Finally a browser detector you can depend on. Let’s face it, with all of the browsers on the market today, you need a slightly more sophisticated tool than just searching for ‘MSIE’ in the user agent, right? The earthli Browser Detector does just that, using a relatively sophisticated algorithm to suss out what kind of a browser is really hitting your server.

earthli Browser Detector

Earthli has a new default style — based on OS X backgrounds and colors. Also, for all you IE users stuck in the dark ages, there is now automatic support for using GIFs instead of PNGs so you’ll get to see all the icons correctly.

Earthli has been upgraded to the latest version of the WebCore. All applications have been upgraded, but only Projects really has new functionality. The entire site benefits from upgraded styles and theme handling.

Common Dreams is reporting in Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil that “at an Asian security summit in Singapore”, Paul Wolfowitz said:

“Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

This is the same guy who was also quoted earlier this week as saying that, in the recent Iraq war, “for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one... [More]”

“What possible justification could we have for going to war with Syria? Oh, I’m just kidding—go right ahead, I don’t care.”

Bombs Away, And Poor Pay by Jimmy Breslin, found on ZNet got me thinking about ways of convincing people without morals that the Bush administration is out of control. It’s quite obvious that a good percentage of the US population is willing to plunk down their hard-earned tax dollars without considering moral issues,... [More]

Congress has finally found something to do; US lawmakers lose patience over spam on the Register reports that:

“US lawmakers finally appear to be losing their patience over spam, with unsolicited e-mail now costing American business billions of dollars every year.”

Isn’t it great that as long as spam was just annoying everyone in the country and hampering our collective ability to make use of the Internet, it was fine to leave legislation out of it and accept spam as an unfortunate side-effect?... [More]

I’m reading The Clash of Fundamentalisms, by Tariq Ali, which includes some great references. One of them is by USMC General Smedley Butler, who served for 33 years in the Marine Corps and received 2 congressional medals of honor. His first book was called War as a Racket, which appears to be reproduced in its entirety at LexRex and HackVan. In a speech in 1933, he explains his position (the text is obtained from Smedley Butler on Interventionism:

“War is just a racket. A racket is best... [More]”

That title is disengenuous. Anyone who’s ever really read comic books knows that comic books have much better dialogue and much better plot than the cheap version of history being served us by this pathetic brigade of fools in charge of the largest weapons store on Earth.

If you didn’t even feel a little bit stupid being American watching Bush strutting around on the deck of that aircraft carrier to “close out the war”, in a flight suit no less, then you obviously weren’t paying attention.
... [More]

I’ve recently written a new message-logging system for my company and wrote up a bunch of thoughts on the subject into a white paper, Message Logging. The abstract is below:

“Discusses the requirements of software logging, relative to the needs of different types of users of a product. Outlines the goals of a logging system with respect to these users and provides guidelines and a set of rules for providing good self-documenting software components and processes. Sending messages and handling... [More]”

I’ve recently written a new startup system for my company’s main software library. The technology on which it’s based is documented in the white paper, Describing Multi-step Processes. The abstract is below:

“Discusses the properties and requirements of multi-stage tasks or processes. Addresses the challenges associated with maintaining and customizing complex hierarchies of tasks by using a declarative approach which concerns itself less with the absolute ordering of steps within a task and... [More]”

I’ve got all of the Bill Hicks albums. I think it would have been really cool to hear what Mr. Hicks had to say about the last two years in America. I think the eeriest part is that you can get an extremely good idea by listening to the albums he record a dozen years ago. You see, he was extremely critical of the first Bush administration, and Republicans and Right-to-lifers and the war in Iraq. Listen to (or read, some are available here at BillHicks.com) his material and you’ll be absolutely... [More]

“More people (4 million) tune in to The Daily Show in a given week than watched Fox news at the height of the war (3.3 million).”

It seems the Daily Show has more fans than I thought. The article rightly points out that it’s Stewart and his brilliant delivery that holds the show together. The reason it appeals is that he doesn’t take sides against policies, he takes sides against stupidity; against illogic; against doublespeak.

“Stewart’s on-air persona is that... [More]”

I was going to write an all gloom-and-doom article (to which I’m sure you’ve grown accustomed), but it seems the war suddenly got a lot easier and it’s become the cake-walk that Rummy and Shrub have been saying it was/would be all along. As US troops steam into Baghdad, meeting “ meeting surprisingly light resistance” (NY Times), does anyone else get a bad feeling? Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but when it goes from ‘laying siege to Baghdad’ to ‘surprisingly little resistance’, either there’s... [More]

William Bennett (former drug czar) has taken time out of his busy schedule to write an article for FOX News entitled Why We Must Fight − and Now!. He presses the same line that Saddam is a monster and should be removed. Right there with you, Bill. The war is justified because it will liberate the people of Iraq. Bill, the US is about 0-for-50 on ‘liberating’ people and estabilishing democracies. Why should it be different this time?

“ The people of Iraq will soon know what Afghanis know. The... [More]”

earthli will stay remarkably (and perhaps pleasantly) succinct today, letting I should not be allowed to say the following things about America on the Onion explain why. For a guide to proper response to the war, see Rumsfeld’s weekly press gaggle with FOX operatives on Whitehouse.org.

