Month: October 2004

Just found this page. I don’t know how I got there… I think I followed a link from Kevin Fox’s site. Anyway, this is quite funny…. And not just any old digital toilet. Japan’s Toto, the world’s largest toilet maker, has taken a bidet and added an impressive array of high-tech wizardry to create the Jasmin Washlet, a remote-control, computerized toilet seat with more functions than your VCR. It is all intended to — how shall we say this? — cut down on paperwork. Forget the reading material. Jasmin will keep you busy setting digital controls that allow you to adjust the temperature of the water, water pressure, and the gender-appropriate direction of the water. … But it’s the buttons Read more…

So, I’m using Opera again for a bit. =:) Actually, I’m using the just-released Opera 7.60 TP2 for Linux, and it is REEEHEEEEHEEEEALLY nice!! I have always been very impressed with the Opera team, but this release is the best one evar. It looks like they’ve finally improved (dare I say “fixed”?) the printing issues in Linux!!! And this release works with gmail now too!! All I can say is… Opera guys, you are doing a FANTASTIC job! Please keep the great work up!!

Took Jason Jr. to the mall last night so he could spend his $20 gift certificate at the toy store (thanks Jenny and Elijah!!!!). On the way out of the mall, we saw the ubiquitous picture-taking booth, so we got our pictures done. =:) I think they look pretty good….. =:) Here’s the prints. In other news, Jason Jr. and I are now entering serious training in preparation for the coming release of X-box Live-enabled Street Fighter in February. Josh, you’d better get ready….

In other non-related-really news, I got an e-mail from the infamous jwz last night. He has patiently outlined all of the issues related to replacing the not-exactly-unugly xscreensaver unlock dialog. It was kind of funny–the e-mail that he sent had 18 recipients, of which I was one. The docu-page that jwz posted read VERY much like all of the questions and answers that I still have in my IMAP mailbox from when I was working on doing this bit of side-coding. =:) It was pretty funny reading it–just about all of the questions I asked jwz and all of the answers he so patiently gave me are on his explanatory page. jwz, for those of you who have been living Read more…

I’ve been hit again in another round of comment-spam, apparently. So, I’ve activated the auto-close-comments plugin that I found the other day. That and I turned off “e-mail me whenever anyone posts a comment” and only left “e-mail me whenever A comment is approved or declined” on. That combined with the Comment Authorization plugin, and I think I just might have this crap beat. Oooh–also, WordPress’s comment moderation absolutely ROCKS!! This is a VERY well-thought-out interface and program!! =:) Awesome job, WordPress guys!! =:) I read somewhere that one option people have chosen is to rename some WordPress files so that the comment-spammers can’t script their ilk, but I’ve decided that it’s not worth it to me to do this. Read more…

“End-users run applications, not operating systems.” A Gartner guy came into my place of business the other day and said that. It’s a pretty profound thing to say, honestly. I think that it accurately describes many/most of the corporate people in the business places that I’ve seen. However, I am not an end-user. Nor are MANY people that I know. That is to say that there are MANY people that DO care about what their computer is doing without their permission. They DO care about things deeper than just what applications they are running. They DO care about having a choice and not having something forced down their throats because someone else decided it was best for them. They DO Read more…

Danged, stinking, stupid comment spammers. There are some induhviduals that are not worth the powder it would take to blow them up, honestly. Some knucklehead, let’s call him “Author : free texas holdem (IP: 193.237.254.13 , gardeenhc.demon.co.uk)”, for the lack of a better name, has decided to comment-spam me. So, a quick google search for “wordpress comment spam” turns up this page, which outlines several things one can do to combat this sort of stupidity. So, I’ve added the Blacklist Comment Spam Plugin, and I think I’m going to add the Comment Moderation Plugin, and the Auto shutoff comments one too. Piece of carp…. [update] I’ve decided to use the blacklist comment spam plugin only for the time being. I Read more…