Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Monthly Archives: September 2006

Browsenberg Uncertainty Principle

Co-worker Stephen Touset has described what he calls the Browsenberg Uncertainty Principle: As one increases the layout precision of a section on a webpage, all other sections of the page have their layouts perturbed by a proportional amount. And its corollary: The more precisely one specifies positioning and layout for a page in one browser, the less accurately every other browser will render it. Make sure you follow the link and also read his example … Continue reading

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Ahoy, me maties! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day once again, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve spruced my site up for the occassion. Around my office, I’ve been hearing a lot of “yarrr!” and “avast!”, as many folks have been getting into the buccaneering mood. Or maybe it’s just because they’re grumpy — it’s hard to tell on some days. In any case, I hope you’re enjoying this fine holiday. And if you … Continue reading

Drinking the Ubuntu Kool-Aid

For quite a while, I had considered nuking Windows from my laptop and starting fresh. A few weeks ago, I finally took the plunge. I started with a full backup (two, actually — a file-by-file backup, and a partition image). I toyed with the idea of dual-booting, but finally decided that I’d try to go completely non-Windows, and see how well I could get by. After hearing one of my co-workers rave about how impressed … Continue reading

Piratify Your Blog!

There’s only one week left until Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you haven’t already downloaded my Text Filter Suite, which contains the awesome tfs-pirate filter, then you’d better hop to it! What’s that? You want to know what it does? It turns your blog into pirate-speak on Talk Like a Pirate Day! Well, it does some other stuff, too, but we’re mostly concerned with the piratey bits here. For example, if you typed this: … Continue reading

An Air Miles Experiment

Several years ago I went on a work-related trip on American Airlines (side note: holy cow! they have RSS feeds!). I don’t travel much, but on a whim, I signed up for their AAdvantage program. I got some quantity of bonus miles for signing up. Enough to keep me interested, but not enough to really do anything with. Then I signed up for some partnership deal that they had with MCI where I earned miles … Continue reading