12-XII-2006.

Yesterday, a long forth-and-back with Harry on, of course, english language. Namely, what are the names of residents of places like Salt Lake City (Salt Lake Citizens?), Little Rock (Little Rockers?), Virginia Beach (V. Beachballs?), Bretton Woods (?), Gilmanton Iron Works (,, - workers“?), Center Sandwich, Kill Devil Heights, Avon by the Sea, Bird in Hand, King of Prussia, King and Queen Court House...

I'm digging into php/MySql just for kicks. I've set up FreeBSD on a spare old machine and learned how to set up Apache22, PHP itself etc. Quite a lot to learn, but once in, it all starts making a lot of sense, and the instruction, albeit quite terse, is written for us by guys like us, not by hype producers and market spinners, i.e. even I was able to find my way around it :).

AJAX stuff seemed to be even more convoluted than anything I ever cooked up, with delayed callbacks (any request you send to the server must be received by something - and that something is your callback function). There's also two layers of code: PHP (i.e. generator-time, server-side, one-run-and-it's-outta-your-hands) and JavaScript (which can be added to, erased, changed, really code which can rewrite itself). And then all of that complicated stuff went out the window when I found two magic words: invisible iframe. It's trick equally ingenious to .left=-2000 :). From that point on, AJAX can be done easy.

Except it didn't go so easy... because the hidden iframe very soon went extinct, there was some change in the standards and... well, it stopped working. But then I got busy with other stuff.

Accumulated some 8 hours of work for UniJewel, nothing big.

Our TV is reduced to about two hours a week. The two-three serieses that we watch are under the rerun regime, and there won't be any new episodes until about mid-january, and all the rest is either the appropriate programming or sports. Where's the RTB now, where the holidays and appropriate programming lasted a day, two tops, and apart from that the programme went regularly. This now is the red-green dictatorship. Guess I'll finally start watching all the stuff I have on disks :).

It says „happy holidays“ so not to offend anyone, and then that idiYot Bill O'Riley begins around this tome each year to whine how there's a war against krismas in effect. Then someone points out that it's likewise „happy holidays“ on his own website and he doesn't even blink.

My solution to all that krismissy bullshit is "if you can't win them, lose them". I've set up a modest set of measures for the period between Black Friday and New Year:

- turn the TV on if and only if you're 100% sure it's something you know, and they haven't marked it as a rerun

- keep the strict discipline on the mute button during commercials

- avoid shopping, buy only bare necessities, get out as fast as you can

- ignore the infantry at the shop entrance (n.b. the salvation army folks), if they insist, ask to talk to someone at least the rank of the captain. Don't get annoyed with their incessant noise. They're only obeying orders.

- if someone makes an assumption regarding your religion, ignore them politely

- repeat: you survived last time all right. This too will pass. There will be free space again. Come next year, you can come out and not be reminded on every step as to who owns everything.

Says Nick „If I were elected President -- yeah, like that's going to happen -- my first challenge to the nation would be to come up with an affordable alternative to gasoline and/or oil. We did the Manhattan Project. We put a man on the moon. Why can't we do this?“

Well, buddy, „No viable business plan, which would lock consumers into services in the long run. If we sell everybody solar panels, they'd become independent from us. What would we charge them every month? Same with local windmills - no, we'll build huge windmill farms, so we'll have a center which would produce and we'd sell power, not domestic power plants, and we'd control the distribution. If everyone had an electric car, the unimaginable would happen: the big oil would lose its power, and we can't allow that, comrades, can we?“

And I did take a look at that Toyota hybrid, and it says „no need to plug it in, ever“. Translated „it doesn't have a socket unless it's the version for european market, and if you install one, the warranty is void“. Why? Well the competition would smear it, if it had a socket, with „you won't get far with it, and what if there's nowhere to plug in when it stops?“. Too bad, if a hybrid also had a charger socket, I'd be seeing the gas station about twice a year.

The guy who was to resend me those 60 disks few years ago was mentioned on oldwave because he published a book. Only then Boća realized that he didn't know that those disks never came to me... Someone from there was supposed to travel this way (maybe Dženk?) but it came to nothing.

Wrote to NPR on twonysecond, thus:

In your todays edition, the bit about the first radio broadcast, again is Marconi credited as inventor of radio, even though USPTO credits Nikola Tesla. Its amazing that it takes upward of sixty years to correct this.

They replied with a generic message on 4th of january. First this automated message

Thank you for contacting NPR's All Things Considered.

We appreciate your comments concerning an NPR broadcast. As the primary news source for millions of Americans, NPR takes our

responsibility to be accurate very seriously. We welcome praise, as well as criticism, and your suggested correction will be taken into consideration.

Additionally, your message has also been forwarded to NPR's Office of the Ombudsman.

Three minutes before that, the ombudsman replied

Dear Listener,

Thank you for contacting the Office of the Ombudsman at National Public Radio. Every message is read by the ombudsman's assistant, Chantal de la Rionda until a new ombudsman is hired.

It is then forwarded to the appropriate journalist or manager. If a reply is necessary, you will hear from us shortly. However, should you prefer that your email not be forwarded or aired, please let us know.

Some comments may be directed to your local public radio station. We are happy to forward them, but please make sure that when writing to us, let us know which station you are listening to. If possible, please include the day and time when you heard the report.

* Please note that because of the volume of email received, we are unable to do research for the public on non-NPR related subjects, however appropriate corrections will be made to significant errors of fact on air, on line and in transcripts*

Which I took as a promise that they'll stop praising Marconi for inventing the radio and respect the USPTO verdict from 1943. But then just a few weeks later they again said that Marconi invented radio. I just gave up.

I see I've fiddled some with the stuff for Sean... but can't remember what was it. Aha, here it is, a bit which would download fresh versions of the tables, unzip them and shove in instead of the old ones. That was on twonyateghthth.

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Mentions: 21-X-2024., Božidar Sokolović (Boća), Gradivoj Jankulov (Dženk), Harry McDouglas, Nick Greene, oldwave, Sean Chertoff, UniJewel, in serbian

7-VII-2024 - 11-V-2026