In addition to going out to lunch today at the Lobster Pound, we went apple picking (a yearly tradition). My family and I bought an apple pie, picked our own apples in the rain (a first!), and got to see our friends at Maine-ly Apples in Dixmont. It’s a great place, and they have great apples.
Once we were home, Jemma had fun helping us sort them out. She had to keep one, though, of course.
Maybe CSS isn’t the way to go. I’m at home looking at justinrussell.com/blog in Win IE 6 on Win98, and the modules are in the middle of the page. [sigh]
I’m going to make a couple new skins soon, and they’ll be using tables instead of CSS. I want to at least make one version that’s good for everyone.
(but download Firebird anyway)
It’s about time for a module manager, so I made one.
It’s available through the Info module, or, if you’re lazy and you don’t want to scroll down that much, just go right to it.
If you’re having trouble seeing this page (module failures or anything), please try to hit the Reset button on that page. If it still doesn’t work, e-mail me.
OK, so I got in over my head this week and wasn’t able to finish my CS. Something had to give. I got some done, but one of the bigger parts didn’t get much respect.
Ah, well. I’m gonna have to take some time today and this weekend to think and come up with a better way to do things. Maybe it finally means less procrastination for me.
Continuing my first-and-hopefully-only-for-a-while “what am I doing to myself?” week, I went from 8:30 to 9 yesterday straight. Weee.
Classes: good. Learned stuff. Heard from Mark Woodward, the editor of the Bangor Daily, in mass comm. Good talk.
Went to Ayers Island, a really, really cool place that needs some cleaning up before we do anything with it. I don’t want to know what type of health codes they have to live up to, but between that and fire, it seems like they have a little work to do before they let in the public. I took some pictures and should have them up — get this — when I develop the film. Ha.
Worked more on C programming. Grr. For long time.
Got some more done on the River Valley project we’re doing at ASAP. Almost done.
Met with Jon about the Pool / distributed creativity independent study we’re doing this semester. It should be fun, and I probably get to go to New York (City) in November. Should be fun.
One more thing: everyone visit UMaineWiFi.com. It works great now, and I’m sure it’ll only get better from now on.
Just another typical day lately…
At ASAP I got one of the larger sections of the site we’re working on done. Rock.
I spent a lot of time tonight doing a pretty hard homework assignment for CS. Reminder: this is why I’m not a CS major. Gimme PHP any day.
I read a good article in the Maine Campus (use spicedham@mainesites.net under “Already Registered?” if you don’t want to put in your e-mail).
And last, but certainly not least…
As you might have noticed, I usually try to stay away from talking about politics, religion, abortion, and other topics on this site. Basically, I don’t think one person’s opinions will change anyone’s views; I’d rather stick to the topics I value more for this blog.
That said, FARK picked up a January story today from The Inquirer. The topic? Seems that the same letter to the editor appeared in the exact same wording in a bunch of different newspapers (note, though, that the “a” and “different” ones are the same letter, written to the same paper, a week apart by two different people). Turns out this was generated as a form letter from GOPTeamLeader.com, a Republican National Committee site, a practice called “astroturfing” by those in the biz.
Democrats took this and ran. “Why can’t people take the time to customize the letter if they truly believe what they’re sending?” “That’s not much leadership in itself.”
I don’t particulary agree with that criticism. As a member of the EFF, I’ve sent letters to senators and representatives before using their form mail generator. They even sent it to the proper people. The Internet, once again, allows people to voice their opinions at a higher volume and to more people than ever before, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Don’t stop reading, though - taken at face value, the practice isn’t a good one. Before sending any sort of form letter, the sender should research the topic and attempt to put the letter in their own words. I’d say a form letter is a pat on the back urging support of an issue; a thoughtful letter is the thing that will really change a person’s mind. Blindly using words written by someone else is not only dishonest, but dangerous as well.
Once again, technology allows the use of a great service. Unfortunately, it can once again be used in a good or bad way.
(Note: I believe the EFF’s letter includes a link to their site, giving them proper credit for their writing. The RNC letter offers no such link.)
I had a great trip down to Acadia today. I should be posting some photos soon.
Here’s the thing: Schoodic Point’s a great place, but sometimes it’s hard to climb on the rocks. There are lots of different kinds of rocks there, so I’m used to moving between different colors of rock while climbing over them. Unfortunately for me, it turned out that one of the different colors was actually water. Here’s a brief synopsis of what happened:
Me -> Slip -> Fall -> Go Boom.
No damage done… to me, anyway. I was able to stop the fall by padding it with my right hand, and I fell on my side (one thing about hiking: you have to learn how to fall). After tripping over a root on a trail about a month ago and scraping my knee (that still hasn’t healed… grr), I’ve been pretty careful about where I step. Fortunately, again, though, I wasn’t hurt at all.
The problem? I was holding my digital camera in my right hand. It helped break the fall. After fiddling with it for 10 minutes and looking for a couple of parts on the rocks, I thought I had gotten it fixed; turns out one of the two lenses has probably washed away in the Atlantic by now. It’s the lens that turns the 3x optical zoom into a 10x optical zoom - in other words, about a $150 piece of glass. I can still take wide shots, but they have a nice little vigniette effect around the edges (read: blurry). Ah well. I might look into replacing the lens, but for now I’m considering it pretty much dead.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really disappointed; I estimate I’ve taken somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000 pictures with it (and those are just ones I want to keep… probably 1.5-2x more if you include all pictures). If a film roll costs $4.00 plus $7.99 for processing, that’s $0.44/picture; for 4,000 pictures with my Olympus, it’s $0.13/picture. Sure I would’ve liked to get more out of it, but really, a new digital cam was one of the next things on my list.
I’ve looked around the Web to see how camera prices are doing. I’ve found 2 MP ones for under $100. They usually seem to go for around $125; 3 MP are around $250. For the price that I paid for mine, I can get a 3.2 MP (4 if I’m lucky) of the same camera.
I’ve been thinking for a while about what I’d like to get next, and I think I’ll end up getting two. I’d really like a digital SLR (yeah, like that’s ever going to happen, but you never know, prices are coming down). I’d also like a small camera (1-2 MP) that’s good quality but fairly inexpensive and fairly small so I can carry it wherever I go. I like doing that, and I can’t with the one I have now. I’d go out and buy a $60 1-2 MP one if it was good quality.
Even though the cam was my biggest single purchase ever when I got it a year and a half ago, maybe it’s time to step ahead in my camera plan. I’ll probably end up getting the low-end one I talked about soon, and in the meantime, it’s back to Steve’s Digicams.
You can now see the current Bangor weather and the latest security threats from Symantec as modules on the blog. Enjoy!
Coming soon: new skins and a module manager. They’ll come… sometime… when I have time.
OK, tihs was fnuny the fsirt tmie I raed it, but now lkie so mnay ohter tnhgis on the Itnneret, it’s gttieng old.
