They Can't Do That On Television!

I'm watching an old episode of You Can't Do That On Television. It's the Popularity episode from 1982. Christine 'Moose' McGlade said "I don't know" and didn't get slimed!

For those who don't know, on You Can't Do That On Television if you ever say "water" or "wet" you suddenly find yourself doused in water from above. If you ever say "I don't know" you get slimed. But it didn't happen this time.

You can download the episode at Barth's Burgery.

Wake Up! It's Time To Go To Bed!

What's the deal with circadian rythms?

This is how it works: The circadian rhythm is your daily bodily cycle, from the latin "circa" and "dies" for "around the day." It's controlled by your body temperature. When your temperature rises you wake up and become more alert. When your temperature lowers, you get sleepy.

When you wake up in the morning your temperature rises. It continues to rise until afternoon. Then it drops a bit. That's the afternoon lull you feel. It rises again into the evening. Then it falls, you get sleepy and go to bed.

The circadian rhythm and be somewhat manipulated by your behavior. Taking a hot bath warms you up, then your body says "Hey, I'm too hot. I need to cool down." You cool down, and get sleepy. If you take a cold shower the opposite happens.

Another thing is your diet. If you eat carbohydrates then your brain releases a chemical called sarotonin. That makes you sleepy. You can minimize the afternoon lull by avoiding carbs at lunch.

But what I want to know is why is my afternoon lull ten times worse than at night? I try to avoid carbs at lunch, but I'm not very good at it. After lunch my lull is usually pretty strong. In the afternoon I have slept through a jackhammer being operated downstairs. I can sleep upright in a chair. I have slept through an air-horn being blown mere feet away from me. I can sleep in bright lights, in heat, cold, anything it seems. Coffee or Pepsi sometimes help, but not always.

At night I need everything to be dark and quiet in order to get any sleep at all. Someone else's music, a bit of talking, the TV, someone walking around above me, the pulsating light on my laptop battery, anything keeps me awake.

I'd sure like to reverse that. I'd like to go to bed and immediately fall asleep at night, and last quiet easily through the afternoon without the aid of substances.

A Brave New World Wide Web (Part II)

D'Oh!

Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released I'm excited, right?

One thing I didn't count on was that it's not available for Windows 2000, which is what we use at work. We should be getting XP soon.

Anyway, you can download it here.

Some Folks Have All The Luck

This morning I printed out my final lab reports, put them in an envelope and sent them to Athabasca University. That's the official end to the labs. I sent the lab kit back yesterday.

I am happy to report I have walked away with all of my fingers intact, my eye brows are both there, and the McQueen's house suffered no damage.

A house out in Vankleek Hill wasn't so lucky. I don't think they've found the cause. Some have speculated a natural gas leak, or a meth. lab. I suspect it was some poor kid who's university canceled a chemistry course, and had to take it by correspondence through Athabasca. He wasn't as lucky as I with his labs.

It Sure didn't Take Long, Did It?

Well, gang, it sure didn't take long. IE 7 has been out for less than 24 hours, and the first security hole has been found.

Firefox 2.0

Soon Firefox 2.0 will be released. Oddly enough, I'm not as excited about this as I am about IE 7. For such an anti-Microsoft guy, you'd think it would be the opposite, wouldn't you?

Well, the reason is this: I'm not excited as a user. I'm excited as a developer. IE 7 means I can stop using so many freaking hacks. Writing for IE 6 and for the standards is like writing for two separate standards.

Firefox already has good compliance. I would like to see greater compliance. There are a few things Firefox doesn't support. I'd like to see that more than new add-ons.

But that's just me.

A Brave New World Wide Web

Apparently Internet Explorer 7.0 comes out today, October 18. (I'm writing this on the 17th.) And I, for one, can't wait.

With it's increased standards compliance I can start to forget about developing for v6. True, at work I'll have to still develop for v6 until we adopt v7, which at the government rate will be about 2008. (We'll be upgrading to XP soon.)

IE7 also has tabbed browsing. I've heard it isn't implemented as well as it is in Firefox or Opera. In Firefox I group related bookmarks into a bookmark folder, then "Open In Tabs." For example, I have a bookmark folder called "Blogs" where I have all my blogs bookmarked. Then everyday, instead of manually opening each blog, I open the Blog bookmark folder, and at the bottom is an option "Open In Tabs" which I click. Then All the blogs open in the same browser in a different tab. I then read through them all, pressing ctrl+w to close the tab when I'm done with it. It makes for much nicer browsing experience. You should try it if you haven't yet.

Apparently security has really been increased for this next release. This is great news. Let me explain why.

You know all that spam you get every day? I've got news for you: some of that spam is there because some of your friends use Internet Explorer. IE can download malicious code without you even knowing about it, scan your address book and/or hard drive for email addresses. It then sends spam to those address. But it alters the From field in the email so you have no way of knowing that it came from your friend. (This method uses something called Active-X, something IE uses, but not Firefox, Opera, Camino, Konquror, Safari, etc.)

So, this brings IE to the point where Firefox was a couple years ago. A point of usability. This is odd. Microsoft is usually the first to come out with new and innovative ideas. They are the bleeding edge of technology.

Now I have to wonder how I feel about this. See, when Microsoft releases a piece of junk, then that can sometimes serve to drive people to find a good alternative. That's partly why IE no longer has > 90% market share. People have simply found that other browsers are better.

When Microsoft comes out with something that's not bad then people have much less reason to look around. This helps to secure their monopoly. (Now, I don't call IE 7 "good" because, as I said, it will be usable, as opposed to "good." It's just not bad. IE 6 is just plain bad.)

Microsoft, over the past couple of years or so, has started to learn that they're not the only people around. Open Source software poses a threat. Google poses a threat. Apple poses a threat, whether they realize it or not. (Don't believe me? Get a time machine. Go back 3 years and walk through a university campus. How many Macs do you see? Very few. Then come back to the present and walk through the same campus. Now how many do you see? Many more.)

Now, this new idea of playing friendly may be their way of getting people to hate them less so they can hold their monopoly longer, and therefore more strongly, then they can go back to their old monopolistic tricks.

I would like to see a world where data storage is open, and perhaps some interfaces are proprietary. For example, HTML is an open standard, but IE, which interprets HTML, is proprietary. OpenDoc Format is open. Word, OpenOffice, KOffice, etc. may be proprietary.