K-Squared Ramblings

Firefox 1.5

The waiting is over!

Most of the changes since 1.0 have been under the hood. The most noticeable are probably the vastly-improved update system, rearrangeable tabs, a one-button function to clear all private data, and a new preferences setup. There are also improvements to Mac OS X integration (though not as much as one might have hoped for), performance, pop-up blocking, etc. From a web developer’s POV, there’s a lot of neat stuff including partial SVG support and the new <canvas> element from WHATWG (and of course improved HTML/CSS/JavaScript support).

If you’ve already installed Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3, this is exactly the same program. Nothing’s been changed except the name on the installer.

On the annoying side, they’ve temporarily closed Spread Firefox to prep for their video marketing campaign. I hate it when people close down a site to prep for a relaunch. It’s not like a building, where you have to keep people away so you can remodel. You can do all the remodeling on a copy, and just drop it into place when it’s done.

Then there’s the drag-n-drop/save-as bug in Linux, where the first time you try to rearrange tabs or bring something up with a file picker, it decides the GTK theme has changed and hangs while it redraws everything. They’ve fixed it for the long-term, but the fix just went in yesterday, so it’s not in the 1.5 release. I’d guess the Linux distros will apply the patch when they build their own packages, and with luck the fix will show up in 1.5.1.

And on a completely unrelated note, this is the 1,000^th post on this site. *whew*!

Venus Shadows

Venus is apparently so bright this month that it’s casting visible shadows. Now that’s cool! Unfortunately, while I can see Venus perfectly well, there’s way too much light around to see anything resembling a Venusian shadow. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to drive out into the desert by sunset in the next few days.

(via Slashdot)

Retroblogging

On Friday, Katie wanted to look for some craft supplies at a store we’d seen before, called—believe it or not—Yarn Yarn. We’d first noticed it a couple of years ago, and took a picture of the sign for blog purposes.

The store was closed, but on our way back to the car, we spotted the Puzzle Blimp flying around. So here we had two old blog posts coming together.

Except there was one problem. It turns out that when we took pictures of Yarn Yarn and the nearby Holy Computer, we never got around to posting them online. So here, delayed by two and a half years, are those photos, plus a couple of new shots.

The Puzzle Blimp Returns! (As noted last time, it’s Ameriquest’s Soaring Dreams Airship [archive.org].)

Hmm, is this what Robin says when Batman analyzes evidence using the Cray he has in the Batcave?

Maybe it’s just the fact that I see so much spam, but the first thing this name makes me think of isn’t photography.

Christmas is still safe

Salon has a great piece on how there is no left-wing war on Christmas. This “OMG the blue staters want to ban Christmas” tripe was idiotic last year, and it’s back with a vengeance this year.

Honestly, all this fuss over things like “Happy Holidays,” an expression designed to avoid offending people? Remember, in most cases a store clerk has no way of knowing your religion ahead of time. If you happen to be buying a wreath, a stand-up Santa, a pair of decorated red-and-green stockings and a nativity set, then it’s probably a fair guess that you’re celebrating Christmas, but if you’re buying an Xbox, how are they supposed to know?

(I’m also rather partial to the descriptions of the ACLU defending Christians’ religious freedoms! That ought to make some people question their assumptions.)

Get a grip, people! Christmas is not in any danger, and hysterical whining and knee-jerk boycotts aren’t going to accomplish anything except making you look like a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist.

There Goes the Hogwarts Express

Is this what he saved those mean girls from?

Amazonia, Flash and Joss

Yesterday our copy of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Collection—all seven seasons—arrived. (It’s supposedly a limited edition, but I don’t see anything to that effect on our box.) Since we’d been listening to the soundtrack of “Once More With Feeling” on the drive home last night, we immediately put on the episode.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Comic Cavalcade Archives. I’m determined to read the whole thing, but I have to take it in small doses. Partly the target audience is much younger than me, partly the storytelling (and art) I’m used to is much different, and of course partly it’s a very different time. It was the middle of World War II, and half the stories involved fighting Nazi spies or, in some cases, wreaking havoc in Germany itself. (The Ghost Patrol should have been able to take Hitler out on their own, but they seemed more interested in sabotage and practical jokes.) The original setup for Wonder Woman was that she left Paradise Island to help America defeat the Axis!

The Golden-Age Flash hunt continues. I’m now up to three issues of All-Flash with an issue of Flash Comics on its way. So far I’ve discovered that the Turtle didn’t have a costume the first time he appeared. He was just a guy in a green suit who used slowness against a guy who was used to moving fast. Next up: the original Thorn. I’ve bid on a lot of eBay auctions, expecting to win only a fraction of them. Everywhere else I look online, people are selling collector-grade books at much higher prices. I just want to read the original stories, write down who appears, and scan the occasional panel that I’m going to clean up anyway.

