Michelle, bless her, bought me a 3-day run of a text ad in the classifieds of our local paper (for my computer services). I’d put some picture ads into the regular section of the paper before, but we’re hoping that this might produce better results.

Ironically, nothing was printed in today’s issues, nor did it appear online. Worse, the contact I have there still hasn’t returned my call asking about where the ad went. I’m sure it will all work out. Most likely it was just delayed by a day.

As I’ve mentioned before, I frequently stay up at night until 1:00 in the morning. Normally, I’m awake again at 8:00 when Michelle takes a shower before heading to work. That gives me 7 hours of sleep, which isn’t enough for me. (My natural sleep cycle is about 9-10 hours – a bit more than most people.)

Yesterday I had a nap in the afternoon. When I woke up I felt much better than I had in a while – more alert and full of energy. I think I may need to do this more often. I feel guilty about taking naps because I’m at home all day, and I’m not working hard at a job like other people I know. So, saying that I need a nap seems a little bit strange. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Some Web sites use JavaScript to disable the right-mouse button in people’s browsers. Their excuse is that they don’t want anybody to view their source code or download images via the context menu. Their goal may be understandable, but this kind of “hijacking” of somebody’s browser is regrettable. I’m one of those people who thinks that the user should always have the last word when it comes to what their browser shows. (Even if, by so doing, they don’t display that page the way as it was intended – so be it, that’s their choice.)

Bugzilla bug 86193 has been open for a while now on this issue.

Another thing that’s become noteworthy (from the browser side of things this time) is “bookmarklets”. These are essentially bookmarks, but they call JavaScript code, which means that you don’t leave the Web site you’re on but, rather, activate or inactivate some kind of function. For instance, you can go to a Web site with some annoying Flash animation – then “go to” a bookmarklet which (temporarily) disables the animation on that page. One of the best resources for bookmarklets is this site created by Jesse Ruderman.

I just found out that he’s created a bookmarklet that will re-enable the context menu if it’s been disabled by some site. So, give it a try. Grab the “Restore Context Menu” bookmarklet (appropriately enough, right-click on the link and select “Bookmark This Page”). Then try going to this site that disables the context menu, and right-click. Rather than the normal menu you get an alert box telling you the context menu’s been disabled. Now, while still at that site, load the bookmark you just saved and try right-clicking again. Presto! It’s even easier if you assign it a keyword. I’ve used “!”, so that’s all I need to enter as my URL if I want to put things back in context…

Note: This particular bookmarklet only works in Mozilla/Firebird. There are some that work in IE, but not this one. Then again, why are you using IE anyway?

I finally got around to updating my personal history (the column of text to the left of this) to include mention of my wife, Michelle. Partly this was because she keeps telling me that I should include her significant presence in my life in my history (and I’d like to stop being bugged about it) – partly because she’s absolutely right. I should have made her part of my (online) history as soon as I met her. I really have no excuse for having been so remiss…

Does anybody remember this joke? It described the various revisions of the “Girlfriend” software, with its continuing bugs, fixes, and incompatabilities. There was also mention of “Boyfriend”, “Wife”, “Husband”, etc., at various points.

Anyway, I’ve just discovered a different spin on it in the form of a joke Mozilla bug that was filed 3 years ago and debated on and off. It’s titled “Lack of Sex is interfering with my ability to triage bugs”. Having just been marked fixed, it came to my attention since I look at most bugs that have been marked fixed on a daily basis, and report them to MozillaZine’s Mozilla Builds forum.

Here in Burlington, we recently had a new parking garage built just across the street from us. It also doubles as housing some government offices and a new tourist information centre on the first 2 stories. (Additionally, there will be a cafe/bakery opening soon to which I’m looking forward.)

One slight problem, however, is that the city has started posting signs about the “new” downtown tourist information centre, with street signs that eventually direct people to Locust St., where the garage/office building is located. But they still haven’t put any signage up on the building itself. There’s nothing that says “Here it is!” to people who turn onto the street. (There are some small pieces of paper on the door, but nothing that’s visible from a passing car.)

