posts brought to you by the category “webcams”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire database table that mapped individual entries to categories. Such is life. What follows is a random sampling of entries that were associated with the category. Over time, the entries will be updated and then it will be even more confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun way to find stuff.
Is it my imagination or are we having interchange arguments
about interchange formats? I confess I have
only half been paying attention to the current bitch-fest surrounding
RSS. I have been travelling and so my own personal fury has been
occupied learning to hate people who drive mini-vans, wondering why
Americans are so clue-less about using their turn signals and trying to
think of some karmic justice for the asshole who managed to get the
idea for
cinnamon sticky bunflavoured coffee out of the boardroom and in to gas stations. (Look, it's not like I have any illusions about gas station coffee but some things are just wrong.) But comparing any flavour of the RSS format to the
.doc
seems a bit disingenuous. The whole point of this magic magic XML
stuff, I thought, was that we didn't have to spend all this time
arguing whether or not you spell
labourwith a
u. You say labor, I say labour and we write computer programs to deal with it.
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Me : Image::Shoehorn.pm 1.42
Basically, bug fixes. see also :
changes
,
docs
and
local copy
.
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Greg London : Symbol::Table.pm
Symbol::Table allows the user to manipulate Perl's symbol table while hiding all those nasty eval's and *typeglobs from the user. Symbol::Table gives the user an object oriented interface to perl's actual symbol table. The constructor returns a reference to a tied hash as a Symbol::Table object. The object acts like a reference to a hash: the keys are the name of the symbols in the symbol table, and the values are references to the symbol itself. The tied bit of magic allows changes in the actual symbol table to be reflected as changes in the tied hash. Tieing also allows assignments to the hash to translate into assignments into perl's actual symbol table.
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http://mah.everybody.org/weblog/archive/80614074
www.crimesofwar.org
The Crimes of War Project is a collaboration of journalists, lawyers and scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of the laws of war and their application to situations of conflict. Our goal is to promote understanding of international humanitarian law among journalists, policymakers, and the general public, in the belief that a wider knowledge of the legal framework governing armed conflict will lead to greater pressure to prevent breaches of the law, and to punish those who commit them.
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Me : Eatdrinkfeelgood 1.1b3
refers to
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All your interpreter are belong to us
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : fiblit
It's a Koosh ball (that colorful ball that looks like it's made of old rubberbands), but Fiblit is easier to remember.
ex. Erik, don't throw the fiblit in the living room.
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : giggersnort
Snorting sound, produced by laughing through the nose. Often derisive laughter.
ex. Haha. That was so funny. (giggersnort)
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : firmament
Firmament from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew _raki'a_. This word means simply "expansion." It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered _raki'a_ by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion. It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen. 1:7). The _raki'a_ supported the upper reservoir (Ps. 148:4). It was the support also of the heavenly bodies (Gen. 1:14), and is spoken of as having "windows" and "doors" (Gen. 7:11; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend. easton
Firmament \Fir"ma*ment\, n. [L. firmamentum, fr. firmare to make firm: cf. F. firmament. See {Firm}, v. & a.] 1. Fixed foundation; established basis. [Obs.] Custom is the . . . firmament of the law. --Jer. Taylor. 2. The region of the air; the sky or heavens. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. --Gen. i. 6. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament. --Gen. i. 14. Note: In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse, a wide extent; the great arch or expanse over out heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the clouds, and in which the stars appear to be placed, and are really seen. 3. (Old Astron.) The orb of the fixed stars; the most rmote of the celestial spheres. web1913
firmament n : the apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected [syn: {celestial sphere}, {sphere}, {empyrean}, {heavens}, {vault of heaven}, {welkin}] wn
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Bill Kearney has created a bunch of cool weblog maps
"based on the site URL's IP address."
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : dilligaff
Short for "Do I look like I care?" When someone tells you something you are uninterested in, instead of saying I don't care, just say "dilligaff."
ex. Joe: Nice weather today. Mary: Dilligaff!
