NSLog();

Ask and ye shall receive:

That took too long. I guess I could have made the fonts larger to use more space.

John Gruber said this in linking to this article by Seth Godin:

Back in elementary school, I was the kid in class who organized the pencil drop. The trick to long-term success was to identify the class narcs and make sure they, i.e. the narcs, didn't know I was the one who started it. And if you really wanted to drive the teacher nuts, you'd do it with books, not pencils.

And here I was thinking I'd done something semi-original back in eighth grade. Mr. Onest, the earth-space science teacher with the Dairy Queen hair twist up front, despised me for what were, in retrospect, valid reasons. At one point he accused me of cheating on an open-book test, despite the fact that I'd scored about 30 points higher than the supposed source and finished 25 minutes ahead of him.

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I'm looking for a good WordPress theme for a photoblog. Does anyone have any suggestions? The theme should have support for comments, but the blog will contain little text. Mainly pictures and a few short notes on those pictures.

It's not "nucular!"

And is it just me, or does CTU LA get infiltrated every season?

As I've mentioned before, I recently ditched my old Series 2 DirecTiVo unit in exchange for a DirecTV-powered HD DVR. TiVo and DirecTV severed their relationship earlier this year. The HR20-700s is one of DirecTV's first hardware offerings in TiVo's place.

The HR20 has had a lot of problems. Those who think back to the TiVo's launch (or even look at the recent Series 3 launch) can see similar problems, but many feel that the HR20's issues are larger than they've experienced before. I can say that despite changing a satellite dish and adding HD, the transition has been smooth and I've not had any troubles with the HR20.

The TiVo, of course, is well recognized as having a great user interface. I've been a TiVo user since I signed up with DirecTV in 2001 shortly after moving to southern Florida. True to the word of many, TiVo changed my life. I didn't watch more TV because I watched less commercials. The simple ability to pause even live TV has led me to instinctively reach for a "pause" or a "replay" button my FM stereo in my car.

It's been a little over a week now, and I have a few thoughts on the differences between the TiVo-built UI and the one the DirecTV programmers have managed to cobble together. What follows is a brief compare/contrast:

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The boys did well for themselves. Having to completely re-write their programs in two weeks was a strain, but every score was better than their best score in the local tournament. Still, the high scores went up appreciably more: one team scored 357 out of a possible 400.

Many ideas for next year, if Carey and I do it.

Carey and I will remember the day for the wretched parents of the Grover Cleveland team, who not only ate our food (off our table), commandeered our table, sat and read at our table, and put pop cans on our folders, but also called Carey a bitch just for looking in their direction after I had asked one person to move. Parents weren't even allowed in the area. 😛

On the way home I had to swerve between two doe, missing both by a combined distance of about twelve to fourteen inches. Whew!

I have two NetFlix movies sitting beside me that I won't get to watch until Monday or so. I'm tempted to rip them to my computer for later viewing (on Monday or Tuesday) and send them back today.

While physically in my possession, I believe I am allowed to media shift the movies under fair use. But at what point in the "I put them in my mailbox and the USPS returns them to NetFlix" process does temporary "ownership" of the movie switch from me to NetFlix? I would argue that ownership switches when NetFlix receives the item - I'm still responsible for lost movies up until that point, after all.

If I return a movie today and, because a weekend is coming up, watch and delete the ripped versions before NetFlix receives them, would that be within the bounds of the law? Or is physically possessing the movies necessary?

It turns out you can walk right past the exit bag checkers at Best Buy, but not at Sam's Club ((You can't at Sam's Club, Costco, etc. because you agree to have your bags checked as a condition of your membership. Best Buy is not a "membership"-based retailer.)). But doing so is still not recommended unless there is an unusually long post-checkout line. Still, I may walk past the bag checker once just to see what happens.

