clue free

It felt a lot like riding the 7.

Some days, it feels so good to be a web geek. Earlier this week, I [two years late] discovered jQuery, a JavaScript library. It takes most of the pain out of making your fancified whiz-bang Web 2.0 pages go, go, go. Even better than that, their logo is based on the DEVO energy dome (their former tagline being “new wave JavaScript”.) I get the feeling they won’t end up getting sued over it, unlike some megacorporations.

Today, I find this:

Ajaxorized has released a GPL licensed image manipulation script called Phototype. Phototype is a client/server-side library, based on prototype, which provides image manipulation functionality. On the server, it uses the PHP/GD framework to render the image. While the client is an interface that makes these features easily accessible in JavaScript, including the ability to chain effects.

Phototype supports: image rotatation, resizing, flipping, drop shadows, effects, grey scale, captions, as well as an addChuckNorris() method [for all you Walker, Texas Ranger fans]

Ira Glass of “This American Life” explains why artists — or anyone who takes pride in his work — hit that ceiling of my-hands-are-so-dumb frustration… and how to beat it.

Very insistent. It’s almost like trying to order something at The Pump that doesn’t include a pita.

I’m sitting here in Union Square at the one-night-only 25th anniversary WarGames re-release. (Much of the audience seems approximately the age of the movie itself, incidentally.)

During the scene where David and Jennifer are leaving Falken’s house, the projector cuts out. Totally dead. 10 minutes later, the theater manager shows up and says that “the satellite link for this event has gone down. Not just this theater–the whole country. Some kind of computer glitch.” Raucous laughter. The manager looked confused by the reaction.

Maybe instead of this satellite whiz-bangery, we should have left the humans in the loop?

UPDATE: 20 minutes later, back up! Onward to DEFCON 1!

Robert Soloway, the “spam king”, is going to jail. The real story, to me, is that a different spammer broke out of prison two days before:

Another notorious spammer, Eddie Davidson, escaped from his prison camp in Colorado on Sunday, authorities said Tuesday. He had been serving a 21-month sentence after pleading guilty to spam charges in December.

(Cue the theme from The Great Escape…)

And yeah, duh, the car is registered in Texas.

Dinner was great, though — we finally have a good thai restaurant (Dee Thai, 47th Street and Queens Blvd.)  Ka Moo Nam Dang: ultimate thai-style porchetta (porchetta being Italian-style pulled pork, but not shredded and more roasty.)  So much fat.  So much delicious hot sauce. Mmmmm.

Woohoo!  This August 9th, 16th, and 23rd, Park Ave will be closed to motor vehicles.  The route will connect the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park (at 72nd Street.)

NYC is becoming way more car-hostile in recent months, and as a walker/biker/subway-rider, I could not be happier. Maybe one day, in the future, people will work near where they live, rather than commute 2 hours each way. Maybe one day, in the future, people will dismiss wasteful things as wasteful.  Maybe one day, in the future, it will start getting easier to breathe, rather than harder.

Started the Hundred Pushups program this morning.  Pushed 40 for the initial test.  Not bad for first thing in the morning, and puts me squarely into Level 4 (30-49 reps).  The program runs 6 weeks (3 days per week) and gradually ramps you up to the goal.

I love their site — nice and clean, and thank Jeebus they are using print stylesheets properly.  For a printer-friendly version of the site… you just print it! Ah, the miracle of basic CSS, which continues to escape most corporate sites.