Monthly Archives: November 2004

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I’m Nervous

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SDG&E are working on something to do with the electricity under the streets tonight where I live. Which means they are shutting off all the power to my neighborhood between 10:00 pm and 8:00 am tonight. If I don’t go to bed right away, it’s going to be strange. Sit around and do a puzzle by candlelight or something?

What in the hell did people do before the Internet? Hmmm… I guess they watched TV. But what did people do before TV or electricity?

If you never hear from me again, we probably went mad and killed each other.

T-minus 21 minutes…….

Car Stuff, Tech Stuff

Bluetooth Phone Control In A Car

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You know what I wish someone would do? Come out with a way to control a Bluetooth phone hands free while in your car. The 2004 Acura TL can do it right out the factory. Seems strange that after-market manufacturers like Alpine wouldn’t jump on the opportunity. Not only would it be a hot item, but Alpine systems are modular, so they could come out with a Bluetooth module for $80 or $100 or something and it would work with any Ai-NET compatible deck.

That’s what they did with their iPod controller… it’s just a “magic box” that hides away somewhere, and works with any Apline stereo (that supports Ai-NET).

Just seems like an opportunity for someone to do it, because they would sell a TON of them.

Weird Stuff

Virgin Mary Sandwich

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Someone tried to sell a 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich on eBay that had bore the image of the Virgin Mary. eBay pulled the auction right before it closed, but the bidding was up to $22,000 and the auction itself was viewed over 100,000 times.

You know it’s a true miracle because after 10 years, the sandwich never sprouted a single spore of mold. 🙂

Blogs

Publish To Blogger Via Email

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Did you know that you can publish to your blog simply by sending an email? I didn’t until I noticed it under the Email tab under Preferences.

This is my first post ever that I published without logging into Blogger. Let’s hope it works. 🙂

Blogs

How To Hide Deleted Comments In Blogger

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It’s really annoying when someone spams your comments in Blogger (or accidentally posts twice). You can delete the comment, but it’s not “really” deleted… instead it has a message saying the comment was deleted by an administrator. In the case of a spammer, it’s really ugly to have 20 or so of those if you ask me.

So I decided to come up with a hack that will remove it. This only works if you run your blog on your own server (FTP or SFTP published) and your server is running Apache with PHP extensions installed.

First I created a PHP file and dropped it in my blogger base directory:

myfile.php file:

<?php

    $file = file_get_contents ($_REQUEST['file']);

    $a = substr_count ($file, 'deleted-comment');

    $b = preg_match ('/<h4>(.*?) Comments:<\/h4>/i', $file, $matches);

    

    echo str_replace ('<h4>' . $matches[1] . ' Comments:</h4>', '<h4>' . ($matches[1] - $a) . ' Comments:</h4>', $file);

?>

Then I created a .htaccess file in that same folder:

.htaccess

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} 20..\/..\/

RewriteRule ^(.*) myfile.php?file=$1

Great… problem solved. Basically it reads the file and spins it through the script before it’s output to the user.

BTW, this is not a detailed “how to”, so use at your own risk and don’t email me if it doesn’t work. 🙂

Law, Movies, Music

iTunes Music Store

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Dude, let me just say how happy I am that the iTunes Music Store is around now. Before the music store, I would order a CD online, but get tired of waiting for it to come, so I would use Napster to download the album so I didn’t have to wait. Anyway, long story short is by the time I get the CDs in the mail, I already have the music (if you download, you should always buy the music in my opinion). So I have tons of audio CDs that I bought that I never even bother opening (still shrink-wrapped) only because I buy all the music I download.

The iTunes Music Store saves me from having to buy CDs that I never open! Yay!

Now if they would just create an iTunes Movie Store, I wouldn’t have to have all these stupid DVDs (which I never actually use) laying around. Plus it would curb illegal downloading (people that don’t actually own the movie/CD) and protect the copyright owners with the DRM.

I have no issues with DRM on stuff I buy… I just want to be able to download electronically the media I buy, that’s all.

Uncategorized

How Will You Remember President Bush?

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Election day is finally here. I’m a registered voter in California, but I’m not going to vote because the electoral voting system is stupid. California is a lock for Kerry, so he gets all 55 electoral votes regardless of what percentage of California actually votes for him. If I lived in a state where the vote could go either way, I would get out and vote.

I’m also a Republican, but not so much that I would ever vote for someone simply because of their political party. I thought Ronald Reagan (R) was a great president, I thought the first Bush (R) was a mediocre president and then I thought Clinton (D) was a great president.

In my opinion, the 2nd Bush is a terrible president… not because of anything specifically he did (or did not do). While I don’t agree with some (most) of the things he does, I don’t think it makes him a bad president. If he gets reelected today, I hope things go much differently in his second term, although I kind of doubt it.

The reason I think George W. Bush is a terrible president is because he is the first president that actually made me feel embarrassed to be an American, and if the president makes people feel that way (however it happened), I think they are a terrible president.