ebyblog students and information

Books are good for you

Food Network

Another humorous essay on the food network:

Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to [...]

Fear and Loathing in Boston

An interesting read on the recent reaction in Boston:

This remix of Puritanism and the neo-liberal imaginary (obsessed with what Ericson dubs “the myth of certainty and security”) is a necessary but not sufficient set of conditions for declaring this peculiar “state of emergency.” The remaining variable is demographic. It pits an aging, declining and reactive [...]

Wordpress 2.1

Wordpress 2.1 is out. Again it was about a 10 second upgrade with svn. Some of the features that look useful:

Autosave
Page as front page built in (useful for CMS type installs)
Upload manager
Pseudo-cron and error class for plugins

A nice addition is the voting for future enhancements. Nice to see outside of the normal forum posts.

Firefox can’t play application/x-mplayer2 embeds

Had this problem with the home computer on Windows. Upgraded WMP but didn’t help. The solution is to install two missing DLL files in the Firefox plugins directory. You’ll likely need to restart Firefox. The DLL’s were:

npdsplay.dll
npwmsdrm.dll

Was a quick fix for me.

Update: Thanks to commenter’s there looks like there’s some decent information available at the [...]

OOXML, DTD’s and Caching

A few items that may be of interest:

First if you happen to write an application that caches sites or content then you may be interested in the exception in the DMCA. Over at PlagiarismToday they go over what constitutes a legitimate service and why there isn’t a loophole for spammers.

Recently Netscape removed earlier RSS DTD’s [...]

MBR Fix and AutoPatcher

Here are a couple I’ve found useful lately:

MBR Fix

A command utility that allows you to fix the MBR while logged into Windows. I moved my linux to another comp and wanted to get the one I was on up and running again. I had neither the windows boot cd or the Administrator password. However the [...]

Online Stores I Like

I’m really not much of a shopper and I tend to research for so long that by the time I make a decision a new set of products are out. I do most of my shopping online, outside of groceries, and here are some of my favs. I figured I should post it so there [...]

Easy Wordpress Upgrades with SVN

I came across these hints in some comments on blogs but don’t have them bookmarked so credit to other people. This probably isn’t a supported install method either, so use at your own risk. I’ve found it easier than the normal process though.

You may be aware but Wordpress uses Subversion and Trac for their development. [...]

Right where it belongs

Happy Holidays

It’s that time of year again. Be sure to help out Greatfather Winter!

Programming and Movies

Some humor for this less than fantastic friday. Read the full post over at drivl about how real life and movies differ when it comes to coding.

10. Most code is not inherently cross platform

Remember in Independence Day when whatshisface-math-guy writes a virus that works on both his apple laptop AND an alien mothership? Bullshit! [...]

Gaming Platforms

One of the things I hated about gaming was the CD checks. I’d usually have to go through hoops and cracks so that I could take the computer places without hauling tons of CD’s that would likely get swiped.

It was nice when Valve changed over to the Steam platform (though it has plenty of problems). [...]

Thanksgiving in Leelenau

Here are some pics from up north. Was nice and relaxing.

A slide show will appear here shortly.

fs1 = new flickrShow(”72157594391759037″, “fsDemo”, “grey”);

Schneier (and Jimmy Carter) on Elections

Another election cycle, another year of voting problems. Here are some recent posts that are worth a read and as usual the debate in the comments are worth it as well.

Voting Technology and Security

Last week in Florida’s 13th Congressional district, the victory margin was only 386 votes out of 153,000. There’ll be a mandatory lawyered-up [...]

Dawkins in Lynchburg VA

An interesting lecture. The QandA is worth a watch.

Reading:

Q and A

Vote

Photo by djwudi.

Time to vote again. I went ahead and made the debates I posted public on video google. Since going public they have seen over 1,000 views and 90+ downloads all together. Many more then I thought they would get.

Granholm vs Devos Debate 1 - 150 views, 26 downloads
Granholm vs Devos Debate 2 - [...]

Jack Black on Piracy

A PSA worth watching.

Firefly Letterpress

Nice little video on the art of letterpress. Still an artform.

Middle East History

Not posted for political reasons, but to point to the YouTube of History.