Archive for February, 2007

I have disabled trackbacks at this site, due to a spammer grabbing content from my RSS feed and inserting it in his splog. Thankfully, only a summary of each post appears in my site’s RSS feed, so all the content he grabs from me is just a short sentence or two. I’m also blocking his IP address, so maybe I can put a stop to this nonsense.

I’ve rolled out some upgrades to the software I use here at the site for my photo albums. Here’s the list of improvements:

• Clean URLs are now used through the magic of URL rewriting. I think I’ve gotten most of the kinks worked out with this, but WordPress feels like it should control everything on the site. I’ll be making a post later this week on what I had to do to get things to work.
• HTML is now supported in all my photo captions. I’ve added a few links to a few of the photos, and I’m looking forward to using this feature on future albums. I hope to add this functionality to album descriptions eventually.
• The header image is no longer shown on photo album pages. This reduces the height of the page, reducing the need to scroll down.
• Extended photo information is now shown in a table using four columns instead of two, again reducing the height of the page.
• A new database backend is being used (the MySQLi extension instead of the raw MySQL PHP calls).
• A photo gallery title is no longer shown on each album page.

I want to add comments eventually, but there’s more effort involved in doing that than I want to spend right now. If you notice any problems, please let me know about them. I’m aware of a minor bug in my rewriting code (no regular users should encounter it), but I hope to fix it in the coming days.

An increasing number of links to photographs are making the front page of Digg, making an already weak collection of ‘news’ even weaker. There’s a petition for adding a new photography section to the site, and that would certainly help keep these links off the front page. Most of the photographs that get linked to on Digg are nice, but none of them are front-page worthy.

On a photography related note, I will be making some upgrades soon to the photo album software I employ here at this website. Don’t be surprised if the photo galleries are down for a while over the next few days. Some new features are coming, and I’m excited about them, so stay tuned for updates.

It appears that LucasFilm Entertainment is suing Digg Inc. over the use of the trademark “Digg.” Strangely enough, LucasFilm claims that the Digg name infringes on their 1996 video game The Dig. LucasFilm has just lost all credibility; their glory days are truly over.

There’s nothing that says “my career as a popular icon has hit rock bottom for good” more than shaving your head, getting a tattoo, and wearing a blond wig with gigantic, Cobra-style sunglasses. I’ve never had any respect for Britney Spears, so I’m really not moved by her latest cry for attention. What really makes me laugh, however, is the fact that semi-respectable people are saying that we shouldn’t poke fun at Ms. Spears, since she’s going through a “tough time” right now.

Get serious.

Everyone should be making fun of her non-stop. She has now entered the realm of Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson; everything she ever does from here on out will be a joke. I say that we get the most entertainment out of her while we can. Let the late night jokes commence!

It seems that Papa John’s has “outsourced” the pizza ordering process. The past two times that I have called our local Papa John’s establishment, I was connected with an operator at who knows where. She took my order like the local folks normally do, but she clearly submits the order via her computer (”let me key in your order here on my computer,” she says). What clearly gives it away as a call center is the fact that the operator gives the actual address of the local establishment: “Do you want to pick up your pizza at [insert address here]?” The local folks never asked that in the past; it was simply “is this for pick-up or delivery?”

I’m not exactly sure why Papa John’s would want to send the ordering process to a call center. Is it simply to hire fewer people? Was our local establishment doing such a poor job that the corporation stepped in to help?

Has anyone else seen this behavior when ordering pizza? I’m not sure if this is just something at our local establishment or if this is a wider spread change. Either way, it’s very strange.

Mark Pilgrim just recently patched a long-standing bug in Firefox (the fix will appear in Firefox 3). Currently, there is no way a user can disable timed redirects through META refresh elements. This becomes a gigantic problem to blind users who utilize screen-reader software. By the time the screen reader starts reporting what’s on screen, the page changes unexpectedly.

Beginning in Firefox 3, users will have the option of being warned when such refresh event takes place. A notification bar, just like the one used to alert the user of blocked pop-up ads, will appear when a META refresh takes place. The user will then be able to click a button to allow the event. Note that this new system will be disabled by default, meaning that everything will act as it does today in Firefox 2. Also note that JavaScript refreshes are not handled by this fix.

What I find most intriguing about this new system is that the notification bar appears just like an ALERT to assistive software. Mark has a blog post that goes into way more detail on the fix, so check it out if you’re interested. It’s really good to see Firefox making strides in this area. Yet one more reason that Firefox 3 will be super awesome.