Dispatches

I’m a fan of the Sandbox WordPress theme because it does so much to separate application logic from design, and a few small changes to the CSS can make huge changes to the look of the site. I think that’s the idea behind Yahoo! Developer Network’s Grids CSS library. That is, well structured HTML allows very sophisticated styling. All you have to do is plug in your content. To wit:

The foundational YUI Grids CSS offers four preset page widths, six preset templates, and the ability to stack and nest subdivided regions of two, three, or four columns. The 4kb file provides over 1000 page layout combinations.

That got Alister Cameron excited; he’s building a Sandbox-inspired, Yahoo! CSS-based WordPress theme he’s codenamed Vanilla.

Can the Feds take your laptop? Yep. Be prepared to give up your civil rights and your laptop at the border, says a recent article in the Washington Post. This came to the attention of music fans earlier, when MTV news reported that a hard drive seized at the border contained studio recordings for Chris Walla’s (guitarist for Death Cab For Cutie) latest album. There was some suggestion that it was all a publicity stunt, but the Post story suggests that it’s a real and not uncommon problem.

Apache mod_proxy does most of the work, Nick Kew’s howto on running a reverse proxy with Apache explains it. Now, can I tack on some authentication and make it replace III’s WAM or EZproxy?

Western North Carolina Library Network‘s LC outline is full of detail.

LC outline, classification, Western North Carolina Library Network, libraries

The DevShed technical tour explains that MySQL can spawn new threads, each of which can execute on a different processor/core. What it doesn’t say is that a single thread can only execute on a single core, and if that thread locks a table, then no other threads that need that table can execute until the locking thread/query is complete. Short answer: MySQL works well on multi-core machines until you lock a table.

I like Yahoo!. I really hope the shareholders decline Microsoft’s offer. Blech, MS has wanted a piece of Yahoo! for a while.

Turns out that coots are omnivorous, but prefer plant matter. Why.

What would you do if you found a camera in a cab?

Even though mountain bike sales and participation are down (as a percentage of market share, biking has been declining for ten years), the Library of Congress has just issued a directive to change the subject heading from “All Terrain Cycling” to “Mountain Biking.” The term was apparently first coined by Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher in 1979.

Stephen King writes at Entertainment Weekly.com that he doesn’t hate the Kindle:

Will Kindles replace books? No. And not just because books furnish a room, either. There’s a permanence to books that underlines the importance of the ideas and the stories we find inside them; books solidify an otherwise fragile medium.

But can a Kindle enrich any reader’s life? My own experience — so far limited to 1.5 books, I’ll admit — suggests that it can. For a while I was very aware that I was looking at a screen and bopping a button instead of turning pages. Then the story simply swallowed me, as the good ones always do. I wasn’t thinking about my Kindle anymore; I was rooting for someone to stop the evil Lady Powerstock. It became about the message instead of the medium, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Bruce Pechman earned his credentials, but you could get yours at McDonald’s. Yes, the fast food chain is apparently offering diplomas in Britain now.

“The Office of Emergency Management, the New York City Fire Department, Department of Buildings, NYPD, Health Department, and Department of Agriculture” all apparently showed up to evict 200 tenants from a building called the “kibbutz” in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Why? “Dangerous grains,” and a matzoh bakery. It’s been labeled Matzo-Gate, and speculation is rampant that the eviction was spurred by developers eyeing the now fashionable neighborhood. Gothamist has a picture.

This an old one, but it just caught my atention. In A List Apart tells us Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus. Is this still true? Haven’t the last several years been about the triumph of good design in both the usability and graphic senses? Or are rounded corners not actually useful?

The New Hampshire House is considering a ban on texting while Driving. Please, no.

Mother cheetah wants kids to learn to hunt gazelle, but cubs want to nuzzle it.

Doc Searls in Linux Journal compares previous CES expos to 2008 and finds a shift from talk of “broadcasters and rights-holders extending their franchise” to a Web 2.0 enlightened user-centricity.

At every CES up to this one, I always felt that both open source and user-in-charge were swimming upstream against a tide of proprietary “solutions” and user lock-in strategies. This year I can feel the tide shift. Lots of small things point toward increased user autonomy, originality, invention and engagement. The story isn’t just about What Big Companies Are Doing For You any more. It’s what you’re doing for yourself, and for whomever you like.

Like Mr. Ranganathong said: “The intellect cannot be tied down with a decimal thong.” (via)

Following news that Yahoo! is joining the OpenID fray, it appears Google is dipping a toe in too. While those two giants work out their implementations, others are raising the temperature of the debate on IDM solutions. Stefan Brands is among the OpenID naysayers (<a href=“http://daveman692.livejournal.com/310578.html" title=“David Recordon’s Blog - Stefan Chooses to Take the “Fox News” Approach to OpenID Blogging”>David Recordon’s response), while Scott Gillbertson sees a bright future. Let’s watch the OpenID Directory to see how fast it grows now (count on January 19 2008: 446).

Pre-Code films were apparently something of a spectacle. Harvard Film Archive this weekend is exploring their depths in a series titled Vice vs. Virtue.

just in case anybody else wonders why a WordPress 404 initiates extra MySQL activity http://tinyurl.com/2nkplo

Eccentric, perhaps persecuted, Bobby Fischer is dead. News story.

Ars notes that Yahoo! supports OpenID. Yeah, that OpenID.

Derek Powazek likes it, but is it worth flying SouthWest for?