this'll just be a quick entry to point out a couple things…

1) in light of the "IE gets blowed up real good" bug apparently triggered by the recent bipolar revamp, i've unflipped the switch and gone back to the crappy frames version. if anyone knows why a little CSSP/DHTML might be causing IE to hack up a lung, i implore you to please come forward. for testing purposes, the XHTML valid revamp version is still available.

**update**: well, it looks like i've nearly licked the kick'sploding IE thing. apparently, i didn't do too much testing in IE 6 during initial development, probably thinking that IE5 and 6 rendered more similarly than they do. i still need to do a little layout clean-up work (especially on 1.5) for IE6, but otherwise things appear solid once again.

the culprit? stupid proprietary DOM stuff in IE. document.body.clientHeight was causing IE6 to puke, so i just amped up my browser detect, and called document.documentElement.clientHeight for IE6 only. seems to have done the trick.

those of you IE6'ers out there, please pound on one or all of these (jh – b15 – sp – org) and let me know if you're still seeing crashes. i'd be much obliged. ** end update**

2) in other news, the "latest images" functionality of the gallery scripts is coming along nicely, though it seems with each new feature i complete, i think of five more things that could make them even better. what this means is that, eventually, i'm pretty much going to have to do a ground-up rewrite of the scripts. yippee.

in honor of the new functionality (as partially implemented) check out the pictures i took over this past weekend, when i went home to p'town to visit the fam and see my sis and my awesome little niece. be sure to check out the rasnake/old_homestead gallery, as there are several kick ass shots of stuff in and around my parents house. (sometimes, i actually think i'm a good photographer)

anyway, hit that link quick, as it's only good for 10 days–one of the limitations of the latest images feature (as it stands now) is that the number of days images are counted as new is set globally. i'm planning on adding a bit where you can specify a date, a range of dates, or your own number of days for which to show images. should be fun.

**update 12/21/2004** more fixin's have been added to the gallery scripts, adding some of the stuff i mentioned above, and that gallery link above now targets a specific date (rather than xx days ago). still no UI for all the new gizmos, but i'll get to that soon-ish.** end update**

i'm sure this will elicit a grimace of some sort out of brian, but i've been puttering around the back office here at bipolar the last few days. My most recent accomplishment follows on the heels of a post (or two) i read earlier today about the "spread of weighted lists" or some-such nonsense. anyway, i saw it and immediately wondered if i could wrangle a quick thing together for the categories index of ye olde bipolar to implement the concept. it only took me about 5 minutes to get the basic code worked up in the movable type template for the category index, but it then took me about three hours to figure out the formula to properly weight the percentages so that the lowest-post-count categories would actually be readable. check it out, or wait 'til you get to the end of the post and click the "categories" link. obviously, the more posts in a category, the larger that category appears. pretty simple and visually intuitive (if visually chaotic) method of displaying more complex data than a simple list.

and i figured out the other day a quick painless workaround for that annoying non-scrolling div firefox bug: just click in the area to scroll, hit the tab key (to put focus on the next link), and scroll away! if you mouse while leaving one hand on the keyboard (as i usually do) then you can do this almost without thinking about it. of course, yes, it is a kluge and suboptimal behavior, but i think you can hack it. besides, not everyone has a scroll button on their mouse anyway, and a fix is on the way (an *no* i don't expect people to go out and download a nightly build *just* so they can use their scroll wheel on bipolar… i just offered that as an option for those inclined to it)

finally, i've been working for the last several days on some more improvements and additional functionality for the bipolar gallery, and you can get a glimpse of the work in progress (if all you wanna do is browse thumbnails at this point). the improvements were just in the "multiple subdirectory 'folding'" code (if you really care, ask and i'll explain), and the added functionality is something brian's asked for for quite a while–a "latest images" option. the page i linked to shows a main index of just the latest photos (currently set to show pics uploaded/changed within the last 10 days). eventually i'll make a seperate function that will take this and spit it out in a limited single set of thumbnails (so that i can, for example, have the 4 latest images in my gallery automatically show up on the most recent post). as i said, very beta work in progress at this point. but progress nonetheless.

I got this swanky new laptop, which you may or may not recall, and it counts among its nicer features a DVD+/-RW drive. which means i can create DVDs. which is nice.

since time immemorial, i've captured my favorite TV shows (read: Star Trek) to tape, and always dreamed of a time when i could have them in some more high-quality (and physically easier to manage) format. to this end, i've dreamt often of a massive home media server to which i can record and store every TV show or movie i'd ever want to re-watch.

in lieu of multiple terabytes of network attached storage, the writable DVD thing might be a good way to begin building the collection. but how to capture the TV shows onto my computer for writing? i don't have a TV Tuner card, nor will i be getting one any time soon (see: "pending marriage"), so i had to figure out a reliable method of getting stuff i wanted onto my hard drive. enter pealco [via boing boing] (for me), and engadget (for you). the engadget piece is a bit more involved and hand-holding like with the whole setup, not that you need that, but just in case. it's mainly just because the engadget how-to is new, so it's the one that prompted this post. but, i've been using this setup for two weeks, and it's pretty swank i must say.

