Archive for June, 2005
-
22 Jun 2005
I was working on a Greasemonkey script yesterday, and I ran into a problem for a second time. I had data (in this case, XML, in the previous case, HTML) that I had retrieved via GM_xmlhttpRequest() (Greasemonkey's cross-site-capable and slightly more flexible implementation of the XMLHTTPRequest object). I wanted to grab some small piece of information out of the huge string, but the easiest way to do this that I could think of was with big ugly Regular Expressions. The data was goddamn XML, why couldn't I use DOM? The ideal solution would be if Greasemonkey added a responseDocument field to the data that it passes to the onload callback. Since the ideal solution is not currently available, I had to cobble something else together.
Update 9 Nov: I found a far better solution today. I can hardly believe it.
var xmlDoc; if (typeof(DOMParser) != "undefined") { var parser = new DOMParser(); xmlDoc = parser.parseFromString(x, "application/xhtml+xml"); }
Discuss -
15 Jun 2005
Nomad refuses to carry coinage. I recall one time (likely apocryphal) he purchased a soda for $1.25 at a train station, and then put his change (all seventy-five cents) on top of a garbage can and left it. I can't remember if I did the sterotypical thing and picked it up, but I'm sure I called it foolish.
But it got me thinking; is carrying change a waste of energy? If you carried a pocket-full of coins all day, could you purchase more calories of food than you burned carrying it? I thought about it for a while, and I couldn't reason it out, so I decided to calculate it. The answer somewhat surprised me.
Read more... -
14 Jun 2005
A hundred thousand thanks to smackfu, my fellow MetaFilter user and Naugatuck resident. I added him to my contacts list on Flickr a few weeks ago to watch and see if he posted anything that might look familiar. Yesterday, I was greeted with this message when I logged into my account:
Subject: smackfu has given you a Pro Account!
smackfu wrote you a message: "Everyone I know on Flickr is Pro but you, and I have a free account to give away, so have fun!"
smackfu has given you a Flickr Pro account, good for one year. That means you can have all the benefits of Flickr Pro accounts: 2 gigs of uploads per month, unlimited storage, ad-free browsing, and unlimited photosets and features.
Check out his photostream.
-
13 Jun 2005
Time to play precritic on Batman Begins. What will the tomatometer score for the movie be two weeks after release date? Release date is this
Friday, June 17Wednesday, June 15. As of this writing, the tomatometer is at 83% (with only 30 reviews). -
13 Jun 2005
Pink Floyd will reunite for the Live 8 show in London on July 6. Not just the latest line-up, but Roger Waters will be there with them, as well. Let us hope that this concert leads to a cessation of hostilities and a comeback tour.
-
7 Jun 2005
So here's the situation as it stands now. We know for a fact that there will be backwards-compatibility of some sort built into Nintendo's Revolution console. We know (or at least are fairly sure) that online access will be free of charge. Unfortunately, we also thought that a huge number of first-party games would be free. We were amazed and incredulous, since that list included every Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong game ever made, as well as a number of other ground-breaking and phenomenal games like Gyromite and Goldeneye.
Sadly, it sounds like that's not entirely true. Some games will be available for free to owners of certain other games, but let's hope that Nintendo doesn't go too far in the wrong direction with this. If Mario 128 (ooh, Brian's gonna squirm about that) comes with every back Nintendo game, they'll sell.. er.. okay, they won't sell any more additional games. But they'll get lots of love from the Nintendo community, instead of pushing away those of us who liked everything we saw about the Xbox 360.
-
6 Jun 2005
I reiterate my derisive laugh at LA traffic: ha-hah! It took me more than three hours to travel the 42 miles to work this morning, and for about twenty minutes of that, I was travelling at 70+ mph. My math tells me that that I was travelling an average of roughly 7 mph for the remaining time.
-
3 Jun 2005
My wife just sent me an email with a file called "ANUS.doc" attached. It wasn't quite as hilarious as I was expecting:
The dentate line- location of anal crypts and draining of glands
Superiorly visceral afferents, therefore non-painful; columnar epithelium
Inferiorly somatic afferents, therefore painful; stratified squamous epitheliumDoctors have to talk about funny things like anal crypts and gland drainage, but they have to be all clinical about it. It's sort of a shame.
-
2 Jun 2005
It's a little-known fact that with a library card in the state of Connecticut, you can take out books from any public library in the state. You also don't even need to go to a library other than your local one to do it, and even then you don't have to go until your book is in. Visit the Bibliomation global catalog and search for the book. If it's in any of about fifty participating libraries, it'll come up. Click the "Request Item" button to the right of your result and put in your library card bar code number.
It generally takes less than a week for your local library to get the book. They call the phone number associated with your account when they get it in, and you borrow the book for the lending library's standard period (usually 2-3 weeks). I've got three different books out on inter-library loan right now. It's easy, useful, and it increases the pool of available library books immensely.
(Note, also, that many libraries carry movies on VHS and DVD. Bibliomation includes these, but it's sometimes difficult to tell what format the video is in.)
-
1 Jun 2005
Today in 1495, the Friar John Cor made almost 1500 bottles of scotch whiskey from fourty-eight bushels of malt and thus distilled the first recorded batch. Happy birthday, my amber friend.
(Also, happy birthday to my father-in-law.)