And yet print media is dying?

Published on 2 Jun 2009 at 8:48 pm. .
Filed under Politics,Rants.

From a recent CNN article.

Obama lost to Republican presidential candidate John McCain by 11 percentage points and close to 1 million votes. Still, that margin is less than more than half of what it was when the state’s favored son George W. Bush was on the presidential ballot.

Let me emphasize that again less than more than half. Really? This is what passes for journalism today in the online world? This is what is killing print media? What is that even trying to say? Wouldn’t less than more than half just be less than half? The Hell?

What’s in a browser?

Published on 24 May 2009 at 10:58 pm. .
Filed under Web stuff.

As the Internet becomes more and more engraved into our everyday lives, if you are going to do business over the Web, you should educate yourself on what goes into a browser and how those features can effect your overall business decisions. For the purpose of this article I shall cover the two features that are most influential to the development cycle for a Web site — the layout engine and the JavaScript engine.

The Layout Engine

The term layout engine (sometimes referred to as the rendering engine) is the part of the browser that formats what is placed on a Web page. In technical terms, it is the part of the browser that takes content that has been written in (X)HTML/XML and uses CSS to apply style (e.g. make header green or separate content into two or three columns) to said content. The purpose of separating content from presentation is that to reduce the size of Web pages (which will decrease the loading time of a page) and to decrease development/maintenance time.

Layout engines are not exclusive to Web browsers. Layout engines are commonly used by Internet-capable applications such as E-mail clients, Instant Messengers, and other applications that need to display Web content. While there are numerous Layout engines, the following are the most prevalent layout engines in use and a list of many key applications that use these engines.

The JavaScript Engine

The JavaScript engine portion of the Web browser is the portion that applies the behavior to a Web page.  A behavior would be some action that occurs on a Web page as a result of an action by the user. For example, replacing the main image in a photo gallery when the user clicks on or moves their mouse over a thumb nail image, or when a WYSIWYG editor is applied to a form input box.

Because of the push of Web applications inside the browser, the JavaScript engine is primarily maintained by the core developers behind the Web browser. For example, you’ll notice that both Safari and Google Chrome use WebKit as their layout engine, but Safari uses the SquirelFish JavaScript engine, while Google Chrome uses the V8 JavaScript engine. For completeness, here is a list of JavaScript engines and their primary Web browsers.

Market Share

As you can see from the above, there are a lot of different possibilities that can affect development. Because of this developers tend to create a support graph indicating what browsers are actively tested. This support graph is typically based off of market share — the percentage of use a product has in the market. Some developers go the extra mile to forcibly block browsers that do not meet said criteria. This is typically a short sighted process because you are artificially reducing your potential client base. For example, developers that allowed Safari were actively blocking Google Chrome for a time being, despite both browsers using the same layout engine.

When developing your personal support chart you need to take in to account what market you want to push your product currently, and where you want to be in the future. For example, Opera has less than 1% market share in North America, but makes up 36.14% market share in Russia.

Sports Columnist Doesn’t Know Difference Between Ovation and Lull

Published on 20 May 2009 at 8:55 pm. .
Filed under Wrestling.

During a recent article on WWE being kicked out of the Pepsi Center the columnist ended the article with this little tidbit:

Little more than a month ago, the WWE took in $52 million staging WrestleMania 25 in Houston, making it the highest-grossing one-day entertainment event so far this year. Judging by the applause, the crowd’s favorite moment came when actor Mickey Rourke, who received an Oscar nomination for portraying a washed-up wrestler struggling to hang on, knocked WWE star Chris Jericho with a single punch.

Apparently said writer was never taught the definition of applause. See for most people when they judge something by applause they are usually talking about what got the most applause, not the least. The whole Mickey Rourke thing was just to get free publicity, it wasn’t about building the most electrifying moment of the night — the Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker match.

Bush raises 100 mil for library

Published on 4 May 2009 at 9:42 pm. .
Filed under Politics.

Yeah, it may be a library dedicated to his presidency so it’s not totally selfless, but it is still a worthwhile endevor. Something that any President should have. Good job.

A call to Libertarians

Published on 1 May 2009 at 9:58 pm. .
Filed under Politics.

Been thinking about the state of the Republican party lately and yes, I am one of those that believes that the Republican party looks to be going down in flames. Driving Specter away and advocating more extremism has shown the mindset of the party and how they are distancing themselves from the values of the American population. While I am fairly liberal, I am not under the illusion that the country would be better off with only one party. In fact, I would be much happier with more than two parties, but we need at least two.

So I am looking at you Libertarins. You’re a group that has sat on the sidelines for years now not pushing for any true political power to advance your values in this country. With the state of the country right now their are people turning away from the Republican party to become “independents” or Democrats. You can’t tell me that some wouldn’t become Libertarians. Like with Republicans, it is time with Libertarins to put up and start trying, or go away.

self-blocking ads

Published on 30 Apr 2009 at 9:21 pm. .
Filed under Life,Web stuff.

I know many people use Ad-block or some variant, but at work I feel that I should not be doing anything that blocks HTML content.

But lately I’ve noticed that there are blocks for ads on sites like OkCupid. Where the “ad” is:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

I wasn’t aware that robots.txt files were very good advertising tools. :-p

Passing the Test

Published on 19 Apr 2009 at 9:58 pm. .
Filed under Wrestling.

