Category Archives: Books

What I’m reading, book recommendations, and thoughts on the written word.

Behavior Analysis—French Fries and Computers

Books

Someone pointed out to me the other day that, without fail, I always eat french fries with my left hand. As I looked down at my left hand digging into the fries and then at my completely idle right hand, I was perplexed. Why was I eating my fries in such a particular fashion? Nature or nurture? It was obviously a learned condition, as I don’t know anyone else who does it, but the real question was how had I learned it?

As much as I analyzed my daily patterns, I couldn’t nail it down. Finally, it dawned on me: the mouse. Years of eating while I was on the computer had trained me to eat hand foods with my left hand and compute with my right. While this isn’t effective with a command-line interface, where I do a lot of my work, for browsing or reading it is just fine. Lately I’ve begun to notice there are several benefits to being able to eat with one hand, multi-task with the other. I’ve found it especially useful when driving, but that warrants a whole other article :).

Curly Quotes in Movable Type

Books, WordPress

I am happy to announce that the “curlyquotes” module for Movable Type has passed out of beta into the release stage. Many thanks to Todd of Dominey Design for testing and providing valuable feedback. Here are the updated instructions. For full details, please see this script’s info page, which lets you receive updates by email, leave comments, report bugs, ask for features, and ask questions, et cetera. Here are the updated installation directions:

  1. Install the MTRegex plugin. (Directions from readme.txt file)
    1. Get file.
    2. Place the ‘regex.pl’ file in your Movable Type “plugins” directory
    3. Place ‘regex.pm’ and ‘postproc.pm’ in a ‘bradchoate’ subdirectory underneath your Movable Type “extlib” directory.
    4. You should end up with something like this:
      • (mt home)/plugins/regex.pl
      • (mt home)/extlib/bradchoate/regex.pm
      • (mt home)/extlib/bradchoate/postproc.pm
  2. Create a new template module called curlyquotes with the code from here.
  3. Add <$MTInclude module="curlyquotes"$> to the top of all your templates.
  4. Replace all occurences of <$MTEntryBody$> with <$MTEntryBody
    regex="1"$>    .

Usage is free, in every sense of the word, but if you could throw a link back this way I would appreciate it. Also if you improve on the code in some way, submit your changes so everyone can benefit.

What this module does: It takes straight quotes/prime mark, and makes them proper typographer’s quotes, sometimes called “curly” or “smart” quotes. So basically it takes "this" and makes it “this” using the proper HTML entities. It also works with single quotes, apostrophes, and multi-paragraph double quotes. It slices and dices!

Why? Because there is no button for a curly quote or apostrophe on the keyboard. No really, see the old post for more.

Jazz Quotes Expanded

Books, Jazz

I’ve made quite a few changes to the JazzQuotes section of the site, the most important of which being that it now accepts submissions. I strongly encourage you if you have a favorite jazz quote that isn’t in there already to submit it. I also expanded the database to hold some interesting information in the future. Watch this space.

Search

Books, Gallery

I’m in the process of compiling ht://Dig 3.2.0b4 to add full-featured search to this site. If you don’t have experience with it already, I would highly recommend checking out ht://Dig next time you consider making a search feature. I considered using a FULLTEXT MySQL search but that would ignore one of the largest sections of the site, the Photolog, which is not MySQL-driven (yet).

Makes for a Fun Funeral

Books, Humor

I had the most terrible dream last night that I on death row and today at three I would be put to death. They were going to let me meet Tim-Berners Lee though, who apparently worked across the street from the place. I need to stop mixing late-night snacks with reading W3C specs. Anyway, tho thoughts of my mortality nicely dovetailed with an interesting article on cremation at Wired. I want to be the frisbee :). Warning: article is full of terrible puns.

Great Google Article

Books

I just read an amazing article on Google called Pagerank: Google’s Original Sin. Now it brings up some interesting points about how PageRank technology works creates a reinforcing cycle of “rich” websites getting richer and bestowing their “riches” on partners and such. Frankly though, I think the article is a little whiny. If you can’t get a PageRank above 5, then you’re doing something wrong on your site. As a webmaster who has created about two dozen sites on as many domains, even with the earliest have decent PageRanks. If you write a page with good semantically meaningful markup and have useful content, people will find it even if the PageRank isn’t spectacular, and if people find it and it’s truly useful, they’ll link to it. Also most of the tips and tricks I’ve seen for optimizing for search engines also make sense for users. If your page is about a subject, but it in your title! Put it in the URI! Use real headings! Keep the most significant content above the fold! I guess it seems logical now, but I can’t say honestly that I followed all these rules when I was first starting out.

