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MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Catching Bugs Before They Catch You

I got itchy about magic quotes the other day because it’s the cause (through a fairly long cascade of errors) of some performance problems and runaways I’ve been seeing lately (pictured above). But I deserve most of the blame for allowing a query like this to run at all: SELECT type, data, count(*) AS hits […] » about 300 words

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Treo 650 As Dial Up Network Adapter

Sometime ago I started work on figuring out how to get dial up networking (DUN) access via my Treo 650. Now I’m getting serious about mobile internet access and looking at this again. The plan is that you should be able to make a Bluetooth connection between your laptop and the phone and then get […] » about 500 words

Dang addslashes() And GPC Magic Quotes

Somewhere in the WordPress code extra slashes are being added to my query terms.

I’ve turned GPC magic quotes off via a php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0 directive in the .htaccess file (we have far too much legacy code that nobody wants to touch to turn it off site-wide). And I know my code is doing one run of addslashes(), but where are the other two sets of slashes coming from?

Knockbox = WiFi + Real Estate Info

In another sign of the arrival of the stupendous, i.e. that the internet is changing our world, Engadget some time ago reported on the SellSmart Knockbox real estate selling dohicky. What is a KNOCKBOX? A KNOCKBOX is a sleek, self-contained appliance that is placed unobtrusively inside your home for sale. It contains a photographic tour, […] » about 300 words

Are You With Me?

This weeks free i-tunes down load is the song ” Are You With Me?” released by the band Vaux. I like the song, it’s a little hardcore for my tastes but I can see my self mosh pitting to this. It’s not my favorite music but being a fairly open minded person I can find a place for it in my musical library. I give this song an 6.8 on pies listening pleasure scale.

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WPopac Reloaded

I’ve re-thought the contents of the record and summary displays in WPopac. After some experimentation and a lot of listening, it became clear that people needed specific information when looking at a search result or a catalog record. So now, when searching for Cantonese slang, for instance, the summary displays show the title, year, format, […] » about 400 words

longest book title ever

Geography Made Easy : Being An Abridgement Of The American Universal Geography, Containing Astronomical Geography, Discovery And General Description Of America, General View Of The United States, Particular Accounts Of The United States Of America, And Of All The Kingdoms, States And Republics In The Known World, In Regard To Their Boundaries, Extent, Rivers, Lakes, Mountains, Productions, Population, Character, Government, Trade, Manufactures, Curiosities, History, &c. : To Which Is Added, An Improved Chronological Table Of Remarkable Events, From The Creation To The Present Time, Illustrated With Maps Of The Countries Described : Calculated Particularly For The Use And Improvement Of Schools And Academies In The United States Of America

is it really the longest book title ever? i don’t know.

Verizon EVDO Service And The Mobile Office?

The much anticipated Novatel V640 Express Card EVDO adapter is out. Verizon is pimping them for $180 with 2 year contract and GearLog says it’s “almost too easy” to use these goodies with the MacBook Pros. Then GearLog reader Brad commented: “If you had to install a driver, I wouldn’t say it was the true […] » about 300 words

Carry-On Restrictions To Carry On?

The Mercury News’ QA on carry-on restrictions answered a big question I had: Q Can I still carry my laptop, cell phone and iPod on board? A Those items are still OK as long as you’re not traveling to or through the United Kingdom. But a Reuters story posted at C|Net suggests the restriction on […] » about 200 words

Dancing Against The Current

You might argue with Kevin Lim‘s suggestion that terrorism depends on our emotional and psychological insecurity, but can you really argue with the notion that more happy people is a bad thing? I can’t.

And I can’t criticize him for finding deep meaning in catchy pop songs and funny movies. He and Brandtson might be right… “nobody dances anymore. Everyone’s still playing safe and nobody takes chances anymore.”

