Rubenerd

I get some inbound links from the most unlikely of places. This time it's from a blog called Fire Ron Guenther which appears to be about one Illinois resident's desire to end the employment of someone called Ron Guenther.

This is a blog dedicated to informing folks about University of Illinois Athletic Director Ron Guenther and how he has screwed up Fighting Illini athletics. This is especially true regarding football during his tenure. If you live in East Central Illinois and you blindly believe Ron Guenther is the greatest thing to happen to Fighting Illini athletics, don’t read this blog! If you care about the Fighting Illini and want to see a winning athletics program, welcome!

That has to be the longest blog tagline I've ever read from Illinois. Come to think of it, that has to be the longest blog tagline I've ever read, except for that blog that had that really long tagline.

Most people also append a short profile about themselves to blogs, something along the lines of "My name is XYZ and I enjoy eating ice cream with barbecue sauce." Not to be outdone:

About Me: I am not from East Central Illinois, so I am a realist and not a brownnoser of the DIA. I am tired of bad Illinois football and I demand change. Change starts at the top. Ron Guenther must go.

Why can't I write taglines and personal profiles like that?

The post in question

Assistant Football Coach Leaves Before Coaching A Game! Look, we know Ron Zook is not a genius at football strategy….but this is further proof of how little he is respected

That Ron Zook character doesn't seem to be a genius at avoiding hotlinking images from other sites either. Say, for example, hotlinking images from my site without even a citation. This despite being named after a Singaporean night club that I never went to because I was uncool before uncool was cool. Wait, Ron Zook wouldn't have written that post. Nevermind.

I haven't disabled hotlinking here because then images don't come through on blog aggregators, butI do have a few Apache rules to block some sites. I'm all for non profits and good causes though, so Fire Ron Guenther will get a pass. Apparently its about one Illinois resident's desire to end the employment of someone called Ron Guenther.

Thanks to RedKid.Net for their sign generator :).

So it looks as though Perl 6 might be coming soon… again!

#!/usr/bin/env perl -wT
use strict;
&sayWooHoo("again");
sub sayWooHoo {
    print ("Hey, 6 might be coming soon, $_[0]!");
}

My first job out of high school was writing Perl programs. Was the happiest time of my life, because university hadn't crushed my spirit yet. Perl is awesome. CPAN is awesome! And don't believe what they say, it is possible to write Perl programs that you and others can understand later, provided you follow the conventions :).

Steve Ballmer has commented on the success of the iPad, calling it an "interesting product", only to then defend his company's own record by stating they'd been "selling Windows on tablet computers for years".

He also said the iPhone had "no chance" of gaining significant market share in 2007. He bought and ruined Danger (should have stuck with NetBSD). He trumpeted the Courier as a tangible competitor even though it never got past the concept video stage. He abandoned the Kin project almost as soon as the phones went to market. The Zune had a "squirt" feature and came in brown!

Forgive me if I don't take his words very seriously, especially in the mobile space.

Photo of Steve Ballmer by Martin Olsson on Wikimedia Commons.

I haven't featured a Whole Wheat Radio artist for a few weeks, so here's my favourite for today! From their WWR artist page:

Dan McElrath is a graduate of the Furman University School of Music. He has performed for the past 30 years in venues across America covering a wide range of musical styles from gospel to contemporary jazz. Recently The Dan Mac Quintet has recorded CD’s with vocalist Katie Strock (DanKa-2008), Vonnie Kaufman (So Nice-2008) and Cat Coward (Out of the Bag-2007) all of which can be found on iTunes. The band has just completed its first all original instrumental jazz CD of Alaskan themed jazz entitled "Ajazzkaâ".

I heard my first song of theirs a few days ago. It started as a classical rendition of Beethoven's Für Elise, only to morph into an upbeat jazzy tune of epic awesomeness. I'm using all the technical music jargen, you see.

Unfortunately they're not on CDBaby which; if you'll pardon the crappy pun; is a crying shame.

#96: When I was a kid, I called him Carlos Sultana.

#97: My parents never used to correct me when I called him Carlos Sultana. Apparently they found it amusing.

Awesome photo courtesy of Paul Reed Smith Guitars. And for once, a Fun Fact here is true. Well, not to suggest I was full of crap when I wrote the others. For one, I type them. Gracias.

Firefox may still be the best browser to use for its security and privacy extensions, but if you have Chrome or Safari user interface envy you can use the userChrome.css file to pare down the UI to something a bit more spiffy.

The userChrome.css file

The first step is to access the chrome folder in your Firefox profile folder. If you don't know where yours is, Henrik Gemal has a great page listing the different profile folder locations for Mac, *nix and Windows.

In the chrome folder there's a userChrome-example.css file. Copy it and rename it to userChrome.css. This is the file we'll be editing in a plain text editor to tweak the Firefox UI.

Editing the file

When you open the file you'll notice a bunch of commented lines which you can change if you like, and a @namespace declaration which is mandatory. Personally, I just leave everything in the file alone and start adding my own statements at the end.

