Geek Stuff category archive

A few final tweaks over the last two days:

• Changed the color of the “submit” button for the search and comments from that garish red to green.
• Figured out how to wrap the slogan to the width of the banner picture, which I find more attractive than the full screen width.
• Changed the wording of the “more” tag from “Read more” to “Finish reading this post.” (That one took the most hunting to find.)

I’m taking Jack Handy away because I just checked his website and there may be licensing issues. I originally got the plugin from WordPress, but the plugin is also gone. I believe in fair use, but this plugin may go beyond that.

Look for some fun with the banner picture soon. Other than that, I’m done.

This theme allows me to post the complete Bennett Cerf quotation that forms the motto of this blog.

Bennett Cerf was a genius, a scholar, a gentleman, and a lover of English, which he showed in his affection for puns, the horribler the better.

As a country boy who has become a city boy, I can attest to the accuracy of this particular quotation.

The newest trend in comment spam seems to be yahoos promising to help me improve my SEO.

Since they can find me, I don’t think there’s a problem. Heck, I’d rather they didn’t find me.

Anyway, I’ve never been interested in trying to fake out Teh Giggle, and fake out is what these bozos are selling.

Also, before I pecked this out on the typing machine, I did something I have not done in several years, not since I registered my domain name: Searched for “pine view farm” with several search engines. The results were interesting.

According to my stats, the search that brings the greatest number of referrals here is consistently the James Beard Hollandaise Sauce recipe. followed by the Steak with Mushroom, Onion, Red Wine Sauce recipe.

I just went through my blogroll and removed blogs that seem to have gone inactive (see Afterthought) or irrelevant to my interests, as well as added a couple I have recently been visiting and citing frequently.

I removed the Blogroll Amnesty category, as it has outlived its usefulness; since the passing of Jon Swift, the concept has no prominent champion. I merged the links that I kept into my regular blogroll.

I also restored the “Other Stuff” to the sidebar–somehow I had overlooked it.

I’m looking to have some fun with the banner picture next.

Afterthought:

In the podcast world, a podcast’s going inactive is called “podfading.” Would this be “blogfading”?

Ask Amy offers advice.

Twit twits and twits respond.

If you follow the link, be sure to read beyond the first paragraph or you won’t get the full twitifericicity of it all.

Anonymous announces that it will go after Facebook.

This is hardly upsetting. Indeed, were Facebook inaccessible for a few minutes, the world might be a little better.

I tinkered with the CSS yesterday and am now generally happy with the font sizes. It took a little digging to find out where to adjust the headings on the sidebar.

This morning, thanks to an email from one of my two or three regular readers citing research that italics can be hard for geezers like me to read, I made the italics in the sidebar go away.

The only trouble that still needs shooting is that the entire sidebar contents are centered in Microsoft Internet Destroyer and are left-justified in every other browser known to mankind.

I want only the headings and certain individual bits of the sidebar centered.

I’ll deal with that later.

Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

Addendum:

Jack Handy’s Deep Thoughts are back.

Today, I updated several Linux computers. No reboots were required.

I updated one Windows computer.

Two reboots were required, interrupting my enjoyment of an episode of Mystery Is My Hobby.

Twice.

Wonder now why I think Windows sucks is less than desirable?

It is because Windows sucks is less than desirable.

This is not an animation (though the YouTube is a video). The images were created directly from programming code as the code runs.

H/T Mark for the link.

Bloomberg takes a look at free speech rights vs. continued employment in the world of twits:

The five-member labor board and its general counsel have sided with employers in some cases, agreeing workers can be fired for gratuitous “griping” about the boss. In other circumstances, the government has contended employees were exercising a right to speak out about workplace conditions. The NLRB risks creating a right to Twitter-bomb the boss with online insults, said Michael Eastman, who prepared the study for the Washington-based Chamber (of Commerce–ed.).

If you twit about toil or Facebook about the factory (do we still have factories?), you might want to read it.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contains a report on the growing attractiveness of smartphones to the makers of malware:

All at once, smartphones have become wallets, email lockboxes, photo albums and Rolodexes. And because owners are directly billed for services bought with smartphones, they open up new angles for financial attacks. The worst programs cause a phone to rack up unwanted service charges, record calls, intercept text messages and even dump emails, photos and other private content directly onto criminals’ servers.

The article continues includes descriptions of various forms of malware. If you have or are considering a smartphone, take a look.

OhMyGov! reports:

According to Mobiledia.com, after August 28th it will become illegal for teachers to become Facebook “friends” with their students (other “social network” connections are also prohibited–ed.). Instead educators will be allowed to maintain public “fan” pages where students can stay connected to them, just not necessarily friends with them.

Were I a teacher, I would consider being a Facebook “friend” with a student probably a really bad idea. I’d want to be free of the little darlings when I left work for my sanity.

Nevertheless, that does not seem to be what the law is all about.

Emi Kolawole decides to quit Facebook:

Click on the radio button that says you have privacy concerns, and a reminder pops up that you shouldn’t worry because Facebook ensures your information is private. Then, you have the opportunity to delete your account, which I chose to do. You’re then told that you have 14 days before Facebook will completely wipe your data. Log in once — just once — and you’re back. It’s as if you never left.

Two weeks after my emphatic Wall post announcement, I carried through on my threat — as painful as it was.

I didn’t get very far. Before I quit my Facebook profile, I quickly created a new, more public Facebook profile. Why, you ask? I needed a presence on the platform to manage a Facebook page for the Post.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, August 4.

Note: Meetings are normally on the first Thursday of each month.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

You’d be surprised–not just your seamy history of watching Angry Birds invade Farmville to attack the LOL Cats.

El Reg reports on a study by AptiQuant:

After measuring the IQs of exactly 101,326 users and correlating their scores with the browser they had used to access the test, “There was a clear indication … that the subjects using any version of Internet Explorer ranked significantly lower on an average than others,” concludes the study, conducted by the Vancouver, Canada, psychometric-assessment firm, AptiQuant.

Charts and graphs at the link.

See AptiQuant’s own press release.

Something good:

Police believe they were able to prevent a southwestern Pennsylvania man’s suicide after the man’s friend in California alerted police about a distraught Facebook posting.

The “Haters of Southampton High School.”

At Comically Vintage.

All your dataz are belongz to Facebook, Gold Card version.

“We’re running algorithms to serve you up offers that are relevant based on your likes, your preferences and your friends,” Edward Gilligan, vice chairman of New York-based AmEx, said in an interview yesterday.

Through the new “Link, Like, Love” application on the American Express Facebook page, customers can link card accounts to their own pages. Cardholders’ Facebook use and circle of online friends — what Palo Alto, California-based Facebook Inc. calls a user’s “social graph” — will be used to personalize merchant deals, entertainment offers and other perks.

Full disclosure:

I use my AmEx card to the exclusion of other cards.

AmEx has treated me well, including getting me reaccommodated in record time after a missed airline connection in Phoenix. I had arranged a new flight through them before I got through the line to the airline service desk.

I wouldn’t sign up for this on a bet.