ChrisBunting.com

And it begins…

Chris — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 02:09:41 +0000

I don’t know exactly what is beginning, or what I will do to begin it, but rest assured, it has begun. Yeah.

Photic sneeze reflex

Chris — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:15:47 +0000

I’ve always wondered what the actual terminology was for why I can make myself sneeze whenever I look at a bright light. Normally, this occurs when I’m first walking outside on a sunny day. A quick peak towards the sun, and ACH-CHOOO. It feels pretty good, actually. A simple Google search yields lots of interesting tidbits on this “genetic disorder.”

Just when you were about to lose all hope

Chris — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:23:27 +0000

Scientists have announced that they are closer to solving the mystery behind unpopped popcorn kernels! The American Chemical Society’s BioMacromolecules journal will contain the details of a study into maximizing the “pop-ability” of the corn kernel. Read here for more.

Satellite imagery

Chris — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:24:16 +0000

Wired is running an article on some of the interesting things that have been spotted using Google’s map service combined with satellite imagery. I did some fiddling and was able to locate Area 51 (or so I think). Check out this Wired article for more interesting pics.

Change is coming…

Chris — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 05:41:32 +0000

As long as I can figure out what the heck I’m doing. I hope to revamp the look of the site from the default template to something more representative of me. I’m also hoping to add more sections, and a better home page to the site, to tie everything together. Of course, the blog is somewhat hidden from view, so I’m really just letting myself know that I want to do this…

Oh well, bear with me (especially if you experience page errors or site oddities)!

Major, minor, miraculous updates

Chris — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 03:23:05 +0000

I’ve made several changes/additions to the site. I’ve finally added a calendar, which is using the LiveCalendar 1.6 plugin for WordPress. It’s schweet. Though I did run into a minor bug where if the URI was “http://www.chrisbunting.com/blog” it didn’t like it, so I had to change my site URI to simply “http://chrisbunting.com/blog”. That’s cooler anyway…

I also installed the Countdown 1.0 alpha 5 plugin for WordPress. I’m definitely a fan of that plugin, too. I had to tweak the code a tad to remove some extra info that was causing the dates to wrap to another line. Nothing major, it was mainly to keep things looking clean (to me).

Last, but not least, I added a wishlists page. Since certain people’s birthdays are coming up (what, you weren’t aware!?) it’s always nice to know what someone might be interested in getting their hands on. That’s all for now!

Changes - Round 2

Chris — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:18:35 +0000

I’m loving these WordPress plugins! The good thing is I’m able to add the functionality I want, but it distracts me from working on what I really want to change, and that’s the appearance of the site. Someday I’ll get around to it, but for now I’m just having way too much fun with the plugins.

I’ve added the WeatherIcon2 plugin to show the local weather and other information. I had to modify the weather icons because STUPID MICROSOFT won’t and hasn’t added functionality into IE to render PNG files properly. I changed the background from an alpha transparency to solid white. This causes a problem since my sidebar on the main page does not have a white background. Oh well.

I also added the DonkieQuote plugin to pull random quotes from a database to insert at very bottom of the page. I’ve added the 100+ quotes that I have, and hope to add more as I stumble across ones that I find entertaining or educational.

Lastly, I added some more dates to the Countdown database (sorry Jen). I have some plans for modifying the output of the list to make it appear a little cleaner, but it’s somewhat complicated (for an amateur coder like myself) so I might not get around to it for a while, if at all. I’d like to change the date format to MM/DD, but also format the information in a table to keep the dates and information properly aligned. I think it would also make it easier to read what is happening on any given date.

UPDATE: Microsoft responds! (well, not to me…)

Happy (early) birthday to me!

Chris — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 06:13:47 +0000

What a wonderful surprise! Arriving home today after work, I noticed a package was sitting on the porch. Since Meg loves to order things and not mention them to me until she’s tearing into them, I naturally figured that this particular package was for her. (Not to mention that her birthday also comes before mine.) Needless to say, I was quite surprised when I saw my name on the package. Since there weren’t any obvious clues as to what it was or who it came from, I tore into it quickly and found an item from my wishlist packed nicely inside the box. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a note accompanying the gift, or any writing indicating who sent it to me. My original suspicions as to the sender of the gift proved to be incorrect. Therefore, I’m going to hold off saying thanks for now, and hopefully I’ll hear from the person responsible in the next few days. Until then, I promise not to use it until May 7th!

UPDATE: Thanks, mom! Not only did I get something off of my wishlist, but it came 2 weeks before my birthday!

“The Buzz Behind Caffeine”

Chris — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:53:27 +0000

My in-laws LOVE coffee. And tea. Whenever we visit, and as the night is winding down, it’s inevitable that the offer for a cup of coffee or tea is moments away. What really surprises me, though, is that they can consume these vessels of caffeine in the late evening and still have no problem getting to sleep a short time later. I’m already quite the night owl as it is, so if I even partake in one cup of coffee late at night, I’ll be wired until the early morn’. So my curiosity was piqued when I saw this article from CBSNews that discusses the science behind why caffeine causes the brain to continue working when it’s normally time for resting. There’s also some helpful tips near the end of the article for how to get better sleep at night. As for my in-laws, I guess I just married into a family of caf-fiends… (har har!)

It figures…

Chris — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:07:17 +0000

Of course, right after I submit a post with a mini-rant about Microsoft’s lack of certain abilities in their Internet Explorer web browser, I see this post on Microsoft’s official IE blog discussing the first beta of IE 7 that is expected to be released this summer. And, as you would expect, the first detail they mention fixing in the next version of their web browser is to:

Support the alpha channel in PNG images. We’ve actually had this on our radar for a long time, and have had it supported in the code for a while now. We have certainly heard the clear feedback from the web design community that per-pixel alpha is a really important feature.

Also, and just as important, Microsoft will update their browser to address the inconsistencies in CSS support that have existed for a long time. Microsoft is now leaning back towards adhering to the standards, instead of requiring web developers to include hacks in their code to accomodate Microsoft’s way of doing things.

I do applaud Microsoft for their efforts, but a lot of this is too little, too late. It’s been close to 5 years since the web community started screaming about the problems with IE, and they’re NOW just getting around to fixing it? I honestly think that Microsoft is getting a little worried with the extremely warm reception Firefox has recieved, and now that they are losing market share, they’re trying to play catch-up.