woolie t.

This is one of those absurd situations that result in far too much effort and stress (if you ask me). It goes like this: You want to create a layout with a couple columns. Those columns are set inside your “container” with a pretty background color or nice border. Wrap a couple <div> elements, float one left, the other right, and add your border/color. Right? Check it out in IE and things look as you expect. But when you look at the results in Firefox, you’ve lost your background! Or that distinguishing border is now lumped at the top as a single, less-than-appealing line! What happened?

There are countless solutions to this available via the normal searching mechanisms. I have to give credit to my first encounter of the solution I like the best: a “Background height problem” forum post with the solution being the very first response. The <img> element at the bottom of poster’s content could be modified with the “clear: both” style applied to it. The solution also points to this excellent article, “Clearing a float container without source markup“, which goes into some great detail (a must read).

So here’s my quick tutorial on the matter. For this to be worth while, you’ll need to be following along in Firefox. And again, for more details, please read the “Easy Clearing” article linked to above.

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I’m releasing the first of what I hope are many plugins for Wordpress. All of the details are at the new “WP Plugins” page here at wooliet.

If you’re reading this on the wooliet main page (with multiple posts listed), you can see it in action by clicking the link below. If the is the “single post page” display then..well….there’s nothing to see! Just go to Wooliet and find an entry with a link to more content.

(Updated with official WP plugin link)

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The niche areas afforded by the internet are of limitless supply. Take, for example, Volition, a sincere story crafted by Matt Web (of Schulze and Web). Part physics lesson and part morose romance.

The way you show the existence of just one of these ghosts is you stop dancing and you barrel across the dance floor as hard as you can, shouting and roaring, barging ghosts and dancers alike hither and thither, scattering them and knocking them flying. If you get it just right, you splash a clearing in the ghosts, and if you’re luckier still there’s a moment before they get to their feet where you can grab one, sit on his chest and hold him down by his neck and grab his chin so you can wrench his dirty face round to look straight at yours and lean in real, real close and, panting, whisper straight at him through your gritted teeth: you little fucker: gotcha.

These days, some car stock stereos have a security system whereby, if it’s disconnected from the power source (aka the battery), it locks out and becomes unusable until you enter in a secret code. I didn’t know this existed until recently, when the battery in my wife’s 2005 Pilot conked and had to be replaced. Assuming you don’t actually have the code, the cost associated with retrieving it is due to having to pull the stereo out to view its serial number (see post by “partsiam” in this thread). It’s only with the serial number that one can obtain the code.

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First came Air Jordans and then came….I don’t know anymore because that’s not something I really ever cared too much about. But now, now is the culmination of years of celebrity endorsed shoes. Now is the pinnacle of footwear design and style.

Now is Asics Woolie!

I’ve been working on a plugin for Wordpress and have, until now, been using Mootools. I decided that I should try and simplify things by using jQuery, since it is already included with Wordpress.

So let me take you through my links and hopefully summarize what I’ve learned. First though, let me say, I’m assuming that you already know what it means to hook into the Wordpress application flow by adding “actions”. If not, read up.

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Dueling Analogs linked out to a comic that I had never read before: Cyanide and Happiness. It’s fantastic. And best of all is that there’s no continuing storyline or set of regular characters. This is good news because now I don’t feel compelled to spend the next few hours reading through the entire archive to make sure I’m all caught-up.

The humor is mostly adult. Basically you gotta like dirty jokes. Also notice that there’s a Random button available, which is what I’ve been hitting the past few minutes. I’ll display a few of my favorites (so far) on the underside.

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BookMooch looks seriously cool. I can’t help but think I’ve come across this before (a long time ago) but whatever…I’ve made new contact.

Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
….

Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every three you receive.

The only cost associated with all of this that of shipping your books to those who’ve made the request. The site itself appears to do nothing more than serve as a matchmaker.

As enthusiastic as I am right now about doing this, I have a long and sordid history of initial energy for something followed by little to no follow through. But this time will be different! My fingers are in the crossed position!

Merci Scott Klarr

It’s like this smorgasbord of cool stuff all packaged together in one neat little news-worthy package. Yes, the world does revolve around me.