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : saturdish
About Saturday.
ex. I'll be home saturdish.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : potable
Potable \Po"ta*ble\, a. [F., fr. L. potabilis, fr. potare to drink; akin to Gr. po`tos a drinking, po`sis a drink, Skr. p[=a] to drink, OIr. ibim I drink. Cf. {Poison}, {Bib}, {Imbibe}.] Fit to be drunk; drinkable. ``Water fresh and potable.'' --Bacon. -- n. A potable liquid; a beverage. ``Useful in potables.'' --J. Philips. web1913
potable adj : of alcoholic beverages that are suitable for drinking; "it's an impudent young wine but I think you will find it quite potable" n : any liquid suitable for drinking: "may I take your beverage order?" [syn: {beverage}, {drink}, {drinkable}] wn
POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable; indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be unscientific -- and without science we are as the snakes and toads. devils
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Reinhard Voglmaier : Web Publishing with Perl Objects
Radio Crankypants #17 : On streaming and security
To my knowledge, the centralized Radio
UserLand web-hosting servers don't have an XML-RPC interface. Nor would
they since the Radio framework doesn't appear to support
"downstreaming", or the sync-ing of data between their servers and your
machine. There is therefore no reason to be sending UserLand, proper, a
request to update a website. But, as I write this, I'm thinking it is
subject matter better suited for
this
website
. I can't post it there because I am not writing this from the computer
running that particular copy of Radio. Since
Radio
doubles as an XML-RPC server
, it is true that the Blogger API XML-RPC interface could be enabled
allowing me to post to my blog from a variety of clients. That's pretty
cool. But it assumes a few things : that the machine running Radio is
always on; that the machine running Radio has a fixed IP; that the
machine running Radio is not being NAT-ed or, if it is, that the
appropriate IP forwarding rules have been set up; that you're
comfortable sending passwords in cleartext to an application running
not on some one else's computer, but your own. This last point raises
an interesting problem for Radio. There are no authentication or
authorization checks on running the application itself. Radio benefits
from the fact that the two platform vendors it is written for are
developing increasingly secure multi-user logins and widgets for
limiting who can do what. But the application itself just runs. Let's
imagine that someone neglects to limit which users can run Radio or
that it is installed on a machine with a universal login. Both of these
things are very bad practice but we all know
this kind of
stuff
happens all the time. Think high-school. There isn't a whole lot to
prevent someone from sitting down at the machine and setting up
handlers to turn Radio into a warez server. Or from monitoring a set of
files on your desktop and sending them to anyone who requests them over
the wire. Or deleting them. And if a bad person can sniff your password
-- one presumes that if they can just sit down at your workstation they
can look it up in Radio, but anyway -- then all of these actions happen
as though "you" initiated them. If your copy of Radio runs on OS X,
you've added a whole other layer of nightmarish-ness because shell
commands can be issued from inside the errant XML-RPC handler. Which
brings us back to "streaming". If you look at the actual files that get
written to disk by Radio, you'll see they contain a bunch of control
statements and then a macro :
<%radio.macros.viewWeblog ()%>
. These are what
generate the
HTML
sent to a remote www server. What I am about to say next may be
premature. I haven't had a chance to really dig through the code to see
what's going on here. If Radio is doing some kind of
checking/untainting on the string value of the macro directive then
everything I am about to say should be moot. If, however, Radio is
simply
eval
-ing the macro it raises an enormous red flag. It means that all a bad
person needs to do is fire up a copy of NotePad and change one of the
files in the
www
directory to contain a new
<% do.something.bad () %>
macro which would be run the next time you sync your blog with a remote
server. Just in case you ever thought that your sysadmin was being
grumpy and cranky or just generally contrary simply out of
spite.
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Chris Nandor : Mac:: modules on MacOS X
Movable Type 1.3
"<snip>Added DBUmask, HTMLUmask,
DirUmask, and UploadUmask settings for the mt.cfg file. These are to be
used to adjust permissions set on files and directories created by MT.
Removed manual chmod calls.</snip>"
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Me : Image::Import.pm
"[slurps] an image as a hashref. In the process,
you may optionally resize the image, converting the image to another
image type, create a thumbnail or any combination thereof."
refers to
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No one asked, but since I'm already having a bad day
I would just like to say that Radiohead
have got to be one of the worst bands to ever grace the musical
landscape. Frankly, they come pretty close to giving the whole concept
of music a bad name. It's like listening to the soundtrack to
37°2,
le matin
played at 15RPM with squeaky chalk being dragged across a blackboard in
the background. A worthy successor to the loathesome drivel that The
Smiths wrought on the world...
