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Daynotes: Week of 5 - 11 June, MM
Daily notes and commentary -- Week 23
* Latest update modified 11 June MM at 12:15
GMT+2.
The
latest-link (above/right) points to current date
(or latest addition). The redirector page
(current.html) points there too
-- use this instead of weekly page or index.
Associated links:
Three domains for the
webmaster under the sky. ...
One domain to rule them all. One domain to find them.
One domain to bring them all and in the webspace bind them
In the Land of LeufNet where the Wikis serve.
My name's day.
After a bit of a stressful morning, getting the kids off in time, the day
slowed down considerably. Sunshine and lazy cats can have that effect, I
guess.
I'm still running the EVWM shell in NT4, and I must say that as
minimalistic as it is, I find that I prefer it to the default explorer
environment. Then again, I've been using Windows Commander for some time
as file manager, which means I was already using explorer less. Part of the
reason for EVWM's handiness is the click-anywhere to access the
"start menu" and the easier configuration of keyboard shortcuts. Part is
the "clean screen" -- I was in the explorer environment using
Desksweep (No-Nonsense
Software
,
recommended) to achieve this from time to time, but found a constant ambivalence
to having desktop icons (some of which you can't do very much about).
There are some attractions to moving out shortcuts and folders to
the "desktop" for convenient access, but the way Windows manages this is
less than optimal. If nothing else, the redraw effect can be bothersome even
on a reasonably fast machine, and utterly unbearable on a slow one -- it
takes time to go out and fetch the icons from the respective files, and there
is of course no option to use a standard set (as e.g. Windows Commander)
or text only. Alternatively, as a colleague complains, he would like to have
either icons or text, not both. In addition, you can't properly
"save" a configuration -- change to a smaller resolution and your icon layout
is trashed. And in Win9x, it's one arrangement for all users (except "network"
ones?).
Apropos desktop arrangement, does anyone really use the "arrange icons" option
that simply dumps everything in vertical rows from the top left? (I'm told
Norton defrag ends its session by doing this very thing, to users' aggravation.
Maybe there's a setting for that -- I don't use that utility myself.)
One thing that increasingly bothers me is the tendency of some software to
always generate a desktop icon shortcut. Delete it, and another
reappears as soon as the program is run. Although a few, like WinZip, allow
you to disable this, others do not. This adds unwanted clutter.
I can still use the "desktop" icon collection to keep frequently accessed
stuff in a different way than a start menu, but in a way that no longer clutters
up my field of view. Tweakui's little desktop-in-tray thing does work fine
unless you have too many icons, but I also have the "desktop" available from
EVWM's top menu as a special window. I tended to drop many desktop icons
into appropriate desktop folders anyway, just to keep them out of my face
when I wasn't using them, so that's no big difference.
Hmm, somehow it's already lunchtime, or so the cats imply.
Accident, n. An inevitable occurrence due to
the action of immutable natural laws. - tDD (Bierce)
--
After an afternoon chasing down a few ideas
(gotcha!), I implemented a simple perl search suitable
for these pages. Consider FastFind replaced. While noodling away at this,
I also modified the wiki
search into a full search with context cues. It takes longer, but the
context of all matches on a page is valuable enough for it to be worth the
wait.
National holiday. (Flag day, but not a "bank holiday, calendar
red day" -- go figure...)
Ok, second try. Something went wrong with the production-modified version
of this last night, so I quickly took down the first attempt. I then rewrote
it to automatically derive path information from the sever environment and
tweaked a few details. Anyway, this form invokes a local (safe) cgi-script
that searches htm(l)-files in the directory it is called from. Thus,
here it searches all the journal files only. I expanded the basic search
to show both context and all occurrences.
Enjoy!
If anyone wants to use this on their own site, just let me know and I'll
send you a zipped copy. You only need the perl script, a small HTML template,
and the form source on a page in the directory you wish to search -- and
of course the ability to run your own cgi scripts. For reasons of search
scoping, the current version is not subdirectory recursive, but I'm considering
alternatives for that (I would then probably make it so that it can be configured
for either selective inclusion or selective exclusion of specified
subdirectories, not just blind recursion).