For anybody who lives here, it’s obvious – but people who live here don’t need the centre in the first place. People who don’t live here (tourists) are just as likely to drive right on by without knowing that they’ve passed it.

What we need now is a center for people who are trying to find the new center. Or just the signage on the building that should have been there by now…

The latest build of Mozilla includes a fix for a relatively long-standing MIME type bug that would do things like rename “file.mpg” to “file.mpg.mpeg” because multiple extensions were defined for the MIME type and it would insist on saving anything you downloaded with the first extension in the definition list. It’s nice to not see that problem any more.

However, seemingly at the same time (although it may well have been started earlier than this and I just never noticed), Mozilla now hangs, causing you to have to shut it down and manually kill the process, whenever you try to download a .tar.gz file. Apparently this happens with Firebird too. (It’s not clear if it happens on any platform other than Win32.)

Update: Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that for the past week or so, Mozilla has insisted on “forgetting” that it’s the default browser. Every time I install a new build I get asked about it and have to go through the pain of dis-associating all image files again.

At lunch Michelle instructed me to head over to our local Beer Store to pick up some more liquid fortitude. I just got back and have put it away in our small fridge. There’s nothing unusual about this – then again, that’s not why I’m writing this entry.

When I was at the store I discovered that they’ve “renovated” and updated their display of what’s available. I asked the guy at the counter if they now carrying more brands because I immediately saw several kinds of beer I’d never heard of before. While this isn’t a world-shaking event (there must be many hundreds of kinds of beer I’ve yet to discover) it was rather suprising given the fact that I’d thought I’d sampled, or at least heard of, all of the brands available in local stores and pubs.

It turns out that they aren’t supplying anything new – it’s just that they hadn’t advertised some of them before. This does make me wonder, however, how they ever managed to make any money off of these previously unknown brands. What would be the point of having them in the store? Some kind of Midnight Express rumour mill such that only certain people “in the know” are aware of the these hidden wares?

In any case, this means that I’ve got some more experimenting to do – never a bad thing. (It also turns out that some beer I did know they carried before is actually available in different quantities than I’d previously thought. One of my favourite white beers (Hacker Schorr) can actually be bought in quantities of 20. If these are the same bigger sized bottles that I’ve always/only seen, then it’s a pretty good deal at only $45 (Canadian) should you want to stock up on it over a long Summer weekend or something.

I just made a chocolate mousse pie for dessert. Like most chocolate pies it’s essentially a pudding filling. However, I seem to have fate against me when it comes to having my pudding thicken properly. All goes well on the stove or, in this particular case, in the microwave, but it’s never as solidified as it should be that night when it’s time to serve it (after having been in the fridge for a couple of hours.)

The last time I did something similar (a chocolate meringue pie) it ended up oozing all over the place when served – and only eventually set to a proper consistency 24 hours later.

This one was more of a success, with not nearly as much oozing. However, still not as thick as I would have expected. I’m sure it will be just fine tomorrow.

I suppose the lesson here is that I should simply give myself 24 hours notice whenever I make anything involving pudding…

Typical. I added a comment to my previous entry only to discover that it didn’t work. Something strange is going on. (Comments worked last night.) They probably stopped working as soon as I typed “I’ve now pretty much finished customizing” because things never go that smoothly, and I was just calling doom onto myself.

Checking into it…

…fixed!

Go ahead and comment away. I think I must have made the classic mistake of copying/pasting the source code for the comment function from an existing comment window. So, in other words, I copied a link that had had the journal entry variable already replaced by its current value at the time. (It turns out that all comments I’d made had gone into a specific journal entry, rather than to the one currently being viewed.) I’ve fixed the source code (putting back the variable rather than a specific value) and now everything is, as my best friend would say, tickety boo.