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Daynotes: Week of 24 - 30 Apr, MM
Daily notes and commentary -- Week 17
* Link to: last modified 1 May MM at 01:30
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Posted mail/discussion, see the
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Occasional thematic articles, see
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Earlier weeks, see the Daynotes
index. --
Easter Monday -- yup, still public holiday
I had a fair bit of material added to last Sinday Sunday
-- in case you weren't browsing around over the weekend, it's worth
looking back.
This week I'm experimenting with a table-less, but still columned format
defined in the CSS. My tests show that Opera renders this correctly. Initially,
IE5 rendering was a dismal failure! Turns out that IE is more sensitive to
variations in CSS syntax than expected. Consistent interpretations of em-sizing?
-- forget it. A bit of tweaking later sort of solved that problem, and the
page is now rendering pretty much the same in both Opera and IE5. For non-CSS
browsers, or text-only, the difference should not be too great, and less
intrusive than tables.
The table-per-day solution I've been using for over a year has been ok, but
is rigid and unforgiving if user font settings are significantly different
from the defaults. This new CSS version with floating elements is expected
to be more open to different rendering options. Anyway, if there are any
problems, do let me know.
--
My daughter has now become a Pokémon fan -- the whole thing
is just a ruse to make money on accessories and trading cards of course.
We went and saw the movie together this afternoon. Very typical for many
Japanese stories targeting a generic Japanese and Western audience, and quite
honestly for a lot of the viewing time I was bored. But then I never saw
the point of Mario either. Wrong generation, I am. My Force DC is. New Force,
AC is. Both mix do not. Fuses blow, brain matter curdles, pleasant sight
not is...
So in the end, I explained that she has her allowance money, and if she chooses
to start collecting the cards (we got two free ones with our tickets), it
comes out of her wallet, not mine (at least directly). There is as usual
no end to how many cards you can get I suppose, and you'll always be missing
just those special ones and have umpteen duplicates of the basic ones.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I added FindFast searching to this domain as
well. The form is on the index page for daynotes and on the main TOC.
--
This evening's dinner was salmon, fried in butter and served with potatoes
and dill, white wine and lemon sauce. White wine served chilled. Late but
worth waiting for.
Dan Seto remarked that I copied and pasted incorrectly, 'twas the University
at Manoa. (Now corrected.) He also wrote...
Manoa means abundant. As in abundant plant growth due to abundant rain
(which happens a lot in Manoa Valley, rain that is). Mano means numerous.
Similar to abundant but a different word.
As to being a better bureaucrat. I'll have you know it's us bureacrats
that keep the scientists at Manoa from walking across the street without
first looking both ways. They are such simple people. They need all the help
that they can get. <G> And I'll help them whether they realize they
need it or not <GG>.
Fair 'nuff. It's all manoa from heaven... Manoa gives mano things. I got'cha.
J H Ricketson wrote in, among other things asking for
this recipe
of the Savory Sandwich Layer Cake that I mentioned last Saturday.
Well, why not? And in fact, why not collect more? Go to
DaynoteRecipes and
add your own favorites! (I've not linked to a JhRicketson wikipage,
simply because he's not made himself one. For shame... <g>.)
JHR also begged me to rectify the left margin, or rather lack thereof. He
was helpful enough to provide a link to a jpg screenshot showing the basis
of his complaint. From this I could clearly see that his browser was ignoring,
or rather overriding the overall body CSS specifying a 32 px left margin
for the left-edge image of the spiral (as it had earlier, I believe, ignored
the same for the tabled version). Ok, now I could add the same margin to
the other paragraph specifications in the CSS file, which will give most
of the rest of us a cumulative result of a 64 px margin, but should provide
JHR with his needed 32 px margin.
After a long weekend like this, I need to get out and do some shopping. Actually,
I'm only doing it because of the items needed -- mid-week would be better,
because most "fresh" items were packaged mid last week at latest and have
just been sitting around in storage until today. Bread is likely the only
thing prepared this week. Most of domestic chores fall to me this year,
especially now when Mrs L is doing full-time shift schedule at a nursing
home as the practical 5 week training required for the course she's taking.
Unfortunately, she's not earning anything extra for it apart from the state
study grant/loan totalling an impressive USD 300/month after tax
(30% income tax is deducted at source -- yes, we have a weird system).
Wondering what makes some authors, and a few publishers tick? It's not always
the money, contrary to popular conception. Tim O'Reilly wrote
this
article
which explains part of this in an eloquent way. It's worth your time.
(Got too deep in my chapter, so I never did get around to posting any more
before bedtime...)
