as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

I hate wasps. I’ve mentioned this before. So, obviously, what’s the absolute best thing to find in the eaves of the house? A bloody wasps’ nest! Yes! That’s just what I wanted. So we sprayed some kill-the-little-bastards foam on it, by which I mean that I hid in the kitchen and watched because I was scared. Fortunately, what I was expecting didn’t happen, because what I was expecting was for forty million furious half-poisoned wasps to come boiling out of the front of it and fly around stinging everything. Instead, nothing. Not a peep from them. So I hope they all died in their sleep.

Although, dying in their sleep is too good for them, I think. I hate wasps.

I like the Fahrner image replacement technique to replace text with images using CSS, but I don’t like how you have to put spurious span tags in your HTML to get it to work. So, here’s a different technique that has the same effect but doesn’t require the extra meaningless tags: My image replacement technique

Mark’s going to be a father in January. Congratulations. He’s soliciting name suggestions, which means he gets to see everyone suggest their own name or take the piss, both of which are honorable traditions in this area. Someone suggested “Stuart”, though, which I can’t argue with.

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Simon has a feature request for CSS3, which is the oft-heard “please let me define variables in my stylesheets” complaint. I’ve thought this more than once (and I’m sure I brought it up somewhere on a mailing list for discussion, too; I thought it was css-discuss, but I can’t find it in the archive). So, I thought, that’d be an interesting little Javascript hack, wouldn’t it; have JS look at the stylesheet rules and fix ones where you’ve used a “user defined variable”. Ah, but no. After some testing, both Mozilla and IE just don’t make invalid rules (or rulesets) available to the DOM at all. Given this stylesheet as the first and only in the document:

h1 { font-size: 1.2em; color: red; }
@media screen {
  pre { color: blue; }
}
@define {
  reddish: #f00;
}
h2 { font-size: 1.1em; color: &reddish; }
h3 { font-size: 1.0em; color: red; }

p>You’d expect document.styleSheets[0].cssRules (or ...rules for IE) to contain 5 entries, right, one for each of the rules? Nuh-uh. Walking through the rules and displaying .cssText for each (in Moz; displaying stylesheet.cssText in IE), the stylesheet looks like this:

h1 { font-size: 1.2em; color: red; }
@media screen {
   pre { color: blue; }
}
h2 { font-size: 1.1em; }
h3 { font-size: 1em; color: red; }

Note how both the entire invalid @define ruleset and the invalid color: &reddish rule have both been removed. No trace of them at all. So the only way I can think of making this work is to use XMLHttpRequest() (or MSXML) to grab external stylesheets, document.getElementsByTagName(’style’) to grab inline stylesheets, and parse them yourself. For something which will only work in very modern browsers (and not anything without XMLHttpRequest or an equivalent) with Javascript turned on, that’s way, way too hard, especially since half the point of CSS is to be cross-browser and not require scripting. Since this isn’t get implemented in CSS, looks like server-side parsing is the way to go. Bah. As Simon points out from the w3c-style discussion, it breaks compatibility in older browsers, although I can’t see why you can’t do:

h1 {
    color: red;
    color: &myred;
}

since the latter declaration is ignored by non-supporting browsers, just like all other CSS stuff.

None

The Crooked Timber crew point us at Chad Orzel’s physics posts as part of his weblog, Uncertain Principles. I’d forgotten how fascinating I find this stuff; Orzel is a physics professor in the field of quantum optics, and he’s written some lucid explanations of some hot physics topics like quantum computing. We had a big discussion at the last LUG meeting about this; well, it started with a little remark about how quantum computers could revolutionise cryptography if they can ever get them to work, and then expanded (based on an ever-increasingly basic set of “what does that term mean?” questions from Jono) to cover all of quantum mechanics and relativity in about two hours. Chad’s explanations would have been an invaluable help when bambam and I were trying to remember exactly what the deal was with quantum entanglement.

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Chad Orzel mentions the Interactive Schroedinger’s Cat experiment. Ha! Collapse the waveform for yourself!

I went to see the new Charlie’s Angels film, and then talked about it a little with my best friend (who has just got a new job, woo!). In there I outlined a few thoughts, so I’ll repost them here:

CA2 was, um, interesting. It’s either an excellently plotted half-hour film which they threw an hour of randomness into to pad it out, or it’s an excellently plotted four hour film which they then cut two random hours out of :) I mean, what was the whole subplot about the Creepy Thin Man being a good guy, huh? And just as it became relevant he got stabbed! And what was the point in the school reunion scene? And just how lame is Demi Moore these days? And why was Bruce Willis in it for, like, two minutes without saying anything? It was still pretty cool, though. :)

She points out that the reunion was just for the Rydell High joke, which I got :) But the whole thing was deeply random in places. Entertaining randomness, certainly, but not as good as the first one. And not only because the first one had Drew Barrymore naked.