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is gallimaufry
| source : web1913 | Gallimaufry
\Gal`li*mau"fry\, n.; pl. {Gallimaufries}. [F. galimafr['e]e a sort of
ragout or mixed hash of different meats.] 1. A hash of various kinds of
meats, a ragout. Delighting in hodge-podge, gallimaufries, forced meat.
--King. 2. Any absurd medley; a hotchpotch. The Mahometan religion,
which, being a gallimaufry made up of many, partakes much of the Jewish.
--South.
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Alex Russell : netWindows
"has about as much to do with windows as a nail
factory has with a house: one might help you build the other, but it's
mere coincidence that a house got built and not a desk. At it's core,
netWindows is a DHTML framework for component and code reuse. What does
that mean from an applied standpoint? One of neater uses of this
framework is to provide a way to create and use DHTML "widgets". Widgets
need not be "windows" or "menus", but can include almost any part of a
design that calls for reuse, abstraction, or data representation. In this
way, netWindows can function as a display layer for web applications,
letting them act more like applications and less like web pages. ... It's
also modular to a fault, meaning that if you don't need a part of the
system, it doesn't get sent down the wire."
The "windows" widget would be useful for
things like comments or threaded discussions, but I wonder if it would be
effective (read:not annoying) for displaying remote links in a weblog
context...
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is starveling
| source : web1913 | Starveling \Starve"ling\, n.
[Starve + -ling.] One who, or that which, pines from lack or food, or
nutriment. Old Sir John hangs with me, and thou knowest he is no
starveling. --Shak. | source : web1913 | Starveling \Starve"ling\, a.
Hungry; lean; pining with want. | source : wn | starveling n : someone
who is starving (or being starved)
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Walt A. Boring : phpHtmllib
"is a set of PHP classes and library functions to
help facilitate building, debugging, and rendering of HTML and XHTML. It
provides a mechanism to output perfectly indented/readable HTML/XHTML
source, and a programmatic API to generating HTML/XHTML on the fly."
I haven't tried to code anything with this
yet but, based on the docs, it's got the nicest interface of any PHP
based HTML writer I've seen to date.
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Sean M. Burke : perlpodspec, draft 1
From the "know yer tools" department : Tim Bray on XML::Parser
"The fact that XML::Parser is so much slower than
regexp, when it's based on James Clark's blazingly-fast expat parser, is
silly and wrong."
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is oblation
| source : web1913 | Oblation \Ob*la"tion\, n.
[L. oblatio: cf. F. oblation. See {Oblate}.] 1. The act of offering, or
of making an offering. --Locke. 2. Anything offered or presented in
worship or sacred service; an offering; a sacrifice. A peculiar . . .
oblation given to God. --Jer. Taylor. A pin was the usual oblation.
--Sir. W. Scott. 3. A gift or contribution made to a church, as for the
expenses of the eucharist, or for the support of the clergy and the poor.
| source : wn | oblation n 1: the act of contributing to the funds of a
church or charity; "oblations for aid to the poor" [syn: {offering}] 2:
the act of offering the bread and wine of the Eucharist [syn: {Oblation},
{religious offering}]
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If you'll indulge me in a brief One Year Ago Today moment,
one
Grand Prix de
Montreal
ago, we went to a restaurant, by the walls leading in to the center of
Tarano
, to pick up pizza and fried things. We walked in and everyone was
watching the television as fast cars did laps around Ile Saint Helene.
Tarano is part of Rieti, which is part of Lazio, which sent their
football team to the Euro 2000 match that we watched shortly after
returning to Canada. The cafe where
we watched the game
, it has a name but everyone knows it as "Open Da Night" because of the
worn out notice over the door, is also the setting for some serious
tonsil-hockey in
this music video
. see also :
Tarano -
un paese in provincia di Rieti
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is commodious
| source : web1913 | Commodious \Com*mo"di*ous\,
a. [LL. commodiosus, fr. L. commodum convenience, fr. commodus. See
{Commode}.] Adapted to its use or purpose, or to wants and necessities;
serviceable; spacious and convenient; roomy and comfortable; as, a
commodious house. ``A commodious drab.'' --Shak. ``Commodious gold.''
