May 2002

Ruben James - The Shananagans

Use Eric’s Popup window Generator to easily add popup windows to your site! The windows are activated by clicking on a link, and can be fine tuned in every aspect, such as dimensions, scrollbars, toolbar etc. Awesome tool.

Jason @ JPlay has written a great tutorial on how to add a user comment to the pop-up send-link hack. I’ve gotten multiple requests for this, so I’m sure it will interest many readers. Thanks, Jason!

My girlfriend and I went to The Troubadour last night to catch a guy named Marc Copely. He was opening for a group called Sense Field, and opening for him was a group called Crashcart. (Crashcart was actually pretty cool.)

The Troubadour’s been around since 1957; an excellent little club. I’m pretty sure The Doors played there at some point. It was a lot like The Covered Dish in Gainesville. Their web site is terrible, though, which is surprising since they’re pretty much a landmark in the live music world, y’know? I dropped the webmaster a line and asked if they’d like some help in a redesign, so we’ll see if I get a response.

The History of NFL Team Names is quite interesting. There is a quick explanation of how some of the teams got their names. I think it’s pretty funny that one of the proposed names of the team that would eventually become the Buccaneers was “The Mafia”.

by P. J. O’Rourke

P. J. O’Rourke is one of my favorite authors and his treatise on economics did not disappoint me.

The book is comprised of eleven satire-filled chapters covering the study of economics and the impacts of economic theories on several nations. O’Rourke deftly explains how communism has created a catastrophe in Cuba and how socialism has somehow survived in Sweden. He presents Tanzania, Albania, and Russia as examples of economic theory gone horribly awry and how the suffering and poverty of the peoples of those nations should be unfavorably compared to the relative prosperity of the United States and Hong Kong. He takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the planet - from a corporate magazine-financed viewpoint - and shows, warts-and-all - what can happen when good politics is combined with poor management.

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Dragula (Hot Rod Herman Remix) - Rob Zombie

My Handspring Visor is on le fritz. This is not good. But it does give me the opportunity to share a very nifty design aspect that you might not have noticed. If you need to reset your Visor, there is a little tiny hole in the back which conceals a little tiny button. In order to push this button you have to have a little tiny pin or bent paper clip or something. It’s not so easy to do. I have been, for the last year or so, using one of my earrings as a button-pusher. Of course that means I have to remove and replace an earring which is also not the easiest thing in the world to do.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I realized that the tip of my Visor’s stylus is unscrewable! And when you detach it, there is - lo and behold! - a perfectly-sized tip for resetting the darn thing! Great Caesar’s Ghost! How cool is that?!

[Update: The Palm Pilot stylus also has a hidden reset-tip. It can be found by unscrewing the top of the stylus (instead of the tip).]

I am back from Florida and have a million things to do (and blog!) but I quickly wanted to wish a very special happy birthday to my little sister Jenny today. I got to spend some time with her and mom while I was in the humidity sunshine state this weekend and, as always, I was awestruck at just how incredible a person she is. Jennifer A. Gagne is the world’s best little sister ever and I love her to pieces. She’s about to embark upon yet another whirlwind tour of the Eastern U.S. and I wish her luck and fun (and safety from bears). Go Jenny!

Want to spice up your web site with some easy JavaScript tricks? I’m going to show you how to make your buttons, text boxes, and textareas change their colors. All you need are four attributes and some additional functions in your javascript file. (If you want to learn about adding a javascript file to your site, read this.)
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Updates will be sporadic at best for the next several days. I’m going to Florida to be the best man for my friend Ryan’s wedding. We’re going deep-sea fishing on Friday in lieu of a bachelor party; Ryan doesn’t drink and we’re really not the “stripper” crowd. That should be quite an adventure.

After the wedding shenanigans I’ll be spending a few days with my mom and sister. Jenny’s birthday is next Wednesday which happily dovetails nicely with the release of the new Star Wars movie, so I’m sure we’ll go see that while I’m there. We’ll probably make a cross-state trip to visit my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousins, too.

<smooch!>

I wonder if the conversation went like this:

“Are you sure it’s safe to pet him?”

“Of course it is! Look, if it wasn’t safe, could I do this?”

Time for a little poll. Every now and then I upload a mystery song to my Song of the Moment blog. Does anyone ever download it? Should I bother to keep doing that? I never get any feedback, and I’m wondering if it’s worth it. So here’s your chance to make an impact on the content here. Let me know. Should it stay?

Last week I used some SSI and MovableType trickery, by the way, to include the two most recent songs at the bottom of the sidebar over there on the right.

Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta - Geto Boys