Year: 2003

“Cultural Fire Exits”

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

There’s all kinds of goofy stuff said on IRC, much of it hilarious — and that's where Bash.org comes in. They collect humorous quotes from IRC. This one from their latest quotes section amused me in particular:

<zoweee> i’m holding out til the next election. if it goes against us, i’ll seriously begin looking for my cultural fire exits.

“There are exits at the front and the rear of american democracy. Please take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the nearest exit. In the event of a theocratic american hegemony, lights will appear on either end of the aisle, marking the way to your exit for you.

“in the unlikely event of the repeal of Ammendments 1-5, your seat cushion may be used to purchase carriage across one of our more porous borders.

“should there be a depressurization of america’s historical tolerance for diversity, bibles will drop from the overhead compartment. please read your own copy before assisting small children.

“please do not read pirated versions of the bible, as this may give aid and comfort to terrorist organizations. […]”

MobileTracker – Cell News

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

I ran across MobileTracker on MovableType’s list of spotlight sites. In a nutshell, it’s a blog on cell news, such as new phones and new services. I didn’t expect it to be that interesting, but it’s surprisingly well written and the entries are brief but not curt.

My current phone is a Nokia 3390 — which is fine, I suppose. However, it has areas of improvement: no color screen, monophonic ring tones, and no network connectivitiy. And that last one gets to me most. If you’re lucky, your cell phone might have Bluetooth. Or, if not that, there’s a decent chance your phone has at least a data port (though a special cable may be required). This phone has neither.

So, I’ll have to remedy that with my next phone (though I can’t afford a new one quite yet). A recent post on MobileTracker mentions the Nokia 3650 which almost resembles something out of The Jetsons ;). Still, the Sony Ericsson P800 also looks very tempting (but, it may never make it to North America for all I know).

Recipe: Mexican Muffins

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I saw this recipe on the WhatsInTheFridge mailing list (and I would have linked to the specific post, but it seems that archives are only viewable by subscribers).

Mexican Muffins

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. lean ground beef
  • 1 pkg. (1 1/4 oz.) Taco seasoning mix
  • 1/2 c. water
  • 5 English muffins, split
  • 1 c. grated Cheddar cheese (4 oz.)

Preparation

Brown beef; drain well. Add seasoning mix and water; simmer 15 minutes or until lliquid is absorbed. Place muffins on baking sheet; top with meat mixture. Sprinkle cheese evenly over tops. Bake at 350° F., 10 minutes or until heated through.

Serves 5.

Note: For a Mexican hamburger, substitute hamburger buns for the muffins. Do not bake.

At first, the idea of a Mexicanized English-muffin seemed a bit odd to me, but I think I’ve warmed up to the idea. Of course, I’m now also contemplating whether guacamole & sour cream would improve the dish or if that would overdo it ;).

OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta Available

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I saw on OpenOffice.org’s announce mailing list that OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta has been released. New features include:

  • Many new import/export formats like PDF, Macromedia Flash, DocBook, several PDA Office file formats, flat XML and XHTML
  • Support for Complex Text Layout (CTL) and vertical writing languages, such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew
  • Enhanced integration with Java, with up to 10 times better performance
  • Support for Accessibility throughout the entire suite
  • Support for add-on components
  • Initial support for recovering damaged OOo files
  • Support for a new data source type - MySQL
  • Improved online help

And, that’s just from the e-mail announcement. There are some interesting gems from the complete list as well:

  • The splash screen now has a progress bar.
  • Additional property pages for OpenOffice.org file types in Windows Explorer.
  • A new java-native-uno bridge with up to 10 times better performance.
  • New FTP file access component.
  • […]

OpenOffice.org is already pretty good, but I look forward to trying this new version.

Smooth Scrolling in Mozilla

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Smooth scrolling has been implemented in Mozilla. To see it in action, just download a recent nightly build and add this line to your prefs.js file (while Mozilla isn’t running).

user_pref("general.smoothScroll", true);

If you’re not familiar with the feature, smooth scrolling slides text up pixel-by-pixel during a scroll, instead of a chunk at a time (IE also has this feature). This didn’t initially sound very useful to me, either, but this thead on the gtk-devel-list (for GTK development with Linux) conveys that smooth scrolling allows for scrolling & reading the text at the same time.

Sure enough, smooth scrolling does make it easier to scroll and read text in quick succession. The physics of the current implementation isn’t perfect yet (gravity, velocity, and so on), but I still consider it an improvement over regular scrolling.