--Pope. The haven was not commodious to winter in. --Acts xxvii. 12. Syn:
Convenient; suitable; fit; proper; advantageous; serviceable; useful;
spacious; comfortable. | source : wn | commodious adj : large and and
roomy; "a commodious harbor"; "a commodious building suitable for
conventions"; (`convenient' is archaic in this sense) [syn: {convenient}]
[ant: {incommodious}]
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Notwithstanding everything else that's happening in Quebec city,
if the Parti Quebecois had half a clue they
would take that 40-foot tv screen of theirs, facing the FTAA conference
hall, and simply tune it in to the live feeds on RDI. The federal
government, whose evilness is seemingly matched only by their
stupidity, couldn't have done a better job promoting the idea that
there aren't many good reasons to stay in Canada. I used to think that
Liberals were just middle-of-the-roaders; at worst opportunists, at
best compromise-junkies. They are simply liars and sycophants. see also
:
quebec.indymedia.org
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Bryan Pfaffenberger : Why Open Content Matters
Paolo Marcucci : MS Word 2 OPML
(VBA)
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Lincoln Stein : "Who ever heard of holding a conversation
with someone so forgetful that you have to
continually remind them who they're talking to by handing them back a
slip of paper with your name written on it?"
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Philippe Jardin : The Power of Abstraction
"A proposition to have a better working Zope
product framework."
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Take me to your hot tub, Earthling.
developerWorks : Abstracting the interface
"Using XML to describe parts of a Web app user
interface can make it easy to convert the UI for multiple devices via XSL
style sheets. The article describes using XML data and XSL style sheets
to build the user interface of complex Web applications. A Web calendar
sample application demonstrates the basic techniques and concepts."
meta
Christian Tismer : Python's dictionary algorithm explained
via
daily
python-url
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PHP Builder : An ODBC Socket Server
"One machine will have the operating system of
your choice, the web server of your choice and PHP on it. The other
machine will have Windows, MS Access, and ODBC on it. The socketserver on
the Windows machine will look for connections on a TCP/IP port, PHP will
generate XML commands and send them to the socket server. The socket
server will then execute the SQL statements in the commands and pass
another XML document back to PHP. Finally, PHP will parse the XML
document and manipulate the resulting recordset."
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Stephen Budiansky : The Physics of Gridlock
Wherein, some clever Germans compare the American
highway system to a dozen dogs standing on a waterbed.
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Victor Liu See-le : "b. is a Web-based manager for Web bookmarks.
... b. now supports multi-user environments.
Using basic Web server user authentication (i.e. by password-protecting
the b./ directory), only certain users can have access to b.. Each user
has his/her own bookmarks and optionally can have his/her own theme,
welcome message, etc."
refers to
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The Slashdot-weenies discuss electronic voting
"My change of heart came while listening to an
NPR story last night. Election results for one county in Michigan were
held up for two hours because some volunteers with ballots were
barricaded in the building by a bear. A bear! What century is this?"
Meanwhile,
Peter
Neumann
chimes in with the following : "
I
would not trust a computerized voting system even if I had written it
myself...
", which ought to have a sobering effect on the whole idea but probably
won't.
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Simson Cole : The Myth of Fingerprints
"When I first chose to write my dissertation on
how fingerprint examiners achieve credibility as expert witnesses, I
never thought that I would end up an expert witness myself. But there I
sat in the witness box, fidgeting nervously, swearing to tell the truth.
Here was a role reversal worthy of these postmodern times, one that
brought new meaning to the term 'participant observation.'"
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Morning Becomes Eclectic : Rhinocerose
(real evil g2) see also :
Grim Skunk :
Rhinoceros
(scroll down)
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YULblog : We've had a long love affair with our mountain
Unfortunately, no mention is made of the most
popular urban legend these days : that, following the one million dollars
spent to install fiber optic lights several years ago, the cross will
turn purple when
the Pope
dies.
