Where is the image at the top of your page taken?  I’m guessing French Creek but I have the distinct feeling that I’m incredibly wrong.

When you want to visit a website, you type its address into a web browser and press the Enter key.  OK, so you knew that.  But less well-known is the fact that for nearly every website, you don’t need to type the "www" at the front of a site’s address.  (And of course, you never need to type the http:// because your web-browser will add that automatically.)

Whether the www-rule is true depends on how the owner of a given website has configured the server.  But for nearly all websites, "www.foo.com" is just a shortcut to "foo.com" or vice-versa; either way, there is only one website there, it’s just got two addresses.

For example, visit hp.com.  If you look quickly, you’ll notice that the address you just typed has been automatically changed to www.hp.com.  The same is true for microsoft.com.  My website, on the other hand, automatically changes www.nodivisions.com to just nodivisions.com.  Then some sites like dell.com don’t do any auto-redirection like that; both dell.com and www.dell.com are allowed by the server.  In all these cases, each site has only one set of webpages; the pages just happen to be accessible through two different addresses, foo.com and www.foo.com.

I’d like to wish a warm welcome to all my visitors looking for:

my lcd has 1 red dot how do i get rid of it

From Google’s 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist:

When more people are interested in a "wardrobe malfunction" at a superbowl than the Democratic presidential candidate, I think it’s safe to say the dems are at least a little out of touch with the American people.

IMAO is usually pretty funny, but lately in the comments, people have been posting real news headlines and then making up sub-headlines to go with them.  They are hysterical.

Radical Muslim group Ansar al-Sunnah claims responsibility...
World stunned by use of words "Muslim" and "responsibility" in the same sentence.

North Korea ’only country on earth’ free of AIDS...
Rampant starvation cited as "miracle cure."

France Rejoices at Release of Hostages
But still smell bad, hate America

Male fish bear eggs in Potomac
Incident unrelated to male deer squirrel eggs in the Hudson

It took me a while to get that one, then I couldn’t stop laughing  : )

Rumsfeld Fires Back at Critics
Uses dual .45s; vows to strangle survivors.

Harry Potter fever strikes again
WHO blames President Bush and stolen election for shortage of vaccine

Massive "infants" galaxies found
Abortion Rights activists claim Fetal Galaxies not really alive, protest for right to abort findings

’A particularly difficult year’ for the UN, Annan says
Top customer overthrown, jailed.  Iraq freed from tyranny.  U.N. Punked by U.S.

Hi Anthony, (and all our siblings)!  I am so excited about Christmas this year.  I don’t really know why - - it may be because Cailin is getting older and will enjoy it so much more this year.  It may be because this year we are more settled in and have our tree decorated and stockings hung and nativity scene displayed.  It may be because Tasha and Dan are going to have a baby - - any day it seems!  For whatever reason Brian and I are so thankful to have such a wonderful family to celebrate with.  We love you all so much and can’t wait to see you all on Christmas! Heidi, Brian, Cailin and Erin.

Innovation is an IT buzzword that has never seemed to go out.  It’s what Microsoft always cites when representing itself in various lawsuits, cf. "we are disappointed by the ruling, which will stifle our freedom to innovate."

I’ve never been too convinced that MS software shows any signs of innovation, but today at Best Buy I saw a piece of MS hardware whose innovation impressed me.  Some of their new mice have scroll wheels that are "analog" -- they don’t click when you scroll them, they’re smooth-rolling.  It feels really neat and I couldn’t stop rolling the wheel on the mice at the store.  It may not be hugely innovative, since a non-clicking wheel would be the default and you’d have to add the click feeling, so MS basically just left out that click-adding part that’s always been there until now.  But still, I haven’t seen any other mouse manufacturer (read: Logitech) offering mouse wheels that scroll smoothly.

