You really need to check out Neogentronyx. I'm a bit too old to have played with Transformers as a kid, but this guy apparently did. And it would seem that he never outgrew them. This whole project is obviously the culmination of years of childhood daydreaming. Actually I'm glad that this guy has "way too much time" to work on this, because I don't. But I'd love to have one of these! ;)
I sure hope I get one of these under my Christmas tree! Actually, I want three friends to get them too… Then we can start a band, ala KISS!
Anyone who really knows me surely know that I don't like Wal-Mart because of their "Always Low Prices (at any cost to supplier companies and exploited third-world workers)!" motto. But I have to take there side in this one. If a company follows the laws that govern gun sales, you can't sue them for selling your adult child a gun that they then used to kill themselves. I'm sorry. It's tragic, but Wal-Mart didn't shoot them! What's next? If some nut job jumps in front of my car and I run them over, do I get sued for "wrongful death" because I could have taken an alternate route to my destination? The only things I see coming out of this case are two parent who are prolonging the agony over the death of their child, and a group of lawyers with jinglier pockets!
I'm now running what will likely be PolarBlog V1.4.0 on this site. The only noticeable change you will see is the addition of the "Topics" links in the right navigation menu. This, like most of the features can be turned off via a configuration option if you don't want it. There may be some additional features added, thus the "Alpha" aspect of this, but mostly it is a "Beta" of what will be released. See this changelog for the quick rundown of what else is in this release.
It seems a A 21-year-old Perth man who for obvious reasons has chosen to remain anonymous, nearly killed himself using what I've termed "The Beer Pump". Beer Bongs are crazy enough, but this truly is insanity. This is sort of a "Darwin's Work" lite though, as he did survive…likely to do something incredibly stupid in the future that will end his days.
Well, I've finally gotten back on my bike after nearly a three month layoff. This year was an unmitigated disaster for me when it comes to cycling. I took no long rides and had very little time on the weekends to ride. Then in September I got sick. Then I got busy. Then I got sick again. Then I was on vacation. Then I got sick —again! And all the while laziness settled in and the house started getting cold in the morning…a sure recipe for failure. Now with less than two weeks left in the year, I've suddenly found some motivation. This means very little for this year, but could be a good springboard into 2005. I now just need to stay motivated and overcome the cold floors and general lethargy in the mornings to maintain it. Must think strong.
PolarBlog V1.3.0 has been released. This release contains… Enhancements Internationalization (I18N) Support - PolarBlog should now be capable of displaying in languages other than U.S. English. This release contains both English and German language files. If you are fluent in another language and are interested in using PolarBlog in another language, please read this blog entry. Bug Fixes Comment email notification not always being sent. Comment emails not being sent, but replies work. Displayed comments sometimes appear out of order. Search results are displayed oldest to newest instead of newest to oldest. "Next" navigation button is erroroneously displayed with search results. Double slashes in URL when PolarBlog is the servers root page. Configuration Changes Added I18N_LANG Added I18N_CHARSET Added I18N_DATE_SEPARATOR_FORMAT Added I18N_DATE_FORMAT Added USE_GOOGLE_LINK Added USE_WORD_COUNT Deprecated DATE_SEPARATOR_FORMAT Deprecated DATE_FORMAT See…
After much contemplation, I've finally come up with something to put on my front page other than just the lava lamp. I've been unhappy with the front page for quite some time, but wasn't really sure what to do with it. I didn't want my blog as my front page so I needed to come up with some sort of introduction page. After all, it is effectively the "welcome mat" at your front door and should make a visitor feel welcome and explain what they will find "inside". Thus I've added such an introduction and a brief outline of my various projects. Actually, I think most user of my site come through one of the "side doors"…most likely one of the projects, but then surf around from there. I know this is often how I learn more about someone on the web…I find a deep link into their site and then start exploring the rest of their site. Thus my new front page provides a quick rundown of who I am and what's going on here. I hope you like it as most anything would…
If you run/code a PHP based sites, you owe it to yourself to check out jpcache. I've been using it here at PolarLava for at least the past year and a half. This bad boy will GZip compress your pages before they are sent to the browser, which cuts down on your bandwidth as well as speeds up your page loads. Additionally you can tell it to cache a page for a specified period of time. This makes those DB generated "static" pages into true static pages, thus making them much faster. And you have your choice of either storing your cached pages in flat files or a MySQL database, which is what I do. Another alternative if you are distributing code but don't need caching, is my GZipContent class. It provides the benefit from GZipping compressing the output, but doesn't do any caching. If you are interested in this, just drop me a line. Although it's not released as of this writing, GZContent will be part of PolarBlog beginning in V1.4.0. Although this blog actually doesn't…
Okay, I've been lurking around it for a while, but I finally signed up at del.icio.us have started my own bookmark collection. I can see this becoming really addictive, but also very useful. I used to collect lots of bookmarks, but they were always a hassle to manage. Thus several years ago I basically stopped book marking things and would just search for whatever I needed. Google obviously has made this easier, but often you can't find your way back to that exact link you found previously. You know the one…the one you didn't bother to save or bookmark! ;) The biggest reason I like this is that it will allow me to easily "share" my bookmarks between work, home and wherever I may happen to be. I can always access this list. This is also the same reason that I switched to using a web mail interface exclusively a few years back. Unless you are always in one place —very unlikely for most people these days, you need to be able to access your information globally.
Today marks the second anniversary of the PolarLava Blog. And here is the now infamous first post. Being a generally pointless post, here's a generally pointless link to last year's posting about this momentous event.
You try to do something good and what do you get? In some cases, maybe death when you could still be saved! DOH!
I'm now running what will be PolarBlog V1.3.0 on this, my live blog. If you notice anything odd, let me know. There are a few bug fixes and enhancements in this release, but the biggie for this release is internationalization (I18N). With this release —barring any unknown problems, PolarBlog should now support languages other than U.S. English. I've been working with a German developer on implementing this and he may also be beta testing this as well in the coming days. If you are fluent in something other than English, translators are need. Looking ahead to V1.4, if you have features you would like to see added please let me know. At this time I know of two feature that will be in V1.4: Topic Icon Sizing - Right now all icons are locked at 32x32. This was a carryover from PWL. I may add scaleable sizing to the Topic Edit section, but that may be more trouble than it is worth. At the very least the 32x32 lockdown will be removed. That…
As a parent I often question whether I am qualified or even mentally fit to be "molding" little minds. But then along comes quality parenting like this to make me feel better. I might not be "Father of the Year", but I think this fall under the category of "Things you really should know not to do".
This unplanned release fixes a problem introduced in V1.2.2 whereby the Comment link on an entry would display the entry (ala Permalink), but not the commenting form! I've also backed out half of the change made to the DisplayEdit() function that dealt with converting HTML entities. This wasn't working as well as I had hoped and I need to explore this further. This entity situation is likely of minimal impact to anyone.
Every year it's the same thing…I vow that putting up the Christmas lights outside isn't going to get me all pissed off and stressed out. And every year I seem to fail in this pursuit! Yesterday was this year's adventure and it proved once again to foil my best intentions, although it really doesn't stress me out any more as I've come to expect it. I hauled out the lights and started checking full strings of lights to see if they work. After last year's adventure I vowed I wouldn't mess with burnt out strings as it it dirt cheap to replace them anymore. So everthing is working except the one special/short string that I have to have for around the bedroom window. Figures. Score: Lights 1, Kevin 0. Time for a beer! I then plunk down and begin working through checking each bulb in the string. Not bad, only 4 bad bulbs in a string of about 50 lights! Grrr, but successful. Score: Lights 1, Kevin 1. Let the hanging begin…the lights that is, not me. I hauled out the folding…
I've been working on adding I18N (Internationalization) support to PolarBlog. Being a lazy and lame American, I only speak/read/write English. If you have the ability and willingness to translate the text in PolarBlog from English to another language, please contact me at kevinp AT polarlava.com. From an implementation standpoint this release is a bit tedious as I have to scour through all of the code to weed out all of the hardcoded English. As such, it is somewhat slow going. Also, with the holiday season now in play, that also is impacting my progress. Thus this feature will most likely not be released until some time in January.
