“Nihilism is best done by professionals.”
Iggy Pop
Archives for July 2004
Server Resurrection
The server hosting my various domains, including this one has had major issues over the last few weeks, often losing its electronic consciousness for long periods at a time. Hopefully those days are past, as the entire machine has been replaced except for the hard drive, which is only a few weeks old. So, if you have sent me something and I haven’t responded, please write me back. If you have had problems with an account I set up for you on one of my domains, you should be good to go.
I should start posting to the site more frequently, now that the problem has been resolved. Hopefully I can distract you from the work you should be doing every so often.
Some Days…
This is one of those days that I almost wish I had hair, just so I could pull it out in frustration.
No, my beard doesn’t count.
Rest in Peace Francis Crick
As reported by CNN Francis Crick, who co-discovered the structure of DNA died today. “British-born Crick won the Nobel Prize for his work on DNA’s structure, which he studied in 1953 along with Watson at Cambridge University.” The BBC provides a write-up as well: Man who helped unlock DNA dies.
His work with partner James Watson is directly responsible for a vast array of advances in science and medicine. All too often, people like professor Crick are forgotten, if ever even recognized by the public, who spend far too much time adoring actors, musicians and athletes.
Reply Header in Thunderbird
Sarah Sweeney posted a tip to the eVolt list which I have found very helpful. One of the few annoyances I have had with Mozilla Thunderbird, my e-mail client of choice, is the fact that it doesn’t include the date of the original message when replying. So, when I replied to people, it would place the text “John Doe wrote:” before their message instead of “John Doe wrote on July 28, 2004:”. Sarah’s tip describes how to easily modify that reply header to list whatever you so desire, all you need to do is add the following code to your user.js:
// Change the reply header
// 0 - No Reply-Text
// 1 - "[Author] wrote:"
// 2 - "On [date] [author] wrote:"
// 3 - User-defined reply header. Use the prefs below in conjuction
// with this:
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", 3);
// If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following
// prefs.
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s wrote");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " ");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "on %s");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":");
// The end result will be [authorwrote][separator][ondate][colon]
Make sure that you are not running Thunderbird while making these changes. One note, if you don’t have a user.js file in your profile folder, create one as a blank text file and place this code in it.
Group Warns DVRs Endangered
Wired has a good story covering the fight against the FCC’s broadcast flag mandate [PDF] which would limit future video technology and put the rights of the television watcher (us) thoroughly in the control of the media industry: Group Warns DVRs Endangered. Read my previous post for more information about the DTV Liberation Front.