Chris.Weekly.org - A Web Space

Those of us who have been playing w/ the web since the early days have a special relationship with the HTML <blink> tag, having suffered through its noxious heyday. Today, thankfully, few sites I care about still employ it. However there is a chess openings web application which I use pretty frequently, which uses <blink> on every page, right next to the practice board. Since chess requires concentration, and the blink tag is explicitly designed to attract your attention, it’s one of the worst UI design decisions I’ve come across. Since there’s little chance of convincing the site’s web developers to change their code, I decided to take matters into my own hands and write a Greasemonkey script to strip the annoyance out myself. For those new to Greasemonkey, it is a browser plugin that lets you alter the markup in any given page or pages to modify its styling or behavior. Of course it only modifies it for *me*, but that’s all I selfishly care about. So, in case anyone else out there hates <blink> the way I do and wants to make use of this simple script, here it is. You’ll want to change the UserScript section to suit your specific needs of course.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           blink tag removal
// @namespace      eudesign.com
// @include        http://www.eudesign.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

var allBlinkTags, thisBlinkTag, spanTag;
allBlinkTags = document.getElementsByTagName('blink');
for (var i=0; i<allBlinkTags.length; i++){
 thisBlinkTag = allBlinkTags[i];
 spanTag = document.createElement('span');
 spanTag.innerHTML = thisBlinkTag.innerHTML;
 thisBlinkTag.parentNode.replaceChild(spanTag, thisBlinkTag);
}

Things went smoothly last night updating from a very old Wordpress version to 2.5.1, so when I realized today that WordPress had just released 2.6 (ahead of schedule) I went ahead and upgraded again. Piece of cake! Subversion sure makes things like this easy. 2.6 looks like a good product so far.

Hi

Later tonight I’m going to finish updating wordpress (the blogging software I use for this site). If it goes awry, the site might get hosed for a bit. Wish me luck…

UPDATE: After about an hour it’s basically done. Most of it was painless, and I’m glad to have hooked up w/ the Subversion repo to make keeping the core software up to date (and thus more secure). Just two issues:

(1) Extreme slowness of admin pgs. Wordpress forum suggests RSS support in 2.5.1 is the cause, so I’ve turned it off for now.

(2) The only other glitch was with the “wpg2″ plugin I’d customized for image management… but I was pretty unhappy w/ it anyway so I’ll probably use this as an excuse to figure out something better. But not tonight.

Well it took over 5 hours (during which time my phone was completely unusable), but v2.0 is finally on my iphone. The “Remote” app alone makes it worth the wait. With airtunes nodes in a couple different rooms, I can now access all my music and control where it plays in the house, from my phone. Sweet! Looking fwd to exploring more features this weekend…

To my friends with iPhones: WAIT TO INSTALL 2.0!

Apple is doing a remarkably bad job with rolling out version 2.0 of the iPhone software. I made the mistake of “upgrading” this morning, and my phone is now bricked. It looks like the cause is server load issues at the itunes store; apparently connecting to the store at the end of the download/install/verify process is required, and since the connection times out the phone remains unusable. This is being widely reported so I know it’s not just me. Come on, Apple, get it together!

Anyone trying to call me today, please use my home phone.

An automated script managed to inject code into my blog’s template. Fortunately it did nothing more malicious than to insert link spam (visually hidden links to various dubious sites, to boost search engine rankings for those sites), but it was pretty disconcerting. I’ve removed all traces of the attack, changed my password and am upgrading the wordpress software behind this site. I’d appreciate the help, if anyone reading my blog ever sees anything questionable here (links to questionable sites or anything that looks wrong) please let me know. I don’t do advertising here and I want you friends and family to be safe from harm and annoyance when visiting. Thanks and here’s hoping it doesn’t happen to any of your sites.

A massive movie studio is going to be built in my town, Plymouth MA. I knew about months ago (there was a voting referendum on allowing its construction which passed with overwhelming support) but I didn’t know many details. Local friends shared conjecture but noone seemed to have the whole scoop so I finally looked into it. I am thrilled by what I found.

In a nutshell:
- 2x bigger than Paramount studios!
- 2,000 new jobs
- includes a theme park/attraction, new restaurants and stores
- *not* religious movies per se, as originally discussed
- construction starts early 2009, should open in 2011
- this plus recent movie industry-friendly tax changes in Mass means a TON of movies will be made here

I am *psyched* about this!! Both houses I own are in downtown Plymouth, so here’s hoping property values skyrocket after this recession is over. Given all it has to offer: History, ocean, beach, forest, cranberry bogs, horse farms, restaurants, new coffee roasters, new brewery… and now this… the “cool” factor of Plymouth is going through the roof.

See this CapeCodOnline article for more detail.

Abi grabbed my all-time favorite sunglasses and promptly snapped them in two a few weeks ago. They were high end Maui Jim Sport shades, with polarized shatter-resistant lenses. They’re the only sunglasses I’ve ever liked, the lone exception to the usual “buy $20 throwaway shades for the season” approach for me. They’d thrived in 7 years of ocean sailing, skiing, motorcycle riding and other forms of abuse, but Abi’s 19-month-old grasp was just too much. Without much hope I wrote a quick letter to Maui Jim and put the broken glasses in an envelope and shipped them off to Hawaii, expecting a call or email letting me know they were way past warranty (which didn’t cover accidental breakage anyway) and giving me an option to pay for repair and for return. Well, yesterday my sunglasses returned to me, in like-new condition (cleaned, re-framed, gleaming), with a nice note letting me know they’d taken care of it (including overnight return shipping!) completely free of charge. I am just floored. I couldn’t be happier and feel I’ve gotta publicly share the love for my Maui Jims and for the fantastic way they took care of this customer.

I’ve been slow in posting pics here, it’s been a busy (but great) couple weeks settling everyone in at home as a family of four (plus Layla). Shawna has posted photos of Harper on Picasa here.

Harper Elise Weekly was born Thursday, 2008.06.19 @12:44pm, weighing exactly 8 lbs and measuring 19 inches head to toe.

She’s perfect, beautiful, already nursing like a champ. Shawna’s doing great. We’re home now and I hope to have photos up later this weekend.
Abi says “sisser” [sister] and “Hoppa” [Harper] and “bee-bee” [baby] and is eager to touch and kiss her new sister.

It’s surreal to be doing this again, but so far so good.

Thanks to everyone for all the love and support, and a special thanks to Steve and Lauren who house- and baby-sat for 5 days(!) while we were gone.