PolarBlog V1.2.2 has been released. This release is does not contain any new features and is strictly a bug fix release. The following issue have been addressed in this release: When saving an existing entry if you used the back button to edit again, when you save the entry the second time you would get a duplicate entry error message. The duplicate entry detection has been fixed to only operate on new entries and now allows the browser's back button to function without causing problems. This is an acceptable action as an entry ID is defined when editing an existing entry. The duplicate detection only needs to operate on new entries where there is no existing entry ID. When editing entries, html entities that were defined were being stripped from the text that in the edit boxes. This was mostly causing problem with "&" entities within links that display on the page. This is only an issue if you take the time to…
trashcans
Here's a rather interesting find…10x10. Which is described as "100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time". For the full explanation, read their "about" page. I found this to be a compelling look at the world we live in and hope you do too.
Exactly what the hell was this guy thinking? Apparently he wasn't! Clearly a case of our boy Darwin hard at work once again. I have been so moved by Mr. Philip Quinn's actions that I've decided it's time for a new topic here at the lava flow: "Darwin's Work". Congratulations Philip! Don't worry, there surely will be others to join you in the future. I'll need to back track as I know there are others here before you that need to now be reclassified. But your level of ignorance, the fact that it relates to lava lamps and your clear lack of brainwork —where this was originally going to be categorized, has truly inspired me. A better version of the story is currently available on the Police Department - City of Kent, Washington website. This link is going to get stale rather quickly so save yourself a dead click and read it here. …more
For those who have been troubled by the commenting bug, relief is on its way! I received an email with some very detailed debugging information as well as a solution to the problem. I've implemented the new code on this blog and will be doing some further testing before releasing this update in the coming days. More detailed information will be provided with the release posting, but in short this is likely only a problem new users have seen. If you haven't seen the problem you likely won't, so consider yourself lucky! ;)
It seems to be a trend that just keeps increasing, but once again we have another example of bible thumping paranoia. I just love the thought process of one Delana Davies: "It's like experimenting with drugs, you just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. … If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?" Actually Delana, it is okay both now and in the future. Although you might find it a bit peculiar —as do I, just because someone cross-dresses that doesn't mean that they are or will become a homosexual. But I'm sure this simple concept doesn't register in your simple mind. God save us all! Well, at least those of you who don't cross-dress or support such homosexual activities! ;)
Here's a really cool ASCII War Video that is set to the Rammstein song Feuer Frei! (Open Fire!). There's lots of really silly Flash animation stuff out there, but I find this one to be really cool because of the simple ASCII graphics, its music video motif and its fatalistic message. "You maniacs!… You blew it up!… Ah, damn you!… God damn you all to hell!!" (Here's a hint for those of you who might be too uncultured to understand this reference.)
It's good to see the Southern Baptist Convention hard at work spreading their narrow view. Cue up Dueling Banjos, Cletus!
…more
Here's one that's not only funny, but clever also. From this posting on Boing Boing.
I'm not sure what would make you do something like this. Being Canadian, maybe it's the beer that so many people both up north and in the U.S. thinks is so good, but really isn't! ;)
If you've got small children you should appreciate The Wheels on the Bus by MAD DONNA.
I've released PolarBlog V1.2.1 to fix a very minor comment display issue. This change simply correct the comment word count display to match the new entry word count display…which was changed to save some space in the last release. You can live without this update unless you are anal and easily annoyed by these sorts of things as I am! If you want to do a quick update, download the update and then just copy the "lib/PolarBlog_class.php" file from the tar file.
I've made a couple of changes to my RSS Feeds page. First I've added a link at the top to take you back to the feed selection list which is very helpful when you are viewing a very long feed. You no longer need to scroll to the bottom to get back to the feed list! Secondly and more importantly, I've reworked the page feed to display the description text for each entry instead of just a link to the remote item. Besides helping provide some context for the item, it allows you to view sites like Boing Boing in a work safe manner without the work offensive advertising. 11/20/04 I've added the entry publication date next to the entry title assuming there is one. It seems most feeds don't bother to include this information for some reason. I've also made some changes to the underlying RSS retrieval mechanism that required some coding changes to a third party package. I've submitted these changes to the owner in hopes that he will incorporate them into the package. I will be…
PolarBlog V1.2.0 has been released. The changes in this release are covered it the previous PolarBlog V1.2 Roadmap entry.
This is just too Sick, Twisted & Funny to pass up! Very disturbing but yet I couldn't help but laugh. I know, I'm going to hell, but I surely won't be alone!
irony
Many, many years ago I used to dream of owning a true audiophile listening system. Suffice to say that the unlimited financial resources required for such a venture have never materialized and likely never will. But if they ever do, I can say with certainty that such a setup will most definately include some of the absolutely beautiful work by electron luv. Not only are these works of art, it would appear that they are sonic marvels.
I don't live in Cali, but I see more than enough of these things. Very humorous, unless you are one of these people!
Just enjoying a few days of R&R while my parents are in town visiting me and my family. Last week was brutally long and arduous, but well worth it…I've accepted a position at Synacor as a "Code Review Engineer" beginning November 8th. Thus I notified my current employer, Choice One Communications that November 5th will be my last day there. In my new position I will initially be working with the different programming groups to learn their system. After a couple of months I will be responsible for making sure these groups all stay on the same page and do things in a consistent and compatible manner. Quite an exciting new challenge for me and I'm very much looking forward to it. We had a very nice weekend and went out to Becker Farms on Saturday to pick pumpkins. This has sort of become a tradition for Mary Lou and I and it was especially nice to have my parents along with us this year. Sunday was largely spent lounging around whereby I've either cracked, broke or…
I've had the lust, but not the cash for a USB Drive for quite a while. But these sushi drives are truly lust-worthy at any price, although apparently they are only available in 32MB or 128MB sizes (at this time I would assume). A 256MB or larger drive would be better, but gift purchases are gladly accepted!
PolarBlog V1.2 will contain the following new features: Ping-O-Matic! Support Improved Entry Index/Archive List Preview Popup Double Entry Prevention The Ping-O-Matic support has been integrated and is currently running successfully on this site. If you are interested in the technical details, please see the Implementing Pingers entry. The Entry Index looked nice when I originally implemented it. At this point I think it just looks shitty and inefficient. Sure they match the entry style, but they just waste a lot of space and have too much fluff. Thus this will be changing to a more basic listing of entries separated into months, still in reverse chronological order. One of the features from PWL that I had no use for was the entry preview display. My answer to this was the display/no display option. That fulfilled my preview needs while also adding the ability to save partial entries that could be finished later without…
Now here's a worthy brewing improvement. Anything that helps or improves brewing quality beer, get high marks in my book. Plus it gives me the change to use this beauty: Mmmm…Beer!
If you are interested in pinging one of the many blog pinger/update sites, you might want to consider Ping-O-Matic. If you ping them them, they will in turn ping several services by default for you: Weblogs.com Blo.gs Technorati MyYahoo! (currently disabled) BlogRolling BlogChatter PubSub If you use blogging software that allows you to enter a ping URL, it's real easy. Just add https://rpc.pingomatic.com/ to your configuration. If you use a lesser known blogging package (*cough* PolarBlog *cough*) you may need to add it yourself or run a separate script to do the pinging for you. I'm implementing this in PolarBlog with an option to turn it off and on using code similar to the following test code: //--- Includes require('XmlRpc_class.php'); define("XMLRPC_DEBUG", 1); //debugging only!!! $method = 'weblogUpdates.ping'; $blog_name = 'PolarLava'; $blog_url = 'https://www.polarlava.com/blog/'; $site = 'rpc.pingomatic.com'; $location = '/RPC2…
mcfailure
It is very reassuring to see Darwin in action not only in the U.S., but around the world. This time it's in Pakistan! Truly a "What the hell were you thinking" moment. 12/2/04 - Moved to new "Darwin's Work" topic.
