greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Geekery

  • Thumbnail Theater: The Revival

    A long, long time ago I created my own little rendition of something called “thumbnail theater,” a tongue-in-cheek parody of a popular anime series. The original, by someone calling himself “Toasty Frog” (what’s up with the animal nicknames, eh?) was based on Evangelion, and someone else made one for Cowboy Bebop. I figured that I was best suited to take on the Tenchi Muyo OAV series.

    I probably figured wrong, but them’s the breaks.

    When I converted from version to version to version of the various site platforms here, Thumbnail Theater kept breaking. Moving to WordPress completely broke the archive, and for a long time I figured that’s where it could stay: broken and forgotten. Then, a few weeks ago, I decided to resurrect the project in a more useful form, namely as a static page hierarchy within WordPress. The rest, as they say, is history lunacy.

    At any rate, check out the TMTT revival currently in progress. I’ve reposted the six episodes’ worth of the first OAV, with the remaining episodes to follow as I get the chance.

  • Seals Of Violence

    If you look at the NaBloPoMo page, you’ll notice that some of the seals are a bit… forceful in the message they convey. “We here at NaBloPoMo enjoy nothing more than a good aggressive logo, apparently. Oooh, just wait until next year.”

    I can certainly play along with that spirit. Witness the following:

    Perhaps I’m just a total weirdo for finding the Seal Generator so darned amusing. I can live with that…

    (Note: Permission to use, granted. Permission to hotlink, denied. Be nice, kids.)

  • Yahoo: The black hole of email?

    My sister’s primary email address is at Yahoo, which I find amusing considering that for years she had an address here that she barely used. Maybe she’ll change her mind now.

    If you use Yahoo! mail as your main email account, you might not be receiving all of your emails. […] Since about October 16, 2006 they have been “overly aggressive” in blocking emails.

    I was wondering, this morning, why my server logs report indicated a bunch of strange SMTP errors. Eventually I traced it down to a bunch of deferrals from Yahoo’s server. Normally I don’t correspond with anyone on their system, but Sis and I have been in touch lately. Or, apparently, we’ve nearly been in touch. Maybe she’ll get my reply, maybe she won’t…

  • Timeline: Another feature that will bore you all.

    It’s not like I need more self-absorbed nonsense on this site, but you know what? I’m just that kind of nonsensical self-absorbed guy. So, as I remember dates and get the urge to plug them in, I’ll be updating the new Timeline feature, powered by the now-functional Timeline WordPress Plugin. Huge thanks go out to David Gagne for making this nifty little tool.

    (What? You wanted actual content, like I’ve been promising you for weeks? Hang in there. I’ll get to it. Honest.)

  • I No Longer Seek You

    Well, now. The IM system I’ve used the longest, ICQ, has locked me out of my account. Apparently there’s an ongoing (and officially unacknowledged) problem with hackers getting into their database, resetting passwords and removing associated email addresses, especially on older accounts (like mine, a seven-digit account number). I’ve only ever had a small handful of email addresses over the years, and none of them are working to do password recovery.

    ICQ’s support stance on this problem is, basically, “You’re screwed. Here, have a new ICQ number!” Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not like I was using the thing all that much. I’m just annoyed, not horribly inconvenienced. I suppose I could start using that Microsoft system a bit more, if necessary. (I know. I wasn’t going to create an account there, but it sort of came in really handy for my new job. My shame runs deep, I assure you.)

    So, any of you who might still have had me on your ICQ buddy lists… take me off and block that user ID. I can’t use that account anymore, and anyone who can is a hacker.

    (Before anyone chimes in with the snark: I don’t use the official ICQ client, my computer is squeaky clean, and there’s a history of this sort of thing happening at the server side. My geek cred is fine, thankyouverymuch.)

    Adding to the joys (ha ha) of Friday the 13th, I’m also home sick today. Either I caught a bug somewhere, or the mongolian grill did something to my innards. Whee.

  • BlogDesk: Useful, Perhaps

    Yesterday’s post and this entry appear thanks to an interesting little piece of software called BlogDesk, which may provide a convenient enough posting interface that I’ll have an easier time updating this here journal.

    Maybe.

    The product, while generally nifty, sports a few interesting quirks. For instance, if (like me) you tend to insert HTML as you go, you’re going to be unpleasantly surprised by your post. BlogDesk tends to turn angle brackets into, well, angle brackets. You have to toggle over to “source” view to do anything meaningful in that regard, or use the “Insert HTML” command.

    On the upside, it uses the <em> tag for italics and <strong> for bold face, thus supporting the recommended deprecation of <i> and <b>. (The basic idea is that you can and should decree via stylesheet what emphasized and/or strong text should look like instead of being restricted to simply italics and bold face. Never mind that almost nobody does this; it’s the principle of the thing, don’t you see?)

    (Anyway. Ahem. Moving right along…)

    BlogDesk is worth trying out, especially if you find yourself stuck sometimes feeling like you ought to post something but don’t feel like going to the trouble of firing up the browser and signing into your site’s administrative interface. It’ll post to WordPress and MovableType (among others), and will import your categories as well as allow you to set comment and trackback enabling on a post. I recommend giving it a whirl.

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