An example of what I consider to be meaningful markup and URIs would be Mullenweg.com. It has a ton of unique content and information (thanks to my wonderful sister), yet the front page has a measly PageRank of 5, and it goes down from there. However it averages 47 unique visitors a day, and the vast majority of them come from Google. Why? Because you find stuff there that simply isn’t anywhere else.

That said, PageRank can be frustrating for me simply because I feel trapped by it’s quantified measure of importance. While I don’t have any sites below 5, I also don’t have any above 6. Breaking the 6 barrier has been quite a challenge, and I don’t see it happening any time soon. Oh well. 6 is respectable, right? And she said PageRank doesn’t really matter . . .

Oh My!

Books

To those of you who may have tried to validate this page in the few days may have run into a mess of errors! In reality, there was just one error, a missing end tag for a paragraph element, but it was causing the validator to throw several errors up. If validator error messages scare you and XHTML sounds like something from a Transformers episode, you might want to read Zeldman’s Better Living Through XHTML. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Smart Quotes in PHP

Books

One of the true joys I find in reading different websites is when the author of whatever text you see has taken the time to make his text typographically pleasing to the eye through the use of proper typographical elements. CSS has enabled designers to shape text on the web in ways that allow for far greater control over presentation than the creators of HTML ever envisioned. However, I see many sites where it’s obvious that great pain has been put into the layout and presentation of the text, but there are still things like single and double prime marks being used instead of true quotes or apostrophes. Part of the reason for this is it’s a pain to enter the proper entities in when you type, especially if the entry is being added through a normal text box like most blogging software use. While I’m not going to go start a society (more) I still have written a small function in PHP that will hopefully make the world a better place, one curly quote at a time :). Thanks to my dad, Mark Pilgrim for inspiration and the code that got me started, and Barrett for help.

A little background: This whole thing started a few hours ago when I was writing a paper and when I looked back to proofread I saw that there were a number of occurrences of words like it’s, where writing out the HTML entities had become so ingrained in me from various situations where I hand code that it was now translating into my ‘normal’ typing. At that moment I immediately thought of ten other reasons why it’s probably better for the content to be entered into the database as a single or double prime and then translated to its proper character on display. Most of all, it’s just easier, and the free flow of ideas into your writing is not impeded in any way. My mind also went back to an entry I read on Dive Into Mark early last month which addressed a similar issue, but from looking at the code I saw no easy way I could drop that into my site. And thus this very generic function was born. It can be dropped into any PHP application anytime you want to make some text display worthy. Without further ado: Update: fixed a display issue, and a small bug.

Continue reading Smart Quotes in PHP →

Not Ready

Books

About an hour ago I posted a really neat script which will translate normal prime and double prime characters into ‘curly’ quotes where appropiate. Unfortuately I still have a few bugs to work out, so bear with any ghosts you see in the blog machine today.

So Close, Yet So Far

Books, Events, Gallery

I’ve had what could be called a trying day, in a sense of the word, and it was not made better by my episode with Best Buy’s service, or lack thereof. I was very excited when at dinner my mother told me that a package had come in the mail today. I haven’t ordered anything lately so my mind raced to try and think what could have come in the mail. A sample for the PUG? Some books from Amazon? My camera back from the dead??? The return address had actually come off the box, but as soon as I opened it and dug through the peanuts I was delighted to see my camera. The slip of paper said they had reconnected two of the circuit boards, cleaned it, and tested it. Wonderful! Right?

The trouble started when I tried to turn it on. The problem before was that every time it tried to use the lens, the camera would just turn off. It would turn on in setup mode, or play mode, but as soon as you turn it to take a picture of any kind it would just turn off. I assume this meant there was some sort of bad connection with the lens mechanism, and whenever it tried to send power there it would short out. I was baffled: how could they send it back with the exact same problem it had before? What happened to this testing they talked about?