Some of the mice also featured sideways-scrolling.  Instead of being on a fixed axis, the mouse wheel is mounted in some kind of swively thing that lets you rock the wheel from side to side.  I think that’s a neat idea, but it’s not for me.  I found it slightly tough and unnatural to move my index finger from side to side that way with enough force to activate the feature.  And conversely if it were designed to require less force, you’d probably be accidentally side-scrolling all the time.

I’ve also never liked using mice with more than three buttons (three meaning two plus the wheel), nor mice that are shaped asymmetrically to fit your hand.  So to me the side-scrolling feature is just another thing to make a mouse more complex, when I already thought the 5- and 7-button mice were getting complex enough.

Holy cow, Utz Pub Mix is an amazing snack.  It’s got to be about 95% MSG but I don’t even care.  Whether I love it or I just THINK I love it, I can’t stop eating it.  Mmmm.

Anyway... I don’t suppose anyone here has used FVWM for a long time as their Window Manager, and then switched to Gnome/Metacity?  I love FVWM, it’s so configurable and can be made to look and feel pretty much just like Gnome/Metacity or any other WM.  And it’s so small memory-wise and so fast.  But it has a few nagging problems that I just got fed up with.

1. Alt-Tab doesn’t work right.  "Right" means when you’re working in one window, and you switch to another (whether via the mouse or keyboard), then holding Alt and tapping Tab switches back to the previous window.  Doing it again switches back to the first window again.  On FVWM, this doesn’t work right, and to the extent which it does somewhat work it’s really slow.  First of all, when you first tap Tab, it brings up a window-list (painfully slowly if you have more than about 10 windows open) with the current window selected.  And if you have enough windows open / tapped Tab fast enough, the window-list stays open even after you release the Tab key, requiring you to press Enter or Tab again.  There’s a config option that lets you put the current window at the end of the list, so Alt-Tab does select the previous window... but then doing it again doesn’t take you back to the first window.

This may seem nit-picky but for many people, especially people who avoid the mouse as much as possible and are very fast with keyboard navigation, Alt-Tab is a fundamental part of the interface between user and computer.  When that fails to work properly, it takes a serious toll on your efficiency.

2. Window focusing doesn’t work right when switching between desktops (or "pages" as FVWM calls them).  When I switch to another desktop, the focus should move with me.  But it doesn’t.  If I’m talking in an IM window open on the first desktop, then switch to the second to type into a text-editor window, the text instead goes into the IM window on the first desktop, unless I click on (or Alt-Tab to) the text-editor window first.

3. I know there were a few other things but none of them are coming to me right now; it’s been two weeks since I stopped using FVWM.  But the whole lack-of-functional-focusing-policy including Alt-Tab is really a deal-breaker for me.

But after using Gnome for about 20 seconds, I remembered why I switched to FVWM in the first place about a year ago.  It was because Gnome is SUCH a memory hog.  I have a gig of RAM and 200MB of swap on this (850MHz) system.  I tend to keep lots of programs running at once: Apache and SSH servers, Thunderbird email with a few open message windows, Mozilla browser with tons of open tabs, Gaim instant messenger, VNC-through-SSH connections to various remote systems, a couple gFTPs for web development, Gimp for image editing every now and then, XMMS for music, and then just bunches of xterms and file-managers and text-editors.

Under FVWM, my RAM was about half full and my swap was almost never used at all.  Under Gnome, RAM is at 95% (with ~5-10% being cache) and swap is at 30%.  That’s with the exact same set of programs running.  Now Gnome is definitely keeping some more info about running processes in RAM than FVWM is, because as I said, the Alt-Tab window list on FVWM takes forever to generate... but still, over a half a gig more memory needed by Gnome?  That’s absurd.  It wouldn’t be a problem, except the constant swapping really slows the system down.

I just installed a printer driver on a Mac OSX (10.2.8) machine -- a network printer, no less -- and it required me to restart the computer.  Glad to see OSX has progressed to the level of Windows 98.

