: Interview with Michael Ruhlman author of two of my favorite books #

Imagine Me & You. Let’s see what does this movie, have? Traditional marriage, supposedly straight girl having lesbian affair, Lifehouse song in the trailer, Piper Perabo looking pouty. Damn, clearly I need to see this movie. #

Acronym of the day: NSFC

As an aside, Google shows only 70 occurrences of the phrase not safe for Christians in its index. I guess that makes NSFC a neoacronym. #

Dave Winer sez: People come back to places that send them away. #

For your frustrated geek this gift-giving season, the rm -rf / mousepad

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To read about later: sIFR (aka Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses) #

Why Boing Boing makes me happy, reason #94857: Wordplay. Podunk Craquehaus #

Incredible design of new Swiss Banknotes #

To read later: Our National Eating Disorder #

Luvin Dogs Die in Hot Cars – celebrity sanctum #

Snark: blood for oil #

I should email this to every girl I know, just to hear their collective squeals of delight: Cute Overload! #

Some days I’m starting to believe that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the most important organizations around: Lyrics Browsers, iTunes and Copyright Law #

Watch out: the Glitter Ponies are unstoppable! #

Jason hits the nail on the head: Wikipedia can be fixed. Britannica is wrong forever. #

Newsflash: TBL has a blog! #

A candid picture of me at work: Justin demonstrating improper ergonomics (Thanks Terrie!) #

I ♥ College Board (read: I do NOT heart the College Board) #

Achewood rocks: You’re sayin’ I park like a bitch! I ain’t park like a bitch! Retract dude! Retract. #

If yer not reading Robin’s blog, well, you’re missing out: she*had*a*thirst*for*knowledge #

GASP!!! Factual Error Found On Internet #

Ubergreasemonkey (to learn more about): Chickenfoot #

I freaking love phil ringnalda: From now until the ambiguous time when “I’m satisfied” all my titles will include at least one less-than character, whether they need it or not. #

Goli put me on the homepage of oreilly.com this morning: this concise and instructive reference on Microsoft Access is worth its weight in gold.

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Aphorism of the day: “Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.” (Henry Ford) #

Book to read next: The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail #

Dude, the Microsoft Windows platform frightens me: Windows Blackcomb #

What the heck does petard actually mean, outside of hoisting? #

Keep it comin’ folks: “I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior,” Mortensen told Progressive magazine. “In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.” (Viggo Mortensen, via ,em>ae) #

I LOVE that the Slate covers commercials, and I LOVE the reference in title of this article: Pants Pants Revolution #

Acronym of the day: CYA #

Ok, yeah, this pretty much kicks ass: The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia (when did fake rap get so good?) #

Some beautiful shots of Port Waikato, New Zealand taken by Mozilla hacker Robert O’Callahan #

to check out later: 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist #

This is funny: This is our restroom at work #

Wikipedia article of the day: Wheatpaste #

This has stuck in my head since first reading it: So what do you do with all these [feature] requests? Where do you store them? How do you manage them? How do you track all these requests? You don’t. Read them and then throw them away.

Actually I think it’s just a business process implementation of a cognitive reality, namely that if you can disregard some of what you see, you’ll do a better job remembering the visual input you deem important. #

Wow, Christy took a picture of Mt. Rainier for me #

Feature in WP 2.0 I’m most looking forward to: Improved Post Preview

Instead of displaying the post as plain text below the editor, the post is now displayed in an embedded frame, using all of the layout and CSS that is normally applied to your site. In effect, the post looks exactly like it will when you publish it, giving you ample opportunity to review the post’s layout.

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Yay open source! The WordPress bug I reported: #1793 (double quotes escaped inside pre tags) has been fixed for v2.0! #

I would give my own life standing in opposition to President Bush: The result is that the president’s wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical “War on Terror”: a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing army, and — most ominously — no knowable “victory.” #

I disagree: The country needs The New York Times. A Times of aggressive journalism, integrity, and especially transparency is essential—seriously—to American democracy. The country needs the blogosphere. #

Updated: The Random Image Plugin for WordPress

New Features:
1) images from password protected pages no longer displayed
2) added option to include images from posts, pages, or posts and pages (which inadvertently prevents images in draft posts from showing up) #

I can’t freaking wait: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

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HA! Nihilist chewing gum

This gum has no flavor. It is as pointless as life itself. As unsatisfying as your empty shell of an existence. Like everything else on this wretched planet, it is a dead end. A black hole. A bottomless pit of missed opportunity and shattered dreams.

(via Marie) #

More collaboration love: 4 Seasons by ~Kimmie-pendant (uses of my favorite photos of a pink blossoming tree at UNC in the lower left) #

I just googled “futz” to make sure it was spelled right, and was surprised to find that all the sponsored links were for porn. Strange, I’ve got no idea what the connection is there. Any guesses?

So I was going to link to the search results in mentioning this when I discovered that I got different ad results entering “futz” directly into Google than when I used the search toolbar in Firefox. With Google directly, I get just one porn ad:

q=futz

Coming from Firefox I get 5! Guess Google’s decided we’re a porn friendly bunch.

q=futz&client=firefox-a

Update: I’m noticing that sometimes this doesn’t hold true, especially when clicking the links above. Perhaps Google’s taking referrer information into account? #

Yes yes yes! Get this shirt: Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious

Go here for the reference. #

Hellyeah: Osama [bin Laden]’s niece poses in racy photo shoot #

I am a-feared of linking to this URL (on Christmas day no less): bibleinschools.net (National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools) #

Hehe, I got a My Little Pony for Christmas #

Hehe: New TSA Guidelines “Corrosive acids acceptable, as long as they are safely stored in the stomach lining” #

EU takes first step in challenge to GPS #

Something to think more about: Jon Udell wants to write a book about the professional blog as a literary form that grows out of, and extends, two traditional forms: the resume and the autobiography. #

Wow, Joy declares 2005 to be The Year of the Glitter Ponies! (I’m so proud) #

Wikipedia article of the day: Zzyzx, California (rhymes with Issac’s) #

Hmm: Hotelling’s law is an observation in economics that in many markets it is rational for producers to make their products as similar as possible. #

Terrie has some great pictures of the flooding in Sebastopol: End of year storms #