So I’m stuck lazing around the house today with a miserable cold and nothing to do. I discovered and excellent collection of paper buildings that you can download and build. Enjoy.
Month: December 2001
Cool link of the day
Check out Jorge Colombo’s collection of sketches of folks he observes in NYC.
Back from vacation
Obviously if you’re reading this I’m back from vacation. More to follow soon, including pictures I hope since I’ve once again upgraded the Moveable Type install.
google rocks the house
I keep forgetting to tell this story. When I went down to NY a couple of weeks ago the family was after me to give them a christmas list. I had already posted to this website a few weeks prior but of course no one aside from my sister had bothered to look at it, and I had turned the server off while I was out of town because of the ongoing hardware issue I’ve had with it. So I sat down in front of my mom’s computer and in about 2 minutes had found my christmas list in google’s cache, which surprised me a little, I mean it’s not like I get a ton of traffic or am linked to a lot of people or anything. Anyway, the lesson to take away from this is, embed a few unique phrases in your documents (like ‘fabo dolphin extract cumin’ for example) and you will be able to track that document down in google’s cache. It’s really quite handy, it’s like a free backup service from google.
Coolest web app in ages
Now this is the coolest thing I’ve seen in ages. The guy’s built a slick system that converts XML data into a visual ‘tree structure’ representation of the data by using XSL to transform the XML into SVG. (believe me, I tried to think of another acronym to stuff in there but couldn’t). Anyway take a look, you need adobe’s SVG plugin for your browser and you need a browser that handles javascript adeptly. I’ve tested it on the pc and it works fine, it failed in ns 4 on a mac though so proceed accordingly.
It’s totally applicable to some projects we have underway at work so if I’m lucky we’ll actually be using some form of this in the future on our adaptive learning project and possibly in conjunction with a database of marine organisms some of the staff are working on.
testing something
So does this work?
funniest thing I spied today…
Today’s laugh was spotted on slashdot
Three drinks for the Burger Kings under the sky,
Seven burgers for the Dwarves who are stoned,
Ninety million consumers doomed to buy,
One cut for the Dark Lord, the franchise he owns.
In the land of Mordor where the Whoppers lie.
Onion ring to rule them all, onion ring to dine them,
Onion ring to bring them all and in the deep-fryer bind them
In the land of Mordor where the Whoppers lie.
Sometimes the simplest solution works best
My ibook’s cd drive has broken twice in the last week. The drive simply didn’t work – stick a disc into it and nothing happened, whether I am used OS 9 or OS X. The first time it broke I called Apple and they spent maybe 30-40 minutes on the phone with me zapping the pram and resetting the power manager and so on. It worked after we reset the power manager so I figured ‘problem solved.’ But 24 hours later the same thing happened and I spent an hour repeatedly trying all the tricks the Apple support person had taught me to no avail. I was bummed. For the past 4-5 days, no cd drive, and I have been dreading having to turn it in to Apple. Then inspiration struck and I pulled the equivalent of a ‘Fonzie’ and took a screwdriver to the drive, forcing the armature the laser is mounted on to move up and down its tracks. Ta da, problem solved. Of course now I have a known problem with the drive (it sticks) that I can’t prove to the Apple folks, so I can’t decide whether I should hope for it to happen soon so I can get it fixed under warranty, or simply hope for it to never happen again.
Ever wanted to know what scientology is all about?
Ever wondered what that much derided ‘church’ of scientology business is all about? At the risk of invoking their wrath I’ll post a link to an L.A. Times piece by a reporter who gained access to scientology documents a judge temporarily made available to the public. Now you know why scientology is much derided. Xenu…thetans….my ass, what a crock of shit. Think of this the next time John Travolta is interviewed and tries to come across as erudite.
old man winter makes his presence known
So…am I happy about it? I guess I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love lounging around the house in my sweats taking it easy, watching football, playing zoomies, etc etc. When the weather’s nasty I can do this guilt free, so in that respect yesterday was a great day. On the other hand, I had to shovel the driveway for the first time this year. With only 2-3 inches on the ground it was easy as pie, but I couldn’t help ruminating on how soon enough it will be 10 inches or 2 feet or whatever. Becky is convinced I got my double hernia shoveling all the snow last year, so the thirty minutes or so it took me to shovel the driveway were spent mulling this over. On balance, I could do without the snow. Old man winter, I hope you get an intimate introduction to ms global warming this year 😉
Dave's Place/Metamusing 