Reid Beels

Okay, so I’m sitting here at Coffee Time, I’ve got my Powerbook on the table and my phone is sitting next to it on the right hand side. Since I sat down I’ve grabbed my phone and moved it around no less than three separate times, each time realizing that it wasn’t a mouse and dejectedly going back to my trackpad. My phone is not a mouse, but what if it WAS? With the size of today’s mini wireless mice, the hardware can’t actually take up all that much space and it would provide just one more little bit of hardware integration. It would be so cool. It wouldn’t even necessarily need to be built into the mouse either. Like those flashy lights that scott used to have, it could be built in to a replacement battery pack. This would work especially well on my phone as the back panel could be quickly replaced to let an optical beam shine out. There would still need to be a clicking method, of course, but that could be dealt with. If people would be satisfied with one button, it could add a bit of width to the phone and function kind of like the Apple pro (not mighty) mouse. If it were actually to be built into the phone, existing exterior buttons could be used and if the phone had built-in bluetooth, this would just add one more little way to use it. I totally want one.

Update! I’m realizing that it might not be the most reliable solution, but I think that it might just be possible to do this on a cameraphone with adequate java support! Sure, sliding your cameraphone around might not be the best idea, but it would still be cool.

While working on this redesign here, I’m finding myself reading a bunch of articles and reference sites that I hadn’t paid attention to for years. One thing that I’ve just rediscovered is the joy of the ABBR tag. It lets you markup abbreviations so that they can be styled if you’re so inclined but the thing that is cool about it in my mind is that browsers display the title attribute of it as a tooltip. I kind of went crazy marking up the post that I just made and I’m determined to keep doing it so that those who don’t know what KOL, ZP, or PNCA are can be easily enlightened with a simple mouseover.

After writing this post, I realized that for most of my examples I should have been using the ACRONYM tag instead. Oops, silly me.

In developing my new site layout I’ve been sticking strictly with clean XHTML and using CSS for 100% of my formatting. I just made the final little updates that make all of my templates validate as XHTML 1.1! It feels really good to be writing standards-compliant code and having it create an appealing user experience.

Now, I had kind of expected that IE users would get a somewhat less-pretty experience but had assumed at they would at least get a usable one. I’ve since discovered that I was wrong. My current main problem, which I may have solved somewhat, is that IE doesn’t support position:fixed (used to keep portions of the sidebar from scrolling). Since position: fixed is a version of position: absolute that doesn’t scroll with the viewport, I’d be happy to have the elements default back to position:absolute in IE, but even that seems to cause problems as the top bar doesn’t seem to properly inherit things from the side bar. Phooey.

As an expression of my frustration, I’ve used the Brilliant Button Maker to create the following little 80×15 button:

In other web-related news, I’ve discovered that every browser except Safari seems to hate garamond. Even if I have it installed on the computer i’m working on, Firefox and Opera (now freeee) both render my type in Times. This is confusing.

I just talked to the guys who are doing the wireless install for my building and they’ve just finished working the bugs out and making the system production-ready. I’d talked to them earlier in the install and gotten the WEP key, but the network stopped giving out DHCP leases about halfway through the week. Here’s hoping that the network really is without problems because as proud as I am of my little bridging setup here, I’ll be glad to be able to get a connection with all of my windows closed.

Another thing that i’ve noticed about this connection is that it’s noticeably faster than I expected. As near as I can tell from the little bit of research that I’ve done, it’s a comcast small business connection with 5 mbit downstream / 512kbit up. Now, the upstream isn’t great, but it’s a lot better than the 128 kbit cap that afn and comcast residential put on things. Of course, this is likely to seem slightly less-speedy once other people in the building get ahold of the WEP key, but there are only 14 units so I think it should work out fine as long as people don’t run too many uncapped bittorrent sessions.

I’ll be switching my little network-within-a-network here over to using the new system for connectivity in the next day or so and then I’ll be able to start figuring out a way to tunnel a ssh connection into my G4 tower for cool remote-access projects. I’ve been considering wiring it to the door buzzer in case I ever get locked out of the building and need a nerdy way to get back in. Of course, i’d still probably be locked out of my apartment since electronic locks seem like a bit of overkill, but whatever.

Update: It seems that many things that require a persistant connection such as AIM and some forms of streaming audio/video don’t work with this connection. From what I’ve found online it might be a problem with the ARP tables but I don’t have any way to contact the guys who installed the network right now so I haven’t been able to get it fixed.