A few weeks back I wrote about wearing a LiveStrong wristband. For me it's logical; I'm a cyclist, Lance Armstrong fan, it supports cancer victims who need assistance and my mother is a cancer survivor. It just makes sense to me. Unfortunately, an administrator run amok at the Virginia Beach City Public Schools just disqualified 26 cross-country runners for wearing them. Why? They're jewelery of course, and only religious or medical "jewelery" are allowed. It's good to see a positive message for kids of all ages being squashed by an overzealous school bureaucrat. Fortunately for me I would have been allowed to wear mine because cycling is my religion! 10/14/2004 Well it seems that the bureaucrats who made this blunder have reversed this decision after getting inundated with complaints from rational, sane people.
It's here! I've released PolarBlog V1.1 this morning, enjoy. If you have problem please post your questions to the mailing list. This has been a long time in the making, but I'm glad to have finally gotten over the hump with this release. This release basically represents the culmination of nearly a year of work. It all started with a desire to add a commenting system to PWL and resulted in the creation of PolarBlog.
I used to do a lot of international travel for one of my previous jobs. One place I spent a lot of time was in Japan. Every time I would go there I always came home with lots of little gifts ("We have small gift for you.") from the facilities I would visit. I was doing some cleaning up around my house a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon one of these. A small rubber-stamp like all of the office workers would use to "sign" their paperwork in Kanji. My coworker and I became sort of infatuated with these little stamps so they made a couple of them up for us. This was mine: The small note that they gave me with it had been stamped with "my signature". Obviously my name can't be translated to Kanji, so they made my stamp with two Kanji symbols, "Multiply" and "Smart". Thus implying that they viewed me as being intelligent…obviously a mistake on their part, but that's another story! Then again, for all I know it could say "…
Lot's of goofy people in the news today. That's why you should take the time to learn about Steven Holten. There's so many humorous things in this one I'm not sure where to start. If you're a "one-man Aryan Nation", can you really be considered a nation at all? Based on all of the people that he purports to hate, I think he might have no choice as he likely has excluded everyone but himself. But then again, with all the issues this guy obviously has, he might hate himself also! Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure that having a Nazi SS neck tattoo might pose a small problem traveling through more than one city or town across the nation. I'm guessing it might get him some attention while in prison also! Oh go on and admit it, you're going to run out and get your very own Nazi SS neck tattoo right after you read this article!
Those wacky boys in the NFL can alway be counted on for some good amusement. But shooting at Siegfried & Roy's house? Sounds like Mr. Ford's the one who might want to be leaving the country!
I'm all for saving a buck. And although I'm not big on political statements myself, I don't really have a problem with others making them. That is one of the fundamental tenets of the constitution after all. (Although if Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and company have their way it won't be for long. Another conversation unto itself.) But when you start dumpster diving as your primary means of providing sustenance for yourself and your friends, you've gone too far. That is unless you're a freegan! Sounds a lot like "freak man" to me. As in "you're a freak, man"!
buffalo-lighthouse
After nearly 9 months of work, I've finally got a working commenting system implemented for PolarBlog. So as of right now, this blog is now running the new PolarBlog V1.1 as a Beta test. Click "Comment (X)" to add a comment. This should allow you to post a comment on any post that has comments enabled. When you do this it sends an email to the blog owner (me in this case). If someone replies to your comment, an email will be sent to you letting you know about it. Comments should appear for entries when the "Permalink" is selected and are indented a few pixels from the entry. Replies to comments or other replies will also be indented for each message. Thus it displays as a nested/threaded comment structure. There are also numerous bug fixes and some other minor enhancements that are in this release. I don't expect any major bugs at this point, but I still need to rework the installer/updater script as well as update the documentation. Thus it's probably…
How drunk and crazy do you have to be to pull your own teeth? Apparently you don't have to be completely drunk, just completely crazy! It's very reassuring to see that after all these years, Darwin's work continues to prove itself! 12/2/04 - Moved to new "Darwin's Work" topic.
I've added this new PhotoBlog topic as sort of a photoblog within a blog. With the acquisition of my new digital camera I now have the means to support such a venture. Hopefully the first entry will be up within the next week. But for this to work the way I want it too, I need to upgrade PolarBlog. The new V1.1 adds a complete commenting system that is currently missing. It also fixes a number of existing bugs…one of which will effect this topic section.
While getting ready for work in the morning I often watch the History Channel's Cable in the classroom program. This show consists largely of a couple of those (usually old) 10-15 minute news reel clips. I don't know what today's show was, but it wasn't what's listed on their website. Anyhow, today's show was about the Germans overrunning Poland and France with little effort. At one point they show Adolph Hitler dining and they are talking about him eating a celebratory meal. Not just any meal, but a vegetarian meal. Gasp! You'd likely have to see it to appreciate it, but the tone was the classic "he's a vegetarian, he's evil and this is one of the reasons for it". Quite amusing by today's standards, particularly from a vegetarian viewpoint.
Last week I stumbled upon the website Undercaffeinated. I don't currently subscribe to the right-wing rhetoric that he seems to be infatuated with, but I did find one thing of interest. In the menu bar there's a link to The Political Compass, that I think everyone should check out. So I went and took their political test. The results basically say I'm a "centrist, liberal, libertarian". I scored: Economic Left/Right: -1.25, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.95. This is in contrasts with Undercaffeinated's score of Economic Left/Right: 6.12, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.44. Thus I'd say we share a similar outlook on social issues, but apparently differ on how to achieve the goals…whatever they may be. It really doesn't matter because our government seems to be on a constant downward (death?) spiral. Congress refuses to kill pork barrel projects and deal with the increasing burden of the national debt and the many entitlement programs. We really need to reel…
Apparently God doesn't like George W. and the people in Florida that voted for him.
Chaffing, rash and/or itch problems boys? Maybe you're not taking care of things the way you should. This might help:
8/7/08 And here we are one month shy of four years of using this camera…and I'm here to report that it died this past weekend. It's not completely dead, but certainly unusable. It appears that the sensor is shot as it's massively overexposing any picture you attempt to take. Of course I discovered this out of town, outdoors and at a family reunion this past weekend. :( So new camera is definitely on the horizon. Likely a Canon S5 IS which it the updated 8MP, 12x zoom version of the S1 IS which I've very much have enjoyed. Another option would be a Canon A650 IS which is a 12MP, 6x zoom. From doing some research the A650 has a little better picture quality, but I'm having a hard time giving up the zoom range of the S series. We will see. A most exciting treat arrived on my doorstep yesterday as my parents bought me a Canon PowerShot S1 IS digital camera for my birthday. Or as I told them when I called to thank them, my "birthmas" as this should easily cover…
And not only is Jim dead, he's been dead for 2 years Oh yeah, and nobody even knew! That direct deposit and auto-payment stuff seems to work pretty damn well. ;)
It seems the RSS feed validator has moved their URL. Thus if you have the "Validate RSS" tag enabled, you need to change the URL from "https://feeds.archive.org/validator/check.cgi" to "https://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi" in the $config['tags'] section of the configuration file. The distribution file will be corrected in the next release.
