Adam's Blog

People regularly mangle the English language. I have some affectations that I misuse/abuse too, such as "kinda" and "gonna" that I often feel are conversational and add a casual touch to my writing. Some abuses are simply unforgiveable. Here are 5 of the top offenders in my book. Loose I see this everywhere. Why does no one understand that lose does NOT have two Os? I understand typos, really, I do. In fact, there has never been a spelling error on my website, just typos (at least, that's what I tell myself). When I see "loose" for lose, however, I shut off. Administrate If you submit a resume to me and tell me you administrated a network, prepare to be filed directly in the trash. Despite the fact that "administrate" is actually a real word, the proper word in this case is "administer." I maintain that one does not administrate networks. Administrate, as I interpret it, is a form of "administration" that is more akin to clerical work than managerial. Either way, when I see it on a resume, I just assume it was ignorance. Orientate Again, it is a real word, but most of the time, what people mean...

I've added a little detection script to the comments that records your user agent and tries to put nice little icons next to your name. The icons should depict your browser and operating system. Hovering over the browser icon will show the entire user agent. This detection script is at a very early stage, so I'm still reviewing user agents to best make it work, and only a few comments on the site even have the info properly stored thus far. If you want to test it, please use this thread.

Everyone makes mistakes, even the good people at Yahoo!/Flickr. I've done this on OSNews - it's broken for 20 seconds, but you still get emails and IMs from users. Many PHP functions take two arguments -- a string an an array -- and it's tough to remember which comes first, because sometimes it's the array, and sometimes it's the string. So functions like array_keys() can be tricky without using php.net. click image for full picture

On Monday, my neighbor came to my house and asked me if I had a "spare Windows XP disc." He's not very computer savvy, but someone owed him some money and he wanted a computer so that his 15 year old daughter could access MySpace. His requirements were minimal, but he had gotten a relatively decent Dell machine - something like 1.2 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM - and it was hosed. The guy had given him a Windows 98 SE disc; they left off the actual restore disc and the drivers. So I told him the truth - I didn't have a copy of Windows XP I could legally give him (in truth, I don't even have a copy of Windows XP I could illegally give him since we are PC free). I told him, if he was feeling adventurous, I could give him an operating system that had tons of programs, would likely work with no additional drivers, and was completely free and legal. So he took it. I burned him Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I told him to give the installation a shot, walk through and read everything carefully, and see what happens. If he needed help,...

This video is fantastic. It shows the blind loyalty of some government folks, as well as the patriotism that has been waylaid in favor of political loyalty. This is a fantastical congressional smackdown. This aide should be ashamed and embarassed, and people should be revolted to see government officials place their political agenda and crony loyalty above serving the United States. There is no such thing as honor here, this is pure manipulation.

I left for vacation on June 28, and before doing so, I took a quick glance over sethadam1.com and jotted a quick blog post about it. sethadam1.com was fully functional and officially dormant for 10 days as of June 28. Imagine my surprise when on Monday, my wife said, "Hey, your site isn't working!" The index page worked, but none of the other pages. In short, my webhost, Hostgator decided to implement PHPsuexec. Here's the gist of this awesome program: typically, your web server runs as the "nobody" user on a server, but you login as yourself, say your username is "jdough." You need to use certain tricks, like using .htaccess files and chmodding to get around certain limitations. PHPSuexec makes php run *as you,* removing the need for world writable directories and creating a need for custom php.ini files to replace certain php directives in your .htacess files. Since my site doesn't use file extensions on most files, I used a directive called DefaultType to make everything PHP. This stopped functioning when Hostgator made the changes on Monday. Instead, every one of the pages that relied upon that value for parsing stopped working and started displaying HTTP error 500....

I've had an ongoing debate with some colleagues recently about "people." I've long held that "people" are stupid once they are in a group of about 5 or more. "People" can't be trusted to make sane decisions about themselves, let alone elect a president or something major. I still believe this in general. Yet, I believe in people -- the good in people, the drive to do what's right, the instinct to run ther own community the best they can. I also believe that the parts of Buddhism I most admire are those that deal with true inner peace and enlightenment as well as accepting what you cannot change gracefully. Because "people" - the general populace - are often ruled by mob mentality and say and do things they think they should, rather than what they actually want. But I think individuals are smarter than that, if given the chance, and can be a successful "people" if nurtured. Shift gears: I believe that the web is a place for people. And I believe that community should be granted full transparent access whenever possible. I do not believe in all out chaos, as I've detailed before, but I do believe in...

We are getting ready to go to Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in the next few hours. We're really psyched to see our families. When I get back, I'm going to unveil a new mobile interface to sethadam1.com built especially for the iPhone based on some work I did for Eugenia for a new project she's working on. It uses script.aculo.us and Prototype and is ajax based. It's pretty smooth. Check ya'll soon.

Safari is not now, nor has it ever been, my browser of choice. Aside from the fact that KHTML is generally the least compatible of browser engines these days, Safari is pretty barren from a feature standpoint. I rarely use it on my mac. I also find the lack of the "button" widget in Aqua annoying, because it makes Gmail ugly. When I started using Safari 3.0.1 beta at work, I was impressed, but not impressed enough to ditch Opera. At home, however, I am using Camino, which I love, which is based on Gecko, the underlying Mozilla engine that also forms the core of Firefox. The problem is, as much as I love Camino, it's tough to use for development: it doesn't support extensions, it doesn't have a javascript debugger that works, it doesn't have draggable tabs, or tab restore, and it's not very easy to extend functionality. There are lots of tricks at PimpMyCamino, but even today, the most useful add-on, "CamiScript," is billed as unstable on Camino version above 1.0. Camino 1.0 was released in the first half of 2006. We're over a year later. This is not a post to bitch about Camino though. I love...

America's Got Talent, a show that is in its second season here in the US, is a much better reality competition show than ratings juggernaut American Idol. Here are 5 reasons why: 1. The "nice judge" isn't useless Sharon Osbourne, who has replaced Brandy as the middle judge, is generally the "nice" one on America's Got Talent. Space Cadet Paula Abdul serves the role on Idol. The thing is, Abdul is useless. Abdul is a cheerleader at best, and utterly worthless at worst. When pressed, she offers up condescending comments like "Pretty girl!" She generally has no constructive criticism for the contestant. Osbourne on the other hand isn't as much nice as ladylike and tactful. She'll gently offer a "no" with a "thank you," and you'd believe that even though she hated your act, she'd be happy to serve you tea. She's a breath of fresh air, and she's likable, and most of all, she's able to form complete sentences. 2. The "mean judge" isn't so mean Cranky Simon Cowell is part of American pop culture for good. But in recent season, he's just as useless as Paula Abdul. Cowell usually conjures up comments like "utterly horrendous" and "dreadful" without...