Outshine

Lyrics to Into the Air, by 2Spaces

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:22:59 -0800

So I love the song "Into the Air" which is by 2Spaces, featuring Viktor Ginner, and produced by ROMi. I wanted the lyrics, which for any typical song are generally scattered across so many Web sites that a person can find them with ease. But not this time. No search engine had the lyrics, even when I started searching for actual phrases from the song. So, fine. I wrote them down myself, and now we can get these lyrics into the search engines for the world to find. Here we go.

IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) eats form data

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:34:27 -0800

While working on some internal Web forms for Cadence, I came across a bonafide browser bug that I had never seen before. Some people were filling out a form, but the form sometimes wouldn't work -- data was lost, and we couldn't figure out why. Eventually I had eliminated bugs in my PHP code and as a last resort, I put a sniffer on the wire to watch the traffic. What I found was amazing to me. Internet Explorer 6 will fail to encode data properly (wiping out the first field) under very particular circumstances. What's interesting is that, searching across the Internet, I found lots of people having the bug but not a lot of solutions. That's odd, right? I mean, IE 6 is a really old browser. All the problems with it should have workarounds now, just as the box model issues in IE 6 do. But this doesn't. So I'll go over what I found, and how I fixed it.

Greasemonkey script for rpg.net

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:29:15 -0800

Do you visit rpg.net? It's a site for people who enjoy role-playing games. If you visit that site, and are a bit overwhelmed by the huge number of forum topics about 4th edition D&D, I have got a prize for you. I have created a script for Firefox's Greasemonkey plugin. It's free. It's called Drop 4e 4 rpg, available on userscripts.org. It will hide any topic that is tagged as 4th edition. Have fun.

-Tony

outshine.com goes up on the auction block!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:39:33 -0800

My domain outshine.com is going to be auctioned by either the Great Domains auction house, or by Moniker domain auctions. Not sure which yet. Anybody have suggestions?

The domain name should appeal to anyone doing online ratings systems, or for any "best of the best" product. Outshine is a simple, short dictionary word, so I'm hoping people like it! I've had the domain since 1998, and it's well-ranked on Google. If you know someone who is interested, put them in touch with me.

New resume/CV for 2009

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:26:22 -0800

My revised 2009 resume is now ready (it has all my recent PHP experience at Yahoo! added in). If any recruiters or company execs working in the Silicon Valley would like to review it, please contact me. I'll send it along privately.

American Idol - Gokey

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:46:45 -0800

I'm sorry but this is the most terrible and funny thing I have seen in a while.

If you don't know why this is so awful and hilarious, that's OK. Don't figure it out.

Some footage from Aaron & Patty's wedding

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:37:01 -0800

Some footage of the toasts at my sister's wedding is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8bODbXDJyo or here:

Strangers We've Become

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:14:43 -0800

Liberation Theory

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:55:50 -0800

Seeing things as a difference of brain power is freeing. I had never really considered that option for most of my life. Instead, I had just assumed that "human intelligence" put everyone at roughly the same place. It made differences of opinion very difficult for me to grapple with. I would go over something with a friend, they wouldn't get it, and I'd keep at it again & again under the assumption that eventually, they would catch on. Ugh.

Sometimes people are just broken from their own personal history, or they're indoctrinated into a way of thinking and cannot see it. It is very useful to recognize such issues and route around the damage.

The first time I realized that I could write off the opinion of a someone who had consistently voted in ways that had terrible, terrible results, it was incredibly liberating. Why am I taking advice from someone so reliably wrong? Why are they lecturing me? I broadened it out to politics in general. Why am I listening to the group that screwed things up? Don't I have any discernment? Can't I evaluate someone's position and decide it's foolish? And if they advocate such foolish positions regularly, can't I write off the person as a fool?

Presidential election

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:33:46 -0800

I’m still surprised how many states are heavily in favor of the Republican party’s candidate. To me, it’s like the party is saying, “Hey, we exhibited terrible leadership over the last 8 years, so elect us for better leadership.” That just doesn’t make sense to me at all.

That's all I have to say on that topic for now.

I updated my Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:48:26 -0800

Just a quick note. If you use digg.com and you have my "Digg Done That" or "Digg Filter" scripts installed, they have been updated. You can find the new versions here (newly updated scripts on top):

userscripts.org/users/34026/scripts

If it's wrong to love the vlog brothers, I don't want to be right!

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:02:43 -0800

I want to have John and Hank Green's babies. What's that you say? I'm a heterosexual male who is already happily married with kids? Well, yes. But John and Hank read books, and talk about politics while making Ze Frank peanut butter faces. Seriously, why have I not had their babies yet?

This man has the same beliefs I do.

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:20:10 -0800

Personal responsibility, community support. Reduce taxes by trimming the budget and reducing bureaucracy. Restore our standing in the world. Barack Obama.

It's time. I'm getting the Planescape tattoo.

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:54:29 -0800

For a long time, I've been impressed with the tattoos on Platter's Planescape site. After years of wondering if I really want that tattoo, I've decided that waiting almost a decade to decide is probably long enough. I do want it. I've found a beautiful version of the artwork, here:

The nature of a man by ~isilien on deviant ART

Dungeons & Dragons 3.t, revised bonus spells

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:21:59 -0800

This is my third homebrew rule revision to Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which I'm calling the 3.t edition. Today's rule revision has little to do with speeding up gameplay, but has a lot to do with lengthening the game day. In particular, we're addressing Vancian magic. That's the form of magic that 3.x and earlier versions use -- basically, spellcasters can use a limited array of spells per day, and then they're wiped out and need to rest. That's a very different model from Diablo, for example, where your character can shoot fireballs all day, so long as he has mana.

The problem with the Vancian system is that it engenders the "15 minute work day" -- that is to say that clerics, wizards, and the like seem to blow through their spells after just a few combats, causing the group to go rest after less than a hour in the game world. Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition has a solution for this, which is pretty close to just abandoning the Vancian magic system. I personally wanted to do something much simpler with the 3.5 rules. I was thinking, could I address the issue by changing just one single table in the Player's Handbook?

Let me show you the revised table, and then I'll explain why it's awesome.