Amazon has finally put a discount on the Golden Age Flash Archives vol.2, so I’ve pre-ordered it. While there I looked around on my wish list and noticed that the Mirrormask DVD page (which still shows the wrong date) is recommending, “Buy this DVD with Serenity (Widescreen Edition) DVD ~ Joss Whedon today!” That seems like an appropriate pairing!

Low-Tech Phish

I found a flood of crude phishing attempts in our postmaster account this morning.

How crude?

The hook was, “Simply reply to this email with your online login and password.”

No forms, no imitation websites, no swiped logos, no links of any sort at all. One of them even had multiple recipients visible on the To: line. It’s like a throwback to the early days of spam-n-scam.

The headers were full of things like %RNDDIGIT27, suggesting a broken spam generator, and of course there’s the fact that they actually targeted the postmaster account.

Bacchanalia Supplies

It appears to be an energy drink, which is kind of ironic, considering how closely Bacchus was associated with wine. On the other hand, his followers would work themselves into a frenzy.

A word of advice: If any Maenads drop by with a few cans of this stuff, run. They may look cute, but they’ll tear you apart.

Online Organleggers

Here’s the WTF?!?!?!!!! moment of the day. Actual spam received over the weekend:

Sell Your Organs Online!

Reply to this message if your interested in selling your organs!

Seriously, what the hell?

Forget the fact that selling organs is illegal in the US. And I’m sure mailing them across state lines would be a felony. And you sure as heck can’t list them on eBay. Or Amazon—can you imagine? “15 new and used livers available.” “Customers who purchased kidneys also bought…”

Starbucks Early Holiday

I stopped in a Starbucks after lunch last Wednesday. I confused the barista by ordering a frappucino—he said something about how I was going to freeze my kidneys or something, and when I remarked that I was going to be in the office, he said he was joking with everyone who ordered anything cold. (Local readers may recall that last week was not particularly warm by SoCal standards.)

I also noticed a stack of boxes by the wall, all of them like this:

(For the record, this was November 9.) I assumed they were full of Starbucks’ Christmas and holiday-themed merchandise, but it was the phrasing that got me. The holidays start November 10? That’s kind of early, isn’t it?

I suppose it depends on which holidays we’re talking about. Usually, “The Holidays” refers to the Thanksgiving–Christmas period that also manages to encompass Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Boxing Day. (Wait, no one actually observes Boxing Day? Well, never mind, then.) They could be including Veterans’ Day, but there’s not much in the way of decorations, and the merchandising possibilities don’t tend to overlap much with coffee paraphernalia.

Hmm, here’s an odd thought. In America, we always associate snow with Christmas. Hence the snowflakes printed on the box. But in the southern hemisphere, December is the beginning of summer. I suspect Christmas songs like “Winter Wonderland” don’t get much play in Australia.

Teller About a Dolphin

Mark Evanier’s review of Penn and Teller: Off the Deep End reminded me of two things: First, I forgot to watch the show. Secondly, on Thursday evening I caught an interesting commentary on the radio: Alien Encounters: Dolphins and a Magician. And no, it’s not Penn sounding off—it’s Teller. Yes, the guy who (almost) never talks on camera. While preparing for the underwater magic show, he turned around and came face to face with a dolphin, and… well, it’s probably best if you let him tell the story.

Her Factory

The Leather Factory sign was missing a few letters one night:

So whose factory is it, exactly? She Who Must Be Obeyed? Can guys even buy stuff there?

When Angels Fall

Chadwick H. Saxelid reviews the relaunched Fallen Angel book, which should be out sometime next month. There was a preview a couple of months ago, with just the first few pages of J.D. Woodward’s artwork, and it was stunning.

The series never sold well enough for DC, but the numbers were good for an indie book—and it was creator-owned. Peter David shopped it around a bit, and IDW offered Lee, Juris and Bete Noire a new home. The dark fantasy setting should fit in quite well there.

At the risk of repeating myself: I am so looking forward to this!

(via Peterdavid.net)

Infinite Crisis as Metafiction

I read Infinite Crisis #2 today, and everything—including DC’s turn toward the dark over the past few years—is starting to make sense. Infinite Crisis isn’t just following up on plotlines from Crisis on Infinite Earths, it’s actually making a statement about the past 20 years of comics.

