I blogged about this problem back in December. IE 6.0 won’t let me view the source code on webpages I visit. The problem came back and instead of just erasing the cache like I did last time, I discovered that I could just lower the amount of disk space the cache was set to store. I’ve now reduced it to 100MB which, when I think about it, should be plenty anyway. Reducing the cache size also fixed the problem I was having with not being able to save .jpg files as anything other than .bmp’s. Only time will tell if this fixes the problem permanently.
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The Great Escape
You need a premium account to view articles at Salon.Com, but if you don’t have one you can take a few seconds to view an advertisement and get a free day pass. It’s well worth it to read an exerpt from journalist Craig Unger’s new book “House of Bush, House of Saud”. If half the things he writes are true, it’s enough to make you sick. A lot of the things I read in this article were also pointed out in Michael Moore’s new book “Dude Where’s My Country?”
Immediately after 9/11, dozens of Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family fled the U.S. in a secret airlift authorized by the Bush White House. One passenger was an alleged al-Qaida go-between, who may have known about the terror attacks in advance.
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The Complete Guide to Googlemania!
I’ve been meaning to blog Wired Magazine’s Googlemania report for a couple weeks now because I thought it looked great, but I figured I should be quixotic and read the whole thing first to make sure. But then I forgot. Now that I’ve read it, it turns out I was right: it’s GREAT.
I heart Google. I’ll probably write more about this Wired article later, adding specific comments about each sub-story as I find time.
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Bug Me Not
Don’t you hate those compulsory web registration user name and passwords like at the New York Times and The Washington Post? Well BugMeNot.Com has a listing of humanly monitored user names and passwords for a variety of sites. Just type in the name of the site you are looking to access and a username and password will be provided.
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Simon Cowell Meet Your Match
A company called Polyphonic HMI has created software they call “Hit Song Science” which is supposed to contain algorithms that determine if a song is likely to be a hit. The company is touting their first attempt at using HSS in the marketplace as a success. For a fee, you can already test your song.
“HSS takes a song that sounds like it might be a hit and makes sure it can be one. With finely tuned adjustments in the mix we can ensure it has the optimal mathematical patterns for maximum market performance,” said Wake who has been using the new HSS technology in his studio for several months. “With that base covered, the odds of success are tremendous.”
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Entertaining Short Movie
“Farm Sluts is a hilarious dark comedy of a man’s journey upon opening that one unfortunate e-mail leading to a neverending cascade of pop-up windows and scantily clad women.
Farm Sluts contains partial nudity, language and untimely random acts of perversion. All Searchlab Shorts are unrated.”
Not as perverted as it might sound, but in some ways much worse. Either way, I found it quite funny.
Then don’t do it. Weird religious ceremonies don’t turn out great at the best of times…
The Masons have had a rough go of it lately. First there was the accidental shooting of a new inductee. The unsanctioned ceremony was only meant to scare the new member, but the shooter was carrying two guns, one with blanks and one with live ammo, and grabbed the wrong one during the ritual.
On Tuesday suicide bombers, which are believed to be Islamic Fundamentalists, blew themselves up at the entrance of a Masonic lodge after opening fire on some 40 people in the private dining hall. Two people were killed and six others were hurt.
Today and tomorrow are the Student Union Elections. I had no idea who to vote for, so I’ve been reading up on the candidates trying to make an informed decision. Tyler Tanner, Jon Morrison, Scott McIntyre, Loralee Edwards, and Paul Daniels are running for President; Matthew Sletto, Jason Rumer, and Gorm Hansen for VP Academic. Kelly Andres and Greg Imeson are running for VP Administration while Clay Campbell, Michael Smith, and Patricia Butt are running for VP Internal Affairs. My review of their profiles (as found in the student run newspaper The Meliorist.)
Running for President:
Tyler Tanner—From Taber, Alberta. One of the infamous Tanner crew, specifically of the “Mother Tanner’s Sweet Taber Corn” line. Personally I would have left that detail out. He says some good things about the University and then toots his horn about what a great guy he is, but says little about why he would make a good president.
Jon Morrison—Management student. His reason for running is a personal interest in student issues. He fails to cite which issues he’s interested in. He has little or no experience in politics. Also he didn’t proof read his profile before submitting it, “I have developed a interest in student issues”¦” Do I really want someone so grammatically inept as my SU president?
