Stupid Internet Explorer

April 06, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm sitting in the Annenberg computer lab right now waiting for my advisor to get back from lunch. Being in a room full of Windows machines gives me occassion to see my site in Internet Explorer for the first time in a good while. At least on IE 6.0, it really isn't that pretty. Sidebar padding is a bit whacked, and some background colors aren't getting into places they should.

But you know what? I don't care too much. The design still works in IE, even if it isn't optimal. And I'm sick of trying to accomodate really broken CSS models. I'll bend for Safari, since at least it's trying (and the couple bugs like min-width: might be working now), but as long as it's at least passable in IE I'm satisfied, despite its leading 34% marketshare (on blogdowntown).

Here They Go Again

April 05, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It seems like this kind of stuff pops up every few months these days:

Martin, named FCC chairman two weeks ago, told a crowd at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention here that his agency did not have the authority it exercised over conventional broadcasting to regulate the programming that streams over cable lines.

But, he warned, that could change if Congress decides to give the FCC power to police content on cable and satellite.

At least he's honest; cable's in no way within their control. I don't think Congress can change that, either. Sure, they can pass a law giving the FCC control over cable. They can even make cable indecency fines a million bucks a piece if they feel so inclined. But you're going to have a pretty hard time convincing the Supreme Court that they've been wrong about almost a century of established doctrine regarding what forms of speech the government does and does not have the right to regulate. The government can talk and talk and talk about how "pervasive" cable is because "everyone" has it, but that still doesn't change the base fact that it's a service into which you have to subscribe. Case closed.

Live-Blogging City Hall

April 05, 2005 by Eric Richardson

This afternoon I attended a City Council Budget & Finance Committee Meeting, and live-blogged it. You can find both my live-blog and my post-meeting summary over at blogdowntown. I thought I'd come over here, though, to post my comments on the whole idea of live-blogging.

Starting with the tech: I brought my laptop, bluetooth adaptor, and cell phone. Cingular's EDGE network gave me connectivity with 1000ms ping times and fairly low packet loss. Both phone and laptop lasted through two straight hours of connectivity, though the phone battery was about done afterward.

I basically blogged the contents of the meeting raw as it happened, filtering a little but on the whole recording wholesale what I found interesting. I was IM'ing with Alan during the meeting, and noted that I was probably getting a little too in detail. He agreed, and said looking back a lot of the specifics probably wouldn't be that important. To me, though, it seemed best to record everything and then summarize it later. My summary's probably still too in depth, but oh well.

All in all a fascinating experience. I was amazed at how much I could type during a two-hour meeting.

I wouldn't doubt that this was the first live-blogging ever to be done from inside Los Angeles' City Hall. I doubt that will be recorded in the record books anywhere, but I figure that more times I say it the more google will pick it up.

Power Stayed On

April 04, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I guess the generators must have worked just fine. Power stayed on all morning. I'm glad I chose not to shut things down during the projected downtime.

I blame Vegas for no posting over the weekend.

Need Some Temporary Power

April 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

There's a sign downstairs saying that Monday morning they're going to be testing the building's emergency generator -- please turn off your computer. This creates an issue for someone like me, whose computers never turn off. It also creates an issue for this site, which would go black with the building.

That got me thinking... I have a laptop that's perfectly capable of running the site for a couple hours, but the problem is that my DSL bridge needs power for that to even matter. I guess what I really need is a little UPS that could give juice to just one 18 watt device for two hours. If anyone who reads this happens to have one handy, I'd love to borrow it.

Of course a setup like that wouldn't give me any sort of generalized protection... I'd need to know the outage was coming to get the laptop up and serving (and enough warning to rsync current data onto it), but I don't care about generalities. I care about Monday.