Category: observations

due diligence

The Chimera/Camino team keeps griping about the name change and how it was forced upon them “for reasons beyond their control.” Perhaps the fact that there has been a browser called Chimera for quite some time (it’s at version 2.0) was a big reason.

About:
Chimera is a very small and nimble Web/gopher browser created using athena widgets. The original (1.x series) version has very restricted copyright (University of Ilinnois). The 2.0beta release is available under the GNU Public License. Chimera is capable of HTML 3.2, displaying a lot of graphics, and is very accurate about HTML syntax. Future releases may include security updates, bugfixes, and feature changes (e.g. gtk support, frames support, etc.).

This is why corporations have lawyers: to prevent engineers from making business decision w/o adult supervision. A simple Google search would have averted all this whining.

Here’s a Chimera screenshot.

thoughts while waiting for the bus

I was waiting for the 372 this morning and the stop is right at the entrance to a child care center (Kinder Kampus: how kute). Lots of minivans and SUVs pulling in, with small female drivers and even smaller children.

Not to get into the the whole “SUVs are bad and the people who drive them are worse” thing, but it occured to me that the only objection I have to anything like that is the inherent waste of resources. Drivers pay more in gas taxes, since they use more gas, but you get used to that. They may pay a ‘gas guzzler’ tax based on the fuel economy rating, but that’s buried in the sticker price and financed as part of the deal. It’s not like the buyer has to write a 4 figure check at purchase time — that would be something.

How about if the gas tax at the pump were assessed on size of the vehicle at each fill-up? It could be done with a scale but the day I load my minivan with furniture and buy gas would convince me that’s a bad idea. More equitable to assign ratings to the curb weights of vehicles and assess the tax that way. 0-2000 lbs, pays one rate, 2000-3000 lbs another, 3000-4000 another and so on.

There would have to be some way of making an accurate determination, of course, some kind of sealed transponder that could tell the pump what vehicle was getting fueled.

This has the advantage of reminding the customer of the cost of their choice each time they fill up, instead of letting it become a distant memory. Maybe some people would regard it as a mark of status to pay more for their gas than the next guy, who knows?

I’d like a fair system that rewards good choices and reminds people of their bad ones.

trying to give back

Bug 195828 – mozilla fails to render pages with the stylesheet definition below
Bug 195827 – I don’t get visual notification of where I have new mail: filtered mail isn’t visible in the mailbox window.

I opened two bugs against Mozilla today, once of which is a duplicate of an almost 2 year old and as yet unresolved bug. It seems to be fixed or perhaps never showed up in Netscape 6 so I’m not sure what’s up. The thread shows quite a lengthy debate as to whether or not it’s even a bug.

<UPDATE> someone on the mozilla teams tells me Netscape shares this bug.

The other one, the email non-notifying one, I’m a bit more confident of.

And I donated $25 to MovableType.

Textile: as if you needed a reason to upgrade to MT 2.6x

Brad Choate: MT-Textile

_Textile is a ‘Humane Web Text Generator,’ created by Dean Allen of Textism. After seeing Textile in action, I decided that I must create a Movable Type plugin that does the same thing._

_I came to that decision before Movable Type 2.6 and the custom text filter thing were announced. In fact, seeing Textile spurred me to write to Ben about a way for MT users to have more text formatting choices and the option to select them on a per-entry basis. To my delight, he replied that “it’s already in the works.”_

can MovableType tidy up after its users?

The W3C MarkUp Validation Service

Welcome to the W3C MarkUp Validation Service; a free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

It would be useful if MovableType could generate well-formed XHTML code, even to the point of correcting user-entered stuff. The core functions of htmltidy have been factored into a library, so I wonder how hard it would be to have the MT::CMS stuff pass new posts to it and store what came back?

MT does a fine job of writing conformant code: it’s the user edits that are the problem. For example, for years I have always tagged in upper case, for readability: XHTML is case-sensitive, so that breaks validation at the HEADhead tag.

too late

what’s in rebecca’s pocket?

It will not surprise you that I am opposed to a policy of empire-building. My view is simple: nations’ fortunes wax and wane, but empires fall.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn the US could already be called an empire. Consider:


  • it has airbases and naval bases in every corner of the world — does any other nation?

  • by doing so, it makes itself a target for many nationalist groups who need something to focus their adherents’ anger

  • its culture and ideas permeate the world, from TV to clothing to music. There’s no escaping it. Those opposed to it are not limited to religious fanatics, but include our allies in Europe and Asia.

Maybe a strict definition of empire requires puppet governments, but I’m not sure we need go that far.

shedding blood for sport

Well, it’s taken a while but I had my first bike accident today, unassisted as well. And of course, it would be on a factory new bike, rather than on the used bikes I have trundling around on the past two years.

I need to get used to this beast, that’s for sure. Between all the gearing (going from 2 levers to 4 that don’t necessarily go the way I expect) and toe-clips, going from a standstill into a serious hillclimb was an accident waiting to happen, and it did. I was in the street before I knew it, and I didn’t really have time to disengage my feet, so down I went, bike and all.

I ended up with a bruise and a scrape on my left elbow, a couple of holes in my knee (these I didn’t discover til I got home and Tegan called to me from the top of the stairs “why is your leg bleeding?”), and the imprint of the big chain ring in my right leg. And the left side of my Sora flightdeck controllers looks a little shopworn now.

The bathtub while I showered looked like a slaughterhouse floor, but everything got cleaned up.

So the bike is an amazing piece of work, very fast and responsive. I was able to get up to 20 mph on the flat without hitting the big chain ring, so that felt good. I’ve decided to skip riding to the trailhead and just take the bike over there: I didn’t do that before because I couldn’t easily get the front wheel off the old bike, but this one has a quick release. I don’t really want a lot of hill-climbing practice right now, anyway. Miles more than grades are what I need.