This article may be a bit jumpy, but it is going to be my attempt to discuss my feelings on professional wrestling as it stands at this time. I want to cover the topics of the wrestling related deaths, and the abundance of product that is out there at this time. The reason for my delay in writing this has to do with the former, which allowed me more time to think about the latter.

The month of march saw the deaths of three profesional wrestlers — Andrew Martin aka (Test), Steve Doll (aka Steven Dunn from Well Dunn), and Andrés Alejandro Palomeque González (aka Abismo Negro). Admittedly the deaths of the latter two wrestlers are unfortunate circumstances that one does not count when this circumstance comes up, but the same cannot be said for the death of Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin is a wrestler that most Americans wrestling fans are going to be familiar with due to his career with WWE through out the last decade. The toxicology reports recently came in and it was ruled that Martin’s death was ruled an accidental overdose of Oxycodone.

It is the reaction to the death of Martin that I find most surprising. The man was a jacked up freak. His ring name was Test and yet he did not have a teacher gimmick like the former NYS school teacher Matt Striker.  How is it that no one figured out that his name was short for testosterone? If not for Juventud Guerrera using the nickname “The Juice” in an attempt to be Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, I honestly believe that his ring name would have been Juice. A man just shy of his 34th birthday should not be dropping dead. Yes, the WWE wellness policy is a step in the right direction. It is great that WWE has opened the door to pay for drug treatment to every wrestler that has ever worked for the company, regardless of length or the way they left the company.

But Martin took them up on the treatment! Admittedly, due to his cause of death it must mean that the treatment did not work… is that due to his own personal demons, or is that a comment on the type of treatment that WWE was giving out. Wrestlers such as Eddie Guerrero have cleaned up their act, only to have the their past come back to bite them. Prior to his horrific end the now infamous Chris Benoit was one of the most widely respected professional wrestlers in all the world. Everything about him screamed intensity, endurance, and versatility (except for his skills on the micrphone). Is it any wonder why it was speculated that Benoit had suffered from numerous concussions through out his carrer in combination of the numerous drugs that he took? Martin was very open about his use of drugs to make it through his pro-wrestling career.

To be frank I do not believe it is possible for wrestling to continue on the path that it is now. Forget the argument about whether or not pro-westling should be considered a sport. The fact of the matter is that regardless of whether or not it is a sport, it is a highly athletic field that involves more travel than any “real” sport, does not have an off-season, and sees athletes continuing with the activity much longer than anywhere else and whose participants come out of retirement very frequently. Terry Funk has retired multiple times over the last 3 decades! There is something very wrong here when 105 professional wrestlers under the age of 65 have died since 1985 with the majority of them having come from drugs/pain killers in some form or another, be it directly or indirectly.

The “straight edge superstar” CM Punk is the model that WWE needs to be building up. He legitimately lives the no drugs, no alcohol life style. He is one of the few wrestlers that will actually ask for time off when he is hurt, rather than pop some pain killers to keep going rather than risk losing his spot on the roster. The last two years CM Punk won the Money in the Bank match at Wrestlemania and used that to cash in and become the World champion, but after that time his career seemed to fade to the point that it was an actual surprise that he would win the match a second time and be given the chance to compete for a world title match at any time of his choosing. Wrestlers need to see that it is possible to advance in their career as a professional athelete and live a healthy life style. CM Punk needs to not be the exception to the rule, and the only way that will happen will be if he is allowed to have a successful career. The man has shown on the indy circuit that he can cut a good promo. Let him speak on the microphone every once in a while! Forget that he doesn’t fit into the classic “look” of a professional wrestler.

Going with my point about wrestlers working too much, WWE recently expanded their TV programming by adding WWE Superstars on WGN to Thursday nights. WWE now has programming on 5-6 days a week depending on whether or not their is a PPV on Sunday. Monday is Raw, Tuesday is ECW, Thursday is Superstars, Friday is Smackdown, and Saturday is AM Raw. Admittedly AM Raw is a recap show, and the same wrestlers do not appear on every show, but in the same sense those wrestlers are also wrestling in non-television shows at the same time. Similarly, as a wretsling fan I have to say that this is just too much damned product to keep up with. It involves investing too much time to keep up with in order to follow all of this. The world economy is in the crapper, WWE recently had to lay off about 20 million in work force, and they add yet another show that they have to spend money on producing? This is all around not a smart move.

Edit: And while I was writing this Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) just won the TNA world title. In the infamous words of Tony Schiavone “Yeah, like that’ll put asses in seats”.

Arizona just can’t get a break…

Published on 1 Feb 2009 at 10:12 pm. .
Filed under Uncategorized.

Last November it was:

Now it is:

Enough with the Zombie variants…

Published on 30 Jan 2009 at 7:25 pm. .
Filed under Uncategorized.

Crazy as it seems, the above is not a joke! It is taking Jane Austen’s classic work and modernizing it. And by modernizing it I mean adding zombies. What, no ninjas or pirates?

Personally I am not getting this until we get a Suydam variant cover.

Merry Christmas

Published on 23 Dec 2008 at 9:30 pm. .
Filed under Life.

Just wanted to post the above Flash file. It’s my first experience working with Flex and FlashDevelop.

There were supposed to be more stars in the background that were randomly generated and a snow effect going on… but I just could not figure out how to get this accomplished. From everything I’ve seen, I need the actual Flash software to do this. If anyone sees this and finds that I’m wrong, can someone please let me know?

Special thanks to my friend Christine who helped me out with the computing the points in the star on the tree. 🙂