I love The Wire (two season four episodes still to go). One of its most interesting characters is Omar Little, the scourge of Baltimore city drug dealers.

I also really enjoyed Cormac Mccarthy’s book The Road. The complete scrubbing of all quotation marks took getting used to at first. But once you get into the rhythm of the writing, their removal adds a strange sense of intimacy with the characters.

    He looked at his father and then tilted the can and drank. He sat there thinking about it. It’s really good, he said.

    Yes. It is.

    You have some, Papa.

    I want you to drink it.

    You have some.

    He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here.

The Road has been transformed into a movie, and Omar (Michael K. Williams) is in it as (ironically enough) “The Thief”.

thanks BigScreenLittleScreen

GUIMags. Magnets designed like standard GUI controls (text field, combo selection, etc.) which can be written on with the dry-erase markers. The idea is quick layout/design prototyping. It’s one of those “born out of necessity” ideas:

Our lead designer wanted to find a way to keep coming up with great interfaces after carpel tunnel entered his body uninvited. As he pondered a design at home, he used refrigerator magnets as imaginary interface controls, since drawing and clicking was painful.
A journey of ideas and tests later resulted in the birth of GUImags which turned out to not only help hurting arms, but helped speeding up the design process as a bonus.

The site also has tabs for GUIPanes and GUIBoards, both of which are still underwraps.

Not a recommendation or anything, these just looked fun.

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Not only is LOLCode funny, but it’s effin real. Here are the specs and here are some implementations.

But who cares. It’s just plain funny. I mean, I’ve read the two front page examples (very bottom of the home page) at least twenty times and it still manages to entertain.

COUNT!!1

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
	UP VAR!!1
	VISIBLE VAR
	IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

GeSHi (used by WP-Syntax) needs to get up in that piece so my blog can have syntactically correct formatting of LOLCode.

I noticed a story at ESPN about Cincinnati cutting Rudi Johnson from the team. Rudi played one year at Auburn and was drafted by the Bengals in 2001.

The same article goes on to say:

Offensive tackle Willie Anderson was also released by the Bengals. Anderson, 33, was the most tenured Bengal, having played 12 seasons in Cincinnati.

Willie Anderson also played at Auburn. Ouch. I’m surprised the ESPN story doesn’t mention that connection. And for it to happen today, the opening day of the season for AU? This is conspiratorial ground here.

Surfer’s like the Honda Element. The quick review mentions what I believe to be two of the more fugly cars on the road.

I mean, it looks like a World War II Volkswagen Thing or worse, the Scion. Ugly as hell.

By the by, seen the red-band trailer (NSFW) for Surfer, Dude? Looks like a….uhhh….movie.

This is sad. Geoffrey Perkins died in a road accident yesterday. Father Ted is one of my favorite comedies ever, and its creator, Graham Linehan, shared a nice anecdote regarding Mr. Perkins’ contributions to its beginning.

Mr. Linehan had selected a theme song he felt to be perfect because of its silliness and because it would seem to be “subtly making fun” of the show. Geoffrey Perkins didn’t like it.

“Why do you want to make fun of your show?” said Geoffrey, finally, looking wounded and worried. “People will love these characters.”

I later realised that it was a fork in the road, that discussion, and if we had not travelled the way Geoffrey suggested, we’d have ended up lost…we may never have made it to series three. Without Geoffrey, ‘Father Ted’ would have been a cacophonous riot, and not nearly as loved as it is today. He gave the show a heart, and gave me–still very young, and unsure as to what type of person I should try to become– someone to model myself on.

Ten years ago, Dermont Morgan, the comedian who played the Father Ted character, also passed away unexpectedly. It’s a bit depressing to think that two people so connected to that show’s success are now gone.

I don’t know how long it will be there, but there’s a new Project Wonderful delivered ad on the right. If it’s not there while you’re reading this, here’s a link: Memories Remain Photography.

It’s actually got some eerily surreal and very impressive looking photographs, all of which were taken by Richard Kuperberg Sr. Unfortunately,they’re well-stuffed behind an entirely flash based image gallery (otherwise I might link directly to one or two). If you dig that type of thing, I recommend browsing around.