Murky Has A Posse

If you play WoW and are into internet cliches, then you’ll get a kick out of the graphic you should see to the right of this text. I made it on a whim from a screenshot I took after a partner guild as well as my own defeated Onyxia for the first time.

Misc.

I’ve discovered the -Profile command line argument for Thunderbird. This has allowed me to create a nice setup where I’ve got both the Mac and PC versions of Thunderbird on a flash drive and have both using the same profile. This enable me to pickup my mail no matter where I am or what OS I’m using. The only hack involved was to edit prefs.js and remove all the absolute paths (which differ between OS platforms). You can do this because there are relative path variables that accompany the absolute path variables. Deleting the absolute path variables triggers Thunderbird to seek the relative path variables and everything works.

For my flash drive I’m using the Kingston DataTraveler Plus II which, according to some articles I had found, has the best read/write/seek performance of almost all flash drives out there today. Previously I was using a SanDisk Cruzer Micro and found that to be horribly slow. It would literally take Thunderbird a half hour to apply it’s spam filter to about 500 e-mails. With the Kingston drive it takes about 3 minutes.

Only thing I don’t like about the Kingston drive is that the USB port cover doesn’t have anything it can attach to on the opposite end. So when your drive is in use you’ve got a loose cap. There are some good drives out there today that are cap-less (the brand escapes me at the moment) that should preform just as well. I’d recommend going for one of those.

I’m working on setting up apache/mysql/php on my iBook. Rather than use the built-in copy of Apache 1.3 I’ve installed a fresh copy of Apache 2.2. Installation requires that you compile apache, php, and a few supporting libraries. Once I get everything up and running (need to tweak PHP/Apache settings and get MySQL accounts setup) I’ll have a nice, portable development system. I’ve already got a Mac copy of Nvu installed and it’s ready to go. It’s a lower-end iBook G4 too which, retail 2 years ago, cost under $1000. You can probably find a used one for much less. It’s a really nice, cheap system with a Unix heart. I love it.

Gargoyles Support

Sales of the Gargoyles: Seasion 2 volume 2 DVD have not been as strong as season 1 according to the series co-creator Greg Weisman.

And so I come to you all with a blatant and shameless plug to buy the DVD. Doesn’t have to be for yourself. Could be for your cousin or nephew or daughter or whomever. The better the sales on this thing the better chance at Disney releasing volume 2 (and with more features like director/producer commentary stuff).

If you’ve already bought a copy, I sincerely thank you. If you haven’t and can’t or won’t, that’s okay too. But maybe you could spread the word a bit. Maybe a shout out on a blog or your own website. Every little bit helps.

Also related to Gargoyles is the upcoming Gargoyles comic. An article on the comic along with some previews can be found over at Comic Book Resources. Pencils are by Slave Labor Graphics artist Dave Hedgecock and rumor has it the coloring is being done by an old friend of mine which is very exciting.

And one last bit for those of you who do have a fondness for this show, the annual Gathering (a convention for fans of the show) will be held this June in Los Angeles. A ton of people who worked on the show will be there as guests, including several of the voice actors. I’m especially excited that Ed Asner, voice of Hudson, will be there. It’s a really great con too in that it’s a lot more intimate than other cons like the SD ComiCon. I think it’s quite a unique experience and worth making the trip (if you can afford it). I do plan to be there and there may even be a panel on fan website which I’d be involved with. Although I doubt there’d be much discussion on CSS or HTML document structure theory (which I think is a topic/field I’ve made up, but oh well). But who knows.

So buy the DVD. Check out the con (especially if you live around LA) and have fun!

( and i hope to finish up work on the dropdown menu system soon. real world work has me very busy for the next couple weeks and I may not have a lot of time. at which point i’ll incorporate it into Tank! and release Tank! in ZIP. )

Ruthsarian Menus : A Sneak Peak

Check it out!

The dropdown menu system I’ve been working on. It’s incredibly compatbile. That IE 5.0 and 5.2 work amazes me. It’s been a fun journey so far. Right now the least compatible browser is IE7 (go figure). But hopefully the final release of IE7 will work much better.

I’ve made heavy comments in the stylesheet so take a look at that if/when you get the chance.

It’s not a final version yet, but I think you could probably take what’s there right now and throw it up on a production website without much difficulty (in theory).

I’d love to hear some feedback on this!