September 2008 | Bb RealTech

Deep Breaths and Baby Porcupines

Shelley Mon, 09/29/2008 - 20:11

The economy is all over the place today, and a lot of people are uncertain and more than a little worried. Now is the time to take deep breaths, not over-react, or look for the nearest tall building from which to jump.

Good, commonsense discussions about what all of this means can be found among the doom, gloom, and tales of complete economic failure.

Ron Lieber: "Is My Money Safe?"
Coping with Panic and Fear in the Markets
Don't yank all your money out, or...don't wake up in the morning, screaming "SELL! SELL!"
Frugal is sexy. Not buying is the new black.

In the spirit of the times, the following is a recipe that comes to us from the Great Depression.


Baby Porcupines

1 pound ground round steak
1 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
4 tablespoons chopped onions
2 tablespoons chopped green peppers
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
3/4 cup raw rice
1 cup tomato soup or tomato puree
2 cups water

Mix all but last 3 ingredients. Shape into small balls and roll in the 
uncooked rice, Heat tomato soup and water in heavy pan with a tight 
fitting cover. Place balls in the tomato mixture cover and cook slowly
 45 minutes or until meat is tender and the rice is done.

From Depression Era Recipes!

OpenOffice for Aqua

Shelley Mon, 09/29/2008 - 10:24

Last week I made the switch from NeoOffice to OpenOffice for Aqua on the Mac.

I'm impressed with the overall appearance of the application, and the functionality. Most importantly, I was able to process Word documents with templates without problems and without loss of functionality.

The application is very fast and responsive on my PowerPC laptops, and from what I've read elsewhere, it's actually better on the Intel-based machines. It doesn't have the lag that I've found with newer versions of NeoOffice when clicking on a menu item and the menu contents displaying. Nor does it seem to absorb as much of the machine's resources.

I can open and work on several different types of documents, at the same time, and not have performance or stability problems. Overall, it's quite efficient, as well as including all the features most, if not all, of us need from an office toolset.

OpenOffice includes the following tools:

A fully featured text document editor, including support for both macros and templates, as well as all features necessary for sophisticated document creation and management. You can also track and show changes, as well as autocorrect and format, embed tables and images, add a media player, and incorporate a bibliography database.
A spreadsheet tool that provides any number of formatting capabilities, simple to use chart creators, all the spreadsheet functions you need and want, and some interesting Scenario and Solver tools I haven't had a chance to explore.
A presentation tool with templates that can incorporate any number of graphics and themes, providing slideshows, the ability to package the presentation— the usual presentation software suspects.
A database creation tool that also uses ODBC and JDBC to connect to an existing database, either remotely or locally.
A drawing tool that provides a good deal of functionality in order to create nice looking illustrations.

The application is still in candidate release status, so you may want to wait until the finished release. However, if you're a Mac user, with either a PowerPC or Intel-based machine, give the application serious consideration.

Did I happen to mention it's open source?

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Are Christians Stupid?

Shelley Mon, 09/29/2008 - 08:58

Washington Post article about ministers violating tax laws by urging their flocks to vote for McCain:

Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

Congratulations to Safari/Webkit

Shelley Fri, 09/26/2008 - 12:10

Congratulations to Safari/Webkit for being the first browser in the wild that provides a completely passing Acid3 test.

My own results:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I'm really getting excited by how much The Big Three (Safari, Firefox, and Opera) are improving, not only in standards support, but also innovation and application speed. It's as if the web has suddenly shed its cocoon, unfurled glorious wings, and is ready to fly.

Three Dangerous Words: I Speak English

Shelley Thu, 09/25/2008 - 09:57

As I wrote in comments to the last post, I think we've discovered the Rosetta stone for English, and it's {}.

These are curly brackets, squiggly brackets, worms, curlies, curly parenthesis, and braces. Conversely, braces are suspenders, or pairs of pheasants. I wrote, seeking a map, and discovered a journey, instead.

How serendipitous, then, to receive an email, last night, from Joe Clark about the publication of his new e-book on Canadian English, Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English. According to his email, the book should hit the streets today.

Knowing Joe, the writing should be colorful. Or is that colourful? He spent time organizing the efforts, but to those across the sea, he's really spent time organising the effort.

Even when there are no differences in spelling or meaning, cultural differences can have a significant impact on our use of English. I recently ordered a book through Amazon UK, and marveled at the emails telling me it's progress, up to and including when it was "dispatched" (not sent), and through the Royal Mail, no less. I must do it again, it was like a verbal carnival ride.

Or would that be fun fair dobby?

Curly Brackets or Braces

Shelley Wed, 09/24/2008 - 08:25

This one came up during the tech edit and now during the copy edit on my last book: the use of "curly bracket" as compared to "curly braces" or "brace".

I have used the term "curly bracket" for decades, and have seen the term used in other programming contexts. Wikipedia, though not the definitive source of information on a topic, also seems to promote curly bracket over curly brace. In addition, Wikipedia and other sources also point out that the curly part of "curly braces" is redundant, because there are no other braces but curly ones.

So which is the proper term? When you see "curly bracket" do you itch to take editing pencil to "bracket", to replace with "brace"? Are you confused when you see the word "brace" used in a programming context? Or paired with the "curly"?

q=topic&subject=Google&opinion=sucky

Shelley Tue, 09/23/2008 - 21:51

This site, like most others built using a content management system rewrites the dynamic URLs into a static format, primarily to make them more readable. More portable, too, as we move our writings from CMS to CMS.