So forty years ago today I made my initial appearance in the world. And since then I've seen some good and bad times, although I can't really say I've ever really experienced anything awful in my life. Hopefully I will be just as fortunate in the future. I guess this also makes me middle aged now, but I don't consider it to be the middle of my ages. For me that will be at least 50 as my goal is to be a centenarian. Although it may turn out that I was wrong by as much as 60 years! I'm trying to avoid that though, by taking care of myself and not doing too many obviously stupid and dangerous things…although today's bike ride might fit in that category! For the most part I don't feel 40, and I agree with most people as they say that I don't look 40 and God knows, I certainly don't act it! So cheers to me and here's to another 60 years or so. 9/14/04 I had my "birthday party" (Mary Lou & the girls) on Sunday evening. A very low-key event, but I did get a copy of The…
I have to post this really huge THANK YOU notice that goes out to Alan Caruth. Alan was kind enough to send me a $65 Amazon gift certificate to show his gratitude for my efforts on developing PolarBlog. When I started on this project it was to fulfill my personal needs to improve upon Personal Weblog. Once I decided to completely rewrite it and PWL continued to remain idle, I decided I needed to package it up and offer it up to other PWL users. Alan has been a tremendous help in testing, documentation feedback, and in general, a sounding board for my work. Thank you Alan!
Well, time seems to fly with the little ones. Particularly when they start school at 3! Olivia had her first day of Pre-K3 at St. Amelia yesterday. Dad was unable to be there for the big drop-off, but mom said she was a bit concerned that mom was leaving her there. But both mom and daughter parted ways without shedding any tears. And upon completion of her first day, Miss Olivia was quite happy with her time there. Thus begins her lengthy education process, even if it is only 3 hours, 3 days a week for now. Dear ol' dad on the other hand never even went to kindergarten because they didn't start that program where he went to school until the year he started first grade. How about that…seems my education is lacking on the front and the back-end!
Well, according to a recent traffic study, traffic is getting worse not just in big cities, but also in small and medium sized cities. But there are some exceptions…Pittsburgh, Cleveland and my locale, Buffalo have actually gotten better. That's because these areas have economies that have remained in the dumps for the past decade. My work experiences over the bulk of that time can certainly attest to that! I like my 20 minute commute, but I'd give it up to see some quality jobs come to the area. If they do, it will be a slow painful process as all of the political factions will need to make sure they and their people are getting their cut. Nothing like living in the most unionized area of the country.
Well, we had our 2004 SFFL draft this weekend. I picked from the #4 position this year and I'm happy with my drafted team. Leading the THRAK charge this year are running backs Ahman Green (GB), Domanick Davis (HOU) and quarterback Michael Vick (ATL). I'm sure everyone else also feels they have a winner at this point. Time and injuries will tell the real story. Here's to the mighty THRAK returning to the top of the heap, in this our 10th anniversary season!
Once again we have another fine example of the shallow end of the gene pool. People, wake up and learn your currency! There is no $200 bill! Don't you think that George W. Bush's picture on it would be a small clue that there's something funny going on? Apparently not, because this pinhead managed to pass it to another pinhead who accepted it. As hard as that is to imagine, it's not the first time. Good grief Charlie Brown, this country is in really deep shit. 11/15/04 Well the verdict is in. I guess paying up with real cash will get you out of this sort of bind. It was refreshing to see that neither Deborah L. Trautwine or the pinhead clerk at Fashion Bug knew that the bill was a fake. Unbelievable!
It seems that the brain trust at the Athens 2004 Olympics have opted for a stupid linking policy like some others. Seems you need their permission and can only use the words "ATHENS 2004" as the link text. So you see, something like saying they have a stupid linking policy would appear to violate their rules. Good thing it's their rules and not mine! My rule is to point out such stupidity and remind people that linking from one place to another, using whatever text you choose is what the web is all about! Guess now that the games are over it really doesn't matter, now does it? I guess this is appropriate behaviour as it fits in well with the IOC and their position on olympic bloggers. Aren't the olympics supposed to be a happy, open sort of event? Guess not.
Okay, this probably shouldn't be under this topic, and I'm pretty certain that Daniel Brohm doesn't find it too funny. But if you can't laugh at other people's tragedies, what good are they? Bet you'd be surprised to learn that alcohol and drugs were involved! Read the local scoop here. This is one hangover that John Kemper Hutcherson is going to be living with for years. 9/15/04 Well, it seems that John must have been a pretty good friend to Dan. Well, at least up to that point where he decapitated his friend, but I digress. Hey, that kind of adds a whole new meaning to "Friends for life". It seems that Dan's family pleaded on his behalf to have him released. Thus he is now out on a $50,000 bond. 5/26/05 I guess the judge decided that just because it was your best friend you decapitated, it doesn't mean you're off the hook. Our friend John is off to prison for 5 years. I've also decided that although initially this fit in "That's Funny!", I'm now moving…
A fun filled Sunday afternoon as Mary Lou and I took the girls berry picking at Brown's Berry Patch in Waterport, NY. Complete with a Sunday drive as this is a fair distance from our house. I picked nearly 3 quarts of raspberries while Mary Lou picked more than 3 quarts of blueberries. Olivia picked better than a half a quart of blueberries, and Claire…well Claire picked about a quart of mud! For a day that was supposed to be rainy and lousy, it really turned out to be a nice day. Shockingly enough, this pasty whiteboy even got a bit of a sunburn. I also got a few scratches picking the raspberries, but it was well worth it. For the most part I was reaching in and picking 4-6 berries at a time as the bushes were loaded. After finishing up berry picking and giving a Claire a hobo bath in the bathroom sink, we all had ice cream before heading home for the day. Suffice to say that unlike the girls, mom and dad didn't get to nap in the car and were plenty exhausted by bedtime.
From a purely technical standpoint, this is really cool. But they crossed the "Way Too Much Time" line when they opted to make it into a belt buckle. Dorks.
This is another very minor release with more work on the documentation, a bug fix for a —potential as nobody reported it— problem in the MySQL database class and one new configuration directives: PAGE_TITLE - Allows you change the page title default of "PolarBlog" to whatever you would like. You could have always edited the index page, but this will now make it so you don't have to edit it everytime you upgrade. This likely will be the last update for a while as I'm now starting on the entry comments system. Which was one of the major features that I wanted that was missing in PWL.
Think the US government doesn't have years of practice in censoring the media? Did you know that Japan "bombed" the mainland United States during World War II? No, well neither did I until I read this article on Slate. On one hand I can see why they wouldn't want this reported at the time, but what else have they withheld? And why after 60 years is pretty much obscure knowledge? Just something to ponder as go through your day.
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So this past week at work I was voted as the new company MVP. This "honor" is voted on by all of the employees from anonymous nominations, also from my fellow employees. And what is it? It's for an "Outstanding individual contribution to the success of the company". Personally I call it "doing your job". But in any case, I will take the extra day off that goes with it along with the crown, belt and scepter…although I could do without this tremendous piece of image editing by my boss plastered on our intranet:
It's good to see that the IOC has their head in the sand much like the RIAA and MPAA. They're preventing blogging for nearly all athletes, with only a few exceptions. Always good to see another establishment trying to prevent progress. God knows you can't hear an athlete's story through unsanctioned channels. Nope. Wouldn't want to hear it from the horses mouth. It might just end up being a very truthful and frank assessment of their experience. Good to see that the IOC is playing the part of the horse's ass!
Well, one out of one bear surveyed says to drink the good stuff and leave the swill for others. Apparently by downing 36 of them, he doesn't completely subscribe to the old adage "Quality over quantity" but rather to "Quantities of (marginal) quality". I don't really consider the Pabst brewed Rainier to be a quality brew either, but given the choice, the bear made the right choice!
I've released PolarBlog V1.01. This is a very minor release that augments the documentation and adds two new configuration directives: USE_LOGIN_LINK - Allows you have the Administration menu displayed all the time in the control panel. When you are not logged in, a "Login" link is the only thing in the menu. Once logged in, the standard administration options are displayed minus this new Login link. DOCTYPE - This allows you to choose between HTML Transitional, HTML Strict, XHTML Transitional and the default XHTML Strict DTD's. For those who don't care to maintain an XHTML Strict site, you now have an option that relaxes the burden on you. Of course mine (usually) remains that way, but I'm sure not all of you are as anal about these things as I am!