SXSW 2007 Program Proposals

There's 173 programs proposed for <a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/">SXSW Interactive</a>, March 9-13 2007. Go vote for the ones you most want to see at Lindsey Simon's <a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/panel_picker/">super cool picker</a>. Round one voting is going now. (Also note the really good use of semantic markup in the <a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/panel_picker/panels.php?mode=html">HTML download version</a> (which I'm embarrassed to have sullied a bit in this representation).) » about 19800 words

Hard Math

I <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/201844037/">found this photo</a> at <a href="http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_sep2005/MennoniteMath.htm" title="Mennonite Longhand Math">joe-ks.com</a>. The title there is “Mennonite longhand math,” but can anybody identify the source or context? Can anybody work out the equation on the board? I've convinced my friend <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/53151695/">Will</a>, who teaches math and physics, to pose for a shot like this, but that means we'll have find and fill a huge chalkboard...and he'll have to grow his beard back. » about 100 words

Lawn Mower Speed Record

It’s late summer and the heat wave killed the grass on your lawn, so what better to do than challenge Bob Cleveland’s record for the fastest lawn mower yet? Not sure your mower has what it’ll take to race down the salt flats at over 80 MPH? Wimp. Utah’s KSL TV quotes Bob saying “we […] » about 100 words

Shakespeare, Motivation, War, What Are We Doing Here?

I’m a sap. I can’t help but get choked up when I read or hear Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry The V.

eHow tells me that “Saint Crispin’s Day is a good day to honor lives well lived, beliefs held dear and shoes well made.” But Steve Denning calls the speech a “magical, linguistic sleight of hand,” and warns us:

…it may work for a battle, or even several battles. But the danger in real life is =that it may not be sustainable. It unravels when people begin to question: what’s the point?

Perhaps even more so today, when the justification of war is a often a matter of serious debate and question, the US Army finds that the soldier’s will to fight and kill stems mainly from the soldiers’ interest in surviving and having their buddies survive, rather than in any belief in the purpose of the war. The story of who we are as a fighting unit is more powerful than: what on earth are we doing here, shooting and killing people?

Flight, Hotel, Spa

“Take a deep breath.” I did, and with it Lisa Souza, my massage practitioner at San Francisco's <a href="http://internationalorange.com/">International Orange</a>, pressed into a knot just below my shoulder blade, deep in the <em>latissimus dorsi</em>. She worked along the length of it, not as a baker kneads bread, but rather as person wringing water from a damp cloth. Each press was deliberate, powerful. I'd asked for the deep tissue treatment. Eight hours in planes from Boston (six hours to LGB, almost another two to SFO) had taken their toll, and this, I hoped, might spell relief. » about 300 words

Workflow Goes Social

I was amused this week to see two examples of workflow getting sexy. That’s not how the developers describe their efforts, but the departure from old groupware notions is clear.

In daring defiance of Zawinski’s proclamation, Jeffrey McManus, with Approver.com, and Karen Greenwood Henke, with Nimble Net (as reported yesterday), are tackling workflow and approval processes.

Combine the increasing numbers of people who are self employed or working in very small businesses that can’t afford those old enterprise groupware “solutions” (but who nonetheless have to get a job done) with the combination of luck, pluck and smarts these two seem to have applied to the challenge, and there’s a chance these new products — groupware 2.0 — might have legs.

Still not sure how Approver.com will get somebody laid (the true definition of social software)? I’m just waiting for somebody to submit for approval a document titled “proposal for licentious relationship including sex and other carnal acts.” With tools so easy to use, and a willing approver, how could it go wrong?

Dr. Frankenstein’s Stress-o-Meter

The Scientologists regularly have a table on <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=San+Francisco&ie=UTF8&ll=37.786827,-122.40823&spn=0.005053,0.013443&om=1">Powell St</a>., somewhere near Union Square. Their <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/206274128/">crazy stress-o-meter</a> is not the weirdest thing about them. » about 100 words

A Technology For Every Niche

Way too many people are processing grant applications on paper. They spend a lot of time moving paper around and they don’t know much about who’s applying until after the deadline. That’s why we built Nimble Net. Karen Greenwood Henke’s been working the world of grants and grantwriting for years. Her site grantwrangler.com, and the […] » about 200 words