Slashdot is supposed to be "News for Nerds" but it’s about the user comments as much as, if not more than, the news itself.  And sometimes the news items were reported in the press weeks before they show up on slashdot, and then you get stuff like this:

I finally posted the photo sets from last weekend’s country and city excursions.  Go make fun of my sunglasses :)

I also fixed a design flaw whereby I was getting zero hits from google or any other search engine for about 18 months.  Before sometime in the spring of 2003, I was getting about 200 hits per day, mostly from google.  After that, it dropped off to about 30 hits per day within maybe a month.  At the time, there was talk about google modifying their pagerank algorithm so as to de-emphasize weblogs in their search results.  (Or so I thought; maybe I fabricated that entire concept without realizing it.)

I figured that was the reason I stopped getting so many hits from google searches.  But I recently discovered that I wasn’t getting any hits from search engines because their spiders were unable to crawl my site.  My visitor-log system tries to log visitors based on things like their IP address, their browser’s User-Agent string, their name (if they enter one), etc... but since IP addresses sometimes change, and sometimes even change with every page requested, it’s helpful to give each visitor a unique ID and store it in a cookie.  The problem is that the search engines’ web spiders don’t accept any cookies, and I inadvertently failed to make a provision for that fact.  So every page on my site was saying "here, have a cookie, and then I’ll redirect you to that page" but the spiders were saying "no way, Jose."  The spiders are stubborn and so was my code, so after 10 such exchanges, the spiders give up and move along.

Last week I fixed the code, and I see googlebot and msnbot slowly crawling my site again.  Now I’m a popular destination for these searches:

Can you still feel the butterflies? Elliott Ness "are these all yours" the dingo ate your babies Script for the lullaby Little Yeshua

I’m especially proud to be #1 on google for "Script for the lullaby Little Yeshua," mainly because I have no idea what that means, and because I’m sure it isn’t on my site.

Snow, snow, snow, yay  : )

We love the first snow of the season.

So the OQO has been out for over a month now, and it still costs $1900.  I was hoping by now the price would have dropped to $150 or so.  Oh well.

I have two new photo-sets that I want to post, one from NYC and another from a hike last weekend, but I want to finish some updates to my photo-webpage scripts before I post any more photos.  And the updates are taking some time.  (OK, by "updates" I mean writing from scratch a script to manage the creation/editing of captions, keywords, title/date/descriptions, etc, through the web-browser.)

In the meantime though, I put up a new header image for this fallsy theme.  The photo is from McConnells Mill about six weeks ago.  I had wanted to take some more fall photos this season, but it looks like it’ll be winter-photo season soon.

It’s a moot point now, but I just saw this today:

If John Kerry is the answer,
it must be a stupid question.

Cheap shot, I know, but that’s funny.  Also saw this the other day:

Unlike taxes, death doesn’t get worse every year.

Am I the only one who as NO idea what to get Dad and Jeannie for Christmas???  Has anyone heard what the wish list is this year???  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

In an article titled Debt-cut gift for Iraq, about how the world is going to forgive 80% of Iraq’s debt, guess what the first sentence is?

Baghdad exploded in violence today, even as German finance minister Mr Hans Eichel said in Berlin that he agreed with US Treasury secretary Mr John Snow on a proposal for the world’s key creditor nations to write off as much as 80 per cent of Iraq’s debt, capping a months-long US push for debt forgiveness in Iraq’s case.

No matter what happens in Iraq, no matter what newsworthy event has taken place, just remember: you have to say that Iraq "exploded into violence."  Sure, the nations of the world agreed to forgive nearly $40 billion worth of debt, but that isn’t news... violence in a nation that has just had its dictator removed, that’s news.

A junior at New Mexico State University died Friday after his 21st birthday celebration led to alcohol poisoning, according to the university. ... NMSU has begun an investigation...

Investigation into what?  When you consume absurd quantities of alcohol, you die.  This kid was a fool, and his "friends" who took him out are fools.

