Call me crazy but one of the finer small pleasures in life is a good pen. Although I'm a decent to excellent typist and can write much faster on a computer than I can longhand, there is something about the tactile experience of writing with a pen that I find appealing. Is it because I need to justify all the time spent on penmanship in school? Does it remind me of a simpler time when technology was not yet king? Probably not. Honestly, I think I just like the feel of it and the freedom to doodle when my mind wanders. There's just no parallel for that in the digital world.

I have recently acquired a new favorite writing instrument: the uni-ball signo gel grip (0.7). The point size is perfect and it flows as smooth as can be without running. I'm particularly fond of the blue, but the black is crisp and appealing as well. The only problem I have with them is that they seem to get up and walk away, especially at work. No doubt mischievous gnomes are to blame. First my underpants, now this.

Yea, I know, a post about pens. I'm still sleepy from all the turkey last week, give me a few more days to think of something interesting to write about.

I'll willingly admit that my understanding of the female gender is limited mostly to the concept that their physiology is markedly different from that of my own gender, and a tangential awareness that they apparently come not from Earth but rather her celestial sister, Venus. Other facts I'm not so sure about. I'm relatively certain they always smell nice (do they possess some special "good smell" emitting gland?). I think they have mind control capabilities that allow them to dominate the male will with even just a glance or a smile. I'm also pretty positive that they don't flatulate, ever. Everything else is a mystery to me. Do they go to the bathroom in pairs in order to perform secret cult rituals? Do they possess an internal chocolate-based power source? Can they travel through time? I'm clueless obviously, which is why I'm much better off when the mysteries of womankind are explained to me in terms my primitive brain can comprehend.

Case in point, a conversation last week with a female friend of mine. The names have been changed to protect the ignorant.

Mars: So how is your week going?
Venus: Busy! I have all this crap to get done and I still haven't worked out my plan for Black Friday.
Mars: You're kidding right? You're actually going out that day?
Venus: Of course. I have to.
Mars: Are you crazy?
Venus: Let me see, how can I put this into terms you can relate to?
Mars: (stares blankly)
Venus: Imagine there was a national holiday on which everyone had the day off to go to LAN parties. You'd have to go to one, wouldn't you?
Mars: Of course. (the hint of understanding registers on his face)
Venus: There you go.

Now if someone can just equate PMS in terms of a boss battle at the end of each level, I'll be home free.

To my readers in the States, Happy Thanksgiving. With any luck they'll have to roll me away from the table after dinner.




Tags: Thanksgiving

It's the day before Thanksgiving, one of the holiest of days in Kato's Big Calender of Gluttonous Holidays, and I'm sick.

Sick!

I woke up this morning with a hastily scribbled noted pinned to my chest:

"Gone to Aruba, see you at Christmas!
Signed,
Your Immune System

P.S. Be a dear and TiVo House for me."

Needless to say I was not amused. Here I am, perched on the eve of St. Thanksgiving's Day, and my throat feels like I've been gargling fiberglass shards. My eyes are bloodshot (that is to say more so than usual), my appetite is suppressed, and I may currently be North America's leading producer of phlegm. The Winter weather (Fall my ass, it's snowing outside) isn't helping either--with the heat on full blast everywhere the air is as dry as an Englishman's wit.

If I had a superpower, it would be the ability to get sick. I'm like Rogue, but instead of stealing mutant abilities I absorb the virus or bacterial infection of anyone I touch. I'll spare you the story of the time I got that yeast infection.

I'm not going to let a little illness get in the way of tomorrow's festivities, however. I still plan to consume mass quantities, preferably spread out over at least two courses, one of which will almost certainly involve nearly every morsel of food bathed liberally in sweet, sweet turkey gravy.

Appetite be damned, tomorrow is The Day of No Belts and I plan to take full advantage of it.

Now, who's gonna pass me the stuffing?

Although the InterWeb is now an almost inextricable part of our daily lives, I still find it amusing when references to it appear in popular media. Case in point, Sunday's episode of Family Guy. I cracked up laughing when I saw this:



If you don't get it, here's the flash animation that inspired it.

Also, the very same episode featured a "guest appearance" by the Transformer Soundwave, whom I mentioned a few posts ago. If I had died right then and there, I think I would have died a happy man. You can see Soundwave in this clip.