This is what I have in my file. My miopic short sightedness means I can define a smaller UI font to save space on toolbars:

/* make primary UI font more compact */
*
{
 font-size:10px !important;
}

I'm a huge fan of Safari's merged reload/stop button; it makes sense not having both because pages don't ever need to simultaneously reloaded and stopped. The only caveat is the stop button must be placed before the reload button on the toolbar before trying this.

/* merge stop and reload buttons
   stop must be placed before reload to work */
#stop-button[disabled="true"],
#stop-button:not([disabled]) + #reload-button
{
 display:none !important;
}

Now it just comes down to hiding things I really don't need. It may seem silly hiding lots of little things, but they add up to lots of extra space.

/* hide (in this order):
   1. url box dropdown arrow
   2. url box / search box resize splitter
   3. star (bookmark) button
   4. go button
   5. forward-back dropdown button
   6. new tab button */
#urlbar .autocomplete-history-dropmarker,
#urlbar-search-splitter,
#star-button,
#go-button,
#back-forward-dropmarker,
.tabs-newtab-button
{
 display: none !important;
}

Finally, I never understood why the bac, forward, reload and stop buttons were also placed in the page right click menu, so now I can get rid of them!

/* never saw reason for having go/stop/back buttons
   in the context (right click) menu */
#context-back,
#context-forward,
#context-reload,
#context-stop,
#context-sep-stop
{
 display: none !important;
}

The end notes and stuff

Of course this is only scratching the surface of what you can do with userChrome.css. If you browse the Mozilla documentation you'll find that pretty much every UI element has a handle you can reference in CSS and modify (or hide!).

I also fragently cheated in my screenshot. You can merge the URL bar and search bar like Chrome has it with the Onmibar extension. The clean look comes from Camifox, a theme that borrows elements from the really nice Camino browser of which I'm still quite fond.

Useful pages and stuff

• Henrik Gemal’s page showing where Firefox Profiles are
• Mozilla’s official page on customising software with CSS
• Mozilla’s complete list of userChrome.css element names/IDs

With their launch of new iMacs and Mac Pros yesterday, Apple are perhaps copping the most flack for discontinuing the 24 and 30 inch Cinema Displays. Presented for your consideration are my thoughts, interspersed with plenty of pointless nostalgia. Is that how you spell "interspersed"? Doesn't look right.

Anecdotal nostalgia

For several years my primary machine was a PowerMac G5. It was an amazing machine for compiling huge projects, compressing archives and video, and when it got hot it sounded as if a fighter jet was landing on my desk. It was huge, it was beautiful, it looked like a machine someone would use to get things done. But I digress.

Along with the Mac mini, the PowerMac (and now the Mac Pro) are the only Apple computers that didn't/don't come with displays, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who baulked at the price when I saw the Cinema Displays displayed (heh) as an optional extra for use with my new PowerMac. Next thing I did was go down to Funan Centre and pick up a Samsung display for 1/10th the price.

Now it might seem silly that a person buying a professional computer would go out and buy a consumer display to use with it, but the great thing about the PowerMac line was you could bring your own third party stuff to the party. Its why people went with them instead of getting an iMac. Even most professional AV users I read on newsgroups opted for third party displays, though they no doubt splurged a bit more on them than I did to buy mine.

As a pointless aside, that Samsung display still works. We have it attached to our media server and scanner machine. Last Windows box in the house, go figure.

Don’t attempt jokes before breakfast

The problem for Apple is displays are now so cheap and the profits so razor thin people are more likely to cut themselves on that than any of the styling of the display itself (that was supposed to be a joke, but it went off the rails). Apple uses IPS panels in their displays, but people don't see that when they're comparing prices, they just see inches and price. There's another joke there, but I'll leave that for you to imagine.

Still, I can see why some people would be disappointed. My aging MacBook Pro still has a great screen built in, and because it's the older generation it has a florescent tube as the backlight instead of LEDs which their new display and current MacBooks use. It sucks (relatively speaking) for battery life, but I find I can use it for much longer periods without getting eyestrain. The same goes for the 30 inch Cinema Display, probably, if I could have afforded one.

The other issue is that Apple's lone display — the 27 inch — is just as wide in resolution, but you lose 200 pixels down. For an OS that keeps the menubar permanently locked to the top of the display, plus with all the toolbars in pro apps, that's not an insignificant loss of screen real estate.

I suppose this is another of those decisions that makes bidness sense for Apple, but will ruffle plenty of people's feathers. I wish I could have afforded a cool Apple 30 inch display that they used all over Law and Order, but I suppose my current super cheap but decent 1920×1080 22" ViewSonic will have to do. The ratio is a bit irritating, but the colours are great and lines are ultra sharp. Oh yeah, and it's matte!

As a final aside…

It looks as though Apple Australia still has stock of the 30 inch Cinema Display, as of the 29th of July. If I had two and a half grand I'd get one in a heartbeat if only so I could revel in further digital nostalgia. It's got DVI instead of a MiniDisplay Port too. I could even pretend it's an iMac by drawing a black optical drive slot on the side.