Google has come out with an odd post about static versus dynamic URLs, and it's better for the Google bot to leave your URLs dynamic, because people screw up the rewrite rules. If you leave the URL dynamic, then the Google bot can figure out what it needs from the URL. However, if you rewrite it as a static URL, but leave dynamic pieces in, such as page number or the like, the Google bot may interpret the URL incorrectly.

At least, this is my interpretation of the post, and from the comments, other people's interpretation.

The focus of Google's suggestion is search engine optimization, and so probably only of interest to the SEO types. However, when Google writes posts like this, they ripple out like waves on a pond after a big stone is dropped in. Within a week or two I'm sure we'll be hearing about how "best practice" for URLs now, is to use dynamic, not static URLs, regardless of the reason for the best practice.

No more permalinks to you Wordpress folks. Or smart URLs for the Drupal users. Be brave, and show your parameters.

Or not.

End of the Politico and Beginning of Computer Fund

Shelley Tue, 09/23/2008 - 13:59

Today I went to the gas station to fill up my tank before this week's rapid rise in gas prices. The station has two islands, with three filling areas on each side. I drove through the center, between the two islands, which has room to pass even if cars are at both sides. However, I was forced to stop before getting to the pump because an elderly man was using the window squeegee thing to clean the inside of his windows and had his door wide open so I couldn't pass.

I stopped, thinking that he would see I was trying to get past and close his door, but he just continued his painfully slow process of trying to use the squeegee thingie to clean his inside windows.

I was already cranky entering the station, and snarled at him to please close his door, as I was trying to get past— startling him a little, which left me feeling like a jerk because my parents did not raise me to be rude to somebody in their 80s. I had let my cranky feelings overcome both my manners, and my sense of perspective, because I was in no hurry and could have waited a couple of minutes for him to finish.

I'm cranky from the news, not only of the election but the abysmal bail out, which, no, I don't approve of in any shape or form. However, the stress of both is actually adding to a sense of physical degradation, as well as impacting on both my humor and my interactions with those around me. I snarled at an elderly man, and I've never snarled at an elderly person before. I wasn't raised this way. Snarl at webloggers, yes; but never the elderly, the very young, or critters. That's just plain mean.

You'll be glad to know that this is my last post on the election, because I am going to be restricting my intake of news and politics, and especially economics. I can't do a thing to make a difference, and keeping up with the stories is, frankly, ruining what is potentially going to be a beautiful fall.

I had planned on writing a long, seemingly learned paper on the election, listing out various topics and how Obama and McCain differ, but there's a lot of people who do a much better job at this than me. I'm voting for Obama/Biden, plain and simple. To do otherwise will turn the White House over to two people who are incompetent to lead, at a time when this country is in a world of hurt, and needs the best, not the worst.

There. I did my thing, and I'm sure have convinced hundreds, thousands of you to vote for Obama.

Now, writing about the internet, browsers, standards—including and RDF and SVG, and the like—is useful because I may actually make a difference talking about these topics. Same with my tales of Missouri at MissouriGreen, video at Secret of Signals, and whatever at Just Shelley. Even if all I do is post pictures of our zoo's new Amur leopard cub, Sophie, who stole my heart this weekend, forever, when she "stalked" my roommate as he walked around her habitat trying to see her.

Yes, I have given my heart to a leopard cub. Sorry to my male readers who might be disappointed. Come to that, sorry to my female readers who might be disappointed.

Hopefully pictures of this sweet thing will make up for the fact that I've been a dead bore, lately.

update: Decided against trying to run a computer fund.

Future Firefox and Color Management

Shelley Mon, 09/22/2008 - 13:07

Before the build copy of Firefox (known as "Minefield") upgraded itself on my Mac, dying a horrible and immediate death in the process, one other change I noticed in the upcoming version of Firefox is that color management is now on by default.

I also noticed, again before the crash and burn death, that the new version seems to be much more efficient and fast compared to the old.

As pointed out in comments, Bobby Holley has an excellent discussion on color management and the state of Firefox. Bottom line, in the interests of performance, the new version of Firefox will have color profiles turned on, by default, for "tagged" images: images with embedded color profiles. I started embedding profiles for my pictures about 2 months or so, ago, in hopes that more browsers will follow this path.

It would be nice to have full color management, but I think support for color profiles in images is a good interim solution. This is also the approach that Safari uses, and hopefully Opera, too, eventually.

The Great American Setup

Shelley Mon, 09/22/2008 - 10:59

The Congressional Democrats are once again acting the part of Fool to George Bush's King by allowing themselves to be set up with the current "bail out" of Wall Street.

Two weeks ago there was no problem in the economy that couldn't be resolved on its own. Now, one week before Congress is anxious to adjourn so that members of Congress can do what's really important to them—run for office—the members are told that they have to accept a given deal from the White House. And quickly! Before it's too late! Basically handing to Bush and Paulson the golden goose with no strings attached.

The Democrats are buying it. They're buying the rush, they're buying the stories, they're buying the panic, the fear—they're buying the "rightness" of basically handing a get out free card to the most avarice of those in corporate America.

Bb RealTech