The inaugural Fiesta Asia event will take place on May 6, 2006 and is free and open to the public. This kick-off event will feature an exciting array of attractions including an open market filled with an assortment of Asian merchandise, live performances, Pan-Asian cuisine, interactive displays, Manga design competition, and much more. The May 6th event precedes a month-long series of activities in venues located in DC metro area.
[ Fiesta Asia - 2006 National Asian Heritage Festival - Washington, DC ]
Ali went last year and said it was pretty cool.
Update: Then Yaty pointed out that Today was the 6th, not tomorrow as Ali claimed... Perhaps next year.
In a meeting today someone mentioned the need for a calendar of sorts. I immediatly thought of a Life Hacker post I had seen recently about MonoCalendar:
If iCal existed for Windows, I would recommend using that before MonoCalendar. On the other hand, since it currently does not exist for many systems, it is an alternative to consider, and furthermore it is an alternative that is Free Software.
[ MonoCalendar ]
Until Vista arrives, this is likely the best we'll see.
CIO Magazine reports that A9 and Amazon are switching from Google to Microsoft for their search. Bet it is less than cheap for them... That reminds me, A9 had that map with the photos thing, and when it launched there was no Washington, DC. I expect that because my office is 2-3 blocks from the Whitehouse that they wouldn't want to photo it anyway. Guess again:
Creepy, eh?
Oddly enough there are still no photos that I can find of the Whitehouse, or an odd "pentagon shaped" area just across the river...
I still can't really determine the usefullness of this site. Things change rapidly in the city, and these photos don't even show the building that went up next to my office, yet people moved in months ago.
A comedian emerges as the Edward R. Murrow of our day.
[ Thank You Stephen Colbert. ]
Ain't that the truth...
If you don't know what the fuss is all about, then check out this you tubed CSPAN coverage of Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:
Props to Sajous.
Wrote a nifty piece of DHTML that does a gallery pop-up in a DHTML div instead of a separate window. I'm sure I saw this in some on-line gallery, and it seems like a great way to do things, now that pop-ups are practically verboten. Nifty, that is, until I pulled it up in IE6. I haven't done a ton of DHTML in years, and clearly I forgot what a pain cross-browser issues are. Until I had to determine the size of the browser:
There are some constants available that give the document area of the window that is available for writing to. These will not be available until after the document has loaded and the method used for referencing them is browser specific. ... This is a little messy because the clientHeight/Width properties can mean different things in different browsers, and even different things in the same browser, depending on whether the document type declaration triggers the browser's strict mode or quirks mode.
[ JavaScript tutorial - Window size and scrolling ]
Ugh. Worst of all, I don't even want to do this from JavaScript, but from CSS. Since Microsoft has been kind enough to provide CSS expressions, I came up with this super-kludge for making the div full size under (what I believe should be) all circumstances:
#id {
width: 99%;
height: 99%;
_width: expression((typeof( window.innerWidth ) == 'number'?window.innerWidth:(document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.clientWidth || document.documentElement.clientHeight)?document.documentElement.clientWidth:(document.body && ( document.body.clientWidth || document.body.clientHeight ) ?document.body.clientWidth:"100%"))));
_height: expression((typeof( window.innerHeight ) == 'number'?window.innerHeight:(document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.clientHeight || document.documentElement.clientHeight)?document.documentElement.clientHeight:(document.body && ( document.body.clientHeight || document.body.clientHeight ) ?document.body.clientHeight:"100%"))));
}
I think this is likely super-over-kill, but it does work. Oh, and why 99%? 100% will pull up scroll bars on the size and bottom in some browsers (IE7b2 for sure...). And why _width? IE6 ignores the _ and treats _width as width (most "real" browsers ignore these rules). And why is the id "id"? It isn't really, but why use my real code without alteration first?
