After a lot of faffin, I’m finally back to working on a tic tac toe game in VB.NET (which I had started in Python a while back).

Read more about it on my new blog.

I haven’t posted anything on Hobby Lobby for a long time now – and hope that visitors will have some time to check out my new blog.

It’s mostly going to be about stuff like comic books (graphic novels, Disney, etc.) and old films (especially early comedy films from Laurel and Hardy, W.C.Fields, Lum and Abner, etc.) books, games, and punk music.   All good stuff.

I hope to see you at http://turnpagenow.wordpress.com

Thanks!

I just discovered Gene Loves Jezebel’s wickedly ugly site.  It’s ugliness is soon forgiven once you discover the fact that the have 4 full albums of songs available for free download.  They have even included a very rare LP called Glad To Be Alive (1986).

in related news: here’s a great live clip of the boys singing two songs.

Nice stuff.

Oh – and I just noticed that the Wolfgang Press’ first album is being remastered!!

One other difference – and I’m guessing it’s a key difference – this time I unplugged the VGA cable to my external monitor before starting the update process. I did not reconnect my external monitor until after Gutsy Gibbon was fully booted and running.

I followed Mike O’Conner’s advice which he left in a comment here earlier. For convenience, here’s the link to Intel’s instruction – which Mike had reported on.

So:

While still on the laptop screen (and the external still unconnected) I typed:

xrandr -q

and got:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 800
default connected 1280×800+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1280×800 60.0*
1280×768 60.0
1024×768 60.0
848×480 60.0
800×600 60.0
720×576 60.0
etc…

Notice – no information about any other moniter. xrandr thinks the only monitor is called “default”.

I then reconnected the second monitor and restarted X (ctrl+alt+backspace).

After the reboot, I immediately saw my second desktop – all correctly positioned with the correct resolution. But typing xrandr -q at the prompt on the laptop screen still gave me exactly the same information.

I then typed xrandr -q at a prompt on the external monitor’s instance of X and got a different set of data – this time, with no information about the first monitor’s configurations. The bad thing – xrandr is reporting that the external monitor is also known as “default”. This will keep me from following the intell instructions – since it seems that xrandr needs to distinguish the two (common sense) but the X Window’s way seems to be to have completly independent instances running simultaneously.

The only kink in that logic that I can see is that, even though X Windows doesn’t allow me to drag windows or applications from one monitor to the next – I can drag icons from one to the other. …interesting. that has to be a clue – - but I’m not sure to what.

the up side:

The up side is that I really don’t care right now. I’ve finally gotten to upgrade to Gutsy and my monitors are working.

dream config:

It’s silly that I should have to even suggest this to the Ubuntu team – but I want to be able to drag running application from one monitor to the other.

mouthing off:

This notion of having X Windows running multiple instances doesn’t seem to support that – and I’m wondering if that means that the errors and troubles that so many Ubuntu users have been having with setting up a dual head configuration could be due to a bad design that simply needs to be scrapped and redesigned.

thanks for all who’ve commented and offered suggestions, links, and assistance!

The genius isn’t only in the comic timing, writing, and delivery – it’s also in the absolute re-imagining of the ad format specifically for the web. This wouldn’t be half as great on TV. I didn’t even see the sign at first – but soon caught on and watched the ad many more times.

The lighting also helps to solidify the appearance of a continuance between spaces, and is a tasty treat – though I can’t really see a difference between the amount of light on their faces – or a change in the light as the sign changes – but it’s brilliant all the same.

[update]

link to youtube page of clips

[/update]

I’m turning into a PBS junkie. Last night I saw a really good documentary on the making of a 100+ pound glass object – which glass artist Josh Simpson calls a mega planet.

The first portion of the documentary details much of the intense planning, research, and testing which occurred before the actual project began.

Then the artist takes his team through a detailed walk through of exactly what would happen at each stage – and each member rehearsed their part in concert with others multiple times just to be sure everyone knew what their role in the big picture was.

Going live:

Invariably, like any project of any considerable complexity, things start to go wrong.

The first live attempt to create a mega planet reveals some serious flaws in the team’s working and planning. In other areas, the team learn that despite great amounts of fore thought, planning, and tool construction, some things simply weren’t considered.

One of my favorite examples:

The team, knowing that the purpose of the entire project was to make a beautiful glass object that weighed > 100 pounds and would measure at least 13.5″ in diameter, had somehow neglected to acurately consider how to keep the massive weighted item ( remember – it’s 1500+degrees ) on their spit without actually having to hold the other end of the blow tube down.

A simple hook was devised after the near failure of the first run, which adequately held the back (light) end of the blow tube down on the spit – which meant that the team would be free to keep the glob of glass turning at a steady, consistant speed without worrying about trying to keep the thing from falling off at the same time.

