Yesterday, I mentioned discovering a new Mozilla clicking mode that I never knew about. Today, I was playing around in IE5.13/OSX and found that if you Option-Click, you get a hand to move around on the page, albiet only while you hold down the mouse button. Funny, since I was just thinking about how hard it would be to write a hand effect, say in XUL or JS/DOM so that if you clicked ‘h’ while you focused on the body, you could move around (like in Photoshop).

I was doing some CSS layout (thank the lord for min and max-width) this morning, and was wondering, “why the hell am I still using workarounds for such simple thing as columns?” Oh, because Multi-column layout in CSS is still a dream (new draft last week). Until then, we’re stuck with using clever hacks [put up my three column variation – more elegant and useful than blue robot 3 col]. Why is this better than tables? (Yes I’ve read the discussion on this, it’s a rhetorical question).

At least one day, when css3-multicol is actually implemented, there’ll be at least one new feature.

Interesting, if you CTRL-left mouse click in Mozilla, it will select everything within a table cell. Who knew?

I was looking for Lance Arthur‘s Soulflare, and was disappointed to find that the domain had lapsed and last fall and is now instead selling porn.

More and more I’m starting to use the Way Back Machine like Google: for everything. Does that mean I’m growing crotchety and curmudgeonly, or that all the good stuff on the net is disappearing? [Actually, in all seriousness, I believe that time-based searches is the next frontier of knowledge management on the web.]

Yesterday I picked up a friend from the airport. He had gone down to Acapulco for a working vacation, and had a life-changing and eye-opening experience down there. The way he phrased it made me worry that he had joined some cult, but luckily, it wasn’t like that; just another 23 year old reassessing his situation in life, the universe, and everything.

While I was down there, I stopped by and picked up a 100ft. roll of 12-gauge speaker wire and some tools at Fry’s. Today I mostly strung up by system; I’ll probably need to get some more wire (It’s a 14′ x 21′ room, but I 3 doorframes that I need to overcome.

Last bit of navel gazing: the nice thing about not having to pay utilities is being able to use your (admittedly small) gas oven as a toaster. Also, you know you’re lazy when you use the squeeze cheese because you can’t be motivated to cut up the monterey jack block in the new fridge.

Yes, boys and girls, there are some posts that make reading miles of drivel all worthwhile:

From: Cash Bailey

Subject: I almost had a heart attack when Wahlberg started singing that song from TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE in BOOGIE NIGHTS.

Comment:

Goddamn. The three things that defined my early childhood were Indiana Jones, ROBOTECH and TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. I sobbed like a little bitch when Optimus Prime was killed. I try to imagine the young kids now feeling the same way about Pokemon, but I just can't because Pokemon is nonsensicle bullshit. We were lucky as kids, we had great stuff like ROBOTECH, ASTRO BOY and HE-MAN but these poor tykes now are stuck with Pikachu and those crack-smoking TELETUBBIES.

Coming across gems like these reaffirms my faith in the Internet as a medium.

Aaron, at youngpup.net has an interesting little thought on old-school, new-school, as it relates to rollerblading and the “DHTML community.” I mentioned it to a friend, and he sort of related to the rollerblading thing as similar to what happened in the professional Quake playing community. One thing that I pointed out that nomenclature when using “community” is sort of a misnomer; that is, in these cases, we’re talking about not so much community dynamics, but the development of a new craft/skill. Now, on thinking about it, here’s where I think that client-side web development differs. While the actuall technology and specifics are new, the screen medium itself and the design and programming skillset in which DHTML design/development is rooted in is not. Which is not to say that there isn’t a whole realm of exploration out there, or that the comparison isn’t valid (rather, it seems very apt and insightful). I definitely see it as a good trend that more and more web creators are starting to get tired of workarounds for non-standard / non-spec implementations. Hopefully, the young turks don’t forget everything though… like named anchors.

sure jon katz can be a complete windbag (most of his posts don’t even make any sense), but sometimes, an interesting discussion gets sparked. So skip the incoherent katz ramble and check out what /.ers have to say on Blackhawk Down.

Wow, I almost skipped this post. There’s comedic gold in them thar hills.

All in all, street parking sucks. However, it has given me an ample time to vastly improve my previously mediocre parallel parking skills. Honestly, I can now reliably fit the car I’m driving into ridiculously small spaces. Now, I don’t know about this “car length + 2ft” business, I do just fine with 4-5 inches. Since I just parked yet again in a spot that my car had no earthly right to be, I just thought I would share. Street parking still sucks though, and I’m putting off making my new car purchase until I get a spot in my building.