Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Monthly Archives: November 2001

Virtual Slot Track Racing

When I was a kid, I loved those slot-track racers. You know, you have some plastic race track with these little electric cars that fly off the track when you go around the curves too fast? Now you can re-live that heady experience with RallyTrophy!

“Just where does he get those wonderful toys?”

A couple of cool gadgets spotted from slashdot: the Handspring Treo is a combination PDA and cell phone. There’s another PDA/phone combo called the HipTop, which runs Java and also has options for a camera and MIDI synth. Wow. And lastly, there’s a review at Tom’s Hardware of 3Com’s new NJ100 Network Jack — a wallplate jack with a built-in 4-port ethernet switch.

Are You an E-Bore?

Take this quiz to find out if you are an e-bore. I scored 80%, in case you’re wondering. (via dithered)

A Message from Scott Adams

As a member of the DNRC, I occassionally receive the Dilbert Newsletter. Today’s had a thought from Dilbert creator Scott Adams that I liked: My Holiday Message I’ve written and rewritten this section a dozen times. My problem is that no matter how much I write, I keep condensing it down to the same thought: This holiday season, as we laugh and eat and shop and enjoy friends and family, our soldiers are in Afghanistan … Continue reading

Dynamic Form Controls

Some time back, I was working on some code at work where we wanted to dynamically disable and re-enable certain form elements based on other user input. Internet Explorer adds a “disabled” property to form elements that makes this simple. But Netscape 4.x doesn’t. I eventually came up with some Javascript code that more-or-less simulates the ability to disable form elements in NS4. If anybody is interested, feel free to use my code in your … Continue reading

Happy Holidays

Now that the Thanksgiving holidays are over, it’s time to get into the Christmas spirit. I hope you enjoy the Christmas theme for the site. But if it annoys you for some reason, you can choose to go back to the standard theme. Check the bottom of the menus. Kudos to Scott Andrew LePara for the theme switching code.

Random Stoopidness

On some days, you can just scoop up stupid links with nets…. Pull my finger Stick it out ChickenCam

Beyond Time and Space

Many years ago, a friend of mine showed me a book called The Tao of Programming. The koans contained within struck a chord with me, but at the time, I was unable to find a copy to purchase for myself. Today, I found that many people have transcribed it into web pages. But I still want to own a print copy….

XML-RPC and other TLAs

I have finally gotten around to learning a little about XML-RPC and SOAP. In case you aren’t familiar with these buzzwords, they are basically protocols for getting data from remote programs. They use HTTP as the transport protocol, and XML for encapsulating the data. I always thought it sounded kind of complex, but it turns out to be fairly simple (especially since there are now tons of code libraries that handle the annoying parts). I’m … Continue reading