Once Again – Ben is Right
I did laugh. You will too.
Dude, I'm getting a Mac.. You will laugh at this. [Ben's Blog]
What is a Weblog?
Thanks to Dave Winer, I stumbled on a new blog find today – Halley's Comment. Halley has a great essay today on what you can say the next time somone asks “Why do you write about that on your web site?”. Just point them to this great article on
Halley's Comment.
I'm Starting Early
The holidays are upon us. While we jumped the gun a bit and put up the tree over the weekend, I couldn't help to notice that many other people were doing the same. Forget about the retail stores and their incessant need to squeeze in a few extra days of Christmas spending. I think that people, in general, are ready for the holidays.
I keep telling myself to take time out for Thanksgiving. Honestly, what I'm most thankful for is the Christmas season. It has been such a difficult year for so many people, I can't help but to think that turning our attention towards each other might help to get our minds off of our own difficult lives.
This morning, I stumbled out of my bedroom just before 6 and wandered towards the kitchen for a healthy dose of OJ. On the way, I was caught dead in my tracks by the brilliant illumination of our glowing Christmas tree. For a brief second, I was 6 again and it was Christmas morning. The wonderment of the Christmas season, the incredible birth of Jesus, and the joy felt by millions upon millions of people around the world, in that single day, unites us all.
Today, I'm starting early. I'm ready for Christmas. iTunes is cranking out Otis Redding's “White Christmas.” I bought firewood yesterday and tonight it might actually be cold enough to burn it. Thursday we will gather around our 16 pound Butterball, surrounded by our closest family and friends, and be thankful of the pilgrims and indians we learned about in American History. However, immediately following our Thanksgiving feast, I'm getting right back to Christmas.
The world is a difficult place – no matter where you live. This Christmas season, may you all find your childhood joy and amazement of the miracle of Christmas and the love that fills even the darkest of hearts. God Bless Us — Everyone.
Great Interviews
“John” has found a couple of must-read interviews. My favorite was the one from the V.P. of Development at Amazon. I highly recommend it.
Wanna put words in George W's Mouth?
http://www.lemonbovril.co.uk/bushspeech/
You know, you have to appreciate the effort and time that someone put into this. Personally, I'm all for George W., but this was just too good not to share. – andy
Thanks in part to a nudge from Mark Pilgrim, and in part to a smart little PHP class (long since disowned by its author) [see below], the documents on this site are now served gzip compressed (at sizes reduced as much as 75%) to browsers which can handle such data, which I believe is most, though I’m not sure, but I’m fairly sure that browsers which cannot handle such data are sent a plain uncompressed file. I would ask for reports of decompression errors, but if there were any decompression errors the request wouldn’t be visible; such is the nature of compression. If you can read this it works.
UPDATE: Anyone with a recent version of PHP (4.1+) running on their server can easily take advantage of this. Benefits are greatly reduced bandwidth consumption and a much speedier site, especially for readers using modems. Simply place the following snippet at the very first line of PHP-aware web pages, before :
Test here. Potential problems and solutions:
- If no compression is happening and you can see the code snippet when you View Source on your page, this means the page is not PHP-aware. Create a text file in your root directory called
.htaccessand paste the following inside it:AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm - If no compression is happening and you can’t see the code snippet when you View Source, chances are your server’s version of PHP was compiled without the gzip library. Confirm this with your server admin.
- If you get the error message
"output handler 'ob_gzhandler' cannot be used twice", your pages are already being compressed. Felicitations.
[Textism]
Top 3 Signs It's Going to be a Really Bad Day.
3. You dreamed you ate a huge marshmallow and when you woke up your pillow was gone.
2. Last night you prank called your boss. This morning, he *69ed you.
1. Last night you told your wife you wanted breakfast in bed. This morning she poured a bowl of Rice Crispies on your head.
Plan B Interview – The Man Behind the Plan
I've been hooked on reading Plan B for quite some time. In addition, I've been looking for new ways to practice my writing skills. In my quest for wanting to know more about Plan B, I thought I'd take a stab at an interview of Diego Doval, the author of Plan B, with the hope that I might get a glimpse of the future storyline. Diego was nice enough to agree to work with me in my efforts. Here are the results of my first interview.
SpamFire is Goooooooooood
I've been a registered user of SpamFire for over a week now. It continues to work well for multiple accounts and is getting smarter. It misses about 1-2 a day, but is a far cry from the 10-20 per day that Apple Mail would miss. Together, the two programs keep my inbox 99% free from spam. I'm finally free from the 100+ per day spams that cluttered my inbox and annoyed me to no end.
Freedom is such a good thing.
Vote Willie for Dumbledore
Well, thanks to HBO, I finally saw Harry Potter last night. I kept hearing how great it was, but I never had a chance to see more than the first 20 minutes of it. I have to admit, it was a good movie. (hey, I'm an easy sell) Great effects and a good story line. There were a few “oh yeah right,this is a movie” moments, but other than that, it was good. The wife and I are looking forward to the next one.
Here's another question. Now that Richard Harris has gone to Hollywood Heaven, who will be replacing Albus Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter? From the Statesman, here's my vote.
