[ music | Jesus Jones – International Bright Young Thing ]

I personally am quite happy with Dreamhost. However, I have a customer who is based in Europe, and would prefer a European web host, or one based elsewhere in the world. So, Lazyweb, does anyone know of a non-US web host with a comparable feature set? A healthy bandwidth allotment, PHP, several domains and subdomains per account, and supporting HTTPS/SSL are required, and SSH access is a really welcome feature. I’m more than open to invite or referral codes for good deals to get us in the door. Please email me or leave a comment. Thanks.

[ music | Aqua – Be a Man ]

Many people are complaining that Kurt Warner didn’t really fumble, that it was an incomplete pass because there was forward motion and he retained control. They say the play should have been reviewed, even if it was a fumble. I can probably agree with that last part, if for no other reason than to put doubt to rest. But it turns out it was reviewed. Thanks to the play reset time and now the extra minute of discussion by the refs for the unsportsmanlike conduct call on Woodley, the guy in the booth, Bob McGrath, had about a minute and a half to review the play. He didn’t phone down and let the refs review it too, but he didn’t feel there was a need. Even after the game it was reviewed and found a legit call. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m sure McGrath wishes he had talked to the refs, but in the end it wouldn’t have changed anything.

[ music | Queen – We Are The Champions ]

No team has ever won 6 Superbowls until now. One for the other thumb.

[ music | Dido – Me ]

Blame Daniel Glazman, it’s his fault. 😉

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Let the self indulgence begin!

1. Building on Dan’s medical theme
   • As a child I had some severe migraine headaches. They’d last for days, and I’d just sleep the whole time, but they’d also be accompanied by incredibly high fevers above 105°F. I’m told by doctors it’s a miracle it didn’t cause any brain damage.  I’m told by friends it most certainly did.
   • In 2006 I got to enjoy the agony of gallstones. I mentioned that, and the subsequent removal of said gall bladder. I have a rather high tolerance for pain, you see. My major attack in October had been increasing in discomfort and pain for about 18 hours before I finally went to the ER. I thought it was bad gas or indigestion. This had happened twice before and passed long before it felt this bad. I was crossing the street, and nearly passed out, so I grabbed a cab home and called 911 (I was still caring for my mother at home and wanted her in the ambulance with me so she didn’t worry, here’s why). Turns out I had developed acute pancreatitis and was in shock. Apparently shooting pains throughout your abdomen is a bad sign, and you should get help. Lesson learned!
2. I used to run a Mozilla news site called Mozilla News. It’s gone now, the domain lapsed, but you can read our old stuff via Internet Archive. I broke some news a time or two that some people weren’t happy about, but over all, I think we did a lot of good for the community. Also, we had the first animated favicon ever.
3. I was engaged once.
4. I got to meet and shake hands with Bill Clinton during his 1996 campaign. He came to Pittsburgh in August and had a rally in the Sewall Center at Robert Morris College (now Robert Morris University). Amazing guy.
5. My first computer was a TRS 80 Model 100 (I had the printer too!). I loved that computer. It was very light and incredibly portable, ran on 4 AA batteries, and had a built in 300 baud modem. Once I bought the modem cable and started checking out local BBSes, my entire world changed forever. I bought a second one, cut off one modular connector and attached alligator clips, and went phreaking. Some of the best times of my life.
6. About a decade or so ago, I got hit by my own car. I was at a motel and someone tried to steal my car. I heard it start up, ran out, and stood in the middle of the parking lot. He drove right into me, and I rolled up the hood, over the windshield, and off the side. I hurt my back, but no broken bones or cuts.
7. I’m a published author. I’ve been published in a couple poetry reviews, a technical book, and most recently tech-edited a book for Wiley, HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Your visual blueprint. I’m also about 170+ pages into a novel, but that’s another story. (Get it? Another STORY? Ha-ha! (that one’s for dolske))

So, now I need to harass seven other people about this.

1. Justin Dolske because he’s a punny guy.
2. Chris Thomas because he’s a really smart guy.
3. Josh Soref because he’s a genuinely nice guy.
4. Jeff Walden because is hard to find.
5. J. Boriss because I’m still looking for Natasha.
6. Sean Umphlet who is a good guy and will not give you up nor let you down.
7. Tim De Pauw who is my favorite waffle (and a good musician).

Fin.

[ music | Eels – Novocaine for the Soul ]

Previously.

Am I being too harsh?

It’s a damn fine morning indeed.

It’s November 4, folks, so it’s time to go out and vote. I don’t care who you vote for, just vote!

[ music | Ulrich Schnauss – Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn ]

Quick note to anyone subscribed to my old RSS feeds: I’ve moved to WordPress, and while all the old bookmarks work, old RSS feed URLs don’t. You’ll need to update them. Thanks.

So, like a brazilian other Photoshop and Dreamweaver users, I was happy to read all the new info Adobe was releasing about the CS4 suite. I’m fairly certain I would undergo severe withdrawl symptoms without PS and DW. As I read over the What’s New in Dreamweaver PDF, I discovered something I had been wishing Adobe (and previously, Macromedia) would address for a while, the less than stellar in-app preview renderer. It was marginally better than IE, but in no way kept up with Friefox, Safari, or Opera. They’re integrating a leading edge open source rendering engine into the app, specifically Webkit.

View your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View—while
still retaining direct access to the code. This new rendering mode, which uses the open source
rendering engine WebKit, displays your designs like a standards-based browser.
Changes to the code are immediately reflected in the rendered display.

I’m thrilled that finally the in-app view won’t suck. However, this will trigger yet another wave of “OMG Gecko is dead, Webkit roolz” posts from people who don’t understand what they’re talking about. Webkit is a great engine, and so is Gecko. But the two engines serve two different agendas. Webkit is about being lightweight and easy to pick up and easy to embed. Gecko is about being heavy duty, and does a lot more than just HTML. It has a heftier learning curve as well. If you want to embed an easy to learn web engine, grab Webkit. If you want to leverage an entire web platform, Gecko is your choice. They both have advantages and disadvantages, and are best in different scenarios.

To quote Nokia developer Oleg Romaxa in a recent interview,

Nokia will use the best browser for the job. Currently, we cannot make a full-featured and integrated browser with WebKit in mobile. But with Mozilla, we do not need to do anything, we can take existing models and API’s which are available. Also, NPAPI support is already in the Gecko web rendering engine.

Nokia was looking for a platform on which to build a browser for their products like the Nokia Internet Tablet. No one sensible is going to argue that Webkit can’t be part of an excellent browser, just look at Safari or Google Chrome. However, Webkit’s narrower focus meant that for Nokia, the better choice was Gecko.

For Adobe, Webkit was a better choice as it’s more easily embedded into other apps, and doesn’t come with a lot of things they didn’t need, such as XUL, plugin support, etc. Webkit is just part of the development environment. On the opposite end of the spectrum is NVu and KompoZer, which are web editors built entirely on Gecko. They leverage the platform Gecko provides, something you can’t accomplish with Webkit.