Ultranormal

  • Best Search Term Ever

    Guess who’s number one for best poop ever. Yup, it’s me. Check out The Best Poop Story Ever\
    Man, I love search engines. They provide never ending entertainment.

  • I BUY LOCAL

    I told you last week (or was it early this week) that I had more thoughts about buying local. Well, it’s ready (and I did it at lunch today while eating chili). I present to you, my faithful friends and family: I BUY LOCAL. Right now, it’s just that first post, but I’m hoping it blossoms into a group blog full of local business-supporting goodness. I’ve already got one blogger lined up to help me (when he “officially” joins up and posts something, I’ll let ya know), and am looking for more.\
    It’s not going to be a big thing, just a small thing that will hopefully help someone realize that where they get their goods and services from does make a difference. Thinking, even just a little bit, about who’s affected by the money we put into the community is a start. I know I’ve just started.\
    If you’re interested in helping out (we’ll have stickers soon), let me know (kevin-at-ibuylocal.info).

  • Blogging With Movable Type

    You know, if you know someone who wants to learn about blogging, get one set up and learn how to customize it , my class at Eclectic Academy on Movable Type would be a swell Christmas present. Only \$20 for six weeks of online classes, and lots of hands on helps from me? I mean, come on… that’s a deal.\
    Or, not. You know, it’s up to you.

  • Comment Spam-o-rama

    This will probably get me spammed, but I’ve been reading a lot the past few days (here, here and here, and the MT Pro list) about the horrors of comment spam, and how evil comment spam spiders are crawling sites for the path to mt-comments.cgi and then spamming the crap out of it. Me? I don’t really have a problem with comment spam. How I’ve been able to avoid it up to this point, I’m not really sure. I have several blogs, and none of them have been hit by more than one or two comment spams in their long lives (three years now for Ultranormal, two for Geekout and almost two for the photo gallery).\
    But, I’m getting serious with the preventative medicine. I haven’t implemented all of these things, but I have done some of them:

    • Don’t install Movable Type in the cgi-bin if your host allows it.
    • Rename mt-comments.cgi (and update the CommentScript line in mt.cfg, removing the # in front of it).
    • Use javascript to write out the form action on your comments form. That way, they can’t spider for the location of your comments script (well, make sure the function to do this is in a linked javascript). All of these javascript options screw people who have javascript turned off, but there are sacrifices we have to make.
    • Use javascript to write out your comments. This way, they won’t be indexed by search engines, and you’re removing the benefit of spamming you.
    • Use javascript to open your comment popup window. The one I use uses the entry id, and has the comment script in the linked script – so, again, it’s not easily spiderable.
    • Use the Moderate plugin to close comments on old entries. This gives the spammers fewer available targets.\
      I wrote a tutorial for doing a few of those. I’ll update it to add the form action bit and probably post it to Geekout in the near future.\
      To me, the real problem here is that Movable Type’s default templates are vulnerable out of the box. Maybe if the default template set was a little more protected, comment spam wouldn’t be such a problem. I know the train has kind of left the station on this, since there’s already a huge installed base of people probably using slightly modified versions of the default templates. But, for future versions, a lot of these changes could be included in the default, protecting the vulnerable “newbie” from themselves.

  • Minimize Me

    I can write about this now because it’s working. Have you seen Super Size Me Well, I rented it shortly after it came out on DVD, and it’s changed how I eat. After watching it, Jen and I both decided to completely cut out fast food. So, for the past three months or so, no McD’s, Chik-fil-a, Wendy’s, BK, KFC or Taco Bell. We initially thought it would be difficult because there are those nights where making dinner just seems impossible. But, it’s worked. I haven’t even really been tempted, and I used to eat McD’s, at least for breakfast, at least twice a week.\
    It’s worked so well, that I’m back dieting again, and have lost twenty pounds in the last two months. I’m down to my lowest weight since I started trying to diet (I think it was two years ago, but it could have been just one). I now weigh less than most NFL linemen, and I’m inching closer to middle linebacker.\
    If you haven’t seen it yet, go rent it. Or, better yet, buy it and loan it to all your friends. It’s amazing the things we’re convinced to put in our bodies, and how our food gets to us. If you get the DVD, you should really watch the Smoking Fry bit, and Morgan’s interview with Eric Schlosser (who wrote Fast Food Nation).\
    We also signed up for CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) from Great Country Farms. Max and I went there in August and had a great time. Their produce is excellent, and I can’t wait to get it every week next year.\
    Dieting is a lot easier when it’s for something. When it’s not self-deprivation, but for a reason, it’s a whole lot easier. I think I’ll be able to keep the weight off this time (because now, even when I’m not paying attention to what I eat, I’m not gaining anything back, and am still losing weight). It’s not a diet, it’s just how I eat now, which feels great. That isn’t to say we don’t go out anymore. We do, and I still splurge on the occasional country-fried steak. But, we do it at restaurants, not fast food places. On top of that, we try to eat at locally owned places when possible. We eat at Linda’s or Amphora instead of IHOP. We go to Emilio’s when we want good pizza (and boy, it’s good). I’ve got more to say about the local business thing… a whole new project I’m working on (very slowly… keep getting interrupted).\
    So… go watch it. It’ll change you.

