You have, for the last time, heard him say, with that trademark crack of a chuckle in his voice, “Paul Harvey … Good day!”
Good night, Mr. Harvey.
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Around the house, our nearly-two-year-old will sip from a cup and follow it with a gratified, “Ahhh.” Sunday during the fruit of the vine portion of the Lord’s Supper, after I sipped the juice from my cup, Whitby followed up with a quite audible, “Ahhh.”
I guess we need to work on that reverence thing.
It’s just hilarious to me what other people search on, and the suggestion technology at search engines like Google and Ask provide a glimpse of that—a small window into the average netizen’s mind—as well as some light entertainment:
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Fortran Programming
Programming in Fortran is like a monarchy: With the right guy, it’s not so bad, but there’s just too much potential for abuse.
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URI Decomposer
At work, we build our client websites upon a framework uses a lot of GET parameters. It makes for some URIs that average, oh, about three feet in length. Examining some of those monsters can make your eyes cross if you ever need to verify some parameter values in the query string, so I decided it was time for a little tool that would break up the URI into its constituent parts for me, instead of wading wearily though the whole URI myself. Google has a JavaScript URI object that does most of the heavy lifting already. I just had to add code to break up the query string into the individual key-value pairs.
Hence the URI Decomposer was born. You’ll find it among the items on the Tools page (few as they are as of this writing).
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Audacity Crudity
I’m starting to do some rudimentary audio editing on the Mac. Not impressed with Audacity version 1.2.5 for the Mac. The most glaring oddity is when exporting a file. As I type the file name, Audacity starts playing the audio. Evidently Audacity does not disable its keyboard shortcuts (not related to the Save dialog, that is). Awfully flaky.
That’s not to mention the rough-around-the-edges UI that makes a Mac user cringe. Guess I’m just spoiled.
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Madoff With(out) The Cash
Am I the only one who finds it humorous that the guy who ran a 25-year, $50 billion Ponzi scheme pronounces his last name “made off?”
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Don’t Let A Spec Pick Your Button Type
Ever need to create a <button> of type button when you’re doing a little DOM scripting? Easy enough, right? It should go something like this:
var okButton = document.createElement('button');
okButton.type = 'button';
Nevertheless when you run this code in IE6, you get the super-informative “Communication error” message. It turns out that IE6 (for once) is following the standard. I don’t know what the W3C were thinking, but so sayeth the ECMAScript Language Binding (9 January 2003) spec about the type property of the HTMLButtonElement:
- type
- This read-only property is a String.
So, the common way to set the property of an HTML element is, according to the standard, right out? I mean, it’s not inconceivable that I would want to create a <button> on the fly with a type that is not the default.
Alas there is a workaround. Ironically, it employs the standard method of setting DOM Node‘s attribute value:
var okButton = document.createElement('button');
okButton.setAttribute('type', 'button');Works like a charm! Even in IE6.
(I should note that Firefox 3 allows for writing to the button’s type property using the button.type notation. I didn’t test with other browsers to see whether they balk at the button.type notation, but Firefox 2/3, Opera 9.6, and Safari 3, along with IE6/7, are more than amenable to the setAttribute method.)
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It’s Good To Be Back
What have I been doing, lo, these many months to keep me away from the blog? Â Two new redesigned websites. Â Allow me to elaborate.
Pepper Road Church of Christ
I worship with the Pepper Road church of Christ in Athens, AL, and for years now, I’ve been responsible for the church website. Â I have fulfilled that responsibility with varying degrees of effort, attention, and responsiveness—lacking in all more often than not. Â I finally have gotten around to building the site within a content management system, namely Joomla!. Â Now, instead of my being the sole soul who can edit the website, our elders, deacons, and minister can author content themselves, and I have a couple of backup administrators, too.Â
We have information about the church and articles on Bible topics. Â Soon we should have sermon audio back online, and after that, we hope to have an introductory Bible correspondence course online.
I’m pleased but not content with look. Â In the interest of getting the new site out the door quickly, I have used a free template from Joomla Shack. Â It’s fine; it’s just not custom. Â I hope to get around to designing something that says “church” a little more than this borrowed template. Â When I do, this space will certainly reflect it. Â
Of course, at the time of this writing, I’m still using the default WordPress theme on this site. Â One of these days …
Conney Safety Products
Not quite a year ago, I took a job with USinternetworking (to which a friend had sold his small business specializing in e-commerce website development in IBM’s WebSphere Commerce). Â The first site to go live that I’ve had a hand in is Conney Safety Products.
Conney is a safety product wholesaler. Â The website offers a quick order feature, shopping lists that can be shared among all of the buyers in your company, and a live chat with Conney support personnel. Â There are a few post-go-live features that we are finishing up, such as an improved search utility. Â Look for that in the next few days.
If you sell safety supplies, drop by conney.com.
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So: The New Now?
So, as I listen to podcasts, participate in conference calls, and even talk to people face to face, I find that it is becoming more and more common for people to begin sentences with “so.” For no apparent reason.
So, the form is not something like, “This happened, and then this. So, I did this.” At least in this case, there is a causal relationship to what he/she just said. Â
No, people are beginning podcasts with, “So, I’m talking to Herb Plumdiggy from Whack-A-Mole, Inc.” Managers are beginning meetings with, “So, we want to talk about the problems with our automated cotton candy spinner.” When an interviewer asks, “How can earthquakes be prevented with sheep’s bladder?” the interviewee answers, “So, this is a very interesting application. …” People are beginning stories with, “So, you guys have to hear what Gigi’s dog can do with a tricycle and a Slinky.”
So, why are people sticking this word to the fronts of their sentences? It serves absolutely no purpose. Â Is “so” the next “y’know” or “like”?
So, all this got me thinking about whether we use any other words like this “so.” It occurs to me that we use “now” in a similar way:
- Now Jason decided that red licorice just would not do for an industrial application.
- Kids, you’re gonna regret playing with the cat with those toothpicks, now.
So, the first example is a little different from this totally useless employment of “so.” In the first example, “now” is something of a transitional word from the previous sentence. People tend not to begin a story with “now,” only continue it. You could argue that it serves no grammatical purpose; it is merely aesthetic. In the second example, on the other hand, “now” really is utterly pointless. “Meaningless!” as Orson Welles might say.
So, maybe “so” is the new “now,” but for the beginning of the sentence.
Whatever the reason, it is really annoying.