None

So, I go away on holiday and lots happens, including Netscape going belly up. Oof. Anyway, a random selection of stuff. Oh, and I had an idea for something that could replace RSS syndication altogether, but I’m still working on the idea in my head so that it doesn’t get immediately shot down. :) On with the linking:

• Aquarion’s got a job. Clearly “ability to spell ‘opportunity’” wasn’t on the test ;) Congratulations are due, especially since he seems to be working for someone who sounds interesting (although, I have to say, a little vaporous…)
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! A film! Yay! Given From Hell, does this mark a new trend for filming of Alan Moore stuff? If I grovel pathetically, can we have Watchmen? Although I fear that it would be ruined by being filmed, especially given how Tom Sawyer is suddenly in the LXG in case American audiences didn’t like it.
• Richard Allen, one of the blogging MPs, had an idea that we should adopt an MP and teach them about weblogs, and people I listen to keep mentioning it, so I may have to try and attend one of my MP’s surgeries.
• This CSS top menu (via Solitude) is vaguely cool in a Mac OS X sort of way.
• Greg Costikyan talks about IP law from the creator’s perspective, and defends the idea that “IP law good, corporate highjacking thereof at the expense of artists morally dubious, but piracy clearly bad” with some aplomb. More to the point, he states that, in reference to the putative law that uploading a single copyrighted file makes you a felon, “the problem with this kind of thing is that contemptible laws breed contempt for the law”. This point was also made by Daniel Davies over at D-Squared Digest, when he said (at the bottom of the page) that “copying is theft, theft is sin, sin is forgiven, so get stuck in.”, continuing with the justification that “in other words, the fact that copyright law means that upstanding citizens are committing theft by sharing their music, is a good thing about theft, not a bad thing about the law”, and finishing with the not-untenable position that “a sensible copyright law could not be drafted in any other way, and nobody should be expected to obey the law that we have.” Pragmatism going hand-in-hand with rebellion, perhaps?
• Germany has implemented the EUCD (via Danny), with the additional even-more-onerous condition that discussion of copy-protection circumvention methods is now illegal in that country.

Has anyone written a Python CSS parser? Specifically, what I want to do is use xml.dom.ext.reader.HtmlLib to get a DOM for an HTML document, and then implement a node.getElementsBySelector() function. I could port Simon’s Javascript code to Python, but it doesn’t handle pseudo-elements and so on. If someone’s written this then I don’t have to :) Mark Paschal has something similar, but it doesn’t support combinators (like foo > bar) and that’s important.

Well, I finally got tired of my quick hack RSS aggregator, Contrary, and decided to shift to something else. Since I need it to be a web application (so I can read from work and home), the obvious choice seemed to be AmphetaDesk, and so it was. The default skin is chronic, however, so I went hunting, and came up with two lauded replacements: lmo’s AmphetaOutlines and Martin’s AmphetaFrames. Contrary is a 3-pane aggregator, so AmphetaFrames is more to my liking. However, Contrary does a couple of nice things like emboldening the names of feeds with unread articles, so I shall have to get hacking on my own AmphetaDesk skin. I hate Perl.

I like the ideas that lmo has for Outlines; spcifically, integrating a Bayesian sort of thing. The issue I have, though, is that what I’d like to do is Don Park’s newspaper UI idea, but with that you don’t know whether an article has been read or not (because articles just appear on a page; you don’t have to do anything to read one, like click an outliner triangle). More thought required. I need to get back into hacking; I haven’t written any decent releaseable code for a while, and I miss it.

Update: I lied; Outlines is actually pretty good, as long as you follow the instructions and create the channels_meta directory like it says. Hmph. What I want to know is whether the magic stick that makes stuff I like bubble to the top actually works, but I won’t know that until I’ve been using it for a bit.

Actually, what I want is to be able to write templates in Python. Didn’t I see a thing that let Perl stuff run Python code? Must go looking for it.

Update, again: Inline::Python. Will I get shot for using it, I wonder? :)

None

—–

Just another one of those “I’m out of here, see you in a week” posts that are popping up all over the net at the moment. However, the place I’m going apparently has an internet cafe, so it’s likely that I won’t be entirely gone.