I've cleaned up both my Links and RSS Feeds pages. On the Links page there were several links that I don't use anymore. And on the RSS page about half the feeds weren't being used so I trimmed that back to a handful that I do use. That page was more of an exercise in accessing RSS feeds anyway. Some of the security related feeds have now been put back onto the Links page. You really needed to know this, didn't you! ;)
So what do you do if you find a 500 pound bee hive? Why you throw rocks at it of course! Well, at least that some kids in Santa Ana, California decided they should do. The real comedy ensues when the bees decided that they didn't really appreciate the attention they were getting so they decided to go out and have a look…all 120,000 of them! Ay carumba! Oh, come on. Admit it. You threw rocks at beehives just like I did when I was a kid. Heck, I likely would still be inclined to do so as an adult! But I think I would have passed on doing so with one this big.
I've been going to mention this for a while, but had put it off because I hadn't gotten one myself! So 3 weeks ago I finally tracked down where to find one, and have been wearing it ever since. What is it? It's a WearYellow LiveStrong wristband. Proceeds from these go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and support people living with cancer. The're only a buck ($1.00) and relatively unobtrusive once you get used to wearing it. There's a seller locator on the WearYellow LiveStrong site, but I'll save you the trouble. The most widely available location where you can get these are at Foot Locker stores. So go now and do something good for those less fortunate than you!
After much work, many delays and numerous headaches, PolarBlog V1.0 has finally been released! You can learn more at the PolarBlog website.
Humiliated, Angry, Ashamed, Brown. is written by Ian Spiers and describes his recent encounter with some agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Nice. And I suppose out of all the people around this area with cameras they just happened to single him out for extra scrutiny. Right. On a somewhat related note, you better watch what you are reading these days. Apparently being in possession of "inappropriate" reading material can cause you to be singled out and have it confiscated. This my fellow Americans is the way in which the wonderous USA Patriot Act is making us all safer from terrorists. It's good to see that the Constitution isn't being trampled on in any way. Well, except some of the silliness like that IV Amendment! God save us for ourselves or at least our government!
In the best news that has come out of NASA in some time, they've finally agreed to consider saving the Hubble Space Telescope with a robotic mission. It's about time that somebody came to their senses and did the right thing. Hubble has been, and now will continue to be the premier space research platform for the astronomy community. 8-11-2004 And now meet Dextre, the leading candidate to go and do the work.
I just read this article on Yahoo. And the best I can say about it is that Stephen H. Galton needs to "get a life"! I certainly don't have any love for lawyers of your ilk, but I do understand your need to protect your clients. That's fine, but just because you get bagged on in a public forum and called a shyster is no reason start suing people. Then again I guess it is if you're a bottom feeder! You appear to be old enough to know the old adage "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me". I'm sure your mother would be very proud of you today. Nice job spunky.
I recently past 20,000 miles in my modern cycling career. Because of work and family commitments, most of my riding for the past several years has been (and continues to be) done in the wee morning hours. Nothing like being blasted out by the alarm clock at 4:15am to hit the road. One of the good and bad things about that is the various critters that you get to share your ride with. What follows is a rundown of what I generally see, the hazards the represent and some amusing encounters with them. —- I felt compelled to update this after this morning's ride added horses to the critter list! …more
In an effort to get this "out there" I've packaged up what I've got and made it available on the PolarBlog releases page. This is pretty much V1.0 barring any bug fix related changes. The big hole would be documentation which is not done yet. Most users should be able to get up and running though by following the instructions in the "INSTALL" file. Happy blogging!
Okay, I've finally gotten back on track and wrote a basic DB installer for PolarBlog. I'm working on some notes for a "quick start guide" for those who have asked to get going with things. If you're interested drop me a line: kevinp AT polarlava.com. I just need to work on the documentation and V1.0 will be released…finally!
I just read this this article over at Boing Boing and all I can say is "unbelievable"! Nothing like having a publisher attempt to hijack/extort/strongarm your domain name from you because they did something stupid. If you visit katie.com she has a very good explanation of her position on this whole situation and the inconvenience it has cause her. And to Penguin Putnam all I can say is tough shit! You don't own it and if Katie is smart, she won't sell it —at least not to you! And although it seems that Katherine (Katie) Tarbox has a sad and unfortunate story to tell in the book Katie.com, why the hell did you agree to that name? Why not call it "KatieT.com" which would point people's interest in it to your domain instead? Pinheads. 8/6/2004 I just read this very interesting GrepLaw interview with Katie Jones regarding this whole situation. Very interesting. I've also appears that it's not Penguin Putnam that is doing the strongarming, but Katherine (Katie…
I've long thought that binaural sound recording was a cool idea. It now seems that some of the brainy folks at UC Davis have come up with an improved binaural recording/playback system. Neat stuff if you're into audio.
If you've been thinking about putting a SUN E450 in your car to operate as an MP3 player, you might want to check out Project ICECE. You should have no trouble swapping notes, because it's obvious you both have way too much time on your hands!
Check out this story about a guy turning the tables on a Nigerian 419 scammer by scamming him with as a member of Church of the Painted Breast! Very funny.
Well, it's back to reality/work today as my two week trek off to Hawaii has come and gone. A wonderful time was had by all including myself, even with some unexpected events. As time permits I will be documenting my adventures in the hopefully not too distant future. 11/5/04 Well okay, it did take me some time to get this reasonably well documented. Here it is more than three months later! Fortunately I outlined the trip as best as I could as soon as we got back. From there it took a lot of work to fill in the holes, write the text, track down some good links and get the pictures online. I still have more photos that need to be added and I will likely need to update this entry again to add some links for those. But in the meantime, what follows pretty well documents our trip. …more
My ride this morning put me over the 20,000 mile mark. This represents the distance I've petaled since I got serious about riding and started to keep track of my results it 1995. (There's probably a few thousand miles from before then, but I really have no idea as to how much.) Being my first entry was in the spring of that year, it took me just over 9 years to reach this point. That's about 2,185 miles/year and represents a total of just over 1138 hours (~47.5 days!) in the saddle. Thus if I continue at the same rate, events to look forward to in the future would be 25K in late 2006, 50K in mid 2017 and 100K in early 2041! You can see all the wonderful stats on my
I saw this Pat Oliphant political cartoon in the paper recently. I believe it speaks volumes about the attitude of the Bush/Chenney administration…and why they need to go. You can find more of Pat's work here if you're interested.
It's sad and unfortunate, but Terri Schiavo will never be more than the shell of the person she once was. She's been in " a persistent vegetative state" for 14 years with virtually no hope of ever being a person who can interact with others. And if Florida Governor Jeb Bush loses the appeal on the ridiculous "Terri's Law" that's keeping her "alive", she may finally get to move on like her husband, Michael Schiavo want to let her. His contention is that she would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially. And who would? What kind of a life does she have or will ever have? "Ooooh, look at me, I'm having fun!" Right. Being a parent I can't imagine how hard it would be to have to watch your child die. But to want them to live as a vegetable, I can't. Pull the plug, stand back, cry and let go. It's time to move on. 9/23/04 Well the Florida Supreme Court has finally weighed in on this issue. In a unanimous 7-0 decision, they have…
From the "We're completely clueless when it comes to the web" department… "Hyperlinking to this site, is not permitted without the express prior permission of Sellotape". Guess I'll be going to jail soon!