--
Nice mosaic up on the NEAR
site showing a perspective of the whole of the Eros asteroid with the
current level of resolution. That's one strange pile of gravel.
--
My wife has from time to time expressed surprise about my stories of local
traffic weirdness, wondering at the fact that I run into such strange behavior.
Sure a lot of people do foolish things, but it's not that bad, she
claimed. Yesterday was however her turn. She came home looking decidedly
shaken, and after a while just told me that people were "nuts", and that
now she fully appreciates my earlier comments. She did not volunteer
any details, and I was busy at the time, but I can imagine...
Returning to frames for a while, suppose you, the webdesigner (or
site owner), have decided to use frames after all. We'll sidestep the issue
that most of what the frameset is supposed to accomplish can be implemented
in other ways, and just assume it is a given fact of life. How do you minimize
the confusion inherent in this?
-
Keep it simple -- sidebar + content + banner, avoid more (footer frames are
a nuisance).
-
Keep some minimum of navigational aids always present, in all component frame
pages.
-
Always implement a "no-frames" alternative!
-
Ensure that content (and navigational aids) work in any HxW window -- that
it either wraps or scrolls appropriately..
Testing the results should be done at several levels:
-
That it works as intended with all features.
-
That content is still usable and can be navigated even if you open a window
on the content page only, outside of frame context.
-
That the no-frames alternative is from the content point of view equivalent
and also easily navigated.
Test on different platforms, or at least with different browser clients.
One of the good uses for a testbrowser like
Amaya, is that it has an "Alternative"
viewing option. This shows you what the page looks like stripped to the baseline
rendering, what for example someone using a text-only browser might see.
This incidentally is pretty close to what an indexing robot sees -- note
for example the pages you can run across in a search engine results list
that only say "Your browser does not support frames...".
--
The day is rainy and cold. A slightly sickly-sweet smell permeates the air.
The past few days, there's been considerable noise and commotion by the
neighboring lot, where the trees had been cut down earlier this spring. Some
kind of machine they use to turn tree stumps into wood chips. Anyway, the
stumps are all gone now, and there are these dunes of soggy wood flakes instead
-- the source of the smell. At least they didn't try dynamiting them...
Speaking of which, I recently read an interesting overview of explosives,
past and present. Strange stuff that's been made over the years. The common
critical issue is how you add or distribute the oxidant, which determines
much of the characteristics of the explosion.
(Bob Thompson wrote in with the correction that concerning "high
explosives" proper, I should not be talking about "oxidants" since these
are based on nitrates and the detonation process is not a combustion. Quite
right. I really have to stop drinking nitroglycerine in the mornings; it
does terrible things to my writing... Explosives is both an arcane art and
sometimes just dirt simple mixing of the proper ingredients in the proper
proportions. The art in the latter case is having the mix detonate when
you want it to and not before.)
Rain and cold. About 10C (50F), which is pretty miserable with the wind building
up. It's typical that Therese should have an outdoor sports day at school,
and Edward's class is on an all-day outing. Brrr... (Me and
the cats are staying indoors today. -- Then again, maybe not. Mother-in-law
phoned and needs medicine and other things, so I will have to go out sometime
soon. (miao) Stop smirking, Salem!)
What keyboard time I had yesterday went to further wiki customization
experiments, most of which you're not likely to see in my production scripts,
hehe. I was mainly looking at implementations (and implications) of allowing
HTML tags in the (my local) wiki page source .Some people
insist on being able to manually style their text
<i><u><font color=#006600
face="impact">just
so</font></u></i>, and well,
that's ok I guess, and no real problem from the wiki point of view as long
as you're running locally or on a trusted network. So I'm exploring some
of these issues in the customization chapter. The real point of what I'm
writing is that if you do allow this, it should be as non-obtrusive
as possible (all legal tags will work if you construct them appropriately,
but you can also just ignore the feature).
The iffy part about HTML tagging wiki text is partly how it drastically degrades
readability for other users who are not familiar with reading HTML source,
and partly the security risks. Since the tag source is freely editable, then
it is possible for someone to for example spoof a URL so that it renders
as one address, but in reality points to another. In "plain-text wiki", the
active part of an Internet URL anchor is generated on the fly from the visible
text, so that cannot happen. However, if explicit href-tag constructions
are allowed, then anything goes. Malicious hacks using this are documented,
but I believe it's possible to implement some kind of filtering that would
make HTML-tag wiki safer. We'll see..
