ldopa.net

An exceptionally elegant, Exposé-styled javascript solution to the issue that occurs when a user clicks on a “link to a larger graphic”, and the browser jumps to a new url: Lightbox.

~jeff

Next time you have about 45 minutes of free time, I really suggest you run through this cool Ruby on Rails “cookbook” example here, because there is, at one point, somewhere midway on page three, something that happens that is kind of akin to magic, and I don’t want to even spoil it for you by telling you what it is. And maybe it’s not so magic, but it seems magical to me. I’ve always considered myself “utterly database retarded”; database design was the one class in college that I flunked*, so that I can put together a little MySQL front end like this is pretty damn exciting to me. It’s like finding out you can swim (and without the gay little waterwings!) after years of being utterly terrified of the town pool.

NOTES: The tutorial is slightly Windows-centric, so Mac users probably want to do all this stuff before the tutorial, and to make the database, you can either gain a cursory understanding of mysql at the command line, or do what I did and download the excellent “YourSQL” and do this to create the database for the tutorial example:

1. Launch “YourSQL”. Add connection (i.e. “localhost”, “root”, and the password, if that’s how you roll) for your local copy of MySQL.
2. Click “Create Database” (and name it “cookbook”).
3. Click “Create Table” (and name it “recipes”).
4. Click on the newly created “recipes”, select the first (and only) record, rename it to id, change the type to int, set the size to 11, and check off “Auto Increment”; this will cause YourSQL to prompt you to ask if you want this field to be your “primary key”, and you will say “Yes”.
5. Set up the rest of the tables so they look like this.

…then proceed with the rest of the walkthrough.

~jeff

*(and flunked *hard*, embarassingly and publically. Sometime when you’re feeling low and you need a cheap pick-me-up and I’m feeling relatively decent about myself, ask me about it and I’ll tell you the story. It’s a story of: not-at-all reading the textbook, staying up way too late, coding an stunningly poor little web page to fake the assignment, and then being deeply, publicly — and justifiably — humiliated the next morning by the teacher in front of an entire auditorium full of people as Netscape 4.0 crashed over and over).

 

Something unexpected happened this season; thanks to the misguided and often downright unfunny six-episode “Little Britain” arc, Arrested Development dipped down in quality while The Office shot way up. I just finished re-watching the Office Olympics episode and it really got to me; the confused-but-grateful expression on Steve Carell’s face when he’s accepting the “gold medal for condo-buying” is a genuinely well-acted moment. It’s nice to see an American version of something actually equal, and in many respects surpass, the British version. 

~jeff

Here are some interesting notes on the hardware and software of what people are calling the “OLPC” (One Laptop Per Child) laptop, a.k.a. the “green MIT laptop”.

Note that in many locations in the world, the backlight will be the first artificial illumination many families will have (besides a fire). How people will use these systems will facinate us all.

…for example, I bet many of them will use it as a terrible source of light.

~jeff

I upgraded ldopa.net to WordPress 2.0 last night. Everything went smoothly, because I am awesome and I read and follow directions like a motha’. Here’s a link explaining what’s new. The guys at WordPress should really be proud; they’ve created a robust and ludicrously extensible product. The new release promises to be even more so.

So far, everything is hunky-dory except some of the custom image-handling PHP I wrote for the admin section needs to be slightly rewritten and plugged back in… and I already miss the old upload page.

~jeff

This is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. And I wish I knew who to credit for it.

Update: The song is by Lemon Demon, and I still can’t track down who did the animation.

Update II: The animation was by AltF4.

Mountain Dew has a new sub-brand: Mountain Dew MDX. I saw it for sale the other day while railsliding and I carved my ‘board right over to “snag” a bottle. How is it? It’s not that bad: a little bit lighter in taste than normal Mountain Dew — much less like squirting a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine syrup dispenser directly into your mouth — but has essentially the same tried-and-true, slightly nauseating (in a good way!) lemon-lime flavor. According to the product literature, it’s “Fueled by Power Pack”, which is their corporate branding nomenclature for their mixture of ginseng, taurine, guarana, d-ribose, and oh, let’s say, powdered Dungeons and Dragons dice.

I’m kind of confused about the name, though; if it’s called “Mountain Dew MDX”, isn’t that an extra abbreviated “Mountain Dew” in the name, like “Automatic Teller Machine Machine”? And isn’t that kind of dumb? I guess in the end, who cares: the only question that matters is is it still packed to the top with caffeine? and I am happy to report that yes, “Mountain Dew MDX” is indeed a frighteningly effective caffeine delivery vector. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ollie off something.

~jeff

If you roll like I do (and I know that you do), then you have noticed that iTunes doesn’t let you tag videos as TV Shows if you ripped them yourself. This means all the episodes of your favorite show you legally put on your computer won’t sort easily when you try to view them on your video iPod. Which sucks.

Enter Lostify. It is GUI for the awesome command line utility Atomic Parsley, which lets you set all kinds of flags for your episodes before you load them. Just don’t forget to set the Series name, or you won’t be able to find them again.

Clowntime Comics is really the only reason to pick up the pointless rag that the Valley Advocate has become. It’s a wonderful strip, with a killer drawing style and well-written to boot. I hope this guy gets rich and famous, but realistically speaking, humor this good tends to inhibit fabulous wealth.

By the way, I knew the Valley Advocate had hit its final nadir when they proudly debuted their recent “T.M.I.” column, which features the stupefied barroom ramblings of drunks, bouncers and local band promoters, subcultures that I had already felt to be over-represented via their previous communication medium: men’s room stalls.

~jeff

Is our president so lacking in serious issues requiring his attention that he has the time to create a video podcast celebrating the his Scottish Terriers?

Apparently so. (Copy that link and paste it into “Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast” in iTunes to watch).

It is, however, adorable, I will give the evil bastard warmongers that.

~jeff

There’s been a couple of news items about Dick Cheney being a jerk about charging his iPod — couldn’t he just charge it off of USB? why hog up all the power outlets? and doesn’t Air Force Two have a power strip? — but what really sets me off is this news story about Bush’s iPod here. In the story he says:

Bush remarked that “Bono came in and dropped his new iPod on me,” comparing his older device to the lead singer of U2’s iPod nano. “This is a clunker compared to the newer version.”

…am I supposed to believe that our Commander in Chief can’t swing the $200 required to get a new iPod nano? Wow, he really is jus’ plain folks like me; I bet his iPod has both kinds of music, country and western. Also offensive:

Bush also took time to mention that his iPod “can shuffle the shuffle.”

…what does that even mean? That’s something a crazy person would mutter while taking a shopping cart full of empties back for deposit.

~jeff

I don’t know if you maybe knew this, but the internet is for porn.

(Thanks to my sister for the link.)

You remember that clip of Clinton biting his lower lip, holding out his thumb and saying “I… did not have… sexual relations… with that woman.”? Remember how many thousands of times they showed that damn clip? Wouldn’t it be nice if our media and our congressmen weren’t so completely whipped and impotent that maybe — perhaps — MAYBE they might show this clip a few times? Clinton lied about diddling some woman, and all the Republicans jumped up and down screaming that it was the principle of the thing, that he had lied to the American people, bla bla bla. Now our current president lies about something that actually means something to Americans, and there’s not a single voice for impeachment. Hypocrites and bastards!

~jeff