The real analogy of this to software design:

The fix – that simple hook – which hadn’t been planned for or implemented in the planning stages – ended up being thrown together in a quick rig manner which was less than professional – and the hasty design ( which left two bar bell weights loosely dangling over the workers’ busy toes ) could have been made safer.

But by that time the project was in full swing. The team had been hired. The furnaces and kilns were on. The glass was hot. And worst of all, there were many other un-planned for problems which had to be fixed.

The team, almost from the beginning ( despite great pains and planning ) were suddenly in a mad scramble.

Lesson:

Eventually they work out enough of the kinks to manage success – but it makes for a great cautionary tale.

I’m not sure if it’s all that optimistic. Does this mean that, despite great planning, fore thought, and effort, projects might fail simply because too many unforeseen elements encourage confusion and mad scrambling down the line?

I know that for me, I’m always trying to get more planning time – but as the life cycle of a project ages, the amount of time alloted by management for proper planning decreases. As a result, the problems ( mostly bugs in our world ) quickly multiply. A project that seemed managed at first, can quickly feel boundless in the problems which need to be addressed before moving on.

On a small team, when the pressure to constantly develop new features without taking enough time to correct old problems (and worse) without having time to correctly implement the new features that are being added –

… well, –
… I suppose that the idea is to always keep the glass glob spinning at a steady rate.

Happy planning!

I just happened to record this show last week and finally watched it tonight.

One of the most understated absurdities in the interviews was the following line – which came after repeated admissions by FBI officials that nearly every single existing database record on every single transaction from every single person in Vegas at the time HAD been handed over to and data mined by the FBI – and yet – not a single lead or hint of suspicious activity by any one in Vegas at that time warranted any actual involvement by law enforcement. …and, it turned out that the initial “intelligence” was faulty to begin with – meaning that there never was a threat of terrorist attacks in Vegas on New Year’s Eve.

ELLEN KNOWLTON, FBI Chief, Las Vegas, 2002-06: I just tell people that we made every effort to safeguard the privacy of everyone whose records were accessed. There was no breach. The information was closely safeguarded.

Really?:

• The information was safeguarded by being turned over illegally?
• The privacy of those whose records were accessed was not violated?
• The fact that the FBI obtained nearly blanket data covering > 1/4 million innocent Americans in one city over one week doesn’t mean that a breach occurred?
• And just who was actually safeguarding the information?

Teaser:

“So many people in America think this does not affect them. They’ve been convinced that these programs are only targeted at suspected terrorists. … I think that’s wrong. … Our programs are not perfect, and it is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs,” former CIA Assistant General Counsel Suzanne Spaulding tells FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith in Spying on the Home Front.

Watch the entire show online at pbs.org.

The seller refused every effort I made to contact him and after more than a week of silence, I decided that I would have to escalate my claims with paypal.

These images were taken of the box exactly as it arrived. The item is a guitar effects pedal called the Line 6 dl4 Delay Modeler. It’s a sensitive piece of equipment — about 10″ in length (the box is about 12″) — fairly heavy, and full of electric circuits that would be easily damaged in shipping without proper packaging – padding, etc.

As you can see, the item was shipped to me in the same box that it would have been sold off the shelf in a store.

NO padding.

NO room for bumps.

It is obvious that the thought of shipping this item consumed about 5 seconds of the seller’s time.

The item also arrived dirty.

The item also shorted out while I was playing this weekend – leading me to believe that my suspicions were correct -that some damage very likely occurred in transit. I say that any likely damage is the seller’s fault for such poor, careless shipping.

Since it is a very delicate and expensive item, I don’t want to assume the responsibility for it – nor should I have to cross my fingers and hope that it continues to function reasonably well. (as I said, it has already shorted out once.)

I’m glad that my recent run in over lifted content didn’t have to involve – as Jonathan Bailey at plagiarismtoday.com suggested might be necessary – a DMCA request to the site’s hosting ISP.

That’s gotten me thinking more about blogger’s rights and blogging law, which naturally pointed my mouse across the internets to the EFF to learn more.

While reading about rights for bloggers, I noticed that the EFF has its own blog. Looks like interesting reading from one organization who really is watching out for us.

Man — I really wish I had a job at the EFF!

the re-poster just emailed me ( shame he didn’t do that when I tried to contact him ).  I suppose it seems innocent enough. …doesn’t it? well, it certainly explains part of the array of languages (seen below).

his explanation:

> I take rss feed from here
> http://wordpress.com/tag/it/ in automatic mode.

[ end of update ]

[ original post: ]

I just heard back from the web host about the plagiarizing site who was stealing and deep linking my content.

they wrote:
> Copyrighted condent [sic] is deleted. Client warned. Sorry.

