afongen

If I’m quiet for the next few days, as I have been the last few, it’s because I’m playing around with some browser-sniffing and such here. More or less. I need some way to screen out non-DOM-compliant browsers when linking to style sheets. Trying to avoid server-side techniques, just cuz. I know how to do it but am having some weird issues with IE5/Mac. I’m missing something obvious, I’m sure.

That, and I seem to have come down with Kiara’s cold. :-( So it’s kinda hard to think.

I’ve converted this site over to Movable Type, so there could be some weirdness. I’m bound to frell things up occasionally.

Oh yeah, I admit it, that word has entered my daily vocabulary.

In a dual-pronged effort to keep up on world events and to keep up on my French, a couple months ago I started reading Cyberpresse, a Canadian news web site. It’s been fun getting used to the little quirks in Canadian French, refamiliarizing myself with useful vocabulary and constructions. (I am all too familiar with the vocabulary for discussing French literary theory or esoteric linguistic concepts, but am sadly lacking in the ability to deal with everyday things.) Then a couple weeks ago, I tuned into Radio Canada so I could listen to French, too.

I can’t understand a word.

Well, okay I can get some of it, especially the more “traditional” newscasts, but much was lost on me, especially the interviews. I thought, my god, am I that out of practice that I can’t follow an everyday conversation in French? So I tried out Radio France.

I understood every word.

So I guess it’s the accent. I certainly ran into this somewhat when we were in Quebec and Montreal last year, but still… oh well. Just have to keep listening.

Because to tell the truth, this is all in preparation for Canadian World Domination.

It’s out: an Episode II trailer. Let the hyperventilating begin.

The Webalizer, an excellent (and free) web server log analyzer, is looking for a new home. If you happen to have somewhere in the Central Florida area where this guy could co-locate a server, please help. I’d hate to see this go away.

A hot topic amongst MnSCU webmasters of late has been search engines. God knows the engine used on Office of the Chancellor sites leaves a lot to be desired (I’m looking seriously at switching to ht://dig). WebReview has an article this week on choosing a search engine, with a quick round-up of some of the popular ones.

Dr. Ernesto Illy, of Italy’s Illycaffe, is on the November 3 broadcast of The Splendid Table, talking about espresso (what else?). This man is a delight to listen to.

And hey, Bill Waddington is on the October 27 show, sharing some delightful scented teas. Bill’s the owner of my favorite local tea shop, TeaSource, and appears regularly on the show.

I like peer-to-peer. The architecture appeals to me, I’m excited about a lot of the P2P apps that are out there…it’s just plain fun and exciting stuff, especially once you peel away all the layers of marketing hype. I’m perversely delighted at how P2P is sneaking into the office under IT departments’ noses. However at the same time, working within an IT department — in an academic environment, no less — I see the sort of problems that P2P filesharing apps can pose: bandwidth and legal issues, to start with. When an entire campus’s bandwidth is sucked up by a student trafficking in porn or illegal MP3s, well it’s a problem. For the most part, I tend to skirt around the issue; I rarely have to deal with it directly (I’m a web guy, not a WAN guy), and anyway part of me is going “yay P2P!” I mean, that student’s probably going to suck up bandwidth regardless of architecture, right?

Andy Oram, editor of O’Reilly’s Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, recently gave a speech to about Peer-to-Peer for Academia, in which he tries to downplay the negative aspects of P2P and encourages academia to experiment with P2P to take advantage of what it has to offer. Worth a read.

What’s Lost When a Language Dies?

Oh, that’s too funny. Workopolis, a Canadian job site, has a link to a “boss panic button” in their menu bar.