Obligatory “Woot!”

The Sox did it! On to the World Series! Congratulations to you diehard Boston fans out there!

In celebration, I gave Kat and Kate some wet food...a whole can each!

DHTML Lemmings

I was browsing shauninman.com, which is a really nice personal-yet-slick site, and came across a couple good links. The inspiring one, other than Shaun's site in itself, is a version of Lemmings written entirely in Javascript. Not Java. Javascript.

I'm not sure I really believe it. Still, Lemmings is a classic game...go play!

Audrey

This is my sister's cat, and we all hang out on the holidays. When my sister is around, Audrey is shy and friendly. When she's not around, Audrey hides from me. When Audrey stayed with me for a week, I had to use a motion-sensitive webcam to verify that she was indeed eating and healthy. But she's still a good cat despite that.

Big Brother Wants Cheap Gas!

Deepak over at Active Edge forwarded me this online report for where to find the cheapest gas in New Hampshire on any given day. Worth a look, fellow Granite Staters!

Abby & Knock

Lao and Harlan's adorable Abyssinians stayed over a couple times in 2000 or 2001. Thus began my inching toward the idea of having my own cats; I got a brother and sister cat because it was pretty clear that they kept each other company very well. They are amazing cats, and their coloring matches the couch so well...

Flash Projector Tools

Today I was looking into tools for stand-alone Flash applications. I'm dumping the notes here... will clean them up later with my thoughts:

SWF Tools PROJECTOR Tools listing http://www.swftools.com/tools-category.php?cat=290

http://www.multidmedia.com/ Flash Studio PRO v2 $250 Crossplatform (through extra-cost plugin), use fscommands

http://www.northcode.com SWF Studio V2 $139 Crossplatform, uses fscommands

http://www.swfkit.com SWFKit Pro $299 http://www.swfkit.com/swfkit/doc/pro_manual/index.html However, this doesn't look like it's native code

http://www.screentime.com mProjector $299 Claims to use http://www.screentime.com/software/mprojector/docs/mWindow18.html

SWF STudio V2 itself is fairly cheap, and explicitly says it supports Z-order. And it's made in america!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/hta/hta_node_entry.asp

Gotchyas: http://www.martijndevisser.com/archives/000029.php http://www.sti-media.com/blog/archives/2004_08.html http://www.razorberry.com/blog/archives/2004/08/25/swf-2-exe-applications/#more-6 http://flashguru.co.uk/pipermail/extendflash_flashguru.co.uk/20040730/001156.html

Interesting: http://flashguru.co.uk/pipermail/extendflash_flashguru.co.uk/20040730/001156.html

James

James, sadly, passed away late this year of old age and other complications. He was an awesome cat. When I was crashing in Cambridge at Alen's place, his cat kept me company while I worked.

This picture is from when James stayed with me years later in New Hampshire, while his owner was away on a trip. The camera was a Canon A50 with a pretty wide-angle lens, so James' face looks pointier than it really is.

Movie Props from Master Replicas

I thought I had outgrown such things, but the tasty goods on Master Replicas' Site had me salivating. Who wouldn't want a durable metal Star Trek Communicator (depicted) with built in sound effects? Or their own Star Wars thermal detonator, to help bring negotiations to a tidy conclusion? Some items have interactive simulations too! The short notes on each item are an interesting read also, detailing the origin of the original props and how they were interpreted to create the final replica.

These things aren't cheap at several hundred dollars a pop, but the reviews on the net seem to hold Master Replica in hard regard. We salute you, Master Replicas!

Tommy

Tommy is a Russian Blue, attached to my high school buddy Mark out in Irvine, California. I first met Tommy (who's named for a character in a play) in Boston when Mark was going to law school. He's an endearing-yet-odd cat that chirp-squeaks when you pick him up. I think the chirp means, "You have 3 seconds to put me back on the floor before you are quite dead". So far, I have not seen the time limit tested.

WordPress Install Practice

Just going through the famous WordPress 5-minute install to see what I need to do to do this from scratch on my server, since a few of my friends have expressed interest.

Installation 1. copy files to wp/ directory 2. create db and usernames via db admin control panel 2. copy .htaccess file with php-cgiwrap setup to root directory 3. go to http://site/wp-admin/install.php 4. on step 2 of the install, change http:/site/wp to http://site, because we're going to move the index file 5. note the admin password 6. login as admin 7. add user, bump to highest level 8. Logout

Now, set up Wordpress Options 1. Options->Reading Show 5 posts paged. Optionally, enable GZIP if I'm not going to be using the staticize plugin. 2. Options->Discussion 3. Options->Misc Upload Directory (needed by LZIL)

Next edit various files: 1. move the index.php out of the wp directory (see instructions on moving the index.php file if you've never done this before) 2. edit line 3 to point to wp directory

Create Fixed Width version of index.php 1. add center div that wraps content div 2. add right div that wraps menu div 2. copy wp-layout.css over

Update Plugins 1. Markdown 2. LZIL (setup the upload directory paths correctly)

That should do it. I can genericize the template now and deploy variations on this much quicker now.