Posted on by lhl

I hit a minor roadblock trying to see how I could get an object reference from within an object. Tom Trenka whipped up a quick little function (which is so obvious after you see it 🙂

function getObjectString(obj, scope) {
  for (var p in scope) {
    if (scope[p] == obj) return p;
  }
  return null;
}

It’s messy and O(n), true, but unless you have a mess of variables, not too bad.

Jesse made a suggestion on how I could avoid needing the string completely by assigning an IFrame.onload, but there are race conditions (unless you use event attachment, see below), and also Mozilla was giving me crap (is it running the onload before the document is finished?)

It occurred to me that there are lots and lots of little JS snippets like Tom’s which are enormously useful helpers, but hard to keep track of. Perhaps they should all go in a little snippets library/repository or something…

Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl

I’ve finally finished upgrading my system (I dropped in an ATI 9800 Pro [which detects as an XT and clocks accordingly] and an Athlon XP 3000+, but needed a beefier heatsink), and although my CPU is underclocked a bit (my old motherboard only goes to 12.5x multiplier, not 13x). My Doom 3 timedemos have gone from a rather anemic 20fps at 800×600 Low Quality to a respectable 45fps at 1024×768 High Quality.

That being said, I think I’m pretty much over this “installing my own hardware thing.” I think I realized this after I managed to pry off the old heat sink and as I was removing glue residue from the new one.

Posted on by lhl
  • Back to the Future – What Bush would do if he were president

    Recession. Unemployment. Corporate fraud. A war based on false premises that has cost us $200 billion and nearly a thousand American lives. They’re all hills we’ve “been given to climb.” It’s as though Bush wasn’t president. As though he didn’t get the tax cuts he wanted. As though he didn’t bring about postwar Iraq and authorize the planning for it. All this was “given,” and now Bush can show up, three and a half years into his term, and start solving the problems some other president left behind.

  • Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards – mostly sad, but also some scary statistics

    70m Estimated number of Americans who describe themselves as Evangelicals who accept Jesus Christ as their personal saviour and who interpret the Bible as the direct word of God.

    23m Number of Evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2000.

    50m Number of voters in total who voted for Bush in 2000.

    (nm, my reading comprehension is low) but see also: Frontline: The Jesus Factor)

  • The Words Speakers Use – great NYTimes infographic comparing words used in the RNC/DNC speeches
  • Movable Type 3.1 Still a Developer Edition? – Keith has a heck of a time installing 3.1
  • Stop Design: Liquid Bleach – Doug continues on his redesign journey
Posted on by lhl

Ken Layne asks What Conservatives? Mostly about the lack of fiscal (well, any kind) or restraint, but also puts all this RNC talk of strong leadership in perspective:

With the Crystal Methamphetamine Ball I keep for such occasions, I can predict those of you who continue to invent apologies for this government will tell me that logic, responsibility, coherence and competence don’t matter a damned bit & never will again, because 3,000 of the 300,000,000 people living in this country were killed by an elusive enemy three years ago, and that for some mysterious reason the current inept administration should be further rewarded for failing to catch the culprits, failing to make this country safer from either similar or new-fangled attacks, failing to remove the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan or Pakistan, failing to win an elective war that had nothing to do with those who launched a war on our shores, and not only failing to make a dent in the Islamic Terrorism movement but in fact creating millions upon millions of ready new converts who now have a massive wrecked state in the center of the Middle East as a home and training base for decades to come, along with a very new and real reason to attack us on every flank that makes Bin Laden’s flowery historical rhetoric seem quaint by comparison.

I just can’t figure out how anyone can look at our post Sept. 11 leadership and see anything but a smoking heap of tragic failure, and yet that seems to be the only thing the Bush loyalists have to offer as a concrete reason to re-elect this administration. Why? Is Losing the new Winning?

Posted on by lhl

I spent most of last night helping out a friend whose Mac had suddenly stopped booting properly and was instead flashing a ‘not allowed’ symbol (no sign, prohibitory sign, denied, circle slash, ghostbusters). Interestingly enough, in working w/ OS X since it came out, I’d never seen it before.

Held down ‘v’ on boot to see what it was hanging on. It couldn’t find the root device. After trying zapping the PRAM and NVRAM to no avail, I booted the rescue disk and checked the drive utility. It couldn’t see the HD. That would explain things. The drive sounded fine, so my suspicion was on the card or cable, but when I swapped drives it worked. But then, booting it again, it didn’t. Swapped SCSI card/cable and put old drive back in and it worked. I can’t really explain it, must be some bizarre connection problem.