Please excuse the reference to the "artists" responsible for 1991's second most popular single. It won't happen again.

For those of you out in Blogland^TM or HTMLVille^TM that, you know, wanna sex up your website, I came across a neat little tool today. It's called Color Schemer and it helps you develop a color scheme for your blog, John Stamos fansite, or whatever else you want to apply it to. The studio version, of course, requires the disbursement of a little tender, but there is also a nifty little free web app called Color Schemer Online for cheapskates like me. Just plug in your base color (in RGB or HEX, ooh la la) and it will suggest 15 other colors to compliment it. Tease your template! Classy up your Cascading Style Sheets! Hypercolor your HyperText Markup Language! Leggo my Eggo! Never let your lack of style or inability to match even a simple pair of socks prevent you from coloring like a pro! Use on your webpage or at home, in the kitchen or the bath, at work in the office, or in the car on the go! Act now and I'll throw in this Flowbee^TM absolutely free of charge... well, you get the picture.

Now all I need is someone to write a program to blog for me and I'll be all set. I bet Dr. Katonian would be able to cook something up in his lab, though he'd probably infect it with a mind control virus or code that continually pops up ads for Party Poker or some such nonsense.

Tags: HTML, Internet

It's fall in Northeastern Ohio, and you know what that means: Kato spends the next six months depressed and bitching about the weather.

I like to bitch about the weather. It's what we do in Ohio to forget about the fact that Mother Nature routinely shits on us without even a courtesy flush. That and watching our sports teams routinely choke.

Fall has been pretty nice here so far. It's been warm and pleasant, though windy and rainy at times. Well, that's all changed. Yesterday it was 70 (!) degrees Fahrenheit. Today: 32. For those not comfortable with math, that's a thirty-eight degree cold front. I woke up this morning and couldn't find my balls, they had retreated into my body cavity. "No thanks, we tried out the 'descended' thing and it's not all it's cracked up to be." Figures.

Oh well, at least I can get back to having that affair with my Winter coat.

Unlike most geeks, I've been slow to convert from Internet Explorer to Firefox. Although many tech guys will claim that IE is inferior because, you know, anything made by a giant corporation with years of experience and a paid staff must suck, I have held out for some time. For awhile there I didn't want to switch because Firefox was noticeably slower, didn't load a fair number of pages "correctly", and worst of all, didn't support the Google Toolbar (actually, the other way around, but whatever). You could assail me endlessly with stories of tabbed browsing and claims of greater security with FF, but I had become quite accustomed to and familiar with IE and was happy where I was.

But my allegiances are starting to shift.

The latest versions of Firefox are pretty good and have a number of nice features. Tabbed browsing is, of course, quite awesome(although I think Opera actually first implemented it), and the ability to load in extensions to modify browser behavior is really cool. FF does piss me off sometimes, though: it still feels a little slower than Microsoft's browser, the Options menu seems like it is lacking features (ability to specify the cache location, for instance), it chokes on some pages, and its implementation of some CSS/HTML tags/attributes can be annoying (the character limit on the title attribute in particular makes my dfn tags here on WITFITS only useful in IE). So, for now I'm double-fisting and using both browsers.

All of that was just a lead-in to talk about some cool Firefox extensions I've come across, some of which are great for Blogger users. Note that you have to restart your Firefox session (completely close all browser instances) before installed extensions start working.

Google Toolbar (extension)
What it does: Adds a plethora of Google-powered features, which I've gone on about before, just a mouse-click away.
How it's useful: How isn't it useful? Now that there's a version for Firefox, there's just no reason not to have it installed.
What's in it for Blogger users: If you use the Blogger GUI for writing posts, or you ever comment on blogs, the spellcheck feature is a must have. You just click the button on the Google Toolbar and it shows you all the spelling mistakes in your post or comment. It checks spelling inline (unlike most spell checkers which pop up a new window) and you simply click on a misspelled word to see suggestions and correct it. Forget about the built in Blogger GUI spell checker for your posts, use the Google one instead.
Caveats: It works great in IE but has some issues in FF. The spell-checker doesn't always seem to work. According to a support e-mail I received, they are aware of this bug, and their engineering team is working to find a solution.
Where to get it: You can get it for your browser here.