TiVo announced a while back that I'd be able to take my TiVoed programs "to go". What does that mean? Not much, apparently. I only have 1 TiVo, so I can't transfer between them. I don't have a laptop, so I guess I can use the desktop software to watch TiVo on my PC, but that's not going very far. I don't wish to burn things on DVD enough to purchase their partner's DVD burn kit. I really just want to download the video to my PSP or Yaty's iPod.
Enter DirectShow Dump:
DirectShow Dump is a debugging App that allows you to extract (into a file) what the output of a DirectShow filter is. It is easy to use, employs asynchronous I/O for optimal performance and can batch-process files.
[ DirectShow Dump ]
Since the TiVo series 2 can copy video to my PC and store it as a modified MPEG-2 file, with some sort of DRM encryption, but allow for playback through WindowsMedia 10 and "DirectShow", it wasn't too difficult to pipe that to an unencrypted file (not too difficult for me at least... ;)). Then I sync that file via my PSP Media Manager, which I purchased before realizing that PSP Video 9 existed, and voilà! I truly have TiVo To Go!
Nintendo has unveiled the new name: Nintendo Wii, the latter standing for 'we.' "While the code-name "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer," said the company in a statement. "Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else."
[ Are Wii Ready? Nintendo's Revolution Renamed news from 1UP.com ]
AT&T believes that Wii is pronounced "wee-ee" by US English speakers, and "why-uh" by UK English speakers. I'm not sure how they determind that everyone will know how this is pronounced, though a quick round up of AT&T's peeps shows:
"Audry" UK English - Why-uh
"Anjali" Indian English - Why-uh
"Lauren" US English - Wee-ee
"Rosa" US Spanish - Wee
"Klara" German - Wee
"Juliette" French - Weee
Perhaps Nintendo knows more Europeans than Americans, and has never heard of England...
Props to N8 for seeing this first.
And who put that wall up in the first place? You can check out the video on Nintendo's revolution.nintendo.com website. It's better quality than the embedded one on 1UP's site. And, you'll note, wii.nintendo.com doesn't work. And, apparently, we can blame the Beatles for the name:
You say you want a revolution
Well you know
Wii all want to change the world...
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia's rumbling Mount Merapi is spewing volcanic ash, magma has fully covered its crater, and a powerful eruption could come any day, a scientist said Thursday.
[ Indonesian Volcano Could Erupt Any Day - Yahoo! News ]
You'd think that this is near Jakarta, since that's what the byline says, but the Western press seems to only have offices in Jakarta, so any Indonesian news says that.
Then where is Mount Merapi (Gunung Merapi to the locals)? The nearest large city is Yogyakarta, and it's right in central Java, Jakarta is over 300 miles to the east of Mount Merapi, and not in much danger. Makassar (née Ujung Pandang), the city from which my wife hails, is over 800 miles NNE of Mount Merapi.
Does this mean that I don't appreciate this tip? No, it means that I get frustrated with the news feeds that Yahoo and other websites carry, if they leave out this information for places I know something about, what happen when the story is about some place I know nothing about, and I am without any access to the *Internet?
And, while I'm on the subject, why do I only hear about natural disasters in that part of the world?
* Yes, I realize that is impossible.
OS 2.7 is out, Network Update should upgrade you.
Sony says the latest iteration of the handheld's frequently hacked operating system adds a number of browser enhancements, including Flash compatibility and the ability to save audio content from RSS channels to a memory stick. The upgrade also fixes the problems that cropped up with earlier versions of the OS when using memory sticks larger than 2GB.
[ PlayStation.com - News ]
However Flash on the PSP sucks. It is sooooooooooo slow, and therefore Homestar Runner is not feasibly enjoyable on the PSP, and is there any other reason to use flash?
The new RSS streaming and save-ability is nice, no longer do you need the PSP Connect software to pod-catch, but I doubt they're giving me a refund...
Shame on you. This is a must read. (Unless, of course, you don't read fiction, or specifically science fiction. Or are scared of computers. Or don't like awards. Or are creeped out by the Internet.)
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same.
[ William Gibson - Official Website ]
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