The time does enjoy flying, doesn’t it? I registered this domain name April 28th, 2000 (and the site itself technically is more than twelve years old now). Ten years…
All articles in category: "Website stuff"
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Ten years of this stupid website
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Google Adwords has a sense of humor
I just noticed this on my site…
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Blog lameness and MacGyver
I’ve been amazingly lame this October, in not updating the site so much. I think after actually keeping up with it, I’d simply gotten burned out on keeping up with it. This is pretty normal for me, though, with going at the site in waves. I’ll pick it back up in frequency soon, I’m sure. Winters are always more interesting, and October has been a generally quiet month anyway. Nothing major to report, good or bad, it’s just been a happily sleepy month more or less.
The only thing I really have to report is that we saw in Target last night that there is a MacGyver box set now, that includes all seven seasons and all the TV movies in one collection. 111 hours of Richard Dean Anderson’s hair and Swiss Army Knife.
I need to buy it.
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Uncategorized fugly
As time permits I’ve been trying to go through my blog to categorize all the uncategorized posts. I’ve noticed my HTML code output on the site in some areas is starting to get rather fugly. I should do something about that…
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Automatically Upgrade Your WordPress
A method to update your wordpress blog, using a plugin that will upgrade your blog automatically to the latest version.
read more | digg story -
Help! Need quick .css fix, part 2
Like I mentioned, I’d been fighting with a stupid CSS issue on my header to make a shadow image show up on the bottom of my header image. Well, w00t, last night I nailed it. First I added this to my style sheet:
#mast-container {
position: relative;
top: -2px;
}The “top: -2px” was the key. Then I added this to my header:
div id="mast-container"
img src="/images/mastshadow.jpg" height="17" width="780"
/div(that second code sample is broken on purpose without < wrappers > so you can see the raw code)
So, my problem image gets wrapped in a new container, and I just tell the container to move “up” on the page a negative value. I never knew you could do a negative value until last night. That nailed it, and got rid of the stray spacing. Go look! That’s so awesome. I’m almost tempted to start really tweaking the CSS even more now with this knowledge…
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Help! Need quick .css fix
I’m totally stuck on a .css fine point, would you guys mind taking a look at my site really quick? This is the style sheet I’m currently using.
I tried to add a shadowed image under the header image/mast, which worked fine, but now in the .css I’m damned if I can figure out where that 5-7 pixel dead white space is coming from. I’m going to leave it up for the time being (this is my second or third try at this) in case one of you can point out and show where the code is barfing. I want the mastshadow.png file to be “flush” under the image in the header that says joeszilagyi.com, but I can’t seem to nail it. I have a feeling it’s something really stupid and easy, but .css has never been my strong suit.
Help! This is what it looks like now, in it’s broken state:
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30+ Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers & Designers
Posting mainly for myself for reference, since I want to snarf up a few of these, but they’re just damn useful for a lot of people: “Firefox has cool add-ons which make the job of website designers and developers much easier. Here is our list of 30+ excellent Firefox add-ons that every web developer and designer should know about.”
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WordPress Plugin – Douche Bag
This is too rich. I almost wish I got a halfway decent volume of crap comments, to make me want to install it: “We created a tool just for those rare instances where some idiot posts a comment on your blog. It’s a simple and straight forward plugin for WordPress, called Douche Bag. When you add the tag to the beginning of a comment, our plugin will automatically insert the Douche Bag icon to their comment.”
read more | digg story -
Hayden Panettiere image
I noticed today that I was getting a ton of hits (by my standards, a ton) for an image of Hayden Panettiere, who plays Claire Bennett on Heroes. I couldn’t figure out where on Earth they were all coming from, until I just ran a Google Images search for her, which you can see here. As of now it still shows my site as the last entry on the first page. The funny thing is, until this post, I never had a picture of Hayden or Claire on this site. I do have my Livejournal Image Randomizer, which links off of each page, and on the top right of each page loads the most recent image on each reload. It’s not really technically random–Livejournal publishes an RSS feed of all the images linked inline on every recent LJ post, and the PHP scripts I borrowed and tweaked from other sites just trawls the last 1 or 10 entries, depending on where I use it.
