mekosh.org

One Year with iPhone 3G

Stephen — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:51:26 +0000

At the dawn of the smart phone era, I considered purchasing a phone with Internet access, but quickly shied away from that idea when I realized how painful mobile web browsers were at the time. I made up my mind to wait until a smart phone with a true web browser was available. Enter the first [...]

Announcing: Ordered Thumbnails

Stephen — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:16:01 +0000

I’ve written over a dozen WordPress plugins in the past 18 months, but the Ordered Thumbnails plugin is the first one that I’ve submitted to the official WordPress Plugin Directory. The plugin became available mid-afternoon today, but it’s already been downloaded over 70 times. I’m not sure how the response compares to the rest of the [...]

QWERTY Bike Grips [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:11:36 PDT

Bike grips that look like a computer keyboard. Quirky and cool.

The Xbox Failure

Stephen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:17:09 +0000

On Monday, my Xbox succumed to the Red Ring of Death. I managed to fix the DVD drive on my Xbox, but in doing so I voided any warranty that still remained on it. While I knew that Microsoft would no longer fix the Red Ring issue for free, I didn’t realize that Microsoft will [...]

I'm Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:58:36 PST

"Before I leave, let me say, from the bottom of my heart: I can't think of another country I would've rather led to the brink of collapse."

Fall Foliage (Treetop) [Flickr]

smekosh — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:23:10 PST

smekosh posted a photo:

Fall Foliage (Ground) [Flickr]

smekosh — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:23:04 PST

smekosh posted a photo:

Fall Foliage [Flickr]

smekosh — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:22:56 PST

smekosh posted a photo:

Last day of nice, bright leaves. Photo taken from parking garage on Calvert Street; The (Baltimore) Sun building is on the left.

Fun with Blur [Flickr]

smekosh — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:00:43 PST

smekosh posted a photo:

Fun with Blur [Flickr]

smekosh — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:00:39 PST

smekosh posted a photo:

Media Bias

Stephen — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:19:13 +0000

The vast majority of the news we consume cannot be described as “impartial.” During the past year, subtle or overt bias appeared in almost all of the news coverage of the upcoming election that I’ve seen. It’s disturbing, it’s unfortunate, and it’s impossible to avoid. In what’s become an exceedingly rare occurrence, I agree with [...]

Valid E-mail Addresses [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:29:52 PDT

Apparently "!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`.{|}~@example.com" is a valid email address. Good examples to check against your regex script.

Akismet Development Libraries [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:36:16 PDT

The excellent Akismet spam blocker for WordPress has been ported to libraries and classes for Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby to be used outside of WordPress environments.

Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:18:30 PDT

"Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich."

Apocalyptic Photo of Los Angeles Wildfires [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:45:41 PDT

The International Herald Tribune ran an amazing photo of the approaching wildfires with residents evacuating their homes in Los Angeles on Monday.

Palin As President [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:38:29 PDT

Palin's interactive Oval Office. Terrifying and hilarious all at once.

Sad Guys on Trading Floors [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:04:46 PDT

"Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes." Oh, the humanity!

Sarah Palin in 30 Seconds [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:50:30 PDT

All you need to know about Sarah Palin in 30 seconds of sound clips, from the Vice Presidential debate.

The Subprime Mortgage Primer [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:43:16 PDT

A crudely illustrated, funny, yet informative storyboard of the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Polaroid Theme

Stephen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:55:31 +0000

It still needs some polish, but I think my new theme, Polaroid, can stand on its own at this point. Instead of working from the heavily modified templates of my old theme, I started with a fresh copy of the WordPress default template, making sure that I had widget capabilities for the sidebars and a [...]

eval2: Real-time Code Debugger [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 09:47:19 PDT

eval2 is a debugger, rapid development, and prototyping tool with a built-in MySQL browser. It executes PHP, CSS, and HTML code in real-time using AJAX and PHP's eval(). Entire project fits inside a single PHP file.

famfamfam: Silk Icons [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:23:39 PDT

“Silk” is a free icon set containing 700+ great 16x16 pixel icons in PNG format licensed under Creative Commons.

Group Posts E-Mail Hacked from Palin Account [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:14:13 PDT

"Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's private Yahoo e-mail account was hacked, and some of its contents posted on the Internet." 4Chan's Anonymous took credit for the job. Best reader comment: "Republicans read our email without recourse. We read theirs. Fair's fair."

Coming Soon

Stephen — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:29:55 +0000

A new design and new content will be available here on Monday. I’ve been tinkering with a new design for a few months in Photoshop and coding a new template locally for the past week or so. It’s a major departure from the current design, which is nearing the three-year mark. The new design will [...]

The Woman from Nowhere [del.icio.us]

smekosh — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:49:32 PDT

Economist article detailing how "John McCain’s choice of running-mate raises serious questions about his judgment."

Cuil Needs Work

Stephen — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:01:46 +0000

The Interwebs are buzzing with Cuil news today, a new search engine developed by a few Google expatriates. Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) aims to index all web pages, something which Google does not do. Considering the buzz and the potential, I gave it a quick test run, but I was not impressed. My first search, like [...]

Xbox 360 on the Cheap

Stephen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:13:27 +0000

I’ve wanted an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 since the moment they were sold, but I didn’t want to spend $400 or more to own one; I just don’t play video games enough to justify it. I had been leaning towards the PS3 because of its Blue-ray capabilities and the fact that the hardware [...]

Homicide Map on Fark

Stephen — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:55:52 +0000

The Baltimore Homicide Map I built in June at baltimoresun.com landed on Fark.com today. There was a significant boost in traffic to the map (ten times the daily average in the two hours after Fark posted the link) and some interesting/funny comments about the state of crime in Baltimore. Update: The map also appeared on MetaFilter [...]

Jumping the Shark

Stephen — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:31:17 +0000

It all stems back to a faulty thermometer. I’ve liked pet fish for as long as I can remember, but I’m appallingly bad at keeping them alive. Growing up, I had serious allergies so a dog was out of the question; I kept tropical fish instead. At some point, my fish started dying—one fish every few [...]