And I’ve got Apache on my Zaurus and the code for ParaVellum, so I can work on that; it’s highly handy having a powerful computer in your pocket. I did actually plan to take my laptop, but firstly the hard drive appears to have crapped out (anyone got one for a Tosh Tecra 520CDT?), and secondly the Z is actually probably a more powerful machine. Irony. Just wish I could afford an external keyboard for it…although that one’s ugly anyway. Canesta’s projection keyboard is much cooler, although also much more scarily sci-fi, and still mainly vaporous as far as I can tell.

Anyway, so, I’m off to Devon. Oh, and, remember the diet? It’s going well. But it’s not happening this week. :)

Not much time to pick up good stuff off the web at the moment, but I have to recommend Mr Cranky Rates the Movies. Go and find your favourite films and watch Mr Cranky rip them into tiny fluttering blood-soacked pieces. And then eat the pieces. Sample quotations:

What kind of runaway ego do you have to have to actually credit yourself as “McG?” If that doesn’t create a picture in your mind of a guy sucking his own tool, I don’t know that anything can. (Charlie’s Angels)

[M]ust loyal Trekkers be forced to endure a three-way acting duel between Stewart, Shatner and Data’s emotion chip? Watching Stewart and Shatner go at it is like witnessing a title fight between Mike Tyson and a frozen enchilada… (Star Trek: Generations)

Maybe somebody not cowed by Redford could point out the obvious to him: YOU ARE OLD, MAN!! REALLY OLD!! AND YOU LOOK OLD!! Director Tony Scott can use all the soft focus he wants short of ejaculating directly on the camera lens, but it doesn’t really help. (Spy Game)

[L]et’s face it, if courtesans looked like Nicole Kidman… the human race would have died out long ago because there would have been a line of men with hard-ons from Paris to Moscow abandoning their usual fertilization duties in favor of hot courtesan sex. (Moulin Rouge)

Absolute classic. Haven’t laughed so hard in ages.

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ASOIAF parodies: parodies of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series as written by other writers. If you know ASoIaF, this is hilarious, especially the one of the series as an IRC log:

** ADMIN_Jaquen whispers to you: if anyone bothers u, just lemme know ok? i got l337 admin rights in here

and Monty Python:

Oberyn: ‘So, Tyrion, your sister – does she ‘go’? Eh? Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink’

and Lewis Carroll:

But the Dragon Queen drew herself up triumphantly and said, “Queens never keep bargains.”

“I wish Queens never trained dragons,” thought Kraznys.

None

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Is there just a lot of funny stuff on the net at the moment or what? Just creased up laughing at this, a keyboard for pirates. (link updated 18-09-2006)

‘Bring Them On,’ Bush Says to Iraq Attacks (via J. Grant) (sort of registration required):

“There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there [Iraq],” Bush told reporters at the White House. “My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”

And furthermore, now the US Government have put a $25m bounty on Saddam’s head. Go for it, Mr Bush! Teach those damned towelheads a lesson!

You fucking gung-ho lunatic.

I need a new editor. I want something that has all the following characteristics:

• Runs on Linux
• Runs in a console/xterm
• Has an X version (although I can live with ‘xterm -e fooedit $FILENAME’ if I must)
• Syntax highlighting (including Python, HTML, and email, and ideally easily configurable)
• Allows rebinding of keys easily (i.e., I should be able to map ^Q to quit by putting “^” followed by “Q” into my config file, not by having to work out which combination of weird octal keycodes my terminal sends when I hit ^Q)
• Is not modeful (vim in insertmode does not qualify)
• Is completely scriptable in Python, or, failing that:
• Allows me to pass either the whole file or a highlighted area through an external command, and allows me to bind a key to do this with named commands directly (so I can hit one bound key and have the whole file passed to an external command I specifed in my config file, not have to enter the command every time)
• Comes with a sane set of default keybindings (including highlighting text with shift-arrows) so I don’t have to rebind the world
• Is not Emacs

I am open to suggestions for anything that meets these criteria. I’ve been looking for the perfect editor for, ooh, two years or so. One day I’ll find it…

I’m going to wait until the dust settles a little on the necho format before I start using it for syndication. It looks a little to me like it might be Emacs, in that the way you please everyone is by making it do everything. But I’m not really qualified to comment, and so I’ll just keep my head down for a bit until everyone’s thrashed the idea out.