Month: March 2004

Warwalking in Dallas

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

As the weather gets nicer in the coming weeks, I’ve been thinking that it could be rather nice to work outside some days, just sitting under a shady tree enjoying the spring breeze. I already have the PowerBook but it would be even better if I had WiFi outside…

So, on Friday afternoon, I decided to go warwalking. You may have already heard of wardriving — driving around with a laptop looking for WiFi access points — but I needed more granularity than that. So, I made sure my battery was charged and I loaded MacStumbler onto my laptop (MacStumbler is an app which continuously scans for access points).

I had to carry my PowerBook open as it would just go to sleep if I closed it, but I found a comfortable position where I could support it with my left forearm as I rested it against my chest. From there, I just started walking around my apartment complex.

I didn’t really want much road noise as part of my hypothetical spring afternoon, so that actually made my search a bit easier. Heading away from the major roads, I walked towards the trees & paths near the Village clubhouse. I had a good feeling about this area since it was wooded enough to be quiet and peaceful yet there were apartment buildings not far away (hopefully with WiFi emanating from them).

Sure enough, I found a few good spots there. As I don’t yet have a GPS receiver for my PowerBook (still looking for recommendations, if you have any), I just had to record each hotspot’s info the old-fashioned way — with TextEdit. I made notes to myself primarily on how to find each spot (in some ways, like a squirrel trying to remember where he buried his nuts).

I also ensured that each spot had a shady tree nearby :). Then, just to be sure tree was still in range of the signal, I sat down under each tree and tested the signal there (usually by browsing a couple pages from Slashdot). Of course, as long as I had signal-bars, the test-pages would usually load fine. Occasionally, however, I couldn’t connect through some of them :-/.

I also didn’t want to have to walk that far to my WiFi Tree(tm), so I limited my search to about a 15-minute radius from my apartment. I ended up with about half a dozen prospective hotspots and I narrowed it down to two likely candidates. One in particular is a hotspot that’s reachable from one of the benches overlooking the small lake in that area. I figure that a bench would be comfortable and I could also bring along a flat object (like a book) for use as a mousepad next to me.

So, the next time a sunny day comes along, I’m ready. I'm guessing that my one-page list of findings wouldn’t be useful to many people but if you live in The Village, I’d be happy to pass them along.

XHTML Jokes

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I found these XHTML Jokes at Photo Matt though they’re originally from HTML Dog. I’m guessing that only standards-aware web developers will get these, but I found some of them rather amusing:

Q: Why did the XHTML actress turn down an Oscar?
A: Because she refused to be involved in the presentation.

Q: Why was the font tag an orphan?
A: Because it didn’t have a font-family.

Q: Why do CSS designers have too many children?
A: Because they employ lots of child selectors.

Q: Why was IE5’s 3-metre wide cell in the insane asylum smaller than IE6’s 3-metre wide cell?
A: Because the width of the cell included the padding…

Q: Why was the XHTML bird an invalid?
A: Because it wasn’t nested properly.

I think the XHTML/Oscar one may be my favorite, though I liked the IE/cell-width one as well. And considering geeks’ general penchant for tech humor, I’m almost surprised that these jokes have only come about now. In any case, they brightened my day a bit :).

Recipe: Blueberry Muffins with Crumb Topping

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I made blueberry muffins yesterday and they turned out fairly well so I thought I’d post the recipe here. I had decided on blueberry muffins a few days beforehand, but I didn’t have a recipe in mind at the time. So, I next checked AllRecipes.com — a handy recipe website with ratings and reviews for each recipe.

I found my way to their recipes for muffins & scones and, from there, to their section on blueberry muffins. They had about twenty blueberry muffin recipes, but the To Die For Blueberry Muffins caught my eye as it had a rating of 5/5 stars and it was also selected for one of the Allrecipes cookbooks.

Here’s the recipe:

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients — Muffin Base:

  • 1½ cups all-purpose flour
  • ¾ cup white sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ⅓ cup vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • ⅓ cup milk
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries

Ingredients — Crumb Topping:

  • ½ cup white sugar
  • ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
  • ¼ cup butter, cubed [half a stick]
  • 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
  2. Combine 1½ cups flour, ¾ cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
  3. To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together ½ cup sugar, ⅓ cup flour, ¼ cup butter, and 1½ teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.
  4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

The muffins turned out well — light and fluffy on the inside with a crunchy-sweet topping. Sliced in half and with a touch of butter, they’re rather delectable. And, other than the blueberries, most of the ingredients are items you probably already have in your pantry.

I wasn’t sure how they’d turn out with Splenda, so I just made them with regular sugar this time. But, I would imagine that Splenda would work fine (though the crumb topping may not have that characteristic sugar crystal crunch without the sugar).

As written, the recipe works out to 1.5 Tbsp sugar in each muffin along with an additional 1 Tbsp sugar for each muffin’s crumb topping (for a total of 2.5 Tbsp sugar). At 16g carbs per Tbsp, that’s 40g carbs per muffin that could be cut out (or at least 24g if you kept the sugar in the crumb topping).

Console-Based Electronica Coming Back

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

MSNBC has an article on console-based electronica making a comeback. These days, consoles like the X-Box and PlayStation 2 have full music capabilities, but I still remember playing my first 8-bit NES back in the 80s and its music seemed fine at the time. And even today I find it amazing what the composers of the day were able to do with such limited hardware.

This 8-bit music — or “chiptunes” as the sound is also known — may be the one video game related subculture you’ve never heard about. Built around the “bleeps” and “bloops” of video gaming’s Paleozoic era, the music has gained a following over the years among assorted hackers, gamers and musicians. It’s particularly large in Europe, where Micromusic.net sponsored music festivals have attracted upwards of 5,000 attendees. And in the United States, “the scene” also appears to be growing thanks to a number of factors including the diversity of its music, the hacker sensibility underlining the scene and nostalgia for old fashioned video gaming. […]

The Register also has an article on old hardware put to use where they mention the Dallas band TreeWave:

We were also informed about Dallas band TreeWave, which performs on two Commodore 64s, an Atari 2600, and an old Compaq luggable. The brains behind Treewave have also programmed Epson assembly language to use a dot-matrix printer as an instrument. […]

Using Commodore 64s is cool in itself, but a musical printer rates highly on the scale of geek cred. I may have to check out one of their shows sometime :). And as it turns out, they’re actually playing tonight at the Curtain Club with The Polyphonic Spree — I might otherwise be tempted to go, but I’ll be going to the DFWBlogs Cocktail Event this evening at the XPO Lounge.

Off to SXSW

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

Once again, I’m heading off to SXSW. I plan on leaving around lunchtime today (Friday) and driving back Tuesday evening (after the last panel of the day). In case you’re going also, here're some of the panels I plan on attending:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

  • I haven’t yet decided on the panels for Tuesday.