Anyway, this is the page on my site that they were ending up on from Google Images. It’s specifically this page, the June 29, 2006 archive, in case that long Google URL goes dead. The actual picture of Hayden was probably linked from the Livejournal feed at the exact moment that Google crawled that page, and voila! People are coming looking for hottie pictures of Claire and find me grumbling about holes in socks, and my review of Superman Returns. This is the picture they were after…
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100 Essential Resources for Web Developers
A Web developer’s life is hard enough without having to be constantly on the hunt for good web-dev resources. After using these, you may still have 99 problems, but developing ain’t gonna be one.
read more | digg story -
AACS Code Leak, part 5/summary
EDIT: Submitted to Digg. Click here to Digg this post!
A summary of what happened:
HD-DVD, also known as Blu Ray discs, havehad a supposedly high level of encryption on them, in the form of digital rights management. Earlier this month, someone had cracked the system. They posted the magic hex code that apparently lets you copy the HD-DVD discs on a message board called Doom9. Like the earlier cracking of the DeCSS code, it would have gotten press, notice, screams and threats of DMCA crackdowns, and the usual nonsense. Then it would have trailed off, and no one would have given a damn about it. However, this situation feels different for a key reason. The HD-DVD hack/crack/whatever you want to call it, in the form of the value “09 F9…”, came out weeks ago. It was quiet. Then the Motion Picture Associate of American stepped in. In their usual feathery touch and approach, they made things absolutely worse for themselves.How? By coming off with the authority of The Law, they begin issuing DMCA take down notices left and right, making a generally indignant and righteous stink. This led to Slashdot and Digg coverage. Again… it would have trailed off. It would have eventually gone into the background. The code was out, perhaps, for much longer it soon turned out than weeks ago. It may have been uncovered months ago. The Blu Ray encryption thus was a lost cause in it’s current form. The people that wanted to crack it would have, and the general public would have had whatever reaction was forthcoming, and then it would have all been relegated to the sub-sub forum of the Information technology cosmos this exists on. Thanks to the overzealous Digg.com moderators, administrators, and management, however, that’s not going to be the case.
Digg.com is a website where people can “Digg” or tag a page on a given website, drawing tremendous attention and traffic to it. Digg is tremendously popular, and influential these days. People began linking and Digging in earnest to various 09 F9/hex code related stories. Digg, in turn, began to crush them all; deleting them all. The Digg users, upset, ramped it up. For everyone deleted, two more would appear. They would go, and more Digg users posted more. Then they began to hide the hex value. The Digged images that contained the hex. MySpace pages with the hex. Then the Digg admins apparently began to edit the Digg values themselves to devalue these links, while removing others. They locked out ‘repeat offender’ users. Then Digg users began to Digg articles and stories about Digg censoring the numbers, a roundabout way around the Digg restriction. Victory, for the virtual masses, was in sight. Digg.com then locked down all new Digg submissions. Keep in mind, that Digg is in part sponsored by HD-DVD, not so ironically. Finally, in a complete turnaround, Digg posted that they’d support their users and would not attempt to restrict things anymore.
Personally, I think that Digg did this on purpose. They trolled their own userbase to seriously rile the masses, and to cause the HD-DVD hex code to spread like literal wildfire. Then, when “hope seemed lost”, they reversed course, and now look like heroes: They’re standing up to the horrible MPAA and the evil DMCA! It’s become some sort of nerdy Bastille.
Let the series of tubes eat hex code cake.
I think that if this actually comes to a head, and the MPAA actually tries to take on Digg over this messy situation, that it could be the first potential serious threat to the strength of the DMCA. If the MPAA lost in court, imagine the consequences…
This is what I’d posted so far:
Part 1: Digital Rights Management, anyone? Read this, and this. A blow in the name of justice, if you ask me. These numbers are almost better than 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.Part 2: Holy leaked information! Because of This blog search about links back to the Doom9 forum, I suddenly got over a hundred hits. In just over an hour. Yow. There’s a Slashdot article on this now, as well, over the release of the AACS Code Leak hex I posted about. I can’t see how the MPAA can possibly keep this under control, now. It’s over, and the information will be on thousands of websites within another day, if not more.
Part 3: Censorship in action: Digg.com admins are censoring (and getting overwhelmed–as of now the front page of Digg is flooded with 09 F9 crap) the hex code that was released on Doom9, as noted here. Apparently Digg admins are even resetting “Diggs”, screwing with things further, and even apparently editing/changing Diggs about complaints aobut the editing oversight. It’s like the Digg Civil War. Even Wikipedia’s article on HD DVD is now locked down with the obnoxious message of, “This page is currently protected from editing because inappropriate content was being repeatedly added.” Classy. There’s not even a reference about the leak of the hex code, which is a major developing news story.