Potential spoilers ahead! Read the rest of this entry »

Uh, that’s a negative

The Los Angeles Times website had an interesting way of describing the results of yesterday’s state election:

It’s hard to believe that all eight propositions failed. Even the four Orange County measures failed. Every item on the ballot in our district was rejected!

On a related note, I still don’t like the voting machines we have in OC. The interface is cumbersome and the display is godawful slow. The controls consist of a dial, which moves the cursor, and a button, which selects the current item.

The display is so slow you can watch it redrawing the title and summary of a ballot item when it highlights it. First the rectangle turns blue, then it redraws the text, line by line, in white. It’s like watching print preview in Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS on a 386. You just don’t see that kind of performance on modern computers unless they’re massively bogged down.

As for trying to use the machine, it’s kind of like entering your name in the high score list on an arcade video game with only a trackball and a fire button. I’m sure they chose it for durability reasons—a touch screen would be much more usable, but much easier to break—and went with the low-powered processor to keep the costs down.

I actually liked the punchcards we had before. It was so much more satisfying to slam down that lever.

Holy Ozone!

A recent post on What Were They Thinking? reminded me of a panel from the original Teen Titans series. In it, Robin and Wonder Girl have just been gassed and tossed out of an airplane, waking up in mid-air.

Yes, Robin once uttered the words, “Holy ozone!” And, like the “holey rusted metal,” the words proved accurate in an entirely different way. This was Teen Titans #7 (1967), the issue which introduced the Mad Mod. (Think of him as Austin Powers as a villain.)

Who knew comics could be so prophetic?

Serenity DVD!

Looks like the Serenity DVD will be out on December 20. Looks like cool stuff, even if the cover art looks… manipulated. (Apparently, that’s supposed to be River above the title.)

(via Cognitive Dissonance)

And speaking of River, I’m not entirely sure why Summer Glau reportedly “admitted to being a bit freaked out at first by her first comics convention” at Wizard World this past weekend, since she’s been to the last two San Diego Comic Cons for Serenity panels. Maybe the San Diego deals were just showing up for the panels, and not the entire convention?

Mandriva: Dual Upgrade

I just updated a system running Mandriva Linux 2006 and in the release notes I discovered that not only will it upgrade a Mandrake system, but it can now upgrade a Conectiva system. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that both used RPM as their package format/database, but I really had the impression that Mandriva was primarily Mandrake with some extra stuff from Conectiva. It’s nice to see that there really is a true upgrade path for both distributions.

Vote!

If you live in California and you’re a registered voter: vote!

If you like the initiatives on the ballot, vote them in.

If you don’t like them, vote them out.

If you’re disgusted with the way the initiative process has been subverted by the very political machines and special interest groups it was supposed to circumvent, protest it by voting them down, not by abstaining.

Finding an Inn

How often do you get to revisit an old in-joke? Six years ago, Katie and I were driving past the Inn-N-Out by UCI and noticed the sign was only half-lit. Katie exclaimed:

It’s an inn! The out is out on In-N-Out!

Last Friday we went back to UCI for a play and had dinner at the Indian restaurant across the street. As we left the parking lot, we saw this:

Ah, nostalgia!

B5 Scripts

JMS’ new site, Babylon5Scripts.com is getting more interesting all the time. Or rather, what he’s selling through the site. It started out as a 15-volume set of all of JMS’ Babylon 5 scripts, but it’s turned into, in Straczynski’s words, the definitive “Making of B5,” complete with production notes, backstage photos, introductions to each episode, etc.

Unfortunately all the really cool stuff is going into volume 15, which is only going to be available to people who order all of the first 14 volumes. A treatment of the 5-year arc with Sinclair in it all the way, alternate episodes, etc.

I’ve ordered Volume 1. Apparently they underestimated demand—people always underestimate demand for B5—because CafePress sent out a notice that “due to overwhelming popularity, your order for the Babylon 5 Script has been delayed. Our production team is working diligently to ensure that the books are printed as quickly as possible.”

The Moon and Venus, sitting in a tree

This view of the Moon and Venus was taken from our apartment balcony earlier this evening.

I also took a picture yesterday, from the top of a parking structure near John Wayne Airport (we went to a show at UCI later that evening.) You can see the red trail an airplane left as it crossed the frame:

Having seen that pairing last night, I knew I had to be ready to catch it today! I figured the Moon would be a lot closer, but I hadn’t expected it to actually pass Venus tonight. It really gives you an idea of how far the Moon moves in 24 hours. (or, in this case, roughly 23 hours, since yesterday’s picture was taken at 6:00 and today’s was taken at 5:10).