Scott McIntyre—Unfortunately Scott has dropped out of the race. PoliSci student and likely would have been my first pick. Rumor has it he is not running for personal reasons.
Paul Daniels—The incumbent. His platform was based on what he has done and what he is going to do. So far so good, but his main points were that he has started to make the Zoo (the campus pub) a more welcoming environment, reviving Thursday night action there as well making the place non-smoking. He also added that ratified clubs need better funding and benefits. So if he’s elected I suppose I should assume that more of my SU fees will be going to University Clubs. Maybe I would care if I was in one.
Loralee Edwards—A senior student, and given the choices probably the best choice, but I still haven’t decided for sure.
Running for Vice President Academic:
Matthew Sletto—No bio submitted. I guess I know who I won’t be voting for.
Jason Rumer—Jason has a lot of experience in the SU and other political organizations. His bio focused on past experience rather than plans for the future but his list of past experience was impressive.
Gorm Hansen—Gorm also has had a lot of previous experience. His bio was unfortunately quite short. He does, however, have something going for him (at least as far as my vote goes) in that someone I recently met from the SU, whom is graduating, said that if he were to pick, either Jason or Gorm would be good choices but that personally he would vote for Gorm.
Running for Vice President Administration:
Kelly Andres—Long bio and considering the opposition, she’s my pick.
Greg Imeson—Why the hell would you run in a student union election and not submit a bio to the University’s student newspaper? I guess we could ask Greg that question.
Running for Vice President Internal Affairs:
Clay Campbell—Currently Clay is the Vice President of University Hall, for the Organization of Residence Students. He is also the founder and two-year president of GALSO (more commonly known as GALIA). He goes on to say that University Clubs are very important [yadda yadda] and that if elected he will divert more funds to clubs. Seeing as he’s the president of one of the clubs I’d have to say his bias on this topic shows through pretty clearly.
Michael Smith—I don’t want to seem judgmental here, but when he listed one of his hobbies as pilates, I had to wonder exactly what type of guy mentions his hobby of a specific kind of exercise when campaigning in Student Union elections. I guess we could ask Mike that. Anyway he’s currently the Vice President of GALIA and a treasurer of the board of directors at CKUL (the University’s radio station). His platform revolves around his desire to encourage diversity. Hmmm.
Patricia Butt—Ok, my last hope Patricia Butt (also known as Tricia). I was actually put off of the idea of voting for Patricia due to the over usage of bad puns in her political advertisements around the school. Puns aside, reading her bio seemed like what I imagine the cover letter of an application to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader would be like. Don’t get me wrong it was actually a pretty well written piece, but it didn’t seem to fit with someone concerned about Internal Affairs. I couldn’t help but think that if she were handwriting this, she would have dotted her lower case “i’s” and “j’s” with little smiley faces. She sounds pretty sporty and had a nice picture to boot, but her platform revolved around what a fun person she is and her love of all things sporty and cute. In the end though, I’ll probably end up voting for her.
The other positions didn’t have enough interest so all running for those positions will be awarded victory by acclamation.
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DVD and Label Burner – Two in One
This new technology, created by HP, lets users burn DVDs, CDs, and their respective labels. The drives cost about $10 more than current ones, and the special disks needed are about 10 cents more than the ones we use today. Despite the slight increase, here’s something that I think will actually catch on. Look for these at your local computer store within the next 6 months.
A technology dubbed LightScribe enables drives to burn a silk screen-like, high-contrast label on the upper side of CD or DVD media bearing a special coating. After completing a data burn, users will be prompted to flip the disc over to burn a label onto the other side.
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Robot that "Prints" Houses
Trials for a robot that builds houses are soon to be underway by the “construction industry”. The robot, referred to as a “contour crafter”, takes instructions directly from an architect’s computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. The robot then fills the hollow walls with more cement.
It’s my opinion that they’ll never get this thing efficient enough for widespread use, but as Greg Lynn, a leading architect from Venice, California, said. “I believe that aesthetically there’s a great potential to make things that have never been seen before.” Maybe they will make some neat artwork.