So I decided to go back to the store, because maybe there had been a mistake and this was how I should get my replacement, since they couldn’t/didn’t fix it. Nope. The store couldn’t have been less helpful. I eventually talked to a lower level manager, Marcus, who actually informed me to get a replacement they would have to send it to the service center four times! I’m on time number two right now, so taking the time the whole thing has taken so far, it could be well over a month before I can start taking pictures again with the digital. I can’t comprehend how them mailing me a broken unit back and me sending it back four times as a prerequisite to getting a replacement evolved as part of their bueracracy. It just boggles the mind. This has seriously tainted my view of Best Buy’s service and I will think very seriously before making any sort of significant purchase from them again, and I encourage others to do the same.

Insomnia

Books, Events, Music

As I enter my 38th hour awake, I’m starting to wonder, academically, how much longer this will last. It might be a useful tidbit of information starting college on Monday. I think I’m just nervous about everything that’s been happening. We had to postpone the production meeting today because the producer is down with a cold or virus of some sort. College is starting in just a few days, and Iଁm not sure if I’m ready physically, emotionally, intellectually.

I rearranged all the furniture in my room, which was almost like the puzzle where you have the squares with the different numbers and you can only move one at a time. Anyway I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out, as I now have true surround sound, dual monitors set up, and a *real* space to study that doesn’t require me moving other stuff out of the way. Also I have a much better practice area now, the next step is practicing more.

One of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time is Sing A Song of Song by Kenny Garrett which is available on the CD Songbook. Although I had heard it before, I was really introduced to it through Rex Gregory’s wonderful senior recital where I thought it was one of the best songs. The recital made me reexamine the song on Songbook and I was really moved by the performance. Kenny Garrett has more vitality and life in his playing then twenty of the other players with record deals and such.

Address Book

Books

The built-in address book is the single most used feature on PalmOS devices. To me this sometimes seems like the dark secret of the Palm world. Every manufacturer is rushing to add new features and increase the memory, but still the single most useful thing people do with their Palm is use the programs that come by default on every unit—the address book, date book, memo pad, to do list. I personally use an enhanced address book called Tealphone which adds some nice functionality and is rock solid. I wrote a review of it for PalmStation.com a while ago that is still mostly applicable. PalmStation used to be a really thriving site but has really fallen off as of late.

I bring all this up because I’ve been taking some pretty austere measures on my address book lately, trying to eliminate people that I haven’t talked to in forever, and don’t plan to talk to in the future. Being the information junkie I am, it’s still all backed up on my computer, but it was a very cleansing process and I feel better now because of it. As previously mentioned I had too many contacts in there, and I’m happy to say I have more than halved that number. In other Palm-related news, if you’re still awake ;), is that Friday at 3 has been set as the definite time for shooting the show. I’m very excited!

Late Night/Early Morning

Books, Humor, Music

Time for a little reverse chronological order: Just got in from another late night; saw the midnight showing of The Neverending Story at the River Oaks theatre. It was quite different from how I remembered it as a child, with many parts being unintentionally funny from bad acting and/or effects. Still the thesis of the movie, a child being part of a fantasy book, has always captivated my interest, and did so tonight. Saw the movie with Emily, Emily 2, Sarah, one of Emily’s friends, Joe, and Rene.

Earlier today I attempted a one thousand piece puzzle with Emily and Bridget, but I’ve decided that I’m just no good at that. Puzzles are harder than they look! The edge was pretty easy, but the interior was pretty hard, at least for me. Oh well, the food/music/company was good. Also had some Oreo ice cream and Dolce and Freddo with the same people, and it was my first time there. Honestly I didn’t see what made it any better than any other ice cream Iଁve had, and it seemed a little overpriced. Maybe some of their other flavors are better.

Finally today I picked up my books from the college bookstore. The most interesting of them is the ‘textbook’ for Psychology, which is actually a $114 password to an online site where the text is located and you can turn in assignments and such. It sounds interesting, if expensive, and I’m looking forward to that class even more now. The other books look pretty much like all the other textbooks I’ve had all my life, but I hope the classes won’t be like that.