To be honest, I wasn’t actually certain it was Venus. It was my first thought, because of the brightness and the color, but I kept thinking it was too far from the sun. I kept trying to convince myself it was Jupiter or maybe Saturn (it wasn’t red enough for Mars, and besides, I’d seen Mars on the other side of the sky the night before). When I looked it up and realized it was Venus, I started remembering my days in high school when I would walk to school for a 7:00am “zero period” class. In winter it would sometimes be just dark enough when I left to see the planets and the brightest stars. I would keep my eye on Venus as the sky brightened, trying to see how late I could still see it by knowing exactly where to look.

(P.S. sorry for the repeated updates—I accidentally hit “Publish” instead of “Save and Continue”)

Playing with your food

You know how some restaurants always give you a pickle with their sandwiches? Well, at Ruby’s today I finished, picked up the toothpick flag that had been stuck in the hamburger, turned the pickle over and planted the flag, declaring it to be a boat. Katie immediately took her pickle and a leftover onion slice and turned it into an outrigger. A bit more manipulation, plus a napkin for a sail, and it became a catamaran.

Our waiter did a double-take when he picked up the plate, then set it down on the counter. We like to think it was so the other waiters could see it.

Lewis on Libby

Over the last few days, I’ve heard more than one reporter at NPR slip up and refer to Lewis Libby (is it just me, or have people stopped calling him “Scooter” since the indictment?) as Libby Lewis. (On a side note, that name always makes me think of Libby Lawrence.) Well, I think they can be excused given that they work with a reporter by that name! Add in the fact that she’s reporting on the Plame case, and you can see the confusion…

This morning I caught Morning Edition’s listener comments segment, and I’m not the only one who noticed. They signed off as “Edition Morning.”

Gods and Comics

I was thinking about a discussion on last month’s Flash #226 and got to thinking about the way religion figures into mainstream comic books. Not the way religious characters are portrayed, but the way the fictional world works. I’m not familiar enough with Marvel (though I can make some guesses based on the presence of Thor), but DC seems to have an “anything goes” cosmology: current scientific theory coexists with the Christian God, Heaven and Hell, with gods and other supernatural beings from various mythologies—some of them made up, like the Lords of Order and Chaos—occupying their own corners of the universe.

That’s probably what you want for a long-term, open-ended shared universe, because it gives you the most opportunities for stories. Want to write about an alien race that lived billions of years ago, or evolved from cats? Check. Have a fallen angel join the Justice League? Check. Tie Wonder Woman’s origin directly to the Greek gods? Check. Use made-up alien gods to explain the Greco-Roman split? Check. Power up half your villains and a handful of heroes as they sell their souls to a devil? Check. Pit the spirit of God’s wrath against a 50,000-year-old immortal ex-caveman? Check. Send some characters to Heaven or Hell, but have others destined to be reincarnated over and over again? Check. Observe the hand of God at the moment of the big bang? Check.

There are a couple of limits. DC seems to avoid ascribing a particular religion or denomination to any of their A-list characters, probably so that readers can just assume it’s their own (kind of like setting a story in “Anytown, USA”). And they avoid direct portrayals of God or Jesus, probably for the same reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Acid2 Timeline

• April 13, 2005: Acid2 test announced by WaSP.
• April 27, 2005: Internal builds of Safari pass it.
• May 22, 2005: Public beta of iCab passes (but no one else notices for a week).
• June 5, 2005: Development builds of Konqueror pass.
• October 31, 2005: Safari 2.0.2 becomes the first non-beta web browser to pass the Acid2 test.
• Update: November 29, 2005: Konqueror 3.5 is the second released browser to pass.
• Update: March 10, 2006: Development builds of Opera pass.
• Update: June 20, 2006: Opera 9 passes
• Update: December 9, 2006: Development builds of Firefox 3 pass
• Update: December 19, 2007: Development builds of Internet Explorer 8 pass

So who’s next? Well, Opera 9 beta 1 is very close—there’s a pair of red squares that should be black, but that’s it. Neither IE7 nor Firefox 1.5 will have much in the way of Acid2-related fixes, though the trunk builds of Firefox show improvement, so 2.0 has a chance 3.0 might make it will pass (since 2.0 will use the same engine as 1.5).

Flu Fighters

According to Marketplace, critics of President Bush’s flu pandemic preparedness proposal contend that it’s too focused on vaccines and antiviral drugs, and that the money would be more effectively used by monitoring outbreaks and trying to stamp out bird flu in the third world.

In other words, they say we should take the fight to the flu abroad so we don’t have to fight it at home. Why does that sound familiar?