Bah! Humbug! I took one of my infrequent walkabouts in the downtown
area with a view to renewing some of my wornout clothes. Right depressing
that was. "½-price!", "Sale on!",
"Crazy Days!" proclaimed signs both here and there... but...
where was the merchandise? And when I did find some stuff, none
of it was anywhere near my size. Most shops seemed half-empty -- that's it!
-- the signs were misprinted, and should have read
"½-empty", "Sod off!" and such. Numerous
places I thought to visit simply weren't there any more, and others had clearly
changed owners, shrunk their floor space (meaning that they actually contained
only a quarter or less of what they used to sell, since they still appeared
half empty), or just moved elsewhere. I've heard of winding down after the
Christmas season, but this was ridiculous.
Newspaper headlines told of discovering a leak in the new, as yet unopened
tunnel section of the Öresund Bridge. They could turn that into a feature:
"Drive across to the Continent and get your car washed for free!"
-- but of course they don't see that PR angle since I'm not working for them.
Buried in writing and perl snippets...
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Niggle's First Law of Programing:
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The smaller the fault, the harder to find.
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Niggle's Second Law:
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The smaller the fault, the bigger the consequences.
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Niggle's Theory of Code Evolution:
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Programming languages constantly evolve to provide an ever richer panorama
of obscure syntax niches for the proliferation of bugs.
Hmm, I seem to be on an every-other-day update regime at present. Not by
design, it just happens that writing and coding gets pushed to the late evening,
when I have normally done the updates, and when I come up for air, so to
speak, it's way too late to do anything but go to bed.
Anyway, I'm sort of evolving the production wiki code, carefully adding or
improving a few of the features that will also figure in the book. I found
a few passages of the code that I hadn't really understood properly -- just
the sort of thing that bites you when you make changes. This of course took
a fair amount of time to figure out (visually trivial details turning out
to be fundamental for functionality), but eventually all was resolved and
I came out much wiser in the ways of perl. I'm in principle juggling two
very different implementations to throw light on best hacks. I had also thought
to code a version in Ruby -- we'll see. More on that later.
I won't go into the news -- most of that is pretty depressing lately, with
a lot of needless violence (even here, in what is seen as placid Sweden).
Better to focus on the fact that it turned "summer" leading up to the weekend.
The fruit trees all blossomed and leaves came out everywhere. Today might
reach 25C... (I'd better stay off the roads; drivers go a bit nuts when the
weather swings extremely like this. Anyway, we need to swap the winter spikes
for normal tires ASAP.)
I helped a family friend the other day with tax declarations. She has a whole
lot of shares, much of it inherited from way back when. She doesn't do a
lot about them, just lets it all passively ride and earn dividends. Every
so often, shares are split, swapped or subject to compulsory acquisition.
These machinations are often obscure, seem unfair and weird, and of course
can cause numerous complications in her tax declarations. This year had two
such major events. One block of legacy shares had been swapped for shares
in the "new" restructured owner company. She had to declare a taxable profit
as if she had sold them all outright, albeit was allowed to defer paying
the taxes on this for now. (This is supposed to be "fair", because selling
e.g. a house works in a similar way, even if you use the money to buy another
house right away. Well, the tax rules there have a few more ifs-ands-buts...)
Another two blocks of shares had been forcibly bought back at face value
by the issuing company, totally wiping out a pre-buy market value of over
USD 10,000. Owning shares in Sweden seems to mix the worst sides of socialism
and free market, plus the fact that your share ownership and income details
are public knowledge for whoever cares to ask for the info. Newspapers delight
in later publishing lists with detailed analysis of the 100 richest in the
country, region and community. Sigh. (I don't own shares.)
The restyling of this section as tableless with CSS floating elements seems
to have gone well. At least there have been no negative comments about it
(and perhaps most readers haven't even noticed the removal of the tables,
given that the overall layout was kept pretty similar). JHR reports that
the extra "overkill" margin addition fixed his viewing problems on Netscape,
so all is well. Dan Seto posted thanks for my CSS files which gave him insight
into how such styling is done, and other comments suggest we'll be seeing
much more CSS-styling on daynote pages.
Walpurgis night (I've written about this, last year I
think)
With all these public holidays, I'm getting seriously confused as to which
day of the week it is. It's pretty much only these daynotes that's keeping
me sync'd. Tomorrow is yet another "red day", in two senses of the word:
public holiday and "socialist" demonstration day. Trust socialist and
socialdemocratic regimes to institutionalize public demonstrations in the
streets to a once yearly, orderly affair, routes carefully approved and cleared
by the police... <g>.
Anyway, today was a hot day, and one did well to stay out of the
sun, even mad dogs sought the shade. Our cats hardly knew what to make of
it.
Tried to do some weekly cleaning with the kids since my wife was on weekend
shift, but it was harder than usual. Some dustbunnies remain...
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