Day: March 18, 2009

In my process of tranferring my DVD collection to a digital media server I discovered that the Apple TV software is smarter than I thought.

I have been ripping my DVD collection using Handbrake on my Mac and transferring them to a Windows box which is shared out via my internal only network to the Apple TV using iTunes.  I use the built-in Apple TV profile to do this.  The profile sets the frame rate option on the encoder to be “Same As Source”.  It turns out that if your rip has a final fps (frames per second) that is greater than 30 then the resulting movie will not be available in the list of Shared Movies on the Apple TV.

So apparently, the category logic, or lack thereof, of the App Store extends to the rest of the iTunes Store as well.

On the iTunes Store if you look at the category of music labeled Albums Under $7 you will find the Maroon 5 album The B-Side Collection.  However, if you look at the category of music labeled Albums Under $9, you will not find the Maroon 5 album.

If an album is under $7 it would seem to me that it is also under $9.

This so doesn’t make any sense.

A friend of mine took this photo of the Apple Store Tokyo, during a recent trip.

Those of you out there who are running an installation of SCT Luminis 3 may have noticed that the browser check always comes up warning you that the browser is unsupported when using Firefox 2, even though all the features seem to be completely supported.

This is due to the fact that the browsercheck javascript does not know about the new agent string that was introduced with Firefox 2. Generally a new release, or service pack to Luminis fixes this for newer browsers.

In order to change this you will need to alter a couple of files in you Luminis install.

The two files that need to be altered are:

1. webapps/luminis/js/clientsniffer.js
2. /webapps/luminis/WEB-INF/templates/portal/browserchk.thtml

clientsniffer.js

In this file you will need to alter the conditional of the big if-statement that follows the assignment for the variable is_nav5.

The problem is that the if checks for the existence of a revision number of 1.8. What you need to do is add an additional check for a revision number of 1.8.1.6. So the if-statement conditional becomes:

if (is_nav5 || agt.indexOf(”rv:1.7.12″) != -1 || agt.indexOf(”rv:1.8″) != -1 || agt.indexOf(”rv:1.8.1.6″) != -1)

The next thing to do is to add an additional Firefox variable that is set to true if the major number is 2. I added this after the existing variable is_fox1_5.

var is_fox2 = (is_fox && (is_major == 2));

browserchk.thtml

In the browsercheck file you need to alter if-statement that sets the variable supported to have a true value. This if-statement should follow immediately after the one that checks for whether java is enabled in your browser.

What you need to add is an additional OR check, so that the if-statement conditional looks like the following:

if ((is_nav8) || (is_nav7) || (is_moz1_7) || (is_win && is_ie5up) || (is_win && is_ie6) || (is_saf1_3) || (is_fox1_5) || (is_fox2) || (is_win && is_fox1))

I have tested this change with Firefox 2.0.0.6 on the following browsers:

• Mac OS X 10.4.10
• Windows XP SP2
• Windows Vista
• Ubuntu 6.10

Resources

Shows like CSI, Law and Order and Bones, throw around a lot of interesting phrases in Latin. While you may not care to study Latin, here’s a few that are fun:

• caveat utilitor – let the user beware
• condemnant quod non intellegunt – they condemn what they do not understand
• deus ex machina – god of the machine
• Roma aeterna – Rome is eternal

For some more fun phrases in Latin check out the entry List of Latin phrases (full) on Wikipedia and the latinproverbs wiki.

Do you ever use a phrase that you heard growing up as a child that no one else around you understands?  Frequently I find myself having to explain the meaning behind a phrase to my student assistants.

One of the latest ones is the phrase bar pit.

Now, I don’t recall whether I heard this from my parents or someone else growing up, but the explanation is quite simple.  And the explanation itself includes a colloquial corruption of a word as well.

Often when you are driving down the highway, at least in South Georgia, you will see large tracts of land where large pit have been created by removing dirt for DOT projects.

These are the bar pits and this term comes from the fact that it is a pit where they are barrying the dirt from.  Now the word barry is itself a corruption of the word borrow.

So it seems that L. Frank Baum’s Oz book series is going to at last come to the silverscreen as a whole.

According to an article on sliceofscifi.com, Warner Bros. has purchased the film rights to all of the original 14 Oz novels, plus a fifteenth book by Ruth Plumly Thompson.

Apparently it is going to be a combined effort between Todd McFarlane and Josh Olson.

One can only hope that McFarlane will restrain his tendencies a little and not produce a product that is as out-of-touch with the original concepts of the books in the way that his Twisted Land of Oz action figures are.

I think that it is great that he wants to update the series and make it “more 2007,” but please don’t warp the childhood of millions by turning Dorothy into a dominatrix.

So this morning, during a momentary lull in my workday, I was perusing my huge and unorganized list of bookmarks when I ran across a bookmark to the Burma Shave section of The Fifties Web.

For those of you, like myself actually, who are to young to have witnessed them yourself, Burma Shave used to put advertising slogans on signs up and down the roads in the US. For more on this, you can check out the article at Wikipedia.

Here’s you a good one:

The wife Who keeps on Being kissed Always heads Her shopping list

Burma-Shave

It’s always nice to see that the Internet is being used to keep alive parts of our culture that might otherwise go by the wayside of progress.

Yesterday walking back to the office after lunch, I was following a girl who was chattering away on her cellular phone using her wireless headset.

It occurred to me that for years on of the signs people looked for when evaluating your sanity was whether or not you talked to yourself in a conversational way, or appeared to be talking to an invisible companion.

