'go to referrer' bookmarklet

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I just stumbled across this wonderful little trick, thanks to Scott.

Ever opened up a link in a new tab or a new window, then left it alone for a while? Come back to it in a couple hours, figure it’s interesting enough to blog about, then realize that you can’t remember just whose site pointed you to the link? It’s a minor annoyance, if you try to link back to your sources.

Here’s a bookmarklet to solve the problem: go to referrer. Drag that into your bookmarks, and choosing it will snap you back to whatever page sent you to the link, even in new tabs or windows. Very handy.

Whiner

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Bush, you whiny little git. Apparently he’s none to fond of being pushed out of the limelight. This was the exchange after a reporter asked what Bush thought of the California governor’s race, and the reporter had the temerity to call the California race the “biggest political story in the country.”

Bush: “It is the biggest political story in the country? That’s interesting. That says a lot. That speaks volumes.”

Reporter: “Means you don’t agree?”

Bush: “I don’t get to decide the biggest political story. You decide the biggest political story. But I find it interesting that that is the biggest political story in the country, as you just said.”

Pressed on the matter, Bush said, “Oh, I think there’s maybe other political stories. Isn’t there, like, a presidential race coming up?”

Yeah, George, there’s, like, a presidential race, in, like, fifteen months or so. This California thing is, like, right around the corner. Like, really, man. Do you really want us all to, like, spend all our time just, like, bashing you instead? Because we’re certainly capable of it. Especially when your English usage is so, like, impeccable and everything.

Shmuck.

(via Kirsten and Daily Kos)

Fun with Pig Latin

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Filter Pad’s Ouyay Eelin’fay Eemay? post reminded me of a story from years ago.

Just after I graduated High School, I went on a trip with the Bartlett High School German Club to Germany for two months — one month living with a host family and going to school, and one month backpacking all over the country. While we were there, my friend Stiffy and I, being teenage boys, really wanted to be able to talk about girls, and point out choice bits of eye candy when we could. Unfortunately, at first we weren’t sure how. Our German was passable, but not fluent, and everyone around us spoke German also. English wouldn’t work either, as Europeans tend to start learning English in about third grade.

The solution? Pig Latin.

Even after we explained the concept to our German friends, they never could quite wrap their heads around it. Meanwhile, Stiffy and I kept using it, even for normal conversations so we could keep in practice. Eventually, we got to the point where we could speak Pig Latin not quite as fast as we could speak English, but certainly faster than we could speak German.

One night late in the trip, we were babbling in our room at the youth hostel we were at before we passed out, practicing our Pig Latin. Suddenly, one of the other guys in the room broke in to ask us what we were talking about. Turns out that though he could translate the Pig Latin okay, we still weren’t making any sense — our brains, faced with a mishmash of English, German, and Pig Latin, had started to play games with us. Without even realizing that we’d been doing it, we had been speaking Pig Latin, only using the German word order for our sentences. Even our friends couldn’t keep up with our conversations anymore, because in addition to having to translate from Pig Latin to English, they also had to re-order the words to fit English grammar, and by that time, Stiffy and I had moved on to some other subject.

It constantly amazes me what the human brain can do when you’re not paying much attention to it.

Evennay ownay, it’sway eallyray easyway orfay emay otay eakspay Igpay Atinlay ithoutway avinghay otay inkthay aboutway itway uchmay atway allway. Ypingtay itway isway away ittlelay oremay ifficutlday, utbay eakingspay itway? Easyway asway iepay.

Who turned out the lights?

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Okay — so who forgot to pay the electric bill? Just bizarre, to know that that much of the eastern seaboard lost power today. There doesn’t seem to be any real news to the news, but John Hoke has been keeping up with the news as best he can over at his Asylum.

I remember a time probably around 15 years or so when most of Alaska went dark. If I’m remembering it correctly, a raven had flown into some power lines, completeing the circut and bringing down one powerstation (along with killing itself in the process). When that station went down, the next in the series tried to cover for the loss, and couldn’t do it, so it went down. The next station then tried to cover for two downed stations…and it went down. And so on, and so forth, until Alaska was blacked out from the Kenai Peninsula up to about halfway to Fairbanks, I think. Took a good few days to get that mess straightened out.

Hopefully everything kicks back into service soon for all you New Yorkers, though. Good luck!

The spectre of Spinal Tap

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We opened and closed the show, starting after a film sequence featuring a businessman searching sand dunes for a half-buried laptop, and a gravelly-voiced man saying in a so-baritone-it-must-be-important, film-trailer way, “There was a search for an internet business…”

The rest of the sequence was always lost to me as I was concentrating on standing upright and not wetting myself with laughter: Gravel Man was our signal that the revolving circular stage we were on was about to turn us briskly to face the audience and, we suspected, hurl our much ridiculed, old before his time guitarist into the front row like a ball off a dodgy roulette wheel. The spectre of Spinal Tap never leaves a rock band.

— Jesus Jones frontman Mike Edwards describing playing corporate gigs, in the Guardian Unlimited

(via kottke)

Cattle Call 2004

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Cattle Call '04 plot

Roughly every week or so, Daily Kos presents a Cattle Call ranking of the presidential candidates. A quick summary of his opinion of their current position in the Democratic presidential race, usually with a few notes about whether he sees them as heading up or down the chart, and why.

Having watched this for a while, I started to wonder just how the various candidates have fared over the months. So, with a little browsing through the Daily Kos archives and some tinkering in Excel, I can present a (fairly ugly) little graph of each candidate’s potential to grab the Democratic nomination, as ranked by Kos.

It’s actually fairly interesting to see. To me, the three most interesting lines are those of Richard Gephardt (light blue), Joseph Lieberman (medium blue), and Howard Dean (bright pink). Seeing Gephardt start fairly slow, then bounce around towards the top of the chart; Lieberman start strong, stumble for a couple months, then regain a top spot; and Dean’s fairly steady upward climb is a lot easier this way. I’m fairly sure that Kos will continue with the Cattle Call posts up until the Democratic nomination — I’ll keep updating my spreadsheet to see how all this turns out in the end.

Oh, this'll be fun

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I need to print, read, internalize, and (possibly hardest of all) understand the [Apache mod_rewrite documentation].

Why?

This is why. If I’m understanding what I’ve read so far, everything I want to do can be done purely through mod_rewrite. But, as of this writing, I have no idea how.

This could get interesting.

diveintocrappyteenagepoetry.org

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mother do you think thy child is sick?
why are my walls built so very thick?
i hide myself so i can feel no pain
but you crack my walls again and again
bringing emotions, people who care
when all i can do is sit and stare
while the feelings i try so hard to suppress
escape, exerting so much stress
that the walls explode, and i feel the pain
of love, and i build my walls again

This drivel was written sometime in high school, while I was bored in my typing class, and it was (obviously) heavily inspired by Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”.

Today’s bit of nostalgiac tripe has been brought to you courtesy of this comment of Mark’s on his Apple //e post.