now i've just gotta design some DVD packaging material for my Enterprise DVDs, and i'll be all set. someone else has already designed seasons 2 & 3 so i just need to knock out 1 & 4. i doubt i'll get as detailed as that guy did, but who knows. depends on how the creative juices flow. i also figure i'll start with the most recent episodes and work my way back, since Paramount's talking about releasing official DVD season one box set sometime late next year.

i don't watch much TV, but what i do watch, i'm serious about.

first off, before i get into the boring bipolar related stuff, let me point you in the direction of ghost town studio, the most recent issue of which features an article and images i put together. it's a very interesting little news piece about the Sears/Kmart merger.

in other news, and to the matter at hand, i've just discovered (inadvertently, i might add) that that annoying little firefox bug where scrollable DIV elements, or rather, DIV elements with their overflow properties set to allow scrolling, wouldn't scroll with a mousewheel (or equivalent widget). the scrollbars would work fine, of course, but it would be heresy to knowingly release something that refuses to work with the one really major improvement in HID design to come along in the last 10 years.

anyway, that nasty little bugger is fixed, at least in the latest trunk builds of firefox, and so should be fixed forthwith in the upcoming minor point releases of firefox 1.x of course, if you go to download the stock ff1.0 today, you'll still get the non-scrolly divs, but in a few weeks or a month's time, it'll all be history.

so, i told you that to tell you this: sometime soon, tonight, tomorrow, sometime this weekend, or maybe even next week, i'm going to flip the switch* on those "major improvements" i talked about way back when. so now's definitely the time to go back to that post and knock the crap out of those pages to see if they fall apart too badly. MC Seth-yo did some extensive cross-browser testing, and aside from some completely understandable though thankfully infrequent failings, the designs really held up pretty well. (of course, that may be selective memory talking, and when i go back to look at those screenshots he did, if they're still up, i may be in for a shock or something.) anyway, soon these changes will go live, the world will rejoice, and you, if you're really really annoyed by not being able to scroll with Mr. Mousewheel, should be encouraged to get thyself to mozilla.org's firefox ftp download area and download a copy of the latest trunk build. right now, the latest trunk still reports as being 0.9.1+, so be warned. latest trunk builds can be squirrelly, not as stable as the normal release builds.

also, i'll very very shortly (tonight) be installed an MT plugin to close old comments (we've been getting bombarded by comment spam for a while, but i've been to lazy to install additional protections on top of MT-Blacklist), so if you've been itching to comment on a post from 3 years ago, you better get on it.

**UPDATE**: the switch has officially been flipped, f'real.

Clinton's DLC sent out a message today about a "reform insurgency." and have to say i agree with them on pretty much every point.

and jennifer, in her comments on the post-election post (which i'm still pushing to get people to read and comment on, 'cause talk=good), mentioned two other worthy organizations we should investigate and invest our time & money in.

Democracy for America
Black Box Voting

but my number one recommendation to get yourself politically involved, even in a tertiary disconnected sort of way, is to donate to and join the ACLU today! To become a card-carrying member requires only a $20 donation, but please feel free to donate as much as your little pocketbook can stand.

and now, back to our regularly scheduled silence.

oh yeah, and by the way, i turned 31 on monday, so thanks alot for the birthday present America… was there a gift receipt in the box? it's a lovely president, i'm sure, but i might want to exchange it for something else.

i am no stranger to obsession, thought sometimes they run stronger than others. for the last… er… what, like 8 months? a year? almost a year… i've been singularly obsessed with politics. and not just politics, but with current events as well (though not with a broad scope). i have collected links to sites that i read on a regular basis, and in the past couple of weeks it has seemed that pretty much all i do anymore is read news sites/blogs and either store the information loosely in my buggy brain, or slip it softly into a "staging" folder in my bookmarks.

for quite some time i've used a "daily" bookmarks folder to house links to all those sites i visit (oh, this is good, you'll never guess) daily, with subfolders for sites i visit "frequently" and for the sites of "friends." before that it was just a huge dailies folder and a blogs folder.

about a week ago i finally decided to take some time and figure out what bloglines was all about. now, i've attempted to use RSS aggregators before, but never really found them to integrate well into the way i surf the web. plus there never seemed a good way to fold the results of all those RSS feeds in with each other. bloglines still doesn't integrate the feeds, but it does an adequate job of tracking entries that have been read, so that i just have to check periodically for new ones. since it's a browser-based aggregator, it's integrated into my regular browsing habits just like my daily bookmarks, but quicker (plus, i no longer have to remember–for the most part–which posts i've read and which i've not, not that it was that hard to begin with).

anyway, it seems to have streamlined my daily reading, but now i seem to have so many damned sites that i read, most of which are fairly prolific posters (or teams of posters) that all i seem to do is read.