---
(Afternoon update) So much for productivity...
A missed domain opportunity: WTF.com -- It's not
active, but it is registered to "WTF, Inc". I can think of a number of people
who would have liked that one. WTF.net ("Welcome To the Future")
is also gone, but WTF.org is still available...
I started thinking about domain names and went looking at a few odd ones
that on the face of it might not seem that attractive. Sometimes they're
put to good use. Take www.fail.com, for
example, which leads to Exponent, specializing in various forms of technical
savvy.
Exponent is the nation's leading engineering and scientific
consulting firm that is dedicated to helping our clients solve their technical
problems. Although we are well known for assisting clients with their most
important challenges or dire disasters, most of our work comes from addressing
their day-to-day technical issues.
Yeah, well that sort of makes sense: "fail" leads to help.
Another name that has some potential is damnlie.com (the nearby
damnlies.com is taken by Access Advocates,
although as yet showing only a homestead notice).
Count Down to Y2k : -17101 Years, 6 Months, 23 Days, 17 Hours,
6 Minutes, 53 Seconds -- It is currently June 7th, 19100 6:53:07 -- (spotted
on rotfl.com)
On more explosive subjects, Jan Swijsen (aka Sjon Svenson) joined the slow
conflagration by noting among other things that: "Chemically speaking
"Oxidation" does not necessary involve Oxygen. The process of oxidation is
the binding of available electrons to an 'oxidant'. The best known oxidant
is oxygen but it is not the only one. As Bob indicates Nitrogen is a good
oxidant as well."
I wonder if he's drinking the same brand of nitro that I am...?
Anyway, Bob gives this definitive response: "However, chemically, nearly
all high-order explosives are compounds, and no separate oxidant is present
(ANFO is one notable exception)."
Weather's improving. Forecast up to 25C over the coming long weekend.
The morning news could tell us that all the so far delivered custom train-sets
for the Bridge have had to be returned due to all kinds of technical
problems, including unexplained emergency stops during the test runs, triggered
by the automated safety systems. This is really bad news for the rail service,
because they now have to scramble to make usable a collection of decrepit
buses to provide any kind of traffic at all when service opens in three weeks.
Deliveries have been seriously delayed (as
reported earlier). A representative for
the train-set manufacturer Adtranz said that seven months' delay
was nothing and that the company was "pleased" with delivery results so far.
Other items that caught my eye...
Lawless. Authorities in the Philippines have dropped charges
against a bank worker suspected of Love Bug virus involvement, citing "no
law ... could be used to prosecute".
Electro-sticky. Gecko lizards have a complex network of
tiny hairs and pads on their feet which produce electrical attractions
(molecular van der Waals forces) that literally glue
the animals down, even in a vacuum (apparently this was tried to rule
out suction). Researchers believe the reptile's "sticky "toes can
help develop a novel synthetic adhesive that is both dry and self-cleaning,
better than adhesive tape. The forces can be a factor 10 greater than needed
to keep the gecko on a wall -- ample safety margin for it.
Free connectivity in the UK proves a PR and service nightmare.
The cable company, NTL, compounded the fiasco by apparently first signing
up new provider-transfer customers for the offer when the public position
was that only existing customers in the "priority queue" would be sent the
limited number of CDs with registration software. Everyone is unhappy.
Faster than light. Controversy again about experiments that
appear to show light pulses travelling faster than the natural limit "c"
(300,000 km/s). In one, yet to be published, pulses are claimed to have exceeded
300c -- in fact the light pulse leaves the far side of the chamber even before
it enters at the near side!
Spanish mobile phones targeted by new Outlook virus. Many
think it is only a matter of time before mobile phones are hit by malicious
programs designed specifically for them. The current and coming generation
of smart mobiles for WAP services are especially vulnerable, since they are
remotely configured by the company providing the service people sign up for.
MicroBorg. Along with the final ruling to split up Microsoft,
more public criticism today that all the software giant has ever done for
innovations is just roll them into its operating systems and drive their
popularity -- often to the detriment of the companies that did invent them.