Instead of wasting taxpayer money on this "investigation," how about an investigation into why the majority of kids in this country are obsessed with alcohol?  At least he didn’t kill anyone else by his foolish actions -- drunk drivers kill 20,000 people per year in the US.  How about whenever a drunk driver kills someone, if the drunkard lives, we execute him on the spot?

I came across Andromeda tonight.  This is just a PHP script that displays your music collection as a webpage, allowing you to click on songs to stream them from your webserver using the M3U format.

I wrote a Perl script to do that; I’ve been streaming my music library from my server to work/home for the past 2 years or so.  It’s essentially the exact same thing as Andromeda: MP3 streamer + login system (though logins are currently not enforced for the sake of this post, so that ya’ll can check it out... it might be slow though, since my net connection is slow).  I obviously didn’t bother to make mine look pretty, as he did, but other than that and a trivial search-box, they are the same.

The same, except that he is selling his for $500 to the Air Force, the Salvation Army, various universities, etc.

The Serious:

We are not the owners of our money and possessions; we are merely managers of those things for the length of our stay on Earth.  (From church.)

The Funny:

medical essay: don’t ignore your mother.  (From a spam email that I just received.)

I just posted three new photo sets from the past couple weeks, and there are lots of good ones.  Go see!

With the calling of the Lord comes the power of the Lord.  (From church yesterday.)

I copy this here in case people didn’t read all the way thru Anthony’s ’give reality a try’ blog because it is SO darn FUNNY I can’t stop laughing and rereading it:
*****
#46:

  This isn’t some sort of coincidence, no my friends Bush, Haliburton and the military industrial complex have had this figured out months ago. You think these ignorant, right wing, religious nazi f---ers could vote their way out of a paperbag? Funny how every state went to electronic voting machines isn’t it. Don’t tell some high altitude electronic warfare aircraft weren’t flying missions yesterday to electronically alter the vote! The CIA has been doing this for decades to change the votes in central and South America.
******
Was this person for real?  Did they REALLY believe this?  I’m sorry, but these folks should not be allowed to vote.  Go back and read all these crazy comments; it will make a great fun start to your weekend!

Just a little reminder... If you didn’t put anything on your pollyanna paper, please email your list. We want to start shopping :) Heidi, can you email me with your new email address? I only have your old one from work. Thanks!!

This election is inescapable.  I just read some hilarious stuff over on ARS: first, somebody called Bush a fascist, and then an argument over the definition of "fascism" broke out...

Another DEFINITION of fascism is corporatism (coined by mr. musolini). The ideas was that corporations pretty much ruled the government and that is what America is under pretty much any president by much more so under bush since his gov. does nothing but favors for corporations.

The key here is that bush is a militaristic gov. with a strong emphasis on a ruling elite and government owned by corporations. Civil rights are also being trampled. The media is coporate owned (controlled), voting rights are supressed, racism is evident as is mass and blind nationalism. This is the bush fascism.

To which someone else responded:

And you think Kerry winning will change this?  Look up the definition of "snowball’s chance in hell" for the answer to that.

Then someone complained thusly:

I voted this morning in Virginia.

While approaching the voting entrance I was accosted by two young girls, 8 and 12, dressed in balerina outfits. They were handing out republican fliers and they said to me "would you like a Republican sample ballot and sticker?" i said no and they rolled their eyes at me! wtf, and 8 and 12 year old girl doing the dirty work of the GOP.... that’s tactless and dirty chicanery. it’s sad that the GOP should have to sink to levels such as this to swing a few votes.

i voted for Kerry.

Someone else replied:

Depending on how close they were to the polling stations, that might be illegal - at least it would be in Mass.

Maybe that’s why the Republicans were using children. Kinda like how crack dealers use kids.

And then...

Yes, those evil GOP people, sending out their crack squads of small girls in tutus to intimidate voters! Call the police! Call the National Guard! Someone please save us from the Legions of the Cute, against which we have no defense!