I checked – my content has been removed. But a quick look at the home page shows an amazing array of lingual skills for this fine gentleman blogger.

I count 6 (including English) different languages being used by the author on the front page alone. !!!

I was going to post this vid myself if it wasn’t already there.

Fields was known as the greatest juggler in the world and his reputation was well earned.

not only could he juggle things – he could also drop them better than anyone alive!

if this don’t make you better, nothing will.

Play it while you can.

Stupid question:

Any one else discover that their content has been stolen and posted on another blog with no credit given – or worse – the credit was assumed by the re-poster and no links to your site were provided?

Stolen content:

I just discovered that my post from yesterday about multi-columns with CSS was stolen – (every word, image, link, and letter) … with all content deep linked to my site no less !!!!

I posted a comment on the offending site, but due to moderated comments, it hasn’t been posted yet.

It’s a little funny that the blogger cares about moderation of the content on his site since he doesn’t seem to have any problem with plagiarism.

which, by the way – what could his needs be in stealing content?  is this an elaborate spamming or phishing scheme? or should I just be flattered?

I had considered linking to his site (for proof?) but have decided against it.

Are you being served by your web page layout? I think we all want more out of life than the typical Grace Bros. experience and CSS can certainly offer us more.

I’ve been trying to work out a simple 2 and 3 column layout with CSS with a header (easy) and a footer (not so easy) that always rests at the bottom of the page’s content (not the page’s window on load).

After a few hours of reading and trying many solutions that I found on message boards and web sites ( none of which worked for me ), I finally worked out a solution that I’m pleased with.

Note:

I’m re-leaning CSS for a web design course. Our textbook is Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, which I really like – but the CSS chapter did not solve this problem for me.

One thing the authors neglected to cover was browser window height in relation to amount of content in your page’s body. All of their examples assumed the content would fit neatly on a browser window without forcing the user to scroll down. (they did cover resizing the browser window – but only discussed resizing the width – not the height.) and, as I said, the content on their example page always fit neatly on the browser window.

The first problem that I noticed was that by their methods, the footer would (at best) position itself at the bottom of the browser window when the page initially loads. but that was not a sticky footer ( in my attempts to implement the ideas in the book, the footer would “ride up with wear” , as Mr. Humphries would say. ) and they didn’t cover making the content area scrollable to fix that.

One more note:

The book – and virtually every site I could find discussed having #wrapper <div>s. I took that a bit further and created a second #wrapper just for the #footer: #sock.

Milage may vary:

I’m no expert. This worked for me and I like the results (using Firefox). Experiment, tweak, or disregard at your leisure.

Solution:

#############
2 – column layout
#############

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">

<!– TWO COLUMN LAYOUT EXAMPLE –>

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<link type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” href=”2-or-3col.css” />
<title>TWO COLUMN LAYOUT EXAMPLE</title>
</head>

<body>
<div id="wrapper">

<div id=”header“>
HEADER HEADER HEADER
</div>

<div id=”two_col_content“>
from <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blah”>wikipedia</a>:
In English, blah is a word that is sometimes used as an expression for words or feelings where the specifics are not considered important to the speaker or writer. It is not often seen in formal writing, except when transcribing speech. It differs from a speech disfluency such as “um” or “er” in that blah is a word used deliberately to represent other words, rather than as an accidental or temporary interjection into speech. Blah is also used when the speaker cannot say what was intended. “Blah” is also mimed behind people’s backs to suggest that they talk too much or that they talk about useless topics for no reason.

<br>
<br>

You can add content till the cows come home, the footer will always position correctly

</div> <!– end of content div –>
<div id=”sidebar“>
SIDE BAR <br>
this is a 2 column CSS layout with header and footer.
<br>
<br>
<a href=”http://hobbylobby.wordpress.com/”>visit hobbylobby</a>
<br>
<br>
</div> <!– end of sidebar div –>
</div> <!–end of wrapper div –>

<!–begin the footer content —————————————————————>
<div class=”clear“>
<!– crucial for forcing the footer to the bottom of the web page content –>
</div> <!–end of the clear div –>

<div id=”sock“>

<!– re-wrap the footer to force it to adhere to the jello rules
which govern overall width and centering on the page that controls
the rest of the page above.
–>

<div id=”footer“>
FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER
</div> <!– end of the footer div –>

</div> <!– end of the sock div –>

</body>

</html>

#############
3 – column layout
#############

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">

<!– THREE COLUMN LAYOUT EXAMPLE –>

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<link type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” href=”2-or-3-col.css” />
<title>THREE COLUMN LAYOUT EXAMPLE</title>

</head>

<body>

<div id=”wrapper“>

<div id=”header“>
HEADER HEADER HEADER
</div>

<div id=”left_sidebar“>
LEFT SIDE BAR <br>
this is a 3 column CSS layout with header and footer.
<br>
<br>
<a href=”http://hobbylobby.wordpress.com/”>I wrote about this on my blog</a>
<br>
<br>
<a href=”twocolcss.html”>see the 2-col example</a>

<br>
<br>
this column has a lot of content and can be used for many things.

