Geek Thoughts

Monday, 21 March 2005

Fraud Detection

Guess what? After my week-end shopping spree, I had a call from HSBC Fraud Detection Department, enquiring about the last few transactions on my credit card, in particular the ones made in the United States. So I had to confess to my visit to the camera shop. However, there was a transaction from my hotel that should not have been done as I haven't left yet. So I shall investigate tonight when I go back.

Fortune Cookie

I got my first fortune cookie ever over the week-end. It might sound weird to some but I had never been to a Chinese restaurant that gave fortune cookies. I supposed it's just not done in Europe. So here's what it said:

Rest has a peaceful effect on your physical and emotional health.
Lucky numbers: 4, 8, 10, 13, 41, 42

I didn't really need a fortune cookie to tell me that. As for the lucky numbers, 4 and 8 are powers of 2 which goes well with the fact that I'm a computer geek. 10 and 13 are the decimal ASCII codes for line feed and carriage return, which are at the centre of my work at the moment as I am working on some file upload functionality where I need to be able to report the exact position in the file where a parsing error occurred, if any, including line number. 41, I am not sure about. And 42 is obviously The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Shopping Spree

I went shopping over the week-end and try to learn from my errors of the previous week-end. As I suspected on Tuesday, or rather Monday night, I had managed to completely avoid the big shopping malls in Buckhead when I wandered round the first time. This time I knew better. I went to Lenox Square. This mall is huge! One thing that surprised me though is that in a mall that big, you only have one small book shop. A shopping centre of that size in Europe would probably have at least one major book shop and a few smaller specialised ones. Lenox Square is mainly a food court and lots of jewelry and clothes shops; and a camera shop; that ended up being the bane of my credit card. Luckily, within walking distance of Lenox Square, you also have a large Borders store and Phipps Plaza that has a decent book shop. Phipps Plaza also has a great wine bar, The Grape, where you can sample some excellent wine with food that goes well with it.

So, what was the damage to my credit card? Well, I did the really serious damage first: I went to the Wolf Camera store at Lenox Square. It was a bit difficult to find because they are in a temporary location while the store is being extended but I did find it. I wanted to find a high quality replacement for the 70-300mm telephoto zoom I have. Although that zoom lens is good, it is an old bottom of the range lens and it has not been working that well since I had it repaired after dropping it in Mexico. So I asked the shop assistant what top of the range lens he had that could replace it. So he took out an EOS-3 body, identical to the SLR camera I have, fitted an EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens to if and let me try it out. I was blown off my feet! From 100mm to 400mm, the camera fitted with this lens focuses on the subject in milliseconds, even in low light, and the barrel mechanism for the zoom means you can change the focal length much quicker than with a rotating ring while following the subject and shooting in continuous mode. And then there's the image stabiliser. Even though it's not that much bigger than my current 70-300mm, it's heavy enough to warrant being fitted with a tripod ring and that's good because it means the body and lens combination is perfectly balanced on the tripod mount. Even the 4 digit price tag (nearly $1800 including a UV filter) felt justified. So the credit card went into the machine; and survived; just.

Heavier by a few pounds and lighter by a grand or so, I went to the Borders store nearby. I wanted some Manga books that are difficult to find in Europe. I found most of what I was looking for and then came across The Elements of Graphic Design and Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn. The former is a small, well constructed book on graphic design that is meant for printed media but that can be readily applied to the web in most cases, which I intend to do with this site so stay tuned. The second is a historic book about two families from Atlanta, one white, one black, that produced the two most influential mayors of the modern South.

I then went to Phipps Plaza and managed not to buy anything. So to congratulate myself, I had a nice glass of wine at The Grape. Then on the way out, I stopped at River Street Sweets and discovered bear claws. I couldn't resist so I bought two that I ate later. Now that is a calorie bomb but it's so good it's worth the indulgence. Apparently, I am not the only one who can't resist bear claws: President Bush has the same problem. I don't agree with his foreign policy but I definitely agree with his taste in sweets.

