grack.com

I’ve got gmail invites to give away to the first five to leave their name and email address in the comments.

First come, first serve!

I wanted to move all of my old articles into yearly subdirectories, but I didn’t want to break any of the incoming links to my site.  Thankfully, mod_rewrite allows me to redirect incoming requests as necessary!

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond         %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ^(.*/news)/
RewriteCond         %1/2004/$1          -f
RewriteRule         ^news/([^/]+)$       /news/2004/$1 [R,L] 

RewriteCond         %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ^(.*/news)/
RewriteCond         %1/2003/$1          -f
RewriteRule         ^news/([^/]+)$       /news/2003/$1 [R,L]

RewriteRule   ^(.+)  -  [PT]

I just tried out my Sharpreader via Mozilla hack on the latest version of Sharpreader.  It still works!

After some playing around with various bits in System.Windows.Forms, I’ve managed to pretty much eliminate the graphical glitches in the .NET control hosting plugin.

The only thing left is some strange WM_ERASEBKGND/WM_PAINT messages that seem to be coming out of nowhere.  Whenever I resize the browser I get a subtle flicker on some controls - it’s almost like the entire control has been invalidated by something.  Perhaps the Gecko plugin hosting window is doing this to force a refresh on any plugins.

Here’s another screenshot for fun:

I managed to get my .NET plugin wrapper for Firefox working just now.  I can get a .NET UserControl to show up embedded in an HTML page through Firefox.

Next step - hook up the <object> tag to download arbitrary .NET assemblies and run them as UserControls (with security of course).

Check it out!

Google has released their latest zeitgeist, but this time without the browser stats of yore.

I was hoping to see a rise in Gecko-based browsers for July, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing it for a few months.  Could this be related to the IPO?

As part of the latest Mozilla Firefox grassroots marketing blitz, I received a personalized email message from Blake Ross.  I have to admit, a non-form letter really does make a good impression. 

To be honest, I’d been thinking of adding it before but this gave me the last little push to add it to my front page.  I might find a different spot for it later on, but it looks really good where it is right now.

UPDATE: If you’re looking for a button for your own site, check out the Mozilla Firefox - Promotional Buttons page.  The little guy they have there () is really nifty.

I started applying the T-moulding to the edges of the cabinet today.  It took a little while to figure out the right height for the router but it goes quickly once you’ve got it set right.

I managed to cut the moulding slot too high or too low in a few places - I’m using “No More Nails” to hold it in.  If this doesn’t work I’ll probably try picking up a hot glue gun (a suggestion I saw elsewhere).

I’m pretty close to getting the cabinet sides attached (once the rest of the shelving supports are in).  This should be a virtual milestone for myself - it’s tough to see the pieces lying around unassembled for so long.

UPDATE: Looks like I’ll need a glue gun after all.  Home Depot, here I come!

RSS (and Atom) should come with an acceptable use flag that lets me tell people that it’s okay to syndicate my blog posts in full.

For future reference, it’s okay to quote or aggregate any of my posts, even in full.

There’s an interesting Wiki discussing Copyright Economics.  It breaks down the interaction between producers and consumers of “intellectual property”, comparing it with the interaction between buyers and sellers of physical goods.

From what I can tell of the analysis, a “social gain” is equivalent to saying that the extra money that the producer gained over the minimum they would have done it for plus the extra money that the consumer has that they didn’t need to use to buy what they wanted results in extra money for everyone!

The interesting conclusion is that pirating IP actually results in a social gain in the short term, while in the long term can potentially result in a social loss:

Okay, gotta make myself a checklist so I can finish this project up in a reasonable amount of time.  It looks like a lot, but I can usually take out a number of these in a day.

Did I mention that a MAME cabinet requires a huge amount of commitment?

Stage One: Construction

Started putting together the MAME cabinet on friday.  I managed to get as far as assembling the base.  Since it’s such an integral part of the entire cabinet, I spent a bunch of time with tubes of No More Nails and some good wood screws to make sure nothing moves. 

It supports me standing on top of it- hopefully it’ll support the weight of the cabinet and the TV (which probably weighs twice as much as me together!)

Fancy tip: pre-drilling all of the screw holes should ensure that none of your wood splits.