</div> <!– end of left sidebar div –>

<div id=”right_sidebar“>
RIGHT SIDE BAR <br>
<br>
“The Yada Yada” is the 153rd episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. The 19th episode of the 8th season, it aired on April 24, 1997.

George’s girlfriend is big on using the phrase “yada yada yada.” Jerry says that at least she is succinct, and it’s like “dating the USA Today.” Jerry’s dentist, Tim, has converted to Judaism, and is already making jokes that make Jerry uncomfortable. Jerry goes so far as to say that he only became Jewish for the jokes. Kramer and Mickey Abbott double-date, but they can’t decide which woman is right for them. Elaine is a character reference for a couple who are trying to adopt, but the story she tells during an interview destroys all hope of adoption.

</div> <!– end of right sidebar div –>

<div id=”three_col_content“>

“Blah” is a token word with no meaning of its own, usually used to illustrate generic, boring speech. It may be used to fill in blank space, or to replace another word or phrase. It’s for this last purpose that blah is sometimes assumed to mean something negative because it is used to replace a word that may be unpleasant, but blah itself is neutral. If spoken aloud the tone can usually be used to determine the speaker’s intent.

</div> <!– end of content div –>

</div> <!–end of wrapper div –>

<div class=”clear“>
<!– crucial for forcing the footer to the bottom of the web page content –>
</div> <!–end of the clear div –>
<div id=”sock“>
<!– re-wrap the footer to force it to adhear to the jello rules
which govern overall width and centering on the page that controls
the rest of the page above.
–>
<div id=”footer“>
FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER
</div> <!–end of the footer div –>
</div> <!–end of the sock div –>

</body>

</html>

#############
CSS
#############

/* two column layout with header and footer CSS
by http://hobbylobby.wordpress.com/
*/

html, body {
/*
to be used with both 2 and 3 col layouts
*/
height: auto;
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 100%;
margin: 0px;
}

div#wrapper {
/*
to be used with both 2 and 3 col layouts
*/
width: 900px;
height: auto;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

div#header {
/*
to be used with both 2 and 3 col layouts
*/
position: relative;
left: 0;
top: 10px;
width: 100%;
height: 5%;
color: #C9E2E9;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #C9E2E9;
border-width: thick;
}

div#sidebar {
/*
for use with the 2-col layout – the left sidebar
*/
position: relative;
margin-right: 10px;
top: 20px;
left: 5%;
width: 25%;
color: #A25F08;
border-width: 3px;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #C9E2E9;
border-width: thick;
}

div#two_col_content {
/*
for use with the 2-col layout – the main content area
*/
position: relative;
float: right;
top: 20px;
left: 20%;
width: 55%;
margin-right: 23%;
color: #A25F08;
border-width: 3px;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #A25F08;
border-width: thick;
}

/* footer tools folow ———————————————–*/

.clear {
line-height: 0px;
font-size: 0px;
clear: both;
height: 0px;
}

div#sock {
width: 900px;
height: auto;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
position: relative;
/* the only difference between the #wrapper and the #sock is
that the sock is positioned relative */
}

div#footer {
/* for this to work, the footer -must- be wrapped inside the #sock
–and– come after the .clear div */
position: relative;
top: 30px;
bottom: 10px;
height: 5%;
left: 0px;
width: 100%;
color: #C9E2E9;
padding-top: 5px;
margin-left: 5px;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #C9E2E9;
border-width: thick;
}

/* end of footer tools ———————————————-*/

/* start of the three column definitions —————————-*/

div#left_sidebar {
position: relative;
float: left;
top: 20px;
left: 3%;
width: 25%;
color: #A25F08;
margin-right: 10px;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #C9E2E9;
border-width: thick;
}

div#right_sidebar {
position: relative;
float: right;
top: 20px;
margin-left: 10px;
width: 25%;
color: #A25F08;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #C9E2E9;
border-width: thick;
}

div#three_col_content {
/*
use when the content area is being displayed
with the left_sidebar and the right_sidebar
*/
margin-right: 31%;
margin-left: 33%;
margin-top: 20px;
width: 33%;
color: #A25F08;
padding: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border-style: dashed;
border-color: #A25F08;
border-width: thick;
}