Well, having just past my 5th anniversary with SETI, I'm now moving on. Not quiting, but moving to BOINC -Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. They have finally begun to move the SETI project over to BOINC as had been announced long ago. So my SETI stats page will be converted to a static page containing my final stats as of today. I will likely be unlinking it from the navigation menu at some point in the future and adding a new BOINC stats page. All in good time… According to my new BOINC stats, I had completed 4522 SETI packets at the time my account was migrated. My current stats show that I've actually completed 4530. One of the cool things about BOINC is that it's designed to do distributed computing not just for SETI, but for pretty much anything. Thus if you decide to you can switch to another project or split your time between multiple projects. If you are a current SETI user who would like to migrate to BOINC, or are new to all of this and are just…
The gallery has gone virtual…. …more
The SETI project was made publically available on May 13, 1999. Just over a month after it started I joined the project. And, at about 3:22pm yesterday I reached my fifth anniversary of churning SETI packets and I continue to do so as I write this entry. At this moment I've processed 4506 packets and have donated 6.456 years of computing time to find E.T. Although I currently only do processing on my one machine, previously I had multiple Unix machines that I could also utilize. Thus that is how I've donated almost an extra 1.5 years in a 5 year timespan. We haven't found E.T. yet, but we're going to keep looking. He's out there…somewhere…to be found sometime.
With our up coming trip to Hawaii, someone was kind enough to share these very disturbing and scary photos with my sister. Apparently these were taken on a beach somewhere in California. So here you go, what I've termed the "man thong": Just as scary: And downright disturbing:
From the "No Shit" department comes word that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda on the 9/11 attacks. Duh? Anyone outside of George W. Bonehead and company with half a brain surely figured this out long ago. But then again, I guess we'll all be eating our words when they find bin Laden sitting in his cave on top of a pile of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons. What can I say other than "bring 'em on". 7/7/2004 Shortly after the 9/11 Commission found no "credible evidence" that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda, Vice President Chenney pretty must insisted that it was not so. His feelings being that "probably" had information the commission didn't. But after reviewing transcripts of his remarks, the commission believes he knows nothing that they don't. Hmmm…go figure. 7/9/2004 The saga continues with even more damning evidence…or the lack there of!
I need to stop doing these little things and work on packaging a release! But…I've added the ability to have a tagline in the sub-header area. In my case, this would be the "Brainwork from the lava flow…" text you see above.
What do you get when you cross two ministers and a porn king? Why it's Pete the Porno Puppet! It's brought to you by XXXchurch.com which bills itself oddly as a "Christian porn site"…In other words an anti-porn site. Regardless of your opinion of porn, you should find this oddity somewhat amusing.
I've completed some necessary changes required to adequately utilize having multiple users on the blog. This was a realization I had shortly after completing the user management. If you're going to have multiple users, you need to distinguish who posted what! At the time I did the user management I was thinking of the longer term where someone could register and post comments more easily. But I hadn't really thought about the mid-term of allowing multiple users to post to the blog. It's a natural extension, thus a few changes to the entry table, the login process and a slew of changes to the add/edit/display functions and voilà , multi-user PolarBlog! And the end result that you see? Well, not much. Just the "Posted by" line that you now see in the header of all of the posts.
With my upcoming trip to Hawaii I was searching for some activity information when I stumbled upon "The White-Trash Birthday Beard". Quite amusing if you too enjoy a good chuckle at the expense of white trash everywhere. And for those of you who may have a wife, is that response to shaving the beard sound familiar? Thought so.
I've completed the User Management module! This allows you to add, edit or delete users. I believe this is the last big chunk of required code that provides an important basic function of the system. At this point I believe the system is pretty well feature complete for what will be V1.0. A couple of additional small things may make it in, but basically the focus now will be on installation, PWL migration and documentation.
Not Illinois or Massachusetts, but as in the Simpsons! I can't imagine the amount of time that went into making this "Guide to Springfield USA". Really cool stuff if you're a fan. But in reality a likely colossal waste of time! I'm just guessing, but it might benefit the guys who did this to read this and then head outside for a long, long walk or some other physical activity.
Welcome to Fat America! There's certainly no denying it, that's for sure. I guess I'm fortunate to not be a part of it, although an astounding 64.5% of Americans are over weight. There's a very interesting (and long) article "The Way We Eat Now" over at Harvard Magazine that explains a lot about it. How we got here, where we're going -all Americans overweight by 2040 or sooner! Quite fascinating stuff. So waddle your (likely) fat ass over and take a look.
If you or someone you love (or better yet hate) are in need of a full cavity search, just go dig up some Area 51 Road Sensors. Although apparently that in and of itself might not be enough. But if you decide to walk off with one, well… it seems you just might get a visit from the Men in Black. But what the heck, if you are going to dig them up, why not document it and put it on the World Wide Web! Talk about sealing your fate. It's hard to say what the outcome of all of this was, because the guy who "allegedly" did it -Chuck Clark doesn't seem to be talking anymore. At least not since his case was resolved. Although, he did report a few month ago that he got his stuff back that the Feds took during the raid. Hmmm…be right back, someone's knocking on the door…
I first read about this on Boing Boing, but it seems our favorite childhood pet dinosaur is now living on White Island, New Zealand. You can read the news article or check in on him from the web cam snapshots. You have to be impressed with someone's effort to bring you this kind of good humor! And if you're inspired, you can go learn more about White Island Volcano, here.
Once again, quality content comes to us from college students with too much time on their hands. I find this one much funnier than Pac-Man Live though.
Here's a freak of nature…it's Tail Baby! Here's my favorite quote: "He is reported to have a 4in 'tail' caused by genetic mutations". Gee, ya think? It's also good to see that his grandpa is cashing in on it!
The PolarBlog development has slowed considerably and will likely remain low for the foreseeable future. The weather is getting nicer and I've started cycling more as well as working around the house, spending time with the family, etc. Since my last update I've done some more documentation and will likely be continuing with that next. One new feature was added, that being the "Other Blogs" option. This will allow you to list and link to other blogs you read. I also reworked the configuration file to make it easier to add tags/tag sections and to turn various things on and off. One thing I've been putting off is user management. I'm still thinking through what I need to do with that more for future use than its current usage. I'd say it's likely that this will be released as a single blogger system for V1.0. The big coding at this point will be directed toward building and installation/PWL migration process…and getting it all documented too!
For once it is nice to see grant money going into something of extreme importance! You've got to be happy to see $20,000 going to develop a "portable method for keeping beer kegs cold indefinitely". Is this a great country or what? Go Adam, go!
Here's what you do when your neighbors complain about your naked gnomes. At least this guy has a sense of humor and is rolling with the punches. Being I already have a gnome entry if I get another, I might just have to start a new topic!
Another example of living vicariously through movies. (A previous example can be found here.) This time it's Ghostbusters. A good movie, but this is about one fan-dork's desire to be a Ghostbuster for Halloween. Okay, so you find a jumpsuit, strap on a cardboard box with a vacuum hose duct taped to it. Alright, let's start drinking! But, noooooo that's not good enough for fan-dork. His costume has to be authentic! And if you now want to be authentic next Halloween, you can buy his and save yourself some time at the expense of a lot of cash.
What happens when you take a classic video game and cross it with the idle time of your average college student? Why Pac Manhattan of course! Oh, it gets better…it's part of a graduate course at NYU! Ah, the pointless life of a liberal arts major.
I've been mulling over my previous road map for PolarBlog development and decided it's not really the way I want to do things. And the first manifestation of departing from the road map after V0.7, would be the new PolarBlog website! The content there is currently lacking, but it's a start. At this point I plan on focusing on documentation, release packaging and cleaning up/reworking the existing configuration framework. The sooner I get these things done, the sooner I can invite others into the fold.
In The Worm Within, you'll find one man's tale of discovering he had been sharing every waking moment of his life with a tapeworm. Follow his tale from discovery, diagnosis and demise! Includes some amusing illustrations as well!
In a previous job I used to travel a lot for work. And a good deal of my travel was to Japan. So when I came upon the Vending Machines of Japan, it definitely struck a chord with me. These things are everywhere over there. To quote a frequent travel companion at the time, "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one of those!". Most of the time where we worked was quite a ways from our hotel. So a taxi was generally the way to go. But occasionally we would forgo the taxi and walk back to the hotel. Our Japanese host always thought we were crazy for walking. But they weren't aware of our "game". A little something we called "Vending Machine Hopping". It was very simple. Every time you passed a beer vending machine you had to stop and drink one. Needless to say we were pretty jovial by the time we got back to the Hotel! Update: 05-12-2004 Okay, I can't say I ever saw this sort of thing while in Japan. But I can say from being there that this…
I've long had a fondness for Rhino's. And you could say that I have a bit of a connection to the SFFL's Rhino. But I can only hope that it's not my beloved Rhino that is out cavorting like this one! Oh, and you can completely disregard that spokeswoman's comment that "rhinos are not particularly intelligent animals". She's very wrong about that one!
