Monthly Archives: December 2007

Building In A (Big) Bubble

December 30, 2007 – 12:02 pm

dcdead’s photo of the Central Station of Strasbourg, France reminds me of something I’d long wanted to do in (or around) my old house: put it in a dome. Apparently, this dome doesn’t fully cover the building, just enlarges it without obscuring the facade. Still, 6000 square meters of glass looks pretty good, eh?
Back to [...]

By Casey | Posted in Warren | Comments (1)



WordPress 2.4 Performance, Timeline

December 29, 2007 – 12:07 pm

The good news is that performance is a big goal for WP 2.4, the bad news is that it’s been delayed to the end of January at the earliest.

By Casey | Posted in Blink | Comments (1)

Gmail IMAP vs. Previous POP3 Users

December 20, 2007 – 12:24 pm

Google Mail now supports IMAP, but what if you’ve been using POP3 all along and have a gajillion messages on the server, all marked unread and waiting in your inbox? How can I tell Apple Mail not to download the [Gmail]/All Mail IMAP folder without an ugly hack? [Update, the hack just causes Mail to [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (0)

Free Report On Accessible Web Design From Jakob Nielsen

December 18, 2007 – 7:46 am

Free from Nielsen Norman Group: Beyond ALT Text, Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities, a report on web design for users with disabilities. ?Seventy-five best practices for design of websites and intranets, based on usability studies with people who use assistive technology? According to the blog post, usability is three times [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (8)

bSuite Machine Tags

December 17, 2007 – 12:08 pm

There can be no arguments about it, machine tags are cool and they solve problems. And now they work in WordPress with bSuite too (svn only, for the moment).
It’s not just because flickr popularized them that I like them, though it helps and you should definitely look at that stuff:

The announcement
Excitement from O’Reilly Radar, ProgrammableWeb, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (0)



Inside Your Head

December 14, 2007 – 12:12 pm

Video found via a photo in Soffia Gisladóttir’s photostream. The suggestion that things go rotten inside a person’s head is very sad, but I’ve also suggested it to Zach for Moldy Snack.com

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (0)

CSS Transparency Settings for All Browsers

December 14, 2007 – 7:01 am

.transparent_class {
opacity: 0.5; /* the standards compliant attribute that all browsers should recognize, but… */
filter:alpha(opacity=50); /* for IE */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* for old Safari (1.x) */
-moz-opacity:0.5; /* for old skool Netscape Navigator */
}

(via)

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (4)

A Boy And His Cabbage of Significant Size

December 13, 2007 – 5:23 pm

From the La Crosse Tribune, A boy and his cabbage of significant size:
Wisconsin ten-year-old Douglas Mezera grew a 31-pound cabbage for a competition sponsored by Bonnie Plant. The Alabama plant company?s program aims to promote gardening as fun and rewarding. What do you do with so much cabbage? ?We made it into homemade sauerkraut,? [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches | Comments (1)

Language Translation Icon

December 13, 2007 – 12:41 pm

We all need a recognized icon to represent ?translate this.? We’ve got one for feeds and social bookmarking, but where’s our translate icon? A lot of folks simply use flags, but that’s a bad idea because they’re ?nationalistic, and represent ideals, boundaries, and political beliefs, but do not represent a language.?
Joe Lee has developed [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (3)

In Flight WiFi Back In The Air?

December 13, 2007 – 6:41 am

I thought the matter was dead after Boeing shut down their much hyped in-flight WiFi plans (yep), but Engadget got a seat on JetBlue’s private introductory flight for their WiFi service. The good news is that it’s free, the not surprising news is that Yahoo! is partnering in it (and it requires a Yahoo! account), [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

Scriblio 2.3 v4 Released

December 11, 2007 – 9:03 pm

Scriblio 2.3 v4 is out. See it. Download it. Install it. Join the mail list.
What’s new?

Lots of small bug fixes.
Implemented wp_cache support.
Revamped SQL query logic for better memory efficiency.
New widget options.
Search suggest/autocomplete support (implemented in the new theme).
New theme. New Theme! By Jon Link.

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (4)

Home Libraries, Amateur Libraries

December 11, 2007 – 7:43 pm

The Library Problem:
In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Blink, Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)

USB-Connected Monitors?

December 10, 2007 – 12:43 pm

DisplayLink is licensing technology that promises to make adding a second (or sixth) monitor as easy as plugging into a spare USB port. Samsung’s 940UX 19? LCD (Under $350, review) is among the first to employ it, though IOGEAR’s USB to VGA adapter is also available (about $65, review). This isn’t without problems, though. Image [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (0)

Seven Person Bicycle: The Conference Bike

December 7, 2007 – 12:15 pm

I saw this bike here, here, and here on Flickr, but nobody said what it was or where I could learn more. Some googling revealed it was Eric Staller’s ConferenceBike, first sold by Hemmacher Schlemmer. One person steers while all seven riders peddle, and it looks like a lot of fun if you’ve got a [...]

By Casey | Posted in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (1)

Compress CSS & JavaScript Using PHP Minify

December 5, 2007 – 7:50 am

It was part of a long thread among WordPress hackers over the summer and fall, but this post at VulgarisOverIP just reminded of it: minify promises to be an easy way to compress external CSS and JavaScript without adding extra steps to your develop/deploy process. No, really, look at the usage instructions. (To be clear, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (1)