more fun with features

January 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Two new features premiering at once here. First off, you'll notice that posts now have a listed location. I wrote in some support for creating locations and then each time I post I assign it to one of those locations. I have some really cool plans for this, but right now all that this gives you is the ability to limit your view to posts at a location. Kind of cool for seeing where I am at a glance, but not real useful for anything else yet. The important word there is yet... Hopefully soon...

The second feature was inspired by the layout of Marc Canter's blog. As I've mentioned before, I really like outlines, and I loved the ability to expand/collapse posts on his site. His navigation appears to come from activeRenderer, but I wasn't sure quite how any of that played together, so I ended up just writing my own javascript to do it. Nothing overly complex, but I think it's a really cool effect. I'll try to put together some step-by-step instructions later, but it's pretty easy to figure out if you just open up my html and the javascript file included.

all in the pursuit of productivity

January 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

One of the things I like least about laptops is the lack of a full 101 keys and getting stuck with two buttons. Today I got around to doing something about it.

There are two things that annoy me most about using my laptop. 1) No middle mouse button. 2) No right-hand Ctrl key. In Linux, which is what I use on the laptop 99.9% of the time, I use the middle button to paste and also an alt-middle drag combination for resizing windows. I use ctrl-(left|right) for desktop navigation, and tend to do this with just the right hand.

Thanks to some handy instructions found here, changing my keyboard mapping around to solve both of these problems was pretty easy. I won't bore the main page with the technical solution, but click to get it. — Continue Reading...

leave no doubt

January 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I haven't mentioned football very often here, which is a bit odd, since each fall the college game comes very close to being atop the list of things taking my time.

Yesterday USC capped off the college football season with a win against Michigan. Everyone knows that. Anyone who watched the game or has read the articles realizes that Michigan had given up 5 passing touchdowns all year. Yesterday they gave up four. Everyone knows that Michigan had given up 15 sacks all year. Yesterday they gave up nine.

I don't know what can or should be done to fix the BCS system. What cannot be denied is that this system does not pick the two best teams in the country as participants for its national championship game. It didn't a couple years ago when Florida St went over Miami, it didn't when Nebraska went over Oregon, and it didn't this year. In my mind, no system at all is better than a system that so consistently fails at the explicit goal for which it was created.

I loved the Rose Bowl. I loved the matchup. I would rather have had USC play Michigan than either of the two teams that will line up Sunday night in New Orleans. I have no problem with the old system that produced occasional split national championships. If USC this year proves the catalyst for the dramatic change or removal of the BCS, I will be pleased.

Speaking of USC football, I have to mention right now the one site that got me through the football season. Garry and the rest of the staff of WeAreSC have done an amazing job all year, and I don't know what I would have done this summer without their daily practice reports.