• April 1, 1848 •
You started down the trail with 20 oxen, 40 sets of clothing, 600 bullets, 3 wagon wheels, 3 wagon axles, 3 wagon tongues, 1,000 pounds of food, and $50.00.
You decided to continue.
You decided to change the pace to strenuous.
• April 5, 1848 •
You have reached the Kansas River Crossing.
You decided to continue.
You chose to caulk your wagon and float it across the river.
• April 7, 1848 •
You had a wagon axle break but were able to fix it.
• April 8, 1848 •
You have reached the Big Blue River Crossing.
You decided to continue.
You chose to caulk your wagon and float it across the river.
• April 12, 1848 •
You have reached Fort Kearney.
You decided to continue.
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• April 13, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• April 18, 1848 •
Severe storm.
• April 23, 1848 •
You have reached Chimney Rock.
You decided to continue.
• April 26, 1848 •
You have reached Fort Laramie.
You decided to continue.
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• April 27, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• May 8, 1848 •
You have reached Independence Rock.
You decided to continue.
• May 9, 1848 •
You decided to change the pace to steady.
• May 10, 1848 •
You decided to change the pace to strenuous.
• May 11, 1848 •
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• May 12, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• May 14, 1848 •
Sara got lost.
• May 19, 1848 •
You have reached South Pass.
You decided to continue.
You decided to take the trail to the Green River Crossing.
• May 20, 1848 •
You found some wild fruit.
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• May 21, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• May 24, 1848 •
You had a wagon axle break but were able to fix it.
• May 27, 1848 •
You have reached the Green River Crossing.
You decided to continue.
You decided to continue.
You chose to take a ferry across the river.
• June 1, 1848 •
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• June 2, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• June 5, 1848 •
You have reached Soda Springs.
You decided to continue.
• June 6, 1848 •
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• June 7, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• June 10, 1848 •
You found 22 bullets, and 1 wagon wheel in an abandoned wagon.
You have reached Fort Hall.
You decided to continue.
• June 12, 1848 •
Hailstorm.
You decided to change the pace to steady.
• June 14, 1848 •
Emily was bitten by a snake.
Emily has a broken leg.
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• June 15, 1848 •
You decided to rest for 4 days.
• June 19, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• June 20, 1848 •
You decided to change the pace to strenuous.
• June 24, 1848 •
Sara was bitten by a snake.
You decided to change the pace to steady.
• June 25, 1848 •
You decided to rest for 3 days.
• July 2, 1848 •
Zeke was bitten by a snake.
• July 3, 1848 •
Emily was bitten by a snake.
Sara is well again.
You have reached the Snake River Crossing.
You decided to rest for 7 days.
• July 8, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
You chose to have an Indian guide help you cross the river.
• July 11, 1848 •
Zeke is well again.
• July 12, 1848 •
Emily is well again.
• July 17, 1848 •
You decided to change the pace to strenuous.
• July 18, 1848 •
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• July 19, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• July 20, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• July 21, 1848 •
Rough trail.
• July 23, 1848 •
An ox wandered off.
• July 26, 1848 •
You decided to change the pace to steady.
• July 27, 1848 •
An ox is sick.
• July 28, 1848 •
Heavy fog.
No water.
• August 1, 1848 •
The trail is impassable.
• August 7, 1848 •
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 0 pounds of food from hunting.
• August 8, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• August 10, 1848 •
No water.
• August 11, 1848 •
You have reached Grande Ronde in the Blue Mountains.
You decided to rest for 5 days.
• August 15, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• August 16, 1848 •
You decided to take the trail to The Dalles.
• August 18, 1848 •
Bad water.
You decided to hunt.
You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.
• August 20, 1848 •
You decided to continue.
• August 21, 1848 •
No water.
• August 22, 1848 •
No grass for the oxen.
• August 25, 1848 •
You had a wagon tongue break but were able to replace it from supplies.
The trail is impassable.
• August 28, 1848 •
The trail is impassable.
• September 5, 1848 •
You found some wild fruit.
A thief stole 7 oxen from your wagon.
• September 7, 1848 •
Emily was bitten by a snake.
You have reached The Dalles.
You decided to continue.
You decided to raft down the Columbia River.
You made it to the Willamette Valley.
5 people arrived in good health.
Your Score = 2,730