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Still Bloggin’

January 31, 2009 in Blog, RealLife | No comments

This just in… this blog, not defunct!

Ya I really don’t blog enough anymore. Not that I ever really updated “frequently”, but it’s been way too long since my last post.

Since then, a lot has happened that I should have blogged about earlier…

I had a really amazing, magical Christmas, definitely one I’ll remember forever. It was the start of a new tradition, and the significance and joy of that resonates with me still. New Years Eve was really special too, and it was the perfect way to celebrate 2008 and welcome the start of 2009. 2008 was a banner year for me, unquestionably the best year of my entire life. It was a year of discovery: I found an exciting new city to move to, a great new career to enjoy, and an amazing, incredible, beautiful woman to fall in love with. And I know that 2009 will be even better, a year of building on the success and happiness of 2008, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the year with unparalleled excitement and anticipation.

There’s a new president in the United States, the guy I’ve been hoping would win for the past couple years. That’s exciting, more so for me than ever before, considering my plans for the future. The whole economic situation freaks me out a bit, to be honest, especially considering my industry and my visa situation. But I’m still very optimistic about my career and my immigration hopes. No matter what happens, the future has so much opportunity, and I intend to seize those chances and make the most of them.

The coming months will be months of transition for me – finally moving to my new city, my new place, my new life. I’m looking forward to it more than I can describe. Yes I love Calgary, my family, my friends here, and what the city has meant to me for my entire life – but at the same time, I’m ready to move on. To move on to new possibilities, new experiences, and to be closer to the most important person in the world to me.

Along the way, I’ll still be blogging, so keep reading. The best is yet to come.

I said oooh, girl, shock me like an electric eel

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Twitter sidebar hack

October 6, 2008 in Blog, Code | No comments

So by default the official Twitter HTML/Javascript badge doesn’t actually let you click-through hyperlinks, they’re just displayed as normal text the same as everything else.

The main JavaScript function from that badge is:

function twitterCallback2(obj) {
	var twitters = obj;
	var statusHTML = "";
	var username = "";
	for (var i=0; i<twitters.length; i++){
		username = twitters[i].user.screen_name
		statusHTML += ('<li><span>'+twitters[i].text+'</span> <a style="font-size:85%" href="http://twitter.com/'+username+'/statuses/'+twitters[i].id+'">'+relative_time(twitters[i].created_at)+'</a></li>')
	}
	document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML = statusHTML;
}

So basically it’s just inserting into the twitter_update_list  (the list in the sidebar)  the text of each tweet, and then a link to that particular tweet with the “relative time” as the link text, with a separate relative_time(datetime) function that just converts an actual timestamp to an ordinal name.

So because there’s no formatting inside the twitters[i].text, links are displayed in the same formatting as any other text.

So even though this is kind of a major design flaw (imho), especially coming from Twitter themselves as the official blog badge, it’s just them being simple with their function – low frills.

BUT, we can be a bit fancy with regular expressions. So, if we add another script that replaces the twitter_update_list with a formatted version (that we subject to a search-and-format for links using regexes), then we can force the Twitter sidebar to have true links.

document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML = document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML.replace(/https?:\/\/([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(\/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?/g,"<a href="$&">$&</a>");

Overall, this shows that regexes can indeed, save the day.

this way is a waterslide-away-from-me-to-chase-her-fuller-everyday

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Dr. Horrible: Act III

July 20, 2008 in Blog, Movies | 1 comment

It was at precisely the moment when I began to think that the final chapter of Dr. Horrible was actually starting to suck that it suddenly became much better than I had hoped for…

*Spoiler alert!*

Read the rest of this entry »

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Dr. Horrible: Act II

July 18, 2008 in Blog, Movies | No comments

So the second act of Dr. Horrible proved to be even more enjoyable than the first.

The whole geek anti-hero aspect of the story is definitely what makes it entertaining – so strikingly cliché, and yet told from an opposite perspective. And delightfully musical.

The crescendo intro duet was great, as was the outro rock-ish tension builder. Harris has a really great “abject dejection” face, and the blink-twitch is a nice mannerism touch that emphasizes the whole socially-inept-genius element. I especially enjoy the visual of him in the goggles and labsuit, awesome costume work. Haha, both Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible remind me so much of Freedom Force.

“The hammer is my penis”. Hahaha. Instantly classic.

I’m looking forward to the third and final act, which drops on Saturday.

over rivers, farms, and state lines

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Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

July 16, 2008 in Blog, Movies | No comments

Oh Joss Whedon, you’ve done it again.

Ok, so it wasn’t actually that great. But for a < 15 min. musical comedy vlog, it was worth my time. Neil Patrick Harris came across surprisingly good (I hate Malcolm in the Middle, for the record, which affects my judgment). Uber-cool Nathan Fillion was actually kinda douchey, but I guess that’s his character. Although, it was amusing to hear both of them sing (Harris – again, surprisingly good). Felicia Day I don’t really find attractive at all, which kinda ruins her hero’s-romantic-interest potential in my books, but she has massive geek cred so it’s ok.

Overall it was campy but enjoyable, quirky but watchable – and touched actual emotions just enough (laundromat scene/song) to make me want to watch Act II when it drops tomorrow.

The inflated-popularity is hugely attributable to fellow browncoats looking for some of that Whedon+Fillion magic to be revived again (that was my reason for tuning in), and although Firefly can’t be bested, seeing Fillion again, in anything with Whedon’s name on it, is almost good enough. The key word being “almost”.

’twas the twelving day of Everfair

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Wordle

July 14, 2008 in Blog | 1 comment

Kudos to Gobi for showing me this cool new word-cloud generating tool, Wordle.

It’s pretty cool to be able to visually express text in this sort of format, and instantly recognize certain key words and concepts that stand out.

For example, here’s the word-cloud for my blog feed (click to expand):

“Like, really?” Haha.

can’t help but think of yesterday

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