Tabbed Browsing (feature)
What it does: Tabbed Browsing allows one to open pages in "tabs" under one browser window/instance instead of having to resort to opening multiple ones.
How it's useful: It's much easier to keep track of multiple pages and doesn't clutter up your Windows Taskbar.
What's in it for Blogger users: It's handy to have the Blogger page in one tab, your blog in another, and any pages you may be researching or citing in additional tabs. It makes switching back and forth easy, especially if you have just posted and want to make quick touch-up edit.
Where to get it: It's built in to Firefox and Opera.

Colorful Tabs (extension)
What it does: Individually colors Firefox tabs.
How it's useful: It makes your tabs stand out a little more by coloring them. It's certainly not a "must-have" but I find the enhancement pleasing.
What's in it for Blogger users: Nothing that isn't there for everyone else.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

Resizeable Textarea (extension)
What it does: Allows you to grab the edges of a textarea input box and resize it.
How it's useful: In general, textarea boxes like the ones found on the comment posting pages of Blogger weblogs are somewhat small. If you are running at a high resolution you're not taking advantage of all the extra window space. Plus, if you are wordy like me, some extra room would help.
What's in it for Blogger users: Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work with the Blogger GUI for editing posts (see below) but is very handy for commenting on Blogger web logs.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

Long Titles (extension)
What it does: Fixes bug in Mozilla, upon which Firefox is built, that truncates the title attribute of tags.
How it's useful: If you mouse over the words "software bug", which I've marked with the dfn tag, you'll notice that in FF the full definition (supplied by the title attribute) is not supplied like it would be in Internet Explorer. This "tooltip" ability is used by many websites (including WITFITS) to deliver additional information to the reader.
What's in it for Blogger users: Nothing that isn't there for everyone else.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Download (Use File->Open to install)

Popup ALT Attribute (extension)
What it does: Provides "tooltip" for alt attribute of img tag ala Internet Explorer.
How it's useful: The HTML guidelines specify that the alt attribute of an img tag is to specify alternate text for when the browser doesn't display an image, or potentially for text-to-speech webpage readers. Internet Explorer provides this text in a tooltip when one mouses over an image, but Firefox does not (which is correct adherence to the guidelines). The solution for webmasters is to use the title attribute instead, but some sites (including WITFITS until I fix it) do not do this.
What's in it for Blogger users: Nothing that isn't there for everyone else.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

Retro Find (extension)
What it does: Replaces Firefox's "find while you type" with a pop-up-box-style find.
How it's useful: If you consider the default FF find annoying, the retro-style find may be more to your liking.
What's in it for Blogger users: Since FF's default find doesn't search textareas, the retro version may be preferable if you often need to search through a post you're editing with Blogger's GUI.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

SessionSaver (extension)
What it does: Restores your browser to the same state as when it was last closed (windows, tabs, typed text).
How it's useful: Having your browser crash can be particularly obnoxious if you are multitasking your webcrawling efforts. This fixes that problem by having it all restored when you re-open Firefox. For day-to-day use, however, it's handy to be able to close down the browser in mid-session and pick right back up where you left off (in case the significant other walks in while you are trawling for Hobbit porn).
What's in it for Blogger users: If you have half a dozen tabs open doing research for a post, it can be handy to just close down the browser knowing it will all come back the next time you start FF.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

IE View (extension)
What it does: Allows you to open a page or a link in an Internet Explorer window.
How it's useful: Some websites don't play nice with Firefox. Switch over when you find a pesky nonconformist.
What's in it for Blogger users: A great way to make sure your blog posts or template looks the same in both FF and IE at the click of a button. Also, if you use the Google Toolbar spellcheck for posts and it's giving you grief in FF, you can quickly switch over to IE and run it there.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

IE Tab (extension)
What it does: Allows you to open a page or a link in Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab.
How it's useful: Like IE View but one better: it's IE running in a tab in Firefox! A little icon at the bottom of the browser window lets you know which engine is rendering the page.
What's in it for Blogger users: If you liked IE View, you'll also have a high degree of like for IE Tab.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

Greasemonkey (extension)
What it does: Allows ability to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior.
How it's useful: Necessary to run the Greasemonkey user scripts.
What's in it for Blogger users: There are some cool Blogger-specific user scripts.
Where to get it: Extension Page | Install Now

