Staticfree Blog

This has been said many times, however I repeat these things here because they have made a difference in my life. They are not easy to do, but neither is changing one's life.

Fundamentally, these tips are about changing from a passive participant in the world (and in your life) to becoming an active participant. It is about getting on the other side of the screen and becoming a producer instead of simply a consumer.

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So, I finally got my Tux beret made. In fact, I got four of them made (one for a spare and two to sell).

But you've had a penguin beret before! True, but it was the Penguin Books penguin. Now I've got the right penguin and all is well.

If you would like to buy one of the two extras that I had made, contact me. Due to the small run, the costs were higher, so each one will be sold for $30 + shipping. They're all gone at the moment. I gave my last extra away recently.. If I get enough interest in them, I'll do a larger batch and can probably sell them for $20/ea.

One of my biggest issues with listening to broadcast radio is that I don't know what I'm listening to. As soon as I find a really neat song/acoustic compilation, it turns out that it's being broadcast from a college radio station with DJs who assumes everyone knows what it is (why else would you listen to such noise?) or who plays 15 tracks in a row.

Radio Sherpa is an attempt to help with that via a snazzy Flash interface. You can currently see what's playing on all the various stations on Boston's FM/AM and HD airwaves. Sadly, the UI is Flash-only and currently broken for the GNU/Linux version of Macromedia's Flash player.

Good luck getting things going, Deva!

So, Tina and I have a place. We've had it for a bit over a month now, but it's now starting to feel like home. It's in Somerville on one of the nicer streets in one of the densest parts of New England. Tina took some photos, and it still looks much like that. We are in desperate need of artwork on our walls - something that will be a long process of finishing (years?!).

It's the most wonderful thing to be entirely responsible for the leftovers in the fridge. No roomies leaving mystery containers of science experiments. The Chinese food is only as bad as we let it be.

So, life is good. And someone spray-painted single hearts in front of each of the houses on the sidewalk on our street.

I just got a Zoom 4312 PC Card Bluetooth Adapter for my laptop, as I wasn't lucky enough to get a laptop with it built-in. For the Google record (because I wasn't able to find this information anywhere): this card works in Linux (tested in 2.6.15+), using the BlueZ Bluetooth stack and the hci_uart module. It is unfortunately a Bluetooth v1.1 card, but I've yet to find a PCMCIA Bluetooth adapter that had anything better. Additionally, this card is a clone (or rebranding?) of the Billionton PCBTC1 card, so those will work in Linux as well.

To make it go in a 2.6.15+ kernel, just compile the hci_uart and serial_cs (located in: Device Drivers → Character Devices → Serial Drivers → 8250... → 8250 PCMCIA) modules. Then use the hciattach tool to connect the /dev/ttySx device to the HCI.

At the moment, the driver seems to not be able to restore from suspend. Hopefully that will be an easy fix.

Minor note: I initially had trouble, as the BlueZ hci_uart driver doesn't properly depend on serial_cs which provides for the necessary serial port bits that make it go (a bug will be filed).

Firefox's slogan, "taking back the web" isn't just about blocking pop-up ads. One of the new features that comes in it out-of-the-box in version 1.5 is a way to add custom CSS to other peoples' websites (when viewed on your computer). This lets you fix the little quirks that may make themselves evident on websites that you frequent, but have no ability to fix.

One such site is my Livejournal friends page. When I view it in my normal 2-up browser mode (with 2 Firefox windows open, side by side each 640px wide), images embedded in the page often cause a horizontal scroll bar. This then causes the text to fill to fit the resized area and makes me maximize the window to be able to read it. While I can tweak the colors and such, I can't actually modify the CSS without getting a paid account (and I don't think I care that much).

My solution? Close Firefox then edit my ~/.mozilla/firefox/profilename/chrome/userContent.css file. Then add this block:

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://xxv.livejournal.com/friends/){
  img {
     max-width: 70%;
     height: auto;
  }
}

(If you are trying to use this, make sure you modify the URL for your username).

Now if I open my friends page in Firefox, it scales down all the images so they fit in the browser. If I want to look at one, I can maximize the window or open the image in a new tab.

userContent.css has been around for a long time to allow you to inject default CSS into all the pages that you view. Firefox 1.5 supports a special selector type @-moz-document which lets you match based on the current URL.

Being able to change the way you look at websites is really what "taking back the web" is all about. Platypus is another wonderful example of this, ultimately more useful than the hack mentioned above. With it you can change content in addition to simple style. Don't like an aspect of a website you frequent? Platypus lets you click on it and delete it, making it go away the next time you visit too.

Remember: a website is just text and links to images organized in a standard way. You can do anything to text, if you know how it's arranged and if you have control of what presents it. Could you do this in a closed, binary format such as Flash? No. Never.

That's right, I'm having a party for an IRC channel. Primarily because we have a special guest - xkcd - coming to town, but secondarily because I love having parties.

Who

Pugglewumpers, friends of Pugglewumpers (so, all my immediate friends, even those not "hip" to the "wump"), and such. If you don't know any Pugglewumpers, I suggest you meet one. They tend to be good monkeys.

Where

My dad's house. See the geographic data for this post or contact Steve

When

2006-03-11 @ 19:00 ("next Saturday at 7")

How

RSVP with the evite or just let me know.

If you would like to help out, you can bring your favorite munchies and/or beverages. I'll have my standard-issue supply, but I'm always looking to try new stuff :-)

Update: I had the wrong evite link. Apparently it's possible to link to an invitation such that you can gain editing permissions; this is terrible. When I write an Evite-like system, it won't do that.

That's right, I listen to indie rock. And there will be some tasty music playing this Thursday at the Zeitgeist Gallery. Tina and I will be going to said concert and are looking for some victims companions to join us. $7 cover for a few of Hush Records better known artists, starting at 19:00. contact me if you wish to join us in the fun.