A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why?”, they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.”
MTCurly Update
I’ve updated the Curly Quotes for Movable Type script in response to two points made by John Gruber. It was interesting to be referred to by last name only, so I felt the need to respond as soon as I read the criticisms. The issues identified, namely the inability to quote single letters like “a” and a small whitespace bug which affected a valid but rarely seen method of writing tags, were trivial to fix. I am still a firm believer in a faster pure regular expression solution to this particular problem; with a good enough regular expression you can parse anything :). Thanks to John for pointing these out.
This Explains It
How and Why the Internet Broke—while it scares me that so much of the internet could be affected by one company, particularly one controlled by WorldCom, it’s good to know why I couldn’t get to my own site through SWBell the other day. While this is obviously a huge blunder on their part, overall I still like UUNet. Last summer I got a personal tour of their network operations center and I was very impressed with the people working there and the infrastructure they had. It was also humorous how obviously some parts of the NOC were for show, such as the windows that turned opaque with the flip of a switch and the extremely large big screen televisions overlooking the main room which “are more for you [visitor] then them [workers].” The one they did say they watched closely was the one on the Weather Channel, because apparently weather can have a large effect on their operations.
History of Tilde and Google Change
I’m a little behind, so I’d like to point out two very interesting articles over at Mark Pilgrim’s weblog. First he has a nice summary of the change to Google’s ranking algorithm. There are links to all the threads and articles I’ve seen around the web; it seems Mark has an uncanny ability to find relevant links quickly. I do not agree however that this is the “beginning of the end” for Google, it’s just an adjustment phase; they’re still committed to having the very best search results possible, and they’re merely responding to an obvious and well-known exploitation of their previous system. If relevancy is temporarily suffering, just them a little time.
Mark’s History of the Tilde also piqued my typographical interest. One of my Human Situation professors remarked the other day that the Greek alphabet wasn’t even finalized until several years into their war with the Spartans, meaning that at the beginning of what would be a thirty-year war, they still found time to debate and codify a standard of writing. He then asked what new characters were in the western alphabet lately. The first thought in my mind was the euro, but that was a little too obvious. A examination of my keyboard yielded three characters—~, @, and *—that I can’t really see a use for before the time of computers. I’m going to look into it.
Close Call
I had the biggest scare on the way to Psychology this morning: as I was driving on 610 South when I saw a police officer sitting on the side of the road. And it wasn’t just any cop car, it was one of the Camaros. So I naturally checked my speed, and then went on my merry way. Next thing I know, I see the cop whip out of the shoulder in the rear view mirror and head straight towards me. His lights were blinking and I was panicking and . . . he pulled over the person behind me. In hindsight it was actually pretty interesting to watch it happen, almost like something from a nature show. It was a lot like the lions that you see jump out of the grass and pick off a zebra from the pack.
Pun-A-Day #4
A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and announces: “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.”
Jish Goes to Houston
Had a wonderful time tonight at Market Square Grill with a number of new people who I hadn’t met in person before. The guest of honor, Jish, was an extremely nice guy. I think he really enjoyed his visit, because everything is bigger in Texas. It was wonderful meeting everyone, such colorful personalities, and I’m definitely going to make it out to the next event. In attendance were (Kathy’s list helped me out here) Katie, Mike, Jish, Elaine, Chuck, Ted, Robert, Hanna, David, Kathy, Christine, and Kymberlie.
The pictures from tonight are now online. I’ve also gotten around to putting up the entire morning shoot from the Sights Unseen series. I also added some photos from 9-27 with some interesting ones in the downtown area that Sarah took. Actually she didn’t take all of them, just the good ones.
Gallery: 10-4-2002
Auto-imported from old gallery:
Pun-A-Day #3
Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor; the other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.
I’m doing the blog equivilent of treading water, but I have some real writing to put up tonight.
Lili
Okay it looks like the hurricane isn’t heading this way, but from the size of it I hope where it does hit is well-prepared and has the best of luck.
Ever wonder why hurricanes always have girls names? Well, there’s no such thing as a himicane.
Okay, that was painful even for me. That’ll be all for the day.
Weather Update
Hmmm, it seems a category four hurricane is heading for the Gulf Coast. Why am I just hearing about this today? This is what I get for getting all my news from /. and Kuro5hin.
Gallery: 10-3-2002
Auto-imported from old gallery:
Pun-A-Day #2
Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says, “I’m sorry gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”
Thanks to Mike Wallace for sending me this current batch.
Hard Drive Usability
Why doesn’t Maxtor just put their jumper settings on the drive, like IBM does? Here they are, in a wonderfully accessible Flash video.
Gallery: 10-2-2002
Auto-imported from old gallery:
MySQL 4.04
MySQL AB never announces these things properly, so for those who are interested there is a new version of MySQL out, namely 4.04. Ironically, 404 errors is what I got when I tried to download it, as from their dozens of mirrors I could only find one, so I’m assuming this is hot off the presses. From the tests I’ve run so far there seems to be a very marginal speed increase over 4.02, but it doesn’t seem to have any of the terrible bugs that 4.03 had. 4.03 really should have never been released to the public. I found all the files I needed here.
Pun-A-Day #1
I’m a real sucker for a good pun, and I have quite a few saved up, some original some not, waiting for that one time where the opportunity arises to just zing one in there. I mean, how often do you get to say “The trumpets were lost at C!” (rehearsal letter ‘C’)?. Anyway, here goes:
Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft; it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
Spaghetti Supper
Every year the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where I studied jazz and classical saxophone for four years, puts on a fund-raising extravaganza called the “Spaghetti Supper.” It features performances from all of the music groups, from the orchestra to the big band. You can go enjoy the music for free, or you can support the school and get some decent food for just a couple of dollars and enjoy the music. The first performances start at 5:15 today, and they go all the way till about 8 or 9. Also at any given moment there are two or three groups performing. HSPVA is located at 4001 Stanford, 77081.
Nice Breeze
It’s a really beautiful day outside, with just the right amount of wind and shade. It’s just warm enough in the sun to be comfortable, but not to hot to make it oppressive. Even though it feels like it might rain, my weather source says clear skies ahead, so I don’t need to stress again about weather or not I brought an umbrella :).
I hope everyone is having a wonderful day!
Southwestern Bell Trouble
For some reason my SWBell DSL can’t get to any of the sites on my server, or actually on my whole subnet. I can ping it from other sites though, and I’ve tunneled my connection through UH to bring you this wonderful update. Oh well, for all its faults, SWBell usually fixes things like this within an hour or two. But to those of you weren’t able to access the site due to your service provider, I sincerely apologize, and if you send me their name I’ll write them a letter. By the by, this box has now been up for over one hundred and thirty-seven days.