Blogger keep current time on post (Greasemonkey script)
What it does: Updates date and time field on Blogger post editor to current time.
How it's useful: It's only useful to Blogger users that edit posts with the GUI.
What's in it for Blogger users: For whatever reason, the time for a post on Blogger is set to the time one opens it for editing, not the the time it is actually posted. This script will automatically update the date/time fields at the bottom of the post editor so that it stays set to the current time. It only does this for new posts (so you don't have to worry about it mucking with the time if you edit a previously published one) and provides a checkbox for turning it on and off.
Where to get it: Script Page | Right Click To Install (requires Greasemonkey)

Blogger large post editor (Greasemonkey script)
What it does: In the Blogger GUI, Makes title field wider and makes post editor textarea fill the width of the browser window.
How it's useful: It's only useful to Blogger users that edit posts with the GUI.
What's in it for Blogger users: If you run at a high resolution this let's you take advantage of all that extra real-estate.
Where to get it: Script Page | Right Click To Install (requires Greasemonkey)

Blogger large template editor (Greasemonkey script)
What it does: Doubles the height of the textarea in the Blogger template editor (and hides the navbar settings).
How it's useful: It's only useful to Blogger users.
What's in it for Blogger users: The template editor is too small by default. This is a considerable improvement.
Where to get it: Script Page | Right Click To Install (requires Greasemonkey)


You can find more extensions at Mozilla Update and more Greasemonkey scripts at Userscripts.org, or your at local library. Oops, sorry, PBS flashback.

 <geekery>
Last weekend I got my game on (in the geek sense, not the playa sense) by attending and admining a Battlefield 2 LAN party. It was a small affair, about ten friends and acquaintances, but we ran a server locally that was open to the Internet so that people from the outside could join us (and, perhaps, be 0wned by us zero-pingers). This was the third or fourth time we have held one (about one per month) and a good time was had by all.

I have included this post within geekery blocks in order to warn those readers of mine that are not well-acquainted with such things that they might find most of what I say here to be beyond their realm of experience. If you aren't a "gamer" (a term I put in quotes because it, admittedly, is vague and lacking a general consensus toward its meaning) then you probably have never heard of a LAN party nor would I expect you to understand one. The WikiPedia link above goes into some details about them but basically it's a group of people (5, 10, 100, 10,000) bringing their PC's to some central location, hooking them into a shared network, and playing videogames with each other (usually one specific game that everyone is playing at the same time cooperatively/competitively). They can last a couple of hours or an entire weekend and its basically a chance for us to hang out and enjoy our hobby with other enthusiasts. This was particularly desirable in the days before general availability of broadband because it meant everyone was on a local highspeed network and thus could expect smooth ("Lag-free") gameplay. Nowadays, we all could sit at home and just play with each other on the Internet (which we do), but then we'd miss out on the social aspect of the LAN. Plus it's more fun to taunt a guy that is in the same room with you than one who is miles away at the other end of a voice or text connection. Also, there were donuts, bagels, pop, and pizza, none of which I was willing to turn down.

The setup a few nights earlier was also a good chance to geek-out. We had to make sure our server machine was going to work on the network after our usual admin (I was subbing in) had gone through his latest rounds of locking down the security on the box (it had been hacked by some script kiddie the prior week). We were also trying out a new piece of game administration software (BF2CC, I recommend it for Battlefield 2) and needed to assure it was going to work smoothly. Needless to say we spent long hours preparing, but there was some fun to be had in the task of getting everything talking to each other and set up the way we wanted it. Computer guys like that kind of thing--we appreciate the challenge (so long as the reward it tangible, in this case a smooth-running LAN).

It should be noted, however, that 10 plus hours of gaming does take its toll. In addition to dry eyes and the onset of Carpel Tunnel, your brain kinda stays in that gaming mindset for awhile after you've stopped playing. On my way home I passed the airport and a plane flew overhead. I thought to myself, "I wonder if I should switch over to the .50 Cal turret and take that jet out before he bombs us to Hell?" Later I drove past a business that was displaying an American flag on a pole in front of the building. As I passed, I watched the flag very carefully to see if it was lowering--a sure indication that Chinese or MEC troops were trying to capture our control point. Fortunately, I made it home without acting on any of my impulses. It was hard, though, not to get out of my car and start tossing my bags of computer parts to strangers yelling, "Get ammo here!"

I may be delusional, but at least my delusions are fun.
</geekery>