A Blog of Very Little Brain

Oh sweet mother of…
A site dedicated to Pandas…

Got this through Cute Overload

Found this one at Secret Geek.

This is taken from the time the webmaster started taking narcotics.

Not one of those “What kind of Water Fowl are you?” quizzez (Quizi?), though.

Assume you’re using one of those RSS aggregatos such as, say, Bloglines. And assuming that instead of the usual bunch of stuff that appears in the main window, the site gives you this:

var siteList = new Array(); function SiteInfo( items, dir, iconDir ) { this.items = items; this.dir = dir; this.iconDir = iconDir; } function getElById(idVal) { if (document.getElementById != null) return document.getElementById(idVal) if (document.all != null) return document.all[idVal] alert("Problem getting element by id") return null } function feedError( errorCode ) { window.open('/feederror?ErrorCode='+errorCode,'300x300',
'toolbar=no,status=no,scrollbars=no,location=no,menubar=no,
directories=no,width=300,height=300'); } var agt = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase(); var is_ie = (agt.indexOf('msie') != -1); var is_ie5 = (agt.indexOf('msie 5') != -1); /* * * send a GET behind the scenes to url * */ function SendRequest(url) { var xmlhttp = CreateXmlHttpReq(DummyHandler); ++uniqnum_counter; XmlHttpGET(xmlhttp, url + "&rand=" + uniqnum_counter); } function CreateXmlHttpReq(handler) { var xmlhttp = null; if (is_ie) { var control = (is_ie5) ? "Microsoft.XMLHTTP" : "Msxml2.XMLHTTP"; try { xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(control); xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = handler; } catch(e) { alert("You need to enable active scripting and activeX controls"); } } else { xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlhttp.onload = handler; xmlhttp.onerror = handler; } return xmlhttp; } var uniqnum_counter = (new Date).getTime(); function DummyHandler() { } function

Do you:
A: Refresh the page
B: Start reading the JavaScript code
C: Start reading the code and try to find what went wrong
D: Copy the code to another text editor as well as the whole page’s source and go over them both.

If you answered anything else than A, man, we need a life.

I just finished writing and editing the previous post, when Firefox crashed.
You can imagine I stopped breathing for a couple of minutes. Surprisingly, restarting it launched the “Create Post” page with the entire text in it. I don’t know if I should thank Firefox, or SessionSaver (without whom Firefox would’ve started with the homepage), but whoever is responsible for this, you have my eternal gratitude, for what its worth ;).

(Update: turns out it wasn’t lost, but managed to post before the browser crashed.)

Title is from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it is when a writer is patronising others, eventually patronising his readers. Case in point:
From a DesktopLinux column by Frank Richards:
“However, many liveCD distros can be used as a day to day desktop without ever installing them to your hard drive. Huh? Wait a minute, everyone installs the OS to a hard disk! Well yes, that’s the way it has always been done, but I am not sure why we should continue in that direction… “ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” (Robert Allen Zimmerman).

Let’s for a moment ignore the “Well yes” style, which is more imminent in early high-school composition than serious articles, but noticed the bold lines, and especially the artist, slightly better known as Bob Dylan.
Was there any reason to write Dylan’s full, original name? Not really.
Did it serve the article any better, or helped deliver an argument the writer was, or will be making? Hell no.

So, what’s the point? Notice the entire style of the paragraph. The writer is describing an unorthodox method of using Linux. He is assuming people will object to this method. He considers them old-fashioned and closed. He thinks of himself better than those people, and therefore more intelligent. Please observer the choice of words: “Huh? Wait a minute, everyone…”. Those who present the “old” views are talking like they just woke up from sleep. They are not as coherent. Their argument is “everyone’s doing it”. His retort? Just because it’s always been done doesn’t mean it’s the best way of doing it. Out with the old, in with the new. “We’ll change henceforth the old tradition, And spurn the dust to win the prize!” (The Internationale). His use of the Dylan quote, is, in fact, quite apt. Dylan writes that he (his opinions) were “old” (dated, conservative, unwilling to change) back then; but that he’s “younger” (more radical, open to other opinions, adaptive) now. The scope might be a bit over the top, we’re not talking about a new way of feeding the poor, or that Microsoft is not the AntiChrist, but about using a LiveCD/Business Card GNU/Linux Distributions, in the likes of DamnSmall or Puppy (both well recommended, btw).

It’s a novel idea, but not something unheard of. I’ve been using either Puppy or DamnSmall with my laptop for ages now, as it’s 64MB of RAM are not that well adequate to handle a full-featured GNU/Linux distro (Although it did work pretty well with Ubuntu using FluxBox as the Windows Manager, which is the same WM DamnSmall is using). As with everything in the GNU/FOSS world, it’s a question of choice, of being given enough tools to suffice for every job, and to apply to every need. Both LiveCD distros and HardDrive “full” distros have their place and their usage. Using one over the other isn’t more radical, or conservative, it’s simply a choice of the right tools for the right job. And, despite what the writer might be thinking, snubbing your readers isn’t going to change that.

(Edit: Apparently using an outside link in your post title makes it impossible for RSS to link to the right post)

Well, as expected, the gmx.net email has been erbrechen unt enthauptetten.
This means that from now on, all emails will be sent to erez.schatz@bluebottle.com. Hopefully this will work better than my… interesting experience with the German server.