Part 4: Digg.com has now apparently backed down on the release and Digging of HD DVD hex code information via the Doom9 forum (the Digg suppression story even got picked up by Slashdot yesterday). One of the Digg founders wrote in their blog:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
Awesome… morals on that level of the corporate media stage? Impressive! Even more so since HD DVD is actually a sponsor of Digg.
Part 5: You’re reading it! Scroll up for my summary.
Part 6: The AACS has responded to “reports” of their hex code being broken apart on the Doom9 forums. Read this slowly, methodically, and carefully. Try to spot the portions of what they are saying that falls into “Big Brother” side of things.
RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON AACS TECHNOLOGY
April 16, 2007 – AACS LA Announces Security Updates (Updated URLs)
In response to attacks against certain PC-based applications for playing HD DVD and Blu-ray movie discs, Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (“AACS LA”) announces that it has taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software.
Consumers can continue to enjoy content that is protected by the AACS technology by refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players. This refresh process is accomplished via a straightforward online update.
Through this online update process, manufacturers are also able to see that consumers update their player implementations prior to distribution of encryption key expiration information via new movie discs.
Consumers are advised to check with the manufacturer of their AACS-enabled Blu-ray or HD DVD PC-based player to make sure you have installed the latest version. The following manufacturers have provided links to provide relevant information and facilitate consumer updating of their players…
Part 7: Spotted on ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.com. From Doom9 to mass media attention to jumping the
sharkcat in under 72 hours?Bloggers “crossed the line” when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said.
According to the BBC, anyway. The article has one great quote in it:
Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group, said it had received “good cooperation from most folk” in preventing the leak of the key.
Er, yeah. Keep up the good work. Last time I checked a full Google search for the hex code it was up to 720,000, from the original one on Doom9.
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AACS Code Leak, part 2
EDIT: Summary post/article here on all this.
Holy leaked information! Because of This blog search about links back to the Doom9 forum, I suddenly got over a hundred hits. In just over an hour. Yow. There’s a Slashdot article on this now, as well, over the release of the AACS Code Leak hex I posted about. I can’t see how the MPAA can possibly keep this under control, now. It’s over, and the information will be on thousands of websites within another day, if not more.
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Seattleology, version 2.0
A while back my wife and I started a blog on Seattleology, which was going to be about… well, Seattle. It never really panned out, due to boredom, or who knows what. Anyway, it occurred to me that I still wanted to something Seattle-related, and it occurred to me as well that all the link directories specifically “about” Seattle largely sucked. So… voila!
Seattleology, version 2.0.
Yes, it’s a straight-up links directory, and a bit barren as of yet aside from the beginnings of a solid category tree, but everything has to start somewhere. I was figuring on adding more stuff, later on, content-wise. -
The glory of right aligned images on WordPress
What a pain to get sorted. I’m completely out of practice for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This was the magic code:
style="float: right; padding: 0.1em; margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px"
…as seen here. For my next magic trick I need to figure out why the Sitemeter on this site keeps vanishing/not working, while the Extreme Tracker shows fine. Bizarre.EDIT: Renaming the post, so that Google eventually picks it up. It was a pain for me to find this, may as well help make it easier for the next guy.
Helpful stalking
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Latest nonsense
Darwinian site guide
advertisements America American Taliban bit torrent BP British Petroleum comic books didn't see that one coming Draconian use of fear and subterfuge Evil explosions fail family fun fury future Games Gulf Oil Spill helpful guides History idiocy implausible junkbucket my eyes my own politics my personal timeline narcissism national security not very helpful Politics quantum physics Republicans seriously? simply awesome socialist sunlight The Awful Truth The Future this is what we're up against totally awesome unlikely very cute violence what are you thinking what is this whoaBox of old stuff
Vague categorization
Friendlies
- A Dash Of Bitters
- Andi Szilagyi
- Andrew Sullivan
- bradley’s almanac
- Brian Wood
- Dennis Culver
- Feminist Gold Digger
- Gary Ploski
- Horse's Ass
- Kelly Sue
- Last Night's Dinner
- Making Light
- Matt Fraction
- Neil Gaiman
- Nerdist
- Publicola
- Reuben Negron
- Stranger Slog
- Talking Points Memo
- WA Community Action Network
- Warren Ellis
- Wil Wheaton
Objects of arguable value
Joe Szilagyi, circa 2050.
