Web

I know I'm not the only one this is happening to, but it's still amusing:

Update: Just to be clear, this happened immediately after the iPhone 4S was announced (October 4th, 2011), but before Steve Jobs's death (October 5th, 2011). Note the time stamp.

This is only for blip.tv, but as of now, if you have NoScript set to block Facebook.net, you won't be able to view videos on blip.tv.

Thankfully, there is a feature in NoScript called "surrogate scripts" that allows NoScript to substitute a script stub to make things work on websites even if a given domain is blocked. So all I need to do it write a surrogate script to implement the functions it needs.

It turns out blip.tv doesn't work because a single function is missing: FB.Event.subscribe. So the entire surrogate script is:

Well, since I've actually got the thing working for the most part, try playing the Colossal Cave Adventure, ported to JavaScript! This (should) be the entire mostly-original game, playable right from in your browser. At present there's no way to save your game, but that's OK, it's more exciting that way.

Seriously, screw Theora. None of the tools work. Really, there's no reason to go beyond that at all. ffmpeg can't create working Ogg Theora files for no discernible reason. The makers of Theora don't provide an encoder, so it's not like you can just use theirs! The only working Theora tool appears to be ffmpeg2theora - which is completely useless because it can't be used to remux streams.

The one thing Xiph does provide, a tool for creating Ogg streams, doesn't create working streams. Making it completely useless as well.

The Barnes & Noble nook has had a web browser added to it in the 1.3 update (along with sudoku and chess and a bunch of other things).

And the web browser actually works pretty freaking well. The nook’s design of a small touch screen along with an e-ink display means that you get a full-color small view into the website on the bottom and a very nice black-and-white view on the top. You can scroll through the website using both the touch screen and the page back/forward keys, meaning that all-in-all, it works very well for simple surfing.

Slashdot has a very interesting story about a poor system administrator who was fired for running SETI@Home. You see, the evil management types found it to be a waste of their resources, claiming that it caused $1 million worth of damages!

Doesn't sound very fair, does it?

Man, I managed to completely miss this, but Geocities has shut down as of today. I remember when I put my first website up on ... OK, not on Geocities, but on a local ISP. Using hand-written HTML.

But still with a bit too much annoying-graphical flair. (Specifically with the over-patterned backgrounds. Yes, I know I did that here last Christmas, this Christmas will be better. I hope.) So, here it is, my tribute to Geocities closing down.

I mentioned it. That's my tribute. The end.