冗談よ
四月一日
はバカの日

(if you arrived via the RSS feed, you may have missed the joke)

Update: I guess I was a bit too subtle. One friend said “it looks like you used some font that’s not on my Linux box”. Another said “hey, it looks like your site’s been hacked”, but he also fell for World of Warcraft’s prank.

I had a more elaborate prank planned, with a very specific target in mind, but I just plain ran out of time. This was an easy, last-minute joke: grab some Japanese spam email from my Junk folder, type “asian porn” into Google and grab some non-explicit banner ads and thumbnails, create a simple but hideous layout, and compose a Bad Haiku that could easily be translated by BabelFish (whence the name of my “haxx0r”, Babe.F1sh).

I’m doing 45 minutes of cardio (most) every day on my LifeFitness 5500 elliptical cross-trainer. Doctor’s orders. I like working out on this machine, and it’s certainly good for me, but I’ve always had a problem occupying my mind. In the past, I’ve simply listened to music on my iPod, generally a PopTarts mix (or, more recently, JPopTarts). Studying kanji and vocabulary for my Japanese class would be an ideal use of this time, but I never ordered the optional magazine stand, and it doesn’t look like they make it any more.

So, I stopped at an office supply store and bought the only non-ridiculous copy-holder they sold. Just setting it on top of the crosstrainer worked fairly well, but hid the display. I really needed it to sit above the display section, but there was no obvious way to accomplish this feat. And then, a moment of clarity:

How to attach this...
What mounting system will work?
Ah! Some gaffer tape!

If your (Mac-only) word-processing needs fit within Writer Express‘s feature list, the generally sensible UI will make it a superior alternative to Word. Within its limitations, it’s an excellent, useable program.

However, if you need table support that’s better than an ancient version of Netscape, real Word interoperability, or precision layout tools, look elsewhere. For now, at least; they’re working hard to improve the product.

Note to people with fond memories of the Mac OS Classic Nisus Writer: Express implements a subset of the old features, along with a bunch of new ones.

I’m getting consistent 190ms pings to my server, despite 10ms pings to the router its connected to. It’s not server load, it’s not the bandwidth throttling rules in my firewall config, and I’m not seeing any errors in netstat or dmesg output. My best guess right now is a duplex mismatch on the switch. I’m waiting to hear back from the network guys.

Update: supporting evidence for my switch theory: Scott’s machine in the same rack, recycledbits.org, has the same problem, and I get 360ms pings from mine to his, without ever touching a router.

On the “damn nuisance” front, however, email to ViaNet tech support comes back with one of those stupid challenge/response verification schemes. This is precisely the wrong approach for your primary tech-support contact method. Maybe if you’d actually answered the phone when I called, I wouldn’t mind so much, but come on, grab a clue, eh?

Update: oh, that’s much better.

Driving in this morning, I reflected on yesterday’s sighting of the usual group of “9/11 was a Republican plot!” nutcases on University Avenue, and felt inspired.

"Chickenhawk," you say,
to silence your opponents.
Get a job, hippie.

While preparing a faithful, high-resolution copy of the Mac OS X kernel-panic screen (to submit a patch to XScreenSaver’s BSOD module, now that JWZ has gotten it mostly working as a native Mac screen-saver), I ran into several problems. First, the result of my efforts:

Now for the problems. I started out working in Photoshop, mostly because I hate Illustrator and wish CorelDRAW 4 had been stabilized and ported to every useful platform, but quickly gave up. Even for a simple graphic like this, it’s just annoying to work without real drawing tools.

The power button took about fifteen seconds in Illustrator, leaving me to concentrate on the text (12.2/14.6pt Lucida Grande Bold and 13/14.6pt Osaka, by the way). The Japanese version took the longest, obviously, especially with the JPEG artifacts in my source image.

Mind you, the above PNG file wasn’t exported from Illustrator, because all of my attempts looked like crap. The anti-aliasing made the text too fuzzy. To produce a smooth background image with crisp text, I had to manually transfer the two layers to Photoshop. I exported the background graphic at 300dpi without anti-aliasing, resized it in Photoshop using the Bicubic Sharper mode, then created a text field, pasted in the text, set the anti-aliasing mode to Sharp, and nudged it into the correct position.

The real fun came when I wanted to take the text I’d so painstakingly entered and paste it into another application.

I couldn’t.

Selecting the text in Illustrator CS2 and copying it left me with something that could only be pasted into Photoshop or InDesign. Fortunately, InDesign was written by people who think that text is useful, and after pasting it there I could copy it again, ending up with something that other applications understood. See?

You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart Button.

Veuillez redémarrer votre ordinateur. Maintenez la touche de démarrage enfoncée pendant plusieurs secondes ou bien appuyez sur le bouton de réinitialisation.

Sie müssen Ihren Computer neu starten. Halten Sie dazu die Einschalttaste einige Sekunden gedrückt oder drücken Sie die Neustart-Taste.

コンピュータを再起動する必要があります。パワーボタンを数秒間押し続けるか、リセットボタンを押してください。

I want this almost as much as I fear it:

I remember hearing about these morons a while back, when they wanted to sue the major computer companies for fraudulently advertising disk capacity using the exact same units as everyone else in the industry, using the sizes provided by the hard-drive makers.

Apparently, the howls of laughter with which this argument was received led them to retarget their suit against the hard-drive makers:

You are receiving this notice because our records indicate that you purchased an aftermarket Western Digital Corporation ("WD") hard disk drive between March 22, 2001 and February 15, 2006. "Aftermarket" purchasers are those who purchased their hard disk drives separately rather than pre-installed by an original equipment manufacturer into a computer.

A proposed class action settlement may affect your legal rights. If the settlement is approved, you may be eligible to receive free hard disk drive backup and recovery software from WD. Read below for a summary of the proposed settlement. For a detailed legal notice and complete terms, please visit www.wdc.com/settlement.

A class action lawsuit entitled Safier v. Western Digital Corporation is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit claims that in the sale and marketing of its hard disk drives, Western Digital overstates the useable storage capacity. According to the lawsuit, when attached to most personal computers, a hard disk drive advertised as having "80GB" will only show an available capacity of "74.4GB." The lawsuit alleges that one reason for this disparity is the existence of two different measurements of a "GB," one of which is used by computer operating systems and another of which is used by hard disk drive manufacturers. The lawsuit seeks restitution, damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief. The lawsuit is case number 05-03353 BZ.

Emphasis added. I won’t be joining this one, and if I can find a way to send a message to the greedy little bastards behind the suit, it will consist of two words:

Bite Me