Wow. Someone has made a documentary about BBSing. That’s pretty cool.
I was a BBSer in the 80’s. My best friend, Biko, ran a Citadel BBS named Bad Sector. I met a bunch of cool people in the Citadel sceen and I’m still friends with many of them.
For that matter, I have a Citadel/UX BBS running on my server now. Here is the Web Interface and here is the Telnet Interface (for that old-timey feel.)
It’s $50, but I might have to pick up a copy of this.
Hmm. I have a choice to make now. I’ve been playing with the Exponent Content Management System.
I really like what it does as far as the management system, entering new content, etc.
What I don’t like is the way they handle themes. Now I’m far from an HTML and CSS guru, but I do know that I don’t like they way they are building the pages.
For example: You can have a nav bar across the top of your page and then a menu system down the side. That’s cool. They are even called differently. But – they both use the same CSS class tag. So it makes it difficult to format them differently. (Or maybe I’m a CSS idiot, but I don’t think so.)
The page formatting is just plain messy.
So. I’ve been playing with the CSS and the theme pages, but I can’t make it do what I want. The question is: Do I start mucking with the source (not too hard, I’ ve already figured out some of it), thus making upgrades impossible, or do I install something else and start over?
I hear that Mambo is good. I think I’ll install it and start playing.
There is a new term on the Internet now.
DOOCED: to lose one’s job because of one’s website.
Full (explicit) details
(Actually, it’s not that new. She got fired in 2002. It’s just new to me.)
Liz went out of town on Friday afternoon and was gone all day on Saturday. So the kids and I had to make our own fun.
Friday night we watched Star Wars Episode IV. That was a trip down memory lane. Except where Mr. Lucas decided to make his changes. (Thanks George! – NOT.)
Saturday morning it was raining (again.) Stephanie went to fencing and Roz and I went to the grocery store. (Big fun.)
By the time we picked Stephanie up from fencing it was starting to clear up! So we went home, had lunch and did a couple of chores.
It was still semi-clear, so we decided to go to Valleyfair! Wheee.
We had a good time in general, but when we were in line for the Wild Thing, they decided to shut it down for “routine maintenance”. They told us it would only be a few minutes, but after about 20 we gave up and went on some other rides.
We spent about 4 hours there.
Then after dinner we watched Star Wars Episode V. I had to explain to the kids that when the movie came out it was a huge shock that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. 🙂
On Friday I went in for a LASIK evaluation. It was actually pretty cool. I went to the U of M Ophthalmology department based on a recommendation from an ex-coworker (thanks Sean!) and was very impressed.
Since I’ve been wearing glasses for 30 years now, I’ve had a lot of eye exams. Most of the time (that I can remember anyway) they have felt a bit rushed. And I’ve not always been happy with the results.
This was the most thorough eye exam ever. First they had me read the chart with my glasses on. Then they figured out my prescription using the (don’t know what it’s really called) big black lens system that they always use.
Next we went and used a machine to create a topographical map of my corneas. That was pretty cool.
Then they put some drops in to numb my eyes a bit and checked the internal pressure. After that they checked the thickness of my corneas using two different instruments, the second of which made everything look like it was underwater.
After that they had to test how dry my eyes are. To do this they insert the end of a strip of filter paper under the lower eye lid and see how much water wicks into it. This test takes five minutes and feels kind of weird.
Following that, they put some other drops into my eyes to fully dilate my pupils. I had to sit around for about 30 minutes to wait for that to happen. And I couldn’t read because it’s hard to focus with dilated pupils.
Then they looked at my retina and checked my prescription again.
Finally we talked about the options. They said I was close to the upper limit on near-sitedness (I’m at about -8.75 and they have a soft limit of -10), but that my corneas are plenty thick to support the correction needed. I don’t have dry eyes now (but LASIK tends to give you dry eyes for a while after the surgery.)
Additionally, there is a new technique for cutting the flap in the cornea. Tradditionally they have used a rotating mircrotome (a spinning knife) and that usually works fine, but now they have a new system where they can actually use the laser to cut the flap. It’s more accurate and less prone to complications.
So the upshot is that I’m going to have the LASIK done. The tentitive date is June 3rd.
Whee. No more glasses! (Until I need reading glasses because I’m old.)
I got to go to a special showing of Star Wars Episode III this morning. While I do have some things to say about that, I’m not ready to do that yet.
But, I did get this link sent to me. It’s really funny.
A young George Lucas fights writer’s block while trying to complete his final screenplay for USC Film School. This satire of Star Wars and Shakespeare in Love has Lucas searching for the true origins of the Star Wars saga.
I’m looking for a Content Management System for my web sites that I host. I downloaded PHP-Nuke and played around with it, but it doesn’t really do what I want.
So I asked around a bit on IRC and got pointed to: www.opensourcecms.com
This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.
The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.
Way rad. I’m going to have to spend some time here.
Run out of graph paper? Got a printer? No need to run to the store anymore. Just download some of these printable PDFs of graph paper.
The Experimental Gameplay Project: create 50 to 100 games in 1 semester. New games every week.
The Rules:
Kind of a cool idea.
