Marques Johansson

Belkin N750 gets IPv6

2012-07-01T17:10:00.000-04:00

The Belkin N750 has received a firmware update to 1.10.16 (dated 2012/6/12 1:10:17).

This update includes a cleaner interface, IPv6, Website Filtering (via Norton DNS), DLNA support (associated with Twonky), and Intellistream (fancy name for better QoS?).

I would assume the other Belkin N routers will see a similar update if they haven't already.

See the screenshots for details.

Comcast and Wells need a time-out

2012-03-29T09:54:00.002-04:00

Did anyone else get a physical letter from Wells Fargo and Comcast? What a debacle.

I imagine Comcast yelled at Wells telling them to apologize to their customers or they would lose their business, so Wells did. I got that letter last week.

And then to rub it in Comcast sent out a letter that introduces the Wells problem, squarely blames Wells, then includes another copy of the Wells letter. I don’t even know if I was affected by the billing problem.

It all seems very unprofessional to me but mildly entertaining a Jerry Springer sort of way. Is that still a relevant social reference?

The worst that can happen

2011-08-26T19:10:00.000-04:00

With all the disaster in the air, I was wondering "what's the worst that could happen?" I Googled it, and the results were disappointing. Videos, songs, blah blah blah. Where's the gloom and doom?!

With respect to Hurricane Irene, I propose that the worst that can happen, to me, is the destruction of my newly constructed house. Insurance should cover that (but I'd better check).

People aren't going to die on my watch unless a house crashes on them. We aren't in any flood-able area, there are no Atlantic tsunamis to speak of. That's it. I've been through a few Florida hurricane seasons, so I feel pretty confident that this is the worst that can happen.

Earthquakes they are another story. I don't feel like I can control those at all. It was nice meeting you the other day, now please stay away!

My final thought on this is that there ought to be a web site that lets people submit the worst thing that can happen based on the multitude of variations of improbable disasters. Such a site could be a real tool in the event of an actual emergency. The site could also relate real life stories (blogs, videos, etc) based on those circumstances and outcomes.

I know there are many sob stories out there about horrible things that happened to wonderful people. Don't take it personally.

The Zuck and Brin beat me

2011-08-13T00:09:00.008-04:00

Seriously? Google Plus just got games like yesterday, and in my first toss I got an Angry Birds shot that places me in a top list with the CEO of Google and Facebook? I realize that the score list is probably limited to the people that I circled, but ... How cool is that?

If you still need an invite click here: http://goo.gl/hjIdO

Javascript Scope Resolution

2011-08-06T00:14:00.000-04:00

I ran into some problems understanding a script that I was refactoring and hit Google up for "Javascript Scope Resolution". The search results were very bad, many were not even related to Javascript.

Please allow me to inject some more appropriate results:

- Entry level examples - local and global scope

- Inner function scope and how to transfer scope through closures

http://robertnyman.com/2008/10/09/explaining-javascript-scope-and-closures/

- Changing context with the function methods apply() and call():

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/scope_in_javascript/

- Simple examples that show how context changes depending on instantiation, this, and var usage

http://zhapu-road.appspot.com/2010/07/30/Javascript-scope-chain-example.html

- Prototype .bind(), ExtJs() .createDelegate(), Mootools .create(), jquery .proxy()

- A lengthy bit on closures

http://www.jibbering.com/faq/notes/closures/

[Release Update - I didn't see any value in posting this, so it remained a draft. I just checked again and the majority of search results are C and PHP related. Blogs away! ]

Begging for a Google Reader Offline mode for Android

2010-07-02T10:02:00.003-04:00

I don't get cell reception while the train is running through tunnels. Please please please give us an HTML5 based offline mode for Google Reader on Android phones.

I work around this by setting my feed size really high (100 items) but then I have to use "Mark all as read" (or not) against a much larger list when I have a few items that I would like to dismiss but maybe check out later. (with 10 items at a time I would just skip that page and come back to it after I read or mark as read the remaining blocks of 10)
in reference to:

"Of course, we know that offline access is important to some of you, and with the wide range of third party clients that sync with Google Reader, you don’t need to give it up. Depending on your operating system"
- Official Google Reader Blog: Spring Cleaning: Comments, offline, and older browser support (view on Google Sidewiki)

[Update 2010-12-01 Finally! http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/11/android-google-reader-app-is-here.html ]

People in PicasaWeb are linked to their PicasaWebs (sort of)

2010-06-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

What's going on here? Is Picasa going to start linking my tagged people to their Picasa Web Albums (finally?)

If that's the plan there seems to be a minor snafu. Every contact (wether or not I have a gmail address for them) currently links to http://picasaweb.google.com/null. [Sigh]

Google Voice Transcribes Baby Talk

2010-03-17T13:11:00.003-04:00

The transcription for this message was "Hello Marques, Hello, hope all's well." That's incredible!

a function for breaking two strings by their overlapping / run-in parts

2010-03-15T16:06:00.007-04:00



<?php
/**

 * split two strings based on their overlapping portion. The expectation 

 * is that string 1 ends with something that can also be found in string 2.