"In all the areas where Microsoft is not dominant, such as the Internet,
innovation is rampant."
Bob Thompson vents a complaint about the UK bit-rag
The
Register
and the new fixed font-size design. There are other reasons for disliking
the site. For example, last time I hit the front page, it tried to foist
71 graphics on me (many of these animated gifs, many others navigational
widgets), the next page had 72, etc.
However, I do note that at least the new design is doing things by the
Cascadable Style Sheet rules, so you can override it with a user
preference by having your own local CSS file defined. This is far preferable
to specifying point size in the web page itself. Deplorable as specifying
fixed sizes is, The Register site has in fact only "suggested" them by using
CSS. I find it curious that IE should interpret CSS font-styling so inflexibly,
and in that case it is a fault with IE, not the site as such. Then again,
the IE user settings for "font size" have been noted in other contexts as
being a bit strange, sometimes having no effect in particular contexts.
With Opera, most such user display settings just a toggle away, and the global
resizing setting works fine. IE unfortunately makes management of these things
more convoluted. (On a trivia note. Does anyone remember that IE was
not originally written by MS -- remember the Spyglass
browser?)
End-of-school for the kids, so nothing on the productivity front.
Phil Hough provided some feedback on FTL that eventully led to the
thread posted on
ReplicatorTech (wikisf).
News oddities...
Oops. Norway recently bought 104 new tanks (2.6 billion
Nkr, about 300 million USD). Trouble is, that wiped out their budget, so
no ammunition. That's one way of having a peaceful military
force. No indication was however given if they can tank up the tanks for
a spin around the block.
Rock&roll&.... Radio station Kiss FM in
Finland had a program with various listener requests. One such was to have
sex live on the air. So the producers took in the volunteer couple for a
chat. In the middle of this, they asked for a third female partner. They
picked one of the callers, who came by taxi, and with a live microphone,
the three made themselves at home in one of the studio rooms. Listeners were
treated to 15 minutes of live sex. Finnish public and official reaction was
that this was unacceptable.
Cyclefest. Today saw about 20,000 Swedish cyclists from
one end, and another 20,000 Danes from the other, pedel their way back and
forth across the new Bridge. Cyclists were let on in groups of about 500
from 8 AM to 7 PM for the 35 km round trip. Tomorrow and Sunday, people will
be allowed to walk the stretch for about USD 6 a head. Then on Monday comes
the big marathon run... 92,000 have applied in advance, some from as far
away as Australia.
Today's insight....
-
First Principle of Symbiotic Disintermediation
-
When the advantage of the disintermediation is predicated upon parsimony,
economics of scale, or the novel use of publically accessible technology
inforstructure, one cannot create formidable barriers to effective
competition.
Say what?
(Tomorrow, Predatory Disintermediation :) )
Whitsun Eve (public "red day" holiday)
Windy, but a fine summer's day. Not much to report, may attention is elsewhere.
I leave you with a minor news notice...
As much as 30 percent to 40 percent of lost employee productivity can be
attributed to workers' personal use of the Internet, according to International
Data. Porn sites are the most frequented Web pages by surfers on the job,
according to experts. Gee, and I thought cookery sites were more popular.
Recipe books reliably outsell porn.
Experimenting with a wiki implementation for another site. Found some syntax
bugs.
Ok, I lied...
-
Second Principle of Symbiotic Disintermediation
-
An instance of disintermediation can only reach stability and maintain
viability if the value added is proprietary, inherently unique, difficult
to replicate, or legally protected.
Hmm...
Whitsunday
Missed uploading the update yesterday, too many distractions. Oh well, it's
a long weekend
Turning into a hot day. Wash day. Cleaning day. Edward has booked in this
machine for a modem-to-modem bout of Jedi Knight Dark Forces II
this afternoon, with a friend. I guess the only thing for me to do then is
catch up on some backlogged reading. I really don't mind.
Some people are starting to refer to their "cyber-residence" instead
of website. I doubt it'll catch on, too much of a mouthful. I could imagine
a slangish "cypad", but there doesn't seem to be a need for such
a term. I'm sort of curious about language developments such as this, in
part because when writing futuristic fiction (as I have done from time to
time), you need to consider what the characters call different things in
their environment..
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