And to be detained, stores typically need to follow six universally accepted steps:

1. You must see the shoplifter approach your merchandise
2. You must see the shoplifter select your merchandise
3. You must see the shoplifter conceal or carry away or convert your merchandise
4. You must maintain continuous observation the shoplifter
5. You must see the shoplifter fail to pay for the merchandise
6. You must approach the shoplifter outside of the store

The last item is key, as you cannot be arrested (or detained) for shoplifting until you've left the premises.

I've just installed the WordPress Organizer plugin and it's nice, but I wish it had two extra features. The first would be the addition of a "find abandoned files" function, which would locate all images or files that are no longer linked or used in any posts. The second would be the option to not only edit a post in the "view an image" page, but also to view the post containing the image.

Additionally, I fixed an issue Democracy was having with this blog. What I initially thought was poor coding on the part of the Democracy author ((See the proof right about here.)) turned out to be something I could resolve by modifying another plugin, Text Control. Specifically, I added a priority of "9" to all of the add_filters:

remove_filter('the_content', 'wpautop');
remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize');
add_filter('the_content', 'tc_post', 9);

remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wpautop');
remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wptexturize');
add_filter('the_excerpt', 'tc_post', 9);

remove_filter('comment_text', 'wpautop', 30);
remove_filter('comment_text', 'wptexturize');
add_filter('comment_text', 'tc_comment', 9);

I'm trying out Snap Previews on this site. To see what they do, hover your mouse over a link. The previous one will do just fine. The Snap folks have a blog, too.

Though I doubt it will last, I'm really enjoying the show "3 Lbs" on CBS. The show has enough science to keep me interested and force me, a day later, to look up things like "face blindness" (prosopagnosia). A week or two ago, while refreshing my memory on what exactly a grand mal seizure is, I clicked through links about déjà vu and discovered jamais vu and learned that even déjà vu may be a sort of minor seizure (if you take the very vague "abnormal electrophysiologic phenomena" definition for "seizure," anyway).

WiiSave.com allows you to download Wii game saves (including game saves for some Virtual Console games). I remember the DexDrive allowing PC users to do something like this for their PSX, but with the Wii's SD card support, it's now available for everyone with an SD card and reader.

Today I played a five-set match against myself. Two-on-two and completely against myself. The Wii split-screened the match and I had to hit, then immediately look to the other half of the screen. I almost never used my guy at the net because I wasn't quick enough to know whether it was a forehand or a backhand. The "left" side won, 3-2, and each team broke the other's serve once.

I bowled a 267 (nine strikes, two spares in the 8th and 10th frames) yesterday in bowling, a personal high. Wii Sports has gotten 10x the playtime of any other game in my small collection. Well, maybe only 6x the playtime of Madden…

P.S. Yes, I played with my Wii by myself. I also had a foursome… alone.

Has anyone successfully added an email address to their Wii address book? I hear you can - and you're supposed to get an authentication/confirmation email - but I never see the email.

Furthermore, any and all attempts to set up an account at my.nintendo.com still fail with a lame message:

We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with our e-mail server. Please try again later. If you continue to experience technical difficulties over a 24 hour period, please e-mail nintendo@noa.nintendo.com for assistance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you.

javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: [LDAP: error code 32 - No Such Object]; remaining name 'cn=ERIKJBARZ'

I've been getting this error message since the day of the Wii's launch when I attempted to create a "MyNintendo" account so I could tie it into my Wii store account.

Carey and I spent most of today painting our living room. Prior, it was white with a "library" border around the top - a bunch of books on a "shelf." Ick. We decided to paint the walls a light tan with an "accent wall" in a darker brown near Carey's desk. The room is rather large - 40' x 20' or larger - so we didn't want too much color to shrink the room.

When we removed the border, we found that the builders and prior owners hadn't painted (in a flat white paint) the entire wall. The top 10 inches - under the border - was just primed drywall. After the first coat of paint, the line was still visible. I laid it on quite thick the second time around, and unless you know exactly where to look and catch the exact light needed, the line is invisible. Still, we took no chances on the accent wall and added another coat of primer.

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