Followup on the wireless Baltimore Inner Harbor story from Mike Lee: The signal’s weak, and the air is cold.
Photos / of
Photos are back, now with pretty URLs. This was achieved with mod_rewrite and a line in .htaccess:
RewriteRule ^photos/of/(.*)/([0-9]+)$
/photos/album.php?directory=$1&photo=$2
(on one line)
That line takes the info from the album script’s query string and puts them into the new URL, thus hiding default cruft. The result: friendlier, more human navigation.
(I’ve tested it, but please inform me if any problems are encountered.)
OKCancel
OK/Cancel: Funny up-and-coming online comic about an HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) Designer. Any graphic designer who has worked with hardcore, UI-challenged programmers should identify immediately with this one. (via anil’s daily links.)
Tight Circles
Taikonaut
China launches a spaceman. Based on feedback on Metafilter and Slashdot, I would describe the general reaction as “guarded, magnanimous optimism.” The community is ebullient with congratulations to China, but there’s an underlying current of “Oh no, them thar oppressive Communists is a-beatin’ us at our own game!”
Seriously, it takes money, will, and guts to launch such an ambitious space endeavor — ambition which our own space program seems to have lost in a mess of budget cuts and gray hair. Come on, NASA! When will we be seeing that Space Plane? A Moon Base? A Mars Base?
Whales! Mate!
In Finding Nemo, there’s a part where Marlin and Dory meet a humpback whale right in the turbid waters of Sydney Harbor. At that part, I commented to Amy that such things could not possibly happen near a big city port.
Well, I was wrong. Turns out it’s a fairly common occurrence down there.
Followup: Blogged at Shalom’s. Australia really is an action-packed place, ain’t it?
Relocation to Miscellaneous
In the early days of web building, it was considered good practice to offer your visitors free downloads like branded screensavers and desktops, to build recognition and make your site more “sticky.” That was the rationale behind the download section in my earlier sites. These days, however, such software gimmickry is better relegated to the background in favor of more compelling content — such as that provided by, oh, perhaps, a weblog.
My downloads, however, continue to attract no small number of hits from old directory listings, and as such deserve to remain somewhere on my site. Hence, I have moved the link to the download page, with its old-fashioned desktop tiles and Win9x splash screens, off the front page and into the Miscellaneous section.
(Also moved to Miscellaneous: archives of Pula.ph and the Prepaid Cards Blog. And of course, Ang Dating Daan’s Kaanib.net lives on.)
Twenty-Seven Today
On a completely unrelated note, my wishlist.
Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be
Yesterday at choir we practiced “Thou O Jehovah Abideth Forever” from the Four Motets of Aaron Copland. Personally, I have a hard enough time just listening to Copland, so I expected the singing of his work, with all its atonal post-romantic dissonance, to be musical torture. And at first, it was. But it was kind of fun, too.
After church and practice were done, it was another one of those achingly pretty days when the sun is out and the sky is blue and the temperature is exactly 72.5°F, so I went running around the National Mall for a bit, after which I sat on the grass in front of Air and Space and had a hotdog.
A Golden Galaxy
Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Nor hurt nor torment cometh them anigh / O holy hope of immortality / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / To eyes of men unwise, they seem to die / They are at peace, O fairest liberty / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / On earth as children chastened by Love’s rod / As gold in furnace tried / So now on high, they shine like stars, a golden galaxy / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God.
“Souls of the Righteous,” T. Tertius Noble