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Bokutachi no BLOG

(categories: anime blogs)

A Product of Wasted Time: ToraDora! 14

(categories: anime reviews blogs)

File:Disney-infinite-copyright.svg – Wikimedia Commons

Sad but true.

(categories: mafiaa copyright eff graphics disney)

YOU can decide how JasmineAtAnimax looks! – Animax Asia

(categories: anime design graphics art)

Chrome element names and IDs – MozillaZine Knowledge Base

(categories: css documentation firefox mozilla reference)

- Google Search

Much cleaner, simpler layout

(categories: google search internet)

auDA > auDA News Archive > Information about Australian Style Pty Ltd trading as Bottle Domains

"On 26 July 2010, auDA terminated the accreditation of Australian Style Pty Ltd trading as Bottle Domains due to a serious breach of its obligations under the Registrar Agreement "

(categories: australia domains registrars)

Vintage Tech Ads: The 15 Funniest Videos | ITworld

(categories: funny retro tech 1980s nostalgia computing hardware media advertising)

IDC Go-to-Market Services: The Digital Universe Decade – Are you Ready?

Alas its Flash, but has some uplifting information

(categories: infocom ict it data information internet statistics storage trends video)

What is my Twitter account worth?

Whatever they say mine is, it's too much!

(categories: twitter fun internet socialnetworking)

UMLet Homepage – Free UML Tool

(categories: design studies diagrams java opensource foss software uml)

PhishTank | Join the fight against phishing

(categories: collaboration internet security web privacy antispam spam)

Western troops join Russia's Victory Day parade – CNN.com

(categories: news history russia uk ussr)

Expert: “What Type of Work is Best Suited for Third Culture Kids?” | TCK Academy Class

So far I haven't found it.

(categories: tck thirdculturekids business bidness familyguy)

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline | Electronic Frontier Foundation

"To help illustrate Facebook's shift away from privacy, we have highlighted some excerpts from Facebook's privacy policies over the years. Watch closely as your privacy disappears, one small change at a time!"

(categories: ethics facebook history internet privacy socialnetworking)

KickassTorrents.com Blog

(categories: bittorrent blogs media)

Comments on Rewarding American bosses: Nay on pay | The Economist

"America’s shareholders find a voice to condemn undeserved compensation". Sounds good, but not holding my breath

(categories: business bidness publiccompanies economics shares ethics)

per_user_tmp=yes – Google Search

(categories: netbsd bsd kernel)

Security Awareness Quotations – Quips and Quotes

Funny because they're true

(categories: security privacy quotes funny)

Nimoy. Sunset. Pie. | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

"This is without doubt the single greatest thing on Earth, and the very reason the Internet was invented." +1!

(categories: startrek funny photoshopping pointless)

God is Imaginary – 50 simple proofs

(categories: freethought god humour religion skepticism science)

Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth – opinion – 19 May 2010 – New Scientist

Bummer, it's behind a paywall now. Oh well.

(categories: creationism denial politics religion science)

Amazon.com: Shogun (9780440178002): James Clavell: Books

(categories: books japan history fiction)

Isn’t a vote for the Greens a wasted vote? | Blogotariat

"By giving your first preference to a major party, you’re helping lock in more of the same policies. By giving it to the Greens, you’re helping to give them real competition."

(categories: politics australia greens elections)

Not for your eyes « Groupthink

Already looks funny now with hindsight: "Tonight, the leaders of Australia’s two main political parties will square off in a nationally broadcast debate that will discuss issues likely to dominate political debate in the lead up to this year’s federal election."

(categories: politics religion australia elections kevinrudd tonyabbott)

ICC makes waging war a crime – Focus – Al Jazeera English

Won't change anything, of course.

(categories: news politics wars un)

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Berlin Paper Girls give the gift of art to passers-by | Art & Architecture | Deutsche Welle | 25.07.2010

That's a really cool idea, I love it :)

(categories: art design peace germany berlin)

As my old man would say… bummaire

The Problem

This morning Rubenerd suffered yet another SegPub problem, this time the software couldn't connect to the database not because of an authenticate error but because it claimed it didn't exist. After roughly 15 minutes, the entire site went down.

Everything seems to be back to normal again as of 12:39 Sydney time. Including this one, this is the eighth SegPub problem I've documented since 2009.

I tell you what, RootBSD.net is looking better and better. I need a cup of coffee.

The Update

I just received an official communiqué from SegPub this afternoon. I like the word communiqué, it makes me sound cultured. Does that mean I'm a yogurt?

Hi Ruben,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Earlier today we suffered an outage in one of our internal DNS caches, that caused some internal DNS resolution issues, including being able to connect to our database cluster. The issues were fixed once we were aware of the problem and you shouldn’t be seeing any more database problems.

I appreciated their timely response, but I still would have appreciated a heads up email when they knew something was going wrong instead of having to ask. Oh well, life goes on.