Framing Terror

by Steven Garrity


CNN Screenshot from June 8, 2006

The media is a buzz today with the news of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. I have no doubt that he was a bad dude. However, it’s worth taking a look at how this is being presented and covered.

See this screenshot of the CNN.com US home page. Note that they went to the trouble of framing and matting photo. I can only assume that some framing shop in Washington D.C. got a call from a Whitehouse aide with the weirdest rush-job they’ve ever had.

For bonus points, you can click the photos of the dead man to watch video of the actual bombing that killed him.

We’re getting pretty used to this kind of media presentation by the US government. It’s worth stepping back and taking a look at how absurd things have become. They framed it. Are they going to hang it up in a dining room?

 

Selecting Columns and Rows in HTML Tables with Firefox

by Steven Garrity
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3 Col 4
Row A 1A 2A 3A 4A
Row B 1B 2B 3B 4B
Row C 1C 2C 3C 4C
Row D 1D 2D 3D 4D

A random tip, because I find it so handy on rare occasions:

You can select columns, rows, or blocks of cells in HTML tables in Firefox (or any Gecko-powered browser) by holding down “Control” and
selecting with the mouse. Handy for copy+pasting data from tables in websites.

Try it out in the table to the right.

 

by Steven Garrity

Our local Canadian member of parliament on the descision to stay in Afganistan to two more years.

 

TV Series Pitch: George “W”, M.D.

by Steven Garrity

I’ve got what is clearly a brilliant idea.

A sit-com/drama (a dramady?) about a doctor who, when push comes to shove, is the decider. It’s ER meets Scrubs meets The West Wing meets Commander in Chief meets Grays Anatomy meets Scarborough Country.

I call it, George “W”, M.D.

I wonder if I can get Ian Williams to write the pilot…

 

by Steven Garrity

I wonder if ‘Eagle Fever’ is anything like the bird flu.

 

How to tell if your web-mail system is any good

by Steven Garrity
Commercial Web Mail providers
HotMail No
Yahoo Mail No
Gmail Yes
Open Source Web Mail packages
IMP/Horde No
RoundCube Yes
SquirrelMail Yes
Hula Yes

Here’s a quick test to see if you web-mail system is any good:

When you first log in, does it show you your mail (your Inbox), or something else? If it shows you something other than your mail, what do they think you were logging in for?

The table to the right shows how the leading commercial and open-source web-mail systems stack up.

 

Condoleezza Calrissian?

by Steven Garrity

Is it just me?

Condoleezza Rice vs. Lando Calrissian

I always thought she looked eerily familiar and vaguely galactic.

 

Thunderbird Extension Request: Colordiff for Thunderbird

by Steven Garrity

I have a quick Thunderbird extension request for the throngs of aimless developers waiting to build software at my whim. When reviewing changes to a source code repository, such as Subversion or CVS, most tools offer nice syntax highlighting for the “diff” view.

Even on the command line, output of SVN and CVS commands can be “piped” into the command-line utility, colordiff, for a similar beautification.

Several projects I work on (or hang around pretending to work) have mailing lists of changes to CVS and SVN repositories. I’d love to see a Thunderbird extension that provided syntax highlighting for the diff format automatically in these emails.

 

by Steven Garrity

Fun review of presentation about Firefox to elementary-school kids

 

I Digg a Good Gaim

by Steven Garrity

In the past few weeks I’ve found myself typing “gaim” when I mean to type “game” and adding an extra “g” when I type “dig(g)”. I’ve also typed “exit” into a few chat windows when I mean to leave.

Even my muscle-memory is turning nerdy.