I also picked up the audition music for the big band, a decision which in some ways has been bothering me the past few days. Since the beginning of the summer I have been debating how/if I should continue in music, whether should I even stay with the saxophone or go to piano, or just compose full-time, or nothing at all. Well my thoughts really started to come together after Joel Fulgham, a wonderful Houston jazz drummer, said to me, “Sometimes I meet people that are grumpy and they don’t know why. They used play but for whatever reason—day gig, parents, whatever—they stopped. They’re grumpy because there’s a whole in their life where the music used to be. And it’ll bug you till you don’t know what to do with yourself if you don’t stay true to your heart.” I love playing the saxophone; I love jazz; I love improvisation and the moments of instant composition without a safety net and harmony in music and life that music in general and jazz in particular provide in my life. I can’t turn my back on that.

Photo Hiatus

Books, Gallery

I’m very sad to say that there won’t be any updates to the Photolog for a while. Last night at Katz’s I had set it on my lap while I put the memory stick into my laptop. My legs were stretched out and the camera (a Sony P71) rolled down them, and fell on the floor. This is all it would do.

Actualy at first I wasn’t even that stressed out about it, because I have the extended warranty from Best Buy and I’ve had very good experiences with them exchanging broken items; I hoped to have another camera in time for a photo shoot I was planning for Friday with Rebecca. Unfortunately, according to the tech, they only do exchanges within the first 14 days, or on items that they don’t attempt to repair at their service center. The tech then went on to tell me that the normal turn around time is 10-14 days, already too long in my opinion, but if they had to wait for a part it could take as long as a month. Better yet, there is no way for me to track the status of the camera, I’ll just get a call when they get it back at the store, if they do. I hadn’t realized how attached I had gotten to the camera, I would literally take it everywhere. I guess I’ll keep saving for my dream camera and count the days for my trusty, pocket-sized P71 to get better.

Car Wash

Books, Economics

I just had a very interesting experience at the aptly name “Dirty Dog” car wash. I didn’t plan to actually wash my car, as ominous clouds loomed in the distance, but merely to use their vacuum, because the mechanics who worked on my car seem to have gotten quite a bit of dust and dirt in it. The first thing I noticed when I drove up was that there were hundreds of birds all around. The irony of this struck me immediately, but it became even more interesting when I saw the giant vat of birdseed in the middle of the car wash grounds. How insidious!

It reminds me of a Three Investigators story I read as a child where the workers at a local glass shop went around the neighborhood breaking windows to create business for them (and hurting the economy), but of course Jupiter and his cohorts found them out and all was well again.

This however, took the ploy to new lows, using unsuspecting birds as the innocent agents to soil the neighborhood’s cars. Perhaps if the owner of the car wash (I’ve met her several times before) had been doing this from her backyard it could have been justified as a personal preference for birds, but it seems a tad obvious to feed hundreds of birds at the car wash. You’d think this would have a negative effect on the business since it increases the chances of someone getting ‘bombed’ right as the exit the wash itself, hardly a pleasant experience. It would be more interesting if the plan (if there is one) is actually backfiring, and causing the birds to stay more in the commercial area where the car wash is located as opposed to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Whatever the outcome, I proceded to spend a handful of quarters meticulously vacuuming very nook and cranny of my car. After I finished I started looking at all the car things the wash offered to add that extra sheen to my newly cleaned car. What caught my eye was the “New Car Smell” fragrence dispenser they had right by the vacuum. After the bird episode I appreciated the irony of putting this in my car, as those who know me will attest I have what I like to call a “mid–eighties Mercedes.”. The instructions said to apply it to the carpets and under the seat, so I stuck the dispenser under one of my seats and put the quarters into the machine. It started dispensing a mist of fragrence from the head. As I went to it to start spreading it around, I was almost knocked back by the stench it was spewing. I was expecting new car smell; I got old gym stench. As fast as I could I removed the apparatus from my car, but I could see from the glistening that it had already gotten all around the driver side of the car. I guess you get what you pay for! Excuse me, I have to go loop 610 with my windows down . . .

Update: It seems to have been as ineffective as it was unpleasant, and thankfully now I can detect no traces of the smell anywhere in my car. Whew!