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MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Is Blogging Career Suicide?

Ken (I wish he had a blog to link to) pointed out Bloggers Need Not Apply in the Chronicle Of Higher Ed over the weekend. The story is to some a highly cautionary tale: A candidate’s blog is more accessible to the search committee than most forms of scholarly output. It can be hard to […] » about 500 words

The Big Switch

Other than a bit of head scratching after the announcement in June, I’ve been quiet about Apple’s switch to Intel processors. Now, ArsTechnica‘s Jon “Hannibal” Stokes has written some of the most intelligent material I’ve seen since. How’s it work? Hannibal thinks Apple’s relationship with IBM soured to the point where they refused to play […] » about 100 words

Napster’s Hard Road

Napster — the legal, reincarnated music download site — essentially invented the concept of incumbent campus download services. They loudly touted deals with schools “anxious” to stop the p2p music sharing problem. Trouble is, according to this story at The Reg, it’s not working well. A survey at one client university paints a sad picture: […] » about 200 words

The High Cost Of Metasearch For Libraries

I’ve been looking seriously at metasearch/federated search products for libraries recently. After a lot of reading and a few demos I’ve got some complaints. I’m surprised how vendors, even now, devote so much time demonstrating patron features that are neither used nor appreciated by any patrons without an MLS. Recent lessons (one, two, three) should […] » about 500 words

bStat Features

UPDATE: bstat has been updated. bStat is a hit and search term stats tracking plugin for WordPress. In addition to reporting lists of popular stories and popular search terms, it will report recent comments and a unique “pulse” graph showing the activity for a story or the entire blog over time. The documentation for the […] » about 300 words

Braving Home

Jake Halpern’s Braving Home (also in softcover) easily took my interest. Here’s how John Moe described it for Amazon.com: As a cub reporter at The New Republic, Jake Halpern earned the unofficial job title of Bad Homes Correspondent. Braving Home tells his stories of places where people really ought not live and the people who […] » about 500 words

bstat Beta 3 Release

UPDATE: bstat has been updated. Beta 2 never went public. This is beta 3. Changes This documentation supersedes any previous documentation. The bstat_pulse() function has been improved and now uses your CSS for appearance. Call bstat_pulse_style() to add my default styles inline if you don’t want to modify your CSS. Also, bstat_pulse() now has two […] » about 1200 words

LibDev Launched

LibDev launched today. From the Welcome message there: LibDev is a site for those interested in libraries and networked information. Want to find a way to apply tags or social bookmarking to library content? Interested in how Wikipedia can serve libraries? Want to find a better way to do patron loads or talk about what […] » about 200 words

Idaho Politics

Earlier this year the Idaho legislature passed a bill recognizing the success of Napoleon Dynamite, a film about Idaho life by Idahoan native sons. LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF IDAHO First Regular Session – 2005 HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29 STATING LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND COMMENDING JARED AND JERUSHA HESS AND THE CITY OF PRESTON FOR […] » about 700 words

The Struggle To Protect Democracy In Florida

My dad, who’s called Florida home for quite a while now, emailed me the following about goings on there: The big news here is the struggle to prevent Volusia County adopting the the Diebold touch screen ballot machines. They are bad news, because these Diebold machines do not leave a paper trail and so a […] » about 700 words

Happy Birthday, Popsicle

NPR’s food essayist Bonny Wolf reported yesterday on the 100th birthday of the popsicle for Weekend Edition Sunday (listen in RealAudio). Like so many brilliant inventions, it happened by accident in 1905. And through a century of change, it remains a consistent American icon, stick and all. It all started, apparently, with a forgotten bottle […] » about 100 words

When Is Principality of Sealand’s Independence Day?

Principality of Sealand is a WWII-era gunnery platform — called Roughs Tower — in the North Sea, outside Britain’s pre-1968 three nautical mile claim of sovereign waters. Founded by Roy and Joan Bates in 1967, over time, Roy wrote a constitution and named himself and Joan as prince and princess. The Wikipedia article on Sealand […] » about 600 words

Cannon Aerial Tramway

It’s hot in New Hampshire, but on top of Cannon Mountain, 4146 feet about sea level, it’s a little cooler. It’s an easy enough hike, but the aerial tram will save you the sweat. The current tram was built in 1980 and replaced the 1938 tram. The 2100 foot climb from the base takes a […] » about 200 words

Google Maps Rock, The Google Maps API Rocks More

We don’t need to hack Google Maps anymore. Now that Google has released a public maps API, we can make more reliable map-dependent apps (which will now have better browser compatibility, thank you). Within a few minutes of signing up for a maps API key I had put together the following of the Nevada Test Site Tour.

Yeah, click the satellite button, scroll, zoom… It’s real.

The API is all JavaScript, but I use a bit of PHP to iterate through an array of points and generate the code that puts the lines and pins on the map.

The most frustrating development with the Google Maps API is that each developer key is limited to a certain hostname and directory. It’s sensitive to things like “maisonbisson.com” instead of “maisonbisson.com” or “maisonbisson.com/post/10594” instead of “maisonbisson.com/blog/” . That’s why this is loading in an iframe.

Thanks to The Unofficial Google Weblog for the tip that the API was released yesterday. As a minor coincidence, Yahoo! also released their maps API this week. Damn.

Photron Makes My Favorite Video Camera

Photron’s APX-RS video camera can capture 250,000 frames per second at top speed, and it can get megapixel+ resolution at 3,000 frames per second. It’s one of a dozen or so cameras in Photron‘s lineup that can shoot very, very fast video. How fast is a thousand frames a second? How fast is several thousand […] » about 300 words

Color Picking

I needed to pick some colors for a new website recently. I’m color blind, so that complicates things. Thing is, color relationships can be defined mathematically and “good” or “bad” color combos can be selected by a formula, so it possible to pick colors that go together without actually being able to see them. I’ve […] » about 300 words

WordPress’ is_X() function

An entry at the WordPress support forums{#13505} gave me the list I needed. How do they work?

“You can use [these] in a conditional to display certain stuff only on [certain] page[s], or to omit certain stuff on [those] page[s].”

Here’s the list:

  • is_404()
  • is_archive()
  • is_author()
  • is_category()
  • is_date()
  • is_day()
  • is_feed()
  • is_home()
  • is_month()
  • is_new_day()
  • is_page()
  • is_search()
  • is_single()
  • is_time()
  • is_year()

So there you go.

Alcohol Knowledge Test

I just love tests (previously: psychotic, leadership style in movies and famous people in history, and eccentric or autistic), so I was quick to try myself at this one when Al emailed me. It’s about alcohol, and like most tests, it’s not about getting the answer right, but giving the answer that the test writer […] » about 200 words

Sending SMS Messages

My friend Will was in meetings all day Friday, and there are few better times to have SMS messaging than in meetings. Thing is, I didn’t want to type on my phone’s numeric keypad when I had my computer in front of me, so I went looking for the details of this old hint that […] » about 200 words

GeoTagging Gets A New Meaning

Who doesn’t love tagging? No, tagging as in annotating, not graffiti. Anyway, Rixome is the latest among a bunch of plans/projects to enable tagging of geographic spaces/real-life environments. The good people at We Make Money Not Art had this in their post: rixome is a network and a tool that turns mobile screens into windows […] » about 300 words

Art Deco Hair

Daniela Turudich knows vintage fashion. Her books include not only hair, but how to recreate a vintage wedding, vintage recipes and candy making, and Beauty Secrets of History’s Most Notorious Courtesans. Here’s the description from Art Deco Hair: Art deco has long been associated with uncompromising style and sophistication, and this guide to recreating the […] » about 200 words