Saturday, 19 March 2005

Cleaning Up

This site used to be nearly valid HTML but not quite so I decided to clean it up. It took about an hour or so to get it to validate against the XHTML 1.0 Transitional DTD. Most of the work was around the automatically generated blogrolls in the side bar. The way it used to work looked something like this:

<div>
  <ul>
    <script...></script>
  </ul>
</div>

With the <script> tag calling BlogRolling to generate a list of links enclosed in <li> tags. The problem with this is that, according to the specification, <script> cannot be enclosed in <ul>. To correct this, I had to first correct the BlogRolling configuration so that it enclosed the whole list into a top level tag. Unfortunately, BlogRolling only supports <div> and <table> as global enclosing tags. I choose <div> and enclosed each individual link into its own <p> tag. By doing this, I lost the semantic of a list in the resulting HTML but I could have some code that looked like this:

<div>
  <script...></script>
</div>

Now, this validates fine and the result is visually very similar so by tweaking the CSS, I got something I liked.

Once having achieved compliance with the Transitional DTD, I had only 2 errors against the Strict DTD so I decided to go all the way and make the site validate against the XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD. And of course, I added the logo at the bottom.

I then dealt with the CSS code. The part I have control over was easy: there was 1 error that was easily corrected. However, the CSS provided by Blogger to style the toolbar on top doesn't validate so all in all the CSS on this site is not valid. This is a shame really because the errors reported by the validator look like they could be solved reasonably easily. At least everything I have control over validates, which was the aim of the exercise.

Friday, 18 March 2005

Lorem Ipsum

You need some text to fill up example pages that looks like real text but doesn't really mean anything? That's what the Lorem Ipsum text is for. But it looks boring if you constantly repeat the same piece of text. Enters the Lorem Ipsum, aka Lipsum, Generator. Tell it how many words, paragraphs, bytes or lists of text you want and it will generate some random text made of Latin words that are arranged in a way that derives from a sample of standard Latin sentence structures. Definitely a very useful tool for people in need of random text to fill in examples, tutorials or prototypes. And as a bonus the site explains where Lorem Ipsum comes from.

Custom News

I have been using Google News as one of my main news website for some time now. But it has just got even better! You can now customise it by removing or adding sections. The sections can be standard sections taken out of the different language editions or custom sections where you define the search terms. You can also arrange the sections on the page the way you want. I normally read the UK edition of the site because this is where I live. But, as I am French, I've now added the news section about France out of the French edition. I also added a few custom searches: Europe, Middle East and Cash Management. The result is all the news I am interested in one practical page. With the custom sections, the possibilities are endless: you could remove the Sports section and replace it with a Football and a Rugby sections for instance, so that you don't get the news on Cricket or Golf you're not interested in. Even better, if you're a fan, you can have specialised sections on Manchester United or Maria Sharapova. You have to give that much to Google: they keep coming up with great ideas on how to make good use of their efficient search engine. Because a good search engine is not enough: like any other tool, what makes it excellent is how you use it to bring people the information they're looking for in the form they want.

Footloose

I just came back from seeing the Footloose Musical played by the Norcross Players at the Norcross High School Theatre, just behind the hotel where I stay. It was absolutely amazing! I enjoyed every second of it. It was excellent by any standard but when you think that the actors are high school students, it makes it even better. I do hope some of them take up acting or dancing as a career: they have the gift.

Tuesday, 15 March 2005

Shopping Solution

I seem to have found the solution to the shopping mystery I mentioned on Sunday. It looks like I managed to wander very close to some of the main shopping mall while avoiding them completely. I fact, everything is available online and a quick google would have shown me where to go. In particular, an excellent site is www.Buckhead that lists mostly everything in Buckhead, the trendy neighbourhood of Atlanta: bars, shops, restaurants, etc. Fantastic! I just have to try it all now.

Local Tipple

While at the grocery store tonight, I discovered an IPA called Sweet Water that is Brewed and Bottled in Atlanta, Georgia. I normally associate IPA with traditional English pubs, not big American grocery stores. It has quite an unusual flavour but is rather nice. Once again, it proves that trying the local food and drink is always a winner.

Bottle of Sweet Water IPA