For more context and a good bit of history (and to tie in the article title), I strongly recommend When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History, an article by Thom Hartmann, a historian and writer. The... [More]

As a recent ex-pat, I’ve recently been wishing I could catch the Daily Show every once in a while. Little did I realize what a truly excellent website they have, and what relatively unfettered creative license the folks at that show have. I just checked out a bunch of videos at Daily Show Headlines and other places. (You’ll need RealPlayer to watch the videos, but it’s well worth the free download.)

For great coverage on the recent bill given to the American people for the war and the recent... [More]

Did you catch any recent speeches by George Bush? He’s been giving quite a few lately, ramping up for his 2004 election campagin. First stop − Baghdad. President’s televised address granting Saddam Hussein 48 hours… on WhiteHouse.Org has a translated transcript of one of them, for those of you that have trouble understanding the US President.

“For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have successfully crushed Iraq into the ground with crippling economic sanctions and... [More]”

earthli.com is proud to announce that the code on which this web-site runs is finally ready for release to the masses. It is published under the open-source GPL license and is available for download right here on earthli.com. The release is accompanied by full documentation for both casual users and developers. For more information, visit the official WebCore home page.

earthli has been upgraded to a 2.4GHz IBM rack server with scads of memory. Tests indicate that application pages (like those in Albums, News, Projects or Recipes) are loading from 10-15 times faster than before. This is due in part to the move to a faster server, but also because the server is now Debian Linux and can use the APC PHP cache, which gives a 50-200% speed boost as well (again, based on testing). Enjoy.

How are you interpreting the latest news about Iraq? Is it coming across as intended that the US is attempting to liberate the people of Iraq from a terrible dictator in order to bless them with self-imposed government and democracy and must do so in the face of most of the rest of the nations of the world, who are only interested in their own interests and/or are too cowardly to fight? If this is your base opinion, then mission accomplished for the White House spin doctors. Let them know so... [More]

I learned a new word today; it means “the study of flags”. I was pointed to a cool site by a Plastic post, New EU Logo Looks Like TV Test Pattern about an article pointing out EU may get new ‘bar-code’ logo on Ananova. The logo has not been accepted yet (nor is it likely to be, if you look to the left). The current logo is 12 stars in an circle (like a clock face) over a blue background. EU rejects call to change flag (also on Ananova) reports:

“All the ideas put forward at our meeting have been... [More]”

…Harvard Feminist Goes Off Half-Cocked… on Plastic is about repression on campus. A bunch of people on campus tore down a “nine foot tall snow-phallus on university grounds” (Harvard, if you must know). It was mostly women irate that it was “offensive because it was pornographic”; offended because “[a]s a feminist, pornography is degrading to women and creates a violent atmosphere”. Whatever that means. I’m not being flip. That is an honest evaluation of the intellectual content of that... [More]

Death Star Doesn’t Work… on Plastic covers the recent announcement by the Bush administration that it is seeking USD$1.5 Billion to fund the Missile Defense Shield deployment. From the article, on the Washington Post (which now seems to have dissappeared — deliberate or ???):

“Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld described the initial plan as “better than nothing,” saying, “The reason I think it’s important to start is because you have to put something in place and get knowledge about it... [More]”

earthli is now sporting a state-of-the-art browser-detection technology, described below. If you’d like, you can download it (PHP version only, full documentation included), read the class documentation online (developer documentation also available) or check out the source code.

Browser Detection Technology

The earthli Browser Detector is (hopefully) the last word in browser-detection technology. It provides the standard information like browser name and version, operating system name and... [More]

…Bush would be a shoe-in for the next term. Between big federal deficits and cutting programs/funding, almost every state is facing serious budget shortfalls. Who does this affect the most? C’mon, you can guess…remember, he called himself the ‘Education President’ (probably because he still needs to learn how to read). It’s education that’s feeling the first wave of the budget crunches. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes in District’s shortened school year sparks interest elsewhere:

“In... [More]”

The first small portion of the WebCore is documented and released as a taste of what’s to come in the full library. The browser detector can be used as-is and implements an algorithm that is not at all PHP-specific (though the implementation is in PHP). There is full developer and public documentation included (also a taste of what the full WebCore documentation will look like). Check out earthli Software for more details.

What are we in now? Terror-level fuchsia? I preferred the defcon levels myself.. like defcon 4, that sounds good and scary. These color charts are for little kids. Perhaps that should be an indication of what your government considers you capable of. Is there an equivalency chart for terror-alert colors to defcon levels? Let me know.

Remember bomb shelters? Popular Science showed you how to build them. The government told you you were going to die without one. It was all the Soviet Union’s... [More]

I’m still waiting on my next digital camera. Foveon is the technology I want, I just don’t know of any cameras that use it (or that are in my price range).

The diagram to the left shows the technology behind this successor to the standard CCD:

“The layers are positioned to take advantage of the fact that silicon absorbs different wavelengths of light to different depths, so one layer records red, another layer records green and the other layer records blue. This means that for every pixel... [More]”

From today’s Onion:

“Bacon Good For You, Reports Best Scientist Ever”

“ROCHESTER, MN − Bacon, long believed to contribute to heart disease and obesity, possesses significant health benefits, according to a study released Monday by Dr. Albert Gruber, the best scientist ever. “My research has found that three strips of crispy, mouthwatering bacon every morning can actually reduce cholesterol and help slow the aging process,” the awesome Gruber said. “What’s more, the bacon’s positive effects are... [More]”

Marco and Kathy have been busy and there are several new pictures in the Langfurren album showing off their newly furnished apartment. There is also a new album showing their first overnight ski-weekend in Klosters, Switzerland.