This is actually far harder than it looks. I got one right, and that was just from guessing. But I’ve seen stupid color names at the home improvement places for various paint colors. Can you guess, by the stupid color name, what color it actually is?
Month: June 2003
The Emoticon to RealLife Conversion Manual
I’ll just quote the site for this one: “It has become quite clear to me in recent times that people are having trouble distinguishing RealLife and the internet. So we here at SuperVeggie.com say: “Why fight this confusion? Let’s bring our internet life into the RealWorld!” So here, brought to you by SuperVeggie.com, is the official Emoticon -> RealLife Conversion Manual.” Basically, the site takes Emoticons such as :(, :\, and 😛 and makes pictures associated with them. The guy’s just got a funny face.
Any DSL/Networking Gurus out there?
OK, I have about had it up to here with my ActionTec 1520 not playing nice with my Watchguard SOHO firewall. Our new DSL connection requires PPPoA to get the static IP address that has been assigned to our office here. All I want to do is make this thing be absolutely transparent and just pass EVERYTHING it gets directly to the firewall where it can then get routed around to the correct servers (as we run Web servers, Terminal servers, as well as a couple other ports I need to have open and routed). But this stupid modem does NOT want to play nice with my stupid firewall. I’ve tried disabling NAT. I’ve tried using the transparent bridge setting. I’ve tried (though maybe I’m not doing it right) a static route from ActionTec to the firewall, no luck. I’ve tried putting the firewall in a DMZ, no luck. The ActionTec has firewall features, but they don’t work at all, either, so I’m not about to put the dozen ports into the modem and hope it works (already tried that).
I’ve spent the last 6 hours kicking the sh!t out of this thing getting nowhere (and this is after the various other days I’ve spent trying, too). My DSL provider has been less than helpful, as well. They can’t seem to find their Tech guy, and when I told them that they were no good to me, they said “Well you’re no good to me, either!” How’s that for customer service? If they weren’t the only broadband providers around these rural parts of Central Oregon, I’d tell them to to f**k off.
Does ANYBODY have any idea what I might be missing? Anybody ever dealt with this modem/firewall and gotten it to work? Anybody? Bueller?
I need a drink…OK, I don’t drink, but maybe I should start… .
Shadowbane Journal #2
I promised Jake I’d keep these brief and infrequent.
Kaytana has reached level 46 now. Much has happened. The Phalanx sub’d under the Death Head Legion nation, which made me mad cuz this character is supposed to be anti DHL.
So I mooched more levels and gold off the guild, and provided battle intelligence to the enemy when I could.
Until last night, when I logged on at 9:30pm and found 30+ members of ‘the enemy nation’ ripping down our town walls. Ever the opportunist, Kaytana quickly flipped sides, as this was the nation I really wanted to be under anyhow.
—
The Centaur race is unlocked now (now in my second paid month)..so I made a huntress to toy with. However, Star Wars Galaxies hits shelves next Thursday, so I’ll maintain my shadowbane account thru some of July, and give SWG a try. All my buddies on SB have left due to the political struggles, and plan to play SWG.
Louisiana politicos vote 100-0 to outlaw public sex
Bummer…I was already making plans for a trip down south. Full Story.
Now have this blog read to you!
Got this link via Chris Pirillo’s site. If you notice, next to where it says “Trackback” for each entry on my site, you have a bit of text that says “Read It To Me.” Click on that to get a WAV file of the text in the entry, read by the AT&T Research Labs Text to Speech Converter. The original site had a bit of code there that displayed a button to pull it off, but I couldn’t stand having a button in my entries, so I hacked it a bit to write a text link. Here’s what I did:
In my <MTEntries> tag, I put the following:
<FORM METHOD="post" NAME="demoForm<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>" ACTION="http://morrissey.naturalvoices.com/tts/cgi-bin/nph-talk"><input type="hidden" name="txt" value="<$MTEntryBody words="49" remove_html="1"$>"><input type="hidden" name="voice" VALUE="crystal"><input type="hidden" name="rate" VALUE="8000"></FORM>
I limited the MTEntryBody length to 49 because the converter chokes on more than that, so longer entries will get cut off.
Then, my bit of text to display the link looks like so:
<a name="SpeakButton" href="javascript: document.demoForm<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>.submit();">Read It To Me</a>
This link does not have to be within the <FORM> tag to work properly, just as long as it's in the same <MTEntries> tag.
I've also put the MTEntryID in the form name and in the JavaScript call to it, otherwise you'll have a pile of forms on each page that all have the same name -- and JavaScript doesn't like that.
What do you think? I know it's a stupid feature, but so what? 😉
I’m so glad she bought a Dell
Otherwise, she’d be my problem (as I was going to build them a computer).
I just had a co-worker give me a buzz here at work. It’s her day off. She just got a Dell as a gift from her in-laws. This was (basically) the conversation:
Girl: Hey, quick question. You busy?
Me: I’ve got a minute. What’s up?
Girl: Well, I’m setting up my Dell here, and I have all these CDs. They say “System Restore,” “Driver and Utilities CD,” and a couple others. Do I need to keep these?
Me: Of course you do!
Girl: But they say they’ve been preinstalled. Why do I need to keep them?
Me: What happens if they bonkers and you have to reinstall them, and you’ve thrown away the disks?
Girl: I’ll call Dell.
Me: And you know what they’d have you do? Get your disk, and reinstall the software. And if you don’t have it, Dell with charge you to have new copies sent.
Girl: [silence]…Well, what about these other ones for Word Perfect, PowerDVD, and Encyclopedia Britanica. Do I need to install these?
Me: I’m willing to bet that they’re already installed.
Girl: Where would I find them?
Me: [shaking my head] On the start menu.
Girl: Oh…OK. Do I need to keep these CDs?
Me: Yes.
Girl: All of them?
Me: Yes, every single one of them.
I should’ve told her to chuck them, just so the Dell guys can think it as funny as I did. I don’t envy those Dell guys at all. While I will build and sell computers to some people, I generally won’t to the folks that are going to be more work than they’re worth.
NES’s Super Mario Brothers 3 coming to Gameboy Advance
Actually, it’s all called Super Mario Advance 4, but it’s actually (for all intents and purposes) Super Mario Brothers 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System ported to GBA. This was the game that killed most of my younger days. I still have my old Nintendo Power strategy guide for the game. It’s beaten up, but it’s there, right next to my equally beat up guide for the original Final Fantasy for NES. Full story, with screenshots..
Texas, the tobacco company
From Joke A Day: The state of Texas has executed yet another inmate. But unforeseen legal issues have arisen. The state has killed so many people this year, it must now register as a tobacco company.
A new CSS color model
If you have ever done any major Photoshop or desktop publishing work, you know that adjusting the hue, saturation and lightness (HSL) values of colors is a quick and easy way to adjust colors, especially if you’re looking to adjust a color to make it a slightly different shade. Coming, in CSS3 is a whole new color model that will allow HSL colors to be used online. Why is this nice? The advantage of HSL over the current RGB model is that it is far more intuitive: you can guess at the colors you want, and then tweak. It is also easier to create sets of matching colors (by keeping the hue the same and varying the lightness/darkness, and saturation). Here’s an article that discusses it a bit more.