Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

In an effort to be regular with my content - considering this week has not been kind to my posting schedule - I’ll continue with “Random Links of Interest Friday”. Here’s what I’ve stumbled across this week:

• A List Apart: Sliding Doors CSS. This article provides examples of how to implement rounded tabs by styling an unordered list element.
• CBC News: Digg dumps Google for Microsoft as ad partner. Facebook already has had the Microsoft contract for a while now, and I’m fairly certain Microsoft’s ad business is operated outside of the MSN/Windows Live norms.
• ColorSchemer Online. I’ve been doing a few web designs this week and sites like this one have been immensely helpful in selecting complimentary colours for links, active elements, etc…
• O2Networks Blog: A friend of mine, Dave Aldwinckle, has joined the weasel community of people who write things nobody else wants to hear online. He’s already got some great content online, such as this uTorrent technical manual for new users to the world of BitTorrent. (Disclaimer: EdgeLink Consulting indirectly hosts and helps with the IT dirty work for Dave’s site.
• Wall Street Journal: Hide the Button: Steve Jobs Has His Finger on It. A discussion of everyone’s favourite CEO and his hatred for buttons in user interfaces.
• McAfee Site Advisor Phishing Quiz. See if you can spot the scam sites from the real ones. Most of the problems, though, stem from incredibly poor English. If any of these scammers paid a technical writer to proofread their content, it would start getting really challenging to separate the real from the imitation sites.
• ScoreHero gets new Guitar Hero III information. While I’m probably not picking up this game (waiting for Rock Band personally), it’s neat to hear about the improvements coming in the next version of the game. The forum thread is full of fanboys, though - as would be expected if your favourite game developer paid for a trip to you to see their next product.
• The Math Moron. A Slate columnist, frustrated with her own mathematical ineptitude, decides to enroll in Kumon to be better able to help her daughter with homework. Also check out her latest piece about being a standardized patient and the following chat transcript.
• RewriteRule examples for Apache. While the actual rules themselves are regular expressions (regex), the formatting of them can be slightly different. This site has a few good examples for your webserver configuration.
• TOBlog: Your Rights as a Photographer in Toronto. A former coworker of mine wrote this post about what you’re legally allowed to do when taking pictures. Good advice for anyone who’s gotten a digital camera and is starting out into photography.

I don’t really have much in the way of new or interesting music to recommend to people. Phil’s Thursday posts of random greatness pretty much have that covered, and my iTunes library contains quite a number of bands that are distinctly on the side of “emo“, “screamo” or “god why do you have that.” Sure, there’s the occasional excellent band like Ill Scarlett, and a reasonable selection of popular music (Top 40 radio promo albums), but frankly I’m more on the consumer end of things rather than the trendsetter.

In lieu of providing MP3 filezzzz, then, I figured I’d provide some interesting links that have shown up in my browser history this week.

• Ars Technica: NVIDIA exec to PC makers: Pimping overpriced gaming PCs hurts. Game developers don’t want to write DirectX 10 games because of a common stereotype that DX10-class machines cost over $3000. In truth, you can build a very capable DX10 box for $1500 - but most people don’t even want to pay that. People buying the low-end Dell systems these days are getting an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator that will just squeeze out Aero Glass capabilities.
• CBC News: Massive cuts, fare hike coming to Toronto transit. Subway fares are already $2.75, and it’s pretty much an essential service in the GTA. Not good news by any means.
• Checkers has been solved. It’s now been mathematically proven that the game of checkers, played against a perfect opponent, can only result in a draw.
• The vi guide provides a cheatsheet for using the UNIX-y editor vi. I’ve personally used it for some CS assembly projects to avoid nonsense with Windows/UNIX line endings, and it’s a worthwhile editor to at least be aware of if you’re going to be working with a terminal.
• [H]ardOCP: TFT Technology Breakdown. This forum thread discusses the different types of LCD panels that can be found in flat-screen monitors. I was always quite impressed with my VX2025WM’s capabilities and display: now I know that it’s got a P-MVA panel, I know I’d be disappointed if I dropped down to a TN unit. Another good link is TFT Central, which indicates that a 24″ monitor upgrade to consider would be the BenQ FP241W.
• Yahoo News: Former Spammer: ‘I Know I’m Going to Hell’. Not only are those spam messages annoying and insidious, but they can be targeted to specific users. Don’t buy any cheap prescription drugs online unless you want to be bombarded with spam for them later.
• AlterNet: Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening. It’s like a good old melange of racism, ignorance and stupidity all rolled into one on this ship!
• Gmail Skins: Tweak your Gmail account with this Firefox extension. Still has some bugs, so make sure the first time you save your configuration you know what you want.

Any links you’ve run into this week that are interesting, useful or amusing?