Since the advent of the bluetooth headset and it’s popularity, this has become less and less of a tell.  How are you to know that the person standing next to you in the convenience store looking for a soda is really talking to an invisible companion, themselves, you, or someone on the phone?

Welcome to the world where talking to yourself for no apparent reason may cease to be thought of as mental instability!

Another day, another off the wall saying.

So my father used to use the phrase “You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd” all the time when I was growing up. Until recently I never really cared what the origin was, I used the phrase and went on.

Recently, however, the subject of my unusual phrases came up at a luncheon for one of my student assistants that had just gotten a new job as a full time staff member in another department.

So, here’s the origin. The phrase comes from a song by Roger Miller entitled, strangely enough, You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd. For the complete lyris visit .

Every now and then I will utter a saying that I grew hearing or using that makes my assistants wonder.

Today I happened to use the saying If wishes were horses, beggars would ride in reference to one of my assistants wish that the timesheet process here was all done electronically instead of the paper system that we have.

She wondered where I get these things from. I thought it was a pretty common saying, but I had never actually investigated where it originated, so I went googling.

The first reference I found was from Bartleby.com which listed the meaning behind the saying according to the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy as:

If wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted.

While this was nice, I already knew what it meant, so I went googling some more for the origin of the phrase. It turns out that it is a line from a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, entitled If Wishes Were Horses:

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If turnips were watches, I would wear one by my side. And if “ifs” and “ands” Were pots and pans,

There’d be no work for tinkers!

Ref: apples4theteacher.com

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The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does. — Allen Ginsberg

Here is a recipe that I got from my Aunt Cindy.

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 pounds of carrots, peeled & chopped
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons confectioners’ sugar
• 1 stick butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large pot of boiling water, cook carrots until very tender.  Drain and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
3. While carrots are warm, use an electric mixer to beat with sugar, baking powder, and vanilla extract until smooth.  Mix in the flour, eggs, and butter.  Transfer to a 2-quart baking dish.
4. Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until top is golden brown.
5. Sprinkle lightly with confectioners sugar before serving.

Images

The ingredients

Everything mixed in the bowl

The finished product

Notes

• The confectioner’s sugar is optional, I personally think that it is sweet enough without the sugar coating.
• When incorporating the butter into the mix, it works best to blend it in using small chunks instead of adding the entire stick at once.  I use quarter-stick chunks.
• If you are going to be refrigerating this, use plastic wrap and press the wrap down into the casserole dish to contact the top of the food.  This will help keep the moisture in the dish as well as prevent a skin from forming.
• When cooking this, resist the temptation to check it.  Soufflés can deflate or fall when they are disturbed during cooking.  As Alton would say Just set it and walk away.

The first time I made this I followed the instructions to a T, but this time I was making it with an eye towards someone who has a gluten allergy.  In researching the flour substitution, I did find that some people take the time to mill their own gluten free flour, but this was beyond my particular skill set.  What I ended up using was a gluten-free all purpose baking mix from Arrowhead Mills.

So I ran across a story on Slashdot about how ABC/Disney had a blog shutdown over the posting of some audio clips from a radio-station affiliate in conjunction with the blogger’s letters to the radio station advertisers over their tacit support of the comments and views of the talk radio hosts on the station.

The Slashdot post linked to a blog posting on the Daily Kos: State of the Nation that had more details.

While I don’t exactly like the idea of corporate America picking on the little guy when their pocketbook is being affected, I wonder at the hoopla that gets kicked up in the liberal ‘Net community everytime something like this happens.

One of the comments on the Daily Kos post stated that this was

this is a really big First Amdendment and Blogger Rights issue

I think that the author of the comment would have had a good point if they had stopped after “First Amendment”.

What is it that makes speech in a blog any different than speech in any other medium? If there are legitimate freedom of speech issues in this particular case, beyond the often confusing interpretation of what constitutes fair use, then that is a valid point. However, just because the post was made on a blog shouldn’t impart any special protection beyond what has been granted in the caselaw surrounding the first amendment protections.

For years, people that have an issue with a particular view expressed through a commercial entity, be it radio, television, or print, have been writing letters to newspaper editors and advertisers. How is this any different now that we have another medium to voice our opinions? Just because the ease of getting the opinion across has been increased with the advent of Internet forums and blogs, does not mean that the same laws concerning freedom of speech or copyright are more or less applicable.

Do we really need a whole raft of new legislation when the medium is digital instead of analog?

Sungevity is a company that does residential solar panel installations. They have this cool web app that lets you enter you address and then determines how much energy you will need. They use satellite imagery to help design the system.

When you’re ready to see how much solar your home needs, Sungevity makes it easy. Simply enter your address, and we’ll design a system for your roof remotely, using satellite images. We’ll get back to you with the systems that will fit on your roof – all online and free.

Pretty cool, but unfortunately it is for California residents only.

Well, over the weekend some of the other sysadmins of the world provided the solution to the Office 2007 file download problems.

It’s all about the mime types. For those of you not in the know, a MIME type is an Internet Standard that is used to help webservers and e-mail servers know what kind of files are being served up and sent out. Check out the Wikipedia article for more.

So on an Apache webserver you need to add the following to your mime types file:

application/vnd.openxmlformats docx pptx xlsx

Thanks goes out to Vlad Mazek and his post on this one.

Now if only it was so easy for a Windows webserver running IIS. For the process on updating IIS, surf on over to the entry on David Oberton’s blog at a href=”http://uksbsguy.com/”>UK SBS Guy.