The Daily Reads:

43 Folders
AmigaWorld
Bloglines | News
Boing Boing
Cool Tools
The Courier-Journal
Daily Kos
David Allen
Daypop Top 40
Engadget
Gizmodo
On Lisa Rein's Radar: Daily Show Clips
InfoWorld
Jabber News
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting
LostInLouisville
Louisville, KY – Topix.net
MobileWhack
MoCoLoco
MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse
Quotes of the Day
Screenhead
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Talking Points Memo
Techbargains.com

i've actually managed to do a little work tonight (answered a few emails, updated old-man.net, and written this post) but i still feel like i'm racing the clock.

part of this continual feeling of overwhelmed ineffectualness has driven me towards things like Danny O'Brien's LifeHacks, 43 folders, and especially David Allen's Getting Things Done. i am now making a concerted effort to learn the GTD concepts, and research and figure out how to apply the principles in my life, and with the tools that i like to use. i want to figure out how to make that Handspring Visor i've been neglecting a vital part of the process for me. right now, my room's a mess of discarded envelopes (and, of course, their content) and i have a bad tendency to let things sit for too long or forget them altogether until it's too late. i've gotten my finances under control because i have A SYSTEM, now it's time to get the rest of my life in some semblance of that same control. i know i have the capacity, now i hope i'm finding the methods and the tools that will let me figure the rest of it out. we'll see, but i do have a good feeling about the whole thing.

oh yeah, bush sucks, kerry rules.

i wanted to write a post, but i don't really have any (not-so) unique insights or anything to share.

i spent this past sunday in bed for pretty-much 24 hours, interrupted only long enough to get out of bed to throw up, or later, to try to eat, or to just feebly walk around the house because i was sick of being sick in bed. now i think i'm still trying to recover from being in bed so damned long. my brain is tired.

i did find an interesting site last week, http://www.last.fm/. i suppose not an entirely original site, in that it's basically an online radio station, or live365 style multiple radio broadcaster. what makes it interesting, perhaps even unique, is the fact that you can get online, tell it the artists, albums, etc. you like, and it'll suggest other user's "radio programs" to listen to. then, as you listen to the station, if you keep a window open (you can pop up the "portable" player and minimize it) you can tell the site which songs you like, and which you hate.

as you continue to make judgements, the site can make better suggestions, and, in fact, can create a "profile" radio program for you, where it'll pull songs and artists from other user's profiles who have similiar tastes.

so far, it's been picking some interesting stuff for me, though it did throw a Christina Aguilera at me earlier that i had to ban the fuck out of.

oh, and i think they've been getting more attention lately (i found them via daypop, so they're getting linked all over creation, supposedly) so they're still working out some of the kinks (my profile has been telling me i've been listening to "Tool – Forty Six & 2" all day now, so the love/hate marker thing hasn't been functional for me today).

but, you can go in and add individual artists, albums, and songs to your profile "by hand" if you want to take advantage of the "profile radio" portion of the site.

pretty cool stuff.

y'know, i really should have known about this for a long time, considering it's been kicking around in some form or another since apparently 1996-ish. i don't think i even realized that the "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game had been around since 1996, but then, the most of 1994 – 1999 is kind of a fuzzy memory at best. those were dark days. well, ok. 1996 – 1999 were dark days, 1994 – 1996 were actually kind of fun. if i miss any part of my past life, it's that part.

anyway, back to the subject at hand. a buddy at work was telling me that he used to hang with Roger Clinton back in the day, and then, somehow almost randomly (as is our wont) we wondered what his "Bacon number" was. that's when my co-worker mentioned the Oracle of Bacon and i just looked at him in bewilderment…

it was one of those moments where you just sit there and think to your self:
"of course there's an online site that has a database on which you can run '6 degrees of kevin bacon' queries… so, if it's so obvious, why had the thought never even occurred to me before now?"

of course, now i know i've a Bacon number of 4, which probably isn't that impressive (2 for Roger Clinton, 3 for my co-worker, making me 4), but now i'm also trying to think of whether i know any actors personally or not…

hmm…

i've been hanging out with my sweetheart all night, so i've only got a few minutes to get today's post in under the wire. and what should i see upon ascending the stairs to the technological sauna that is our family room/computer area, but Paul the inimitable Puffin playing some funky weird game based on the struggle between good and evil. i'm sure you've all seen this, 'cause if i'm seeing it, then it has to have been making the rounds… but anyway, any port in a storm is what i always say.

how 'bout this: http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

enjoy!

so, no luck on cancelling the insurance. i'm locked in until at least next June… unless i find a better job.

but, i've figured out a way to equalize the situation a bit—i'll just tell them to pay me more money to make up for the crappy health insurance.

also, here's a classic 2000 style weblog link to pad out this post a bit. i'm sure you've seen it making the rounds, but i wanted to point out what a great list of 10 reasons for despising Bush (though not necessarily 10 reasons for loving Kerry) this guy came up with.

personally—and, strangely enough i don't think i've really commented on this before—i'm not a huge fan of Kerry. but honestly, i think my cat could run this country better than Bush. and i mean Harriet—the crazy one. so, i'm firmly in the ABB camp, and so will vote with conviction for Kerry, because however good Kerry might not be, Bush is much much less good. (how's that for an f'ed up sentence?) in fact, if Kerry is good (which he is good, just not great), then Bush is most decidedly anti-good.

well anyway, enjoy the list of discretions.