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Beth Coleman
"At first, I have to ask, why is this art? But I
guess Web art belongs in a unique place. It exists in a space in which
you can't distinguish between what is real and what isn't." The "filter
of art", indeed. see also :
Virtucone
(quicktime)
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see also
Cybridputo #3
"We don't have a Web site! Get the fuck off the
Web!" see also :
Courtney
: "How am I supposed to compete with 'Jennicam?' She's funny, she's
gorgeous, she's got better furniture. This really, really sucks."
meta
Chris Hubrick
"Be thankful Netscape is building a /free/ (as in
speech) browser for you at all. And the free software community is very
simple...if you want it done faster... help! (put your money where your
mouth is), or at least show some bloody gratitude already." And if you're
inclined to think this guy is just a stick in the mud, with no sense of
humour,
think again
.
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Free Pint : Web resources for handheld computers
The Slashdot Kiddies : What Will the Internet of the Future Be Like?
Interesting, but I worry that few people are
seeing the forest for the trees. There's another aspect that is troubling
: I'd like to hear what people *want* the future of the Network to be and
it fucking sucks to have to consider that as a separate issue. How lame
is it that we ( and I include myself ) find it so hard to reconcile our
hopes with our expectations? see also :
The trouble with having a recursive imagination
and then
Angela
Gunn : Hoax in the machine
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It's nice to know
Indymagazine interviews Dan Clowes
Elsewhere on [their] website is a pretty cool
section called
Exercise
in Style
.
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Using a Command-line interface
"Open the Apple menu and choose System
Administration, then choose Terminal." Pray for the tech support people.
see also :
Dan Lyke : Unix Usability
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NY Times : Online Journalists Keep Their Eyes on Daily Numbers
"It's like in high school and you've auditioned
for the school play," Offman said. "You look at the cast list and your
eyes just slowly move down."
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Le Devoir : Wal-Mart «adopte» 163 écoles
"Je trouve d'une naïveté éhontée les gens qui
oeuvrent dans l'éducation et qui croient que tout cela ne relève que de
la généreuse contribution! Les entreprises ne cherchent que leur intérêt,
rien de plus."
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Carfree Times
I found this snooping around after reading about
plans for
Auto-Free Sundays
in Amsterdam. Wonderful!
refers to
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Janos Starker : A 75th Birthday Celebration
Janos Starker, Mstislav Rostropovich and another
150 cellists performing together. Nice! Live on the Internet, 18h00 PDT.
refers to
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Todd Gitlin : Disappearing Ink
"The point is to decide, while you're listening,
what matters in the presentation. And while I don't believe that most of
life consists of showing up, education does begin with that -- with
immersing yourself in the activity at hand, listening, thinking, judging,
offering active responses. A download is a poor substitute."
meta
BBC : Timor activists warn of cyber war
It's always nice to see
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates
wax poetic about bringing down the banking industry.
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Wired : 'Web Seance' Summons Art
" 'In showing the IP numbers of Web participants,
we're stating the authenticity of the piece's interactivity,' says
Sobell. 'And in attributing participants' written contributions to their
IP numbers, the piece comments on the nature of identity, as seen by the
medium.' " Artists, always looking out for your authenticity...
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Christie Blachford : This bird won't take flight from the city
"There are always miles of highways temporarily
working as mere roads and crammed with sport-utility vehicles and
four-wheel drives, strip malls full of chain stores, big-box outlet
joints (many of which, mysteriously, have cafes attached, as if you
actually might like to linger there in the middle of the bleak and
soul-destroying nowhere), unimaginably huge churches and spanking new
schools, no sidewalks and, the old chicken-and-egg conundrum here,
nothing worth walking to anyway."
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wtf?
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dude, where's my car
This document uses CSS kung-fu and a small amount of JavaScript for rendering its contents. Efforts have been made to separate the form from the content so if you are viewing this in a text-based browser it shouldn't be an issue.
On the other hand it may look funny if you are viewing it in a browser with incomplete CSS and/or JavaScript implementations. Internet Explorer 6 comes to mind.
It's not that I don't love you. However, my time is limited and I no longer feel very good about spending it working around any one browser's inconsistencies with little, or no, confidence that they will ever be fixed or otherwise made more inconsistent at some later date.
On the other hand, if something is down-right unreadable please let me know and I will endeavour to fix it.
-
yes, we have no bananas
This page may not validate. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I'm not aware of it yet. Part of the reason that I rewrote the entire back-end for managing this site is that the old stuff made it too easy for these kinds of mistakes to slip through the cracks.
See also : W3C::LogValidator.pm
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it's the software, stupid