Monday Jan 31, 2005



In the days of Abe Lincoln, Men wrestled and made houses out of logs and fashioned hats out of unsuspecting woodland creatures. This resulted in a certain set of shared physical characteristics. But as Man's way of life has been curtailed, so has he been reduced to a sleek, seductive shadow of his former masculine self. -- http://www.endangeredman.com

Great stuff, where Man Knowledge is broken down into two categories: tools and ninjitsu.

Thursday Jan 27, 2005




forevergeek posted this list of Firefox (or Mozilla) mods. Some initial testing proved them to be quite effective, but as someone who runs websites, may I suggest you be a good netizen and set your maxrequests to something friendlier, like 10.

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!





Ritilan turned me on to the super addictive game, Rocket Bob a game more addictive than Archer- and he's right, although I think what he's referring to is Bowman.

Wednesday Jan 26, 2005




If you run a hax0red version of XP, heads up: http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/01/26/1316230.shtml

Sounds like its not a problem currently, but could be in as short as a few months when they start restricting access to security updates. Not that I condone software pirating, but this seems incredibly short-sited of M$. Even if they are non-legit copies- they'll still give their OS a bad worse name when those machines get compromised and form an attacking horde.

Tuesday Jan 25, 2005




One of my current projects involved exporting some data from MySQL into Oracle. This being one of a limited number of times I've used MySQL, some things didn't work as I expected (expected as in work-like-Oracle does). And although mysql.com has some pretty nice online docs, it took a while to find what I wanted, not knowing exactly how to describe what it is I wanted. In the process, I found this interesting collection of MySQL Gotchas. A "gotcha" is a feature or function which works as advertised - but not as expected. Sounds like a synonym for PITA to me...

Good to see someone took the effort to compile a list. There's got to be something similar for Oracle somewhere...

Saturday Jan 22, 2005


Thanks to the apparently lax inforcement of copyright law in Belgium, a collection (all?) of Bunny Suicides is available for perusal. Some funny stuff, reminiscent of a dark Gary Larson.

Googling for "bunny suicides" revealed these must be from the book, for which Amazon promptly also suggested 101 Uses for a Dead Cat and Yoga for Chickens.

Friday Jan 21, 2005




I've blogged about del.icio.us many times ( 1, 2, 3 ), but if you still haven't jumped on the bandwagon, perhaps this write-up will convince you. It goes into the whole tagged content, social bookmarks scene, but also mentions some clever Firefox search tricks.

Friday Jan 14, 2005




Even with the updated spam handling system (procmail/spamd), and occasional email slips through the gates- rarely do they even get one brain clock cycle before they're deleted, but this one caught my attention because if its subject line: nuerological solutions (sic). It read:

solve your med1cat10n problems once and for all                                 
                                                                                
V^1,C,0*D'1-N 75o m*gg                                                          
                                                                                
3O PILlS 169.00                                                                 
                                                                                
more info                                                                       
                                                                                
Same Day Sh1pp1ng                                                               
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                           
Alfredo Galindo                                                                 
Fishmonger                                                                      
Phone: 111-851-7268                                                             
Mobile: 892-344-4461                                                            
Email: plxpknhwk@gauch.ch


If you can't trust a fishmonger to solve your medication problems, who can you trust??

Tuesday Jan 11, 2005



Via boingboing, someone has put together an indexed site of 120 years of United States Geological Survey images, all in the public domain.

I suggest going through them chronologically. Some really sweet shots of San Francisco post 1906 earthquake, a lull during WWII (after which the shots are mostly color), all the way to more recent events, such as the 1989 quake. Not all images are from the US, and there are some pretty dull categories like erosion and minerals, but still worth poking around for the plentiful gems (ok, thats a bad pun).

Monday Jan 10, 2005




Nature never ceseases to amaze me. First killer bees, now yellow crazy ants. Good thing those guys have an official Government Crazy Ant Task Force...

The Name "crazy ant" was derived from their frantic movements and frequent changes in direction, especially when disturbed. Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson said the ants, which spray formic acid that can burn or irritate the skin and eyes of animals and humans, had been found near Caboolture, north of Brisbane.

What's next, sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads, or dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?!

Sunday Jan 09, 2005



If you're a fan of Flickr and all it can do, but are put off by having to peruse the massive collection or building your own feeds, take a look at FlickrBlog, News, offsite status and great photos daily.

Within its first 2 weeks of life, its mostly links to Flickr collections someone has choosen based on coolness factor. Hopefully it will include more links going forward, like its first post about Flickr as web services: the Flickr API and the inclusion of del.icio.us-style tags have turned Flickr into a service as well as a site.

Thursday Jan 06, 2005



ZDNet had this to say on Bill Gates' keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show:

The presentation was marred by several technical glitches, including a Windows XP Media Center slide show that couldn't be launched and an Xbox game demonstration that abruptly ended with a blue-screen memory error.

Bunch of clowns.

Wednesday Jan 05, 2005





This nasty California weather has revived an old urge I've had to make a fixed gear bike. Partly because fewer parts means less maintenance after a wet ride, but partly because I feel I can't call myself a serious rider without experiencing some fixed gear riding.

With four bikes in the garage as it is, I suppose I should consider converting one of those before looking at making it five... but every time I think fixed gear, I think of old salvaged Italian road frames- chrome, lugs, and glory. Has anyone out there converted a bike? Do you actually ride it over your geared bikes?





The sneak peaks (1, 2) are starting to make the rounds now in advance of tomorrow's 2005 Consumer Electronics Show. Nothing revolutionary... yet... just more of the same, like Seagate's CF hardrive (ya, its 5GB- but is it as fast as flash which is getting super cheap now??), and more mp3 players than you can shake a stick at. Samsung's new displays look mighty sweet, but more of an evolutionary step.

Speculation is the XBox 2 will *not* make this year's CES, but who knows. Let's hope the manufacturers are keeping their big guns under their hats!

Monday Jan 03, 2005





I'm both proud and embarassed to be an American at the same time when I see stuff like this. The Onion meets ESPN??



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