 * Returns an array with indexes 0, 1, and 2 indicating the pre-overlap(0),

 * overlap(1), and post-overlap(2) portions of the two strings

 *

 * @example splitByOverlap("ABCD", "CDEF") // array("AB", "CD", "EF")

 * @param string $str1

 * @param string $str2

 * @return array (0) str1 before overlapping segment, (1) overlap, (2) str2 after the overlapping segment

 */

function splitByOverlap($str1, $str2) {

  $matches = array();

  $results = preg_match('/(.*?)(.+)•\2(.*)/', $str1.'•'.$str2, $matches);



  if ($results) {

    unset($matches[0]);

    return array_merge($matches);

  }

  return false;

}

Kid's flash games don't get it right.

2010-02-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

I had to explain to Lily (almost 3) that computers aren't always helpful after Windows 7 and the touchpad drivers completely ticked her off. Why can't I disable the right click and scroll wheel again? I know I can do this in any version of Ubuntu. (Not to mention being able to change the wallpaper without paying $150).

And what's with designing kids flash games that don't fullscreen into the game itself. I have to manipulate the DOM every time (to remove the page header, footer. and ads). I'm tempted to make a better kid-friendly web experience to show PBS and NickJr how it should be done.

A kid is playing this! All the ads are going to do is become accidental click targets that will lose the game progress (since flash apps don't maintain state once the page has changed - so after you come to the rescue and hit "Back" they are back to the index of games instead of their exact drawing in the game they were in).

She's been using my netbook. While it is perfectly sized for her, the touchpad has a single button which acts as a right or left click depending on where you click. There is no visual cue to this, which is a little tricky to explain, but Lily's got that down (mostly). Why don't they disable the right click context menu in their flash games?!

Then there is the scroll behavior assigned to the right and bottom of the touchpad. She knows that she can scroll with it, but I'd rather disable it because on flash games with (lots of other junk content on the page) she can accidentally scroll off the game. When I full screen the game their shouldn't be enough content to permit scrolling, but there is, and I can't resize the content (using ctrl +/-) because then the flash pointer doesn't track the position of the mouse cursor. And why can't they hide the native cursor? We get an in game cursor and the native cursor, but this is just an annoyance as it doesn't cause her any trouble.

And when she does accidentally scroll down, since the flash app steals the focus, you can't scroll back without clicking somewhere off the game first (which is very unintuitive). She also discovered that my touchpad has multi-touch capabilities and has managed to squeeze zoom and un-zoom the flash apps (which took forever for me to figure out - I didn't think my touchpad had multitouch) - again, this causes the native mouse position and in-game mouse cursor to get out of sync and makes certain areas of the app unreachable due to the max cursor position not being scaled right.

Embeddy or Bloggy? Which bot will let my Blogger account host a Wave?

2009-11-09T10:12:00.007-05:00

If you have a Google Wave account, you may (if this works) see a wave above this line! Because I've added this HTML to my blog post:


<div id="wave" style="width: 560px; height: 420px"></div>

And this to my Blogger HTML Template:


<script
  type="text/javascript"
  src="http://wave-api.appspot.com/public/embed.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  var wave =
    new WavePanel('https://wave.google.com/wave/');
  wave.setUIConfig('white', 'black', 'Arial', '13px');
  wave.loadWave('googlewave.com!w+Co24OsIYC');
  wave.init(document.getElementById('wave'));
</script>

The Jettaless life and times of Marques Johansson

2009-06-06T11:04:00.001-04:00

I sold my '98 Jetta GLS!!!

I sold my Jetta for $500!!!

My trusty stead stopped prancing in the rain long ago. And then he seemed to self-geld at the start of this year and decided not to exceed the brisk pace of 20mph.
A local Jetta rancher decided to graze him on his field and possibly breed and make a stud of him. With proper motivation, he may even race again!

Gum addiction has side effects

2009-06-05T11:19:00.003-04:00

I came into work today and found a group of protesters awaiting my coworker's arrival.
They were clearly upset about the recent culling.

Not one member of those stationed at our shared cubicle space, 60 at the start of week, could be located prior to the assembly of this protest.

Solar Recepticals

2009-05-28T07:38:00.003-04:00

My workborhood has gone eco. Solar trash compactors!

Spring for three

2009-05-28T07:21:00.002-04:00

Here is some evidence that I exploit my kids for my own enjoyment.

Welcome to Blogger

2006-01-30T17:24:00.000-05:00

As part of my continual effort to populate the internet with all things displague, I have marked my territory on blogger with this account. For all other things displague, see http://www.displague.com/