Well, according to this article apparently the drug war seems to be losing ground. Gee, I'm shocked. We should probably pump a few million dollars more into this pointless pursuit. Wake up and smell the coffee people, because it doesn't work! Spend as much as you would like and preach the ills of it, but it's not going to stop it. It's escapism the same way alcohol is for even more people. So why isn't that illegal? DOH! Thus I guess you have a choice. Reinstate prohibition, or legalize pot. Looking at the national debt you shouldn't have any trouble seeing where my vote is going.
I guess we're rounding the bend! The following features have been implemented for version 0.7: Entry spell checking via the Speller Pages frontend to GNU Aspell. Automatic keyword linking and abbreviation tags using phpGiggle. Entry word count Entry topic Google search link
I've added basic word counting functionality for entries. I've tried a number of different ways of doing this and the one I'm currently using seems to be the most accurate. Additional tweaking on this feature may be implemented if I can come up with a better algorithm to use. Suggestions are always welcome!
I've implemented the Entry spell checking via the Speller Pages front-end to GNU Aspell. This is an optional feature that will require you to install Speller Pages separately from PolarBlog.
I'll admit that I've seen the movie TRON several times. A major film it's not, but there have been a lot worse movies that this one. And maybe you can become obsessed with it…learning bits of the dialog, occasionally acting out a brief bit. But some people have clearly gone over the edge. You can find more of this freak show via Google. It's time to go out and get some fresh air boys!
I've managed to clunk a few more things into the code base in the past week or so and as such, I'm calling it V0.6 now. Here's a rough road map at this time: V0.7 Entry spell checking via the Speller Pages front-end to GNU Aspell. Automatic keyword linking and abbreviation tags using phpGiggle. Entry word count Entry topic Google search link V0.8 In-line/entry update time stamp (likely via a token). User Management System V0.9 Multilingual Support A PolarBlog website PWL Upgrade/Migration Documentation V1.0 Installation Documentation User Documentation A Freshmeat project page and announcement Future Development A commenting system Pingback functionality Trackback functionality Entry print view Posting entries via email
In the spirit of the original HampsterDance, not the new slick hampsters I bring you Badger Badger Badger. Don't try to understand it, just accept it for what it is…whatever that may be in your eyes.
Apparently this site was commissioned by Burger King and patterned after other live "performance" sites. The Subservient Chicken will perform based on the commands you send it…within reason. Don't tell him to do something bad because he'll admonish you for it!
I've finally decided to added this new "That's Funny!" topic. I've contemplated doing so for quite some time, but I've seen a number of amusing things this past couple of weeks that deserve to see the light of day.
This past week, being a good but procrastinating Dad, I finally assembled the wagon that Olivia got last year for Christmas…or was it her birthday?! In any case, it's together and a big hit with her. The lengthy delay wasn't entire her fathers fault. Mom pondered for a longtime whether we should return it for credit and upgrade to a wood panel style. In the end, it just wouldn't be money well spent. Thus the time finally arrived to stop putting it off and get some use out of it. One has to wonder why I hadn't done this sooner as it took less than a half an hour to assemble it! In any case, here it is, a Radio Flyer #89 Promotional Wagon.
Okay, I've created a new topic for PolarBlog Development. I'll be putting entries related to this subject here now instead of under the general PolarLava Website section as I had in the past. Existing entries will be moved shortly.
This one has been sitting on the back burner since Christmas! Over the holidays while hanging out with my family we were discussing our trip to Hawaii this coming summer. Being a long journey I suggested we could sing scout camp songs. At which point I began to sing "Junior Birdmen". Unfortunately I couldn't remember all of the works and none of my siblings seemed to have any knowledge of this gem. Well, now they can all learn it along with me and our travels will be that much more enjoyable! Junior Birdmen (Tune: On Brave Old Army Team) Up in the air, Junior Birdmen; up in the air, upside down, Up in the air, Junior Birdmen; with your noses to the ground. And when you hear the grand announcement: that your wings are made of tin. Well, then you know, Junior Birdmen, it's time to send your box tops in. For it takes: 5 box tops, 4 bottle bottoms, 3 coupons, 2 wrappers, and one thin dime! Actions: Make a face mask each time you sing the words, "Junior Birdmen"…
The more I learn about United States Attorney General John Ashcroft the more disturbing I find him to be. The guy is wound way too tight and certainly should not be running the Justice Department. His personal convictions & agenda are simply not something this country needs. In short, I can only hope he goes away soon. Otherwise, chances are you won't be able to read things like this because I won't be allowed to write them! In the past several days I've come across a number of interesting items related to the esteemed Mr. Ashcroft. For starters, there's this lovely mosaic made entirely of pornographic images. Perfect! Unfortunately the post is now gone! Guess the words "Cease & Desist" were involved. Here's the Google Cache but without the actual image which is now gone from the server! I guess this just illustrates my point. Ah, Google good, here it is at Pro-War.com! This picture apparently was done in response to an article about the adminstration's…
I've always longed to be a true audiophile, but have never really had the financial resources to do the things I wanted. But if I did have the money, I would think a nice start might be a set of wooden speakers and the biggest subwoofer in the world! Hey, it's only money right?
I'm a psuedo-vegetarian or more technically, lacto-ovo-pesce vegetarian. Basically that means I eat mostly veggies, but I also eat dairy products and occasionally seafood. I'm generally not militant about it unless you are militant towards me. I'm not a tree hugger or a PETA member. I choose not to eat meat for health, not ethical reasons and generally have a "to each his own" philosophy when it comes to such things. But I have to say, as a whole I find the Atkins crowd to be particularly annoying. They act as if they've found the holy grail of health and nutrition. Yes, you are likely losing weight. And you may even be feeling better. Losing weight tends to do that. But do you honestly feel you can continue to shun carbohydrates indefinitely? Personally I have my concerns about what the long-term effects may be, particularly on your kidneys. I guess we will see in a decade or two when those of you that have managed to stay on the Atkins plan are all "fit as…
A couple of years ago I read this about a Palestinian baby dressed as a suicide bomber. At that time I snagged the picture as I thought I might be able to work it into one of my SFFL Rhino rants. I hadn't really been able to find a good way to work it in, but held onto it, because I figured someday I would. But now with this bomb boy picture I've decided to start a collection. With people teaching nonsense like this, I think I stand a good chance of expanding this collection in the future.
I ran across this rather interesting article about Google at Fast Company yesterday. Most of the articles I've read about Google all seem to be preoccupied with the hype and speculation regarding their upcoming IPO. This one though was somewhat different as it offers a refreshing look into "how they do what they do". Like anything Google related, there is still a certain amount of speculation because Google tends to be pretty tight lipped about their operation. But interesting nonetheless.