  • Different Data

    Ambient Dashboard is weird. It’s weird in a way that makes me tilt my head to the side. But, somehow, it feels right. People are good at reading dials. We do it every time we drive, look at our thermostats or check a thermometer. They’re just translating what we normally think of as digital data to an analog interface. What’s interesting is that they’re using analog paradigms to do so. They’re not trying to create pie charts or graphs, powerpoint slides or anything else that might feel digital. It’s strictly analog, which is the way to go. Use the tools of the medium to display the data.\
    I’ve been talking at work about design and usability (on top of standards and accessibility). This is a perfect example of using the chosen medium to display information. Too many designers try to translate the medium instead of use the medium’s particular advantages to display their content. For example, if it’s a designer used to working in the publishing world, their web designs are going to use magazine conventions and not web conventions. Their web sites will look stale, out of place, and be neither compelling or usable. I see it all the time, all over the place. Instead of doing things the web does well (expandable, flexible display of content, interactivity, portability), they hamstring their products by ignoring those things and making everything look like a magazine page.\
    I’ve been trying to come up with a better way to argue this point to designers, and I think I’ve hit a wall. The best I can do is point to products that feel “right” and say, “See?!” Yeah, that’s probably not productive either.

  • My Boys

    I’ve been slowly transferring our old MiniDV tapes into iMovie and then burning them on DVD. I’m currently importing the video from our trip to Virginia Beach when Max was about eighteen months old. It’s almost jarring how much Max and Brian look alike. I never figured that my kids would have a “look”. My siblings and I look nothing alike (lucky them, I know). If you hold up pictures of Max and Brian from the same age, they could be twins (or, in some cases, the same kid).\
    There were these families when I was a kid where the kids all looked alike. When you saw one, you knew exactly what family they were from. It’s still really foreign to me to think that I’m going to have one of those families. There will be a “Lawver Look™”.\
    At least it’s a good one… if we all looked like Quasimodo, I’d be worried. But, man, they’re cute. They’re really, really cute.

  • Shake That Thing

    I think I need to start a new playlist for songs that make you feel like you’ve just snorted two eucalyptus cough drops. You know the ones… make you wake up, no matter what state you’re in. They make you tap your foot, bounce your head (either up and down or side to side), and feel that rush of blood through your body. You’re alive as soon as that song starts, and awake until the final power chord.\
    My latest addition to that list is Saturday Morning from Eel’s Shootenanny!:

    Saturday morning.\
    Who’s going to play with me?\
    Six in the morning, baby.\
    I got a long day ahead o’ me\
    …\
    Nothing’s ever going to happen ’round here,\
    unless we make it happen.\
    Sleep away the day if you want to,\
    But I got something I gotta do.

    You will get up and shake it, whether you got it or not. To round out this particular list:

    • Uh, Zoom Zip – Soul Coughing
    • I See You Baby – Groove Armada (Fatboy Slim Mix) – There are a whole bunch of Groove Armada or Fatboy songs I could put in this list, but I won’t.
    • Back in Black – Living Colour’s cover of the classic.
    • Breathe (like an Aphex Twin) – The remix of Prodigy’s techno heinie-shaker, without the slightly annoying lyrics
    • That Song from Kill Bill – You know the one, where Ren is walking down the hall with her posse. It’s too darn short, but boy, it’ll wake the dead.
    • Super Bon Bon – Soul Coughing (again)
    • Shake Your Coconuts – Junior Senior – I could have put Move Your Feet in here, but this song cracks me up every time I hear it (and I go into conniptions when Max sings along).
    • No Sleep Till Brooklyn – Beastie Boys – Another conniption song. When Max was learning how to talk, he’d sing along with the chorus. There’s nothing funnier than a two year-old, at top volume, from the backseat: “NO SWEEP TILL BWOOKWYN!!!!”
    • Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day – Morcheeba – Starts a little slow, but the porn-bass is really really catchy.
    • Rockin’ the Suburbs – Ben Folds – Come on, how can you not hop up and shake your pale ass to this one? Another great conniption song. Max knows this whole album… “WOCKIN’ DA SUBURBS!!!”\
      Ok, enough of this fun. You can get all of these songs from from the Apple Music store if you’re too lazy to look ’em up. Really, you can.

  • Lost Keys

    I lost my keys. In the house. After using them. We tore the house apart, and we still can’t find them. I’m at a loss. I have no idea where they could be, and the worst part is, I can’t check my work mail without them (you know those SecurID things? Yeah, on my keyring). If you see my keys, nursing a scotch in a bar, skydiving, riding Space Mountain or mooning nuns, could you drop me a line? I’d really like them back.

  • No Idea What To Say

    I still have a job. A lot of people I know don’t. Layoffs are horrible, and I’ve seen a few by now. A lot of people I enjoy working with are no longer working here, and it’s a horrible feeling, knowing they’re not dead, but feeling like they are. I have no idea what to say. I talked to one friend who’s leaving, and I think I made her cry. It wasn’t on purpose.\
    I still have no idea what to say.