This entry serves two purposes. 1) To split an older weather related entry away from a more general site update message. And 2) To document progress and or changes to my weather project as this thread seems to have grown over time. -klp (3/17/2004) 10/17/2003 Previously I had been using Geo::Weather which pulls weather from the weather.com site. I've been a frequent contributor to this project as I also used it to pull weather on an hourly basis for my CycleLog project. It's a fairly constant battle with weather.com making changes and then having to fix the Geo::Weather code to properly parse their page. Recently they added comments in their code that encourages you to use their free XML feed and not scrape their HTML. This is good and I welcomed the idea of an XML feed until you read the the fine print. Basically you have to provide a link back to them which isn't the end of the world, but they also reserve the right to shove advertising down to you that you must accept. I…
A few years back Microsoft build the TerraServer as an advanced database research project. Basically it's a huge satellite image database. And it was always fun to play around with from time to time. Long after I originally learned of the TerraServer's existence, I stumbled across the ACME Mapper from ACME Laboratories. The ACME Mapper provides a very simple and easy to use front-end to the TerraServer. And using the mapper you can quickly find and mark locations on the satellite images. Again one has to wonder what practical things can I do with this? Thus I arrived at the conclusion of mapping and documenting all the places I've lived. Okay, maybe not practical but it makes for good blogging fun! My early and most formative years were spent growing up in a subdivision called Grandwood Park, in Warren Township, Illinois just outside of Gurnee, Illinois. I remember there were these two putrid black text on green billboards near the two main entrances that read "If you…
Good grief Charlie Brown! This guy needs to get out more. Mike Carmichael is his name, and obviously about 26.9 years ago he inhaled way too many paint fumes. Dear God, why have you not purged these types from among us?
Assuming the United States Department of the Treasury even made a million dollar bill, don't you think trying to use one at a Wal-Mart might just draw a bit of unwanted attention? Apparently Alice Regina Pike didn't think so! Well Alice, here is another government body you will likely be becoming more familiar with in the future. And in an act of charity, here is someone you should contact, ASAP. Oh how I love the comedy of stupid people!
For all you pinheads out there who are flocking to the Atkins Diet, maybe you should start eating at Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. Apparently one of their newest "gourmet" entrees is the new high protein salad. Sounds yummy, doesn't it meat eaters?
I've finally managed to get this blog page XHTML compliant! After much trial and tribulation, I've managed to track down all of the issues and get it to validate properly. That said, it may fail the validation on various pages because some of the older entries may not be 100% compliant. It's unlikely that I'm going to go back and track down all of the errors as they aren't critical, but then again being as anal as I am, I just might! In the process of working on the XHTML compliance, I was able to implement one of the changes I had been wanting to do. That being, the updated display look so entries now standoff in a sort of "box in a box" fashion. I believe it gives it a cleaner look and differentiates each entries. You might not see it that way, but then again it isn't your blog, now is it? ;) And now it's time to move to the next level. …more
I found this project nearly a year ago, but for some reason it never made its way into the WTMT! collection until now. Now I've been known to more than happily quaff a beer or two on occasion, but this is just silly. For starters, if you need this thing, you need to either (a) not drink, or (b) drink faster. Besides, in the picture's it's a Guinness. Generally, I find with a quality dark beer like this it's usually too cold and I need to warm it in my hands to get it to a suitable drinking temperature. But if you're one of those knuckleheads who's still drinking cheap american swill, then by all means start building! The colder you can get that shit, the less of it's nearly tasteless, horid flavor you will be exposed too! And for future reference kids, "Quality over quantity".
I've added a new Stock Quotes section to the site that is powered by a modified version of PHP-Quote. This PHP class had the basic guts in it to retrieve quotes from Yahoo! Finance, but had some funtionality and display issues with it from my perspective. These issues were resolved by writing a new get_single_table() function to replace the print_single_table() function. This new function returns the HTML code instead of printing it and also is XHTML compliant. I also expanded the table to include the date as well as the time. Additional, I created CSS classes in my site CSS instead of using the Insert_Style_Sheet() function in this class. Again, I don't like direct printing from functions and it really wouldn't work within my site's framework. Seems to work for me and hope it does for you also!
I was absolutely shocked to hear the news reports [1][2]that "Il Pirata", The Pirate died this past weekend at only 34 years of age. Marco had been dealing with a lot personal issues in the past couple of years and unfortunately, never got a chance for true redemption in the professional cycling world. A lot of charges had been leveled against him, many which he was cleared of after a long battle. Was he completely innocent? We may never know, although my personal believe was that unfortunately he likely was not. But prior to his troubles, Marco was clearly the most amazing climber I had ever seen. At his peak, this man could go up mountains fasters than anyone in the sport. His life and career were far too short. Rest in peace Il Pirata. [Updated: 07:41am EST, 22 Mar 2004] And the sad news continues as it has now been confirmed by the inquest that Marco's death was caused by an "acute cocaine intoxication".
I can't help but be disturbed by the television commercial I saw this morning by a local attorney. It's not the first time I've seen it and surely it won't be the last. But the basic premise of this commercial is to compel people who are in debt to declare bankruptcy. Why? Well, Congress is working to change the law to make it more difficult for you to declare bankrupcty. Gasp! So if you've been fiscally irresponsible you might want to act fast before you can be held accountable for your actions. Or in more real world terms... If you've been stupid enough to dig a big hole using credit cards to live beyond your means, then you should be able to walk away from it and leave someone else (i.e. me and other responsible people) holding the bag. This is just brilliant! Welcome to America, where no one is responsible for their own actions. I will agree, as pointed out in that last link, that the banks also shoulder a certain amount of responsibility. Why are they giving credit to…
Dear God, Please stop this kind of madness! Thank You, Kevin Can't you people find something more productive to do with your spare time? Write some useful code, clean your monitor and keyboard or even go for a walk! Anything would likely be a more productive use of your time. Unless of course Pierre-Philippe Coupard is under the age of 12. In which case my apologies and congratulations on doing something productive instead of playing video games.
eWeek has a pretty good article on the Deep Space Network entitled The 100-Million-Mile Network. This network is what is used to talk these two wonders as well as many other space probes.
As mentioned in my previous post regarding the CycleLog Search. The Summary, Latest and Random Ride pages of the Cycling section (CycleLog), have been updated to the new code base. Now begins another bigger task, the conversion of the "Add Ride" section to the new code base. This section when complete, will also add the ability to allow editing of previously entered rides. A much needed feature that currently does not exist. [Updated: 07:47am EST, 24 Feb 2004] One more hill climbed…I've now completed the "Edit Ride" feature and have linked it to all single ride display screens with a form button. This now allows me to edit any single ride without having to manually edit the database. This also covers 90% of the new "Add Ride" section that still needs to be completed. What does this all mean to you? Probably not much because you can't access that section! But, it does allow me to correct any data errors so you can sleep well at night knowing that…
It's been a long time coming, but the new CycleLog Search page is finally done! And looking into it a bit, I find that it was just over a year ago that I mentioned the shortcomings of the previous search utility. The new search now allows you to perform all sorts of date based searches. You can now locate a specific ride, date bounded rides, X number of rides forward or backward from a specific date, as well as all rides on or in a particular month, day, year or any combination of those parameters. More important than this just being a new search page, this represents a new beginning, effectively the start of CycleLog V2.0. There is an entire new code base that drives the search utility and ultimately, the entire project. Everything from here forward will utilize object-oriented PHP, a template engine and will be XHTML standard compliant. This has been a long time in the making, but well worth the effort. The next step will be to update the simpler section of the site: Summary…
Alright, here's just another classic example of "Way Too Much Time!" topic section. And again it seems to be college students that have all this excess idle time. Color me jealous! So without further ado, here it is... The Doombolt. Not terribly practical, but quite educational. And it looks as though it would be quite an enjoyable way to waste some time. Jealous again!
Okay, maybe not quite infinity, but back to the moon and on to mars. At least that's what President Bush has proposed we do. And I have to say that I'm very much in favor of doing so. There's a lot to be learned for sure, but there would also be a lot of good technological spin-off that would come from the development program. Things that would benefit all of us. This will be a huge undertaking even if it's just to get back to the moon again. But the work required to get to Mars is nothing less than colossal. But an effort worth making. And now for the sad economic reality. Even if the U.S. Congress were to find the extra $1 billion that President Bush is seeking, would they be willing to give it to NASA? I think the social "do gooders" would surely argue against it. Not that helping the less fortunate is a bad thing, but how much of that money would truely reach those in need? And then there simply would be demands for more without a doubt. And in all fairness, as there…