Categories
Blather Oddities

Where is Tel-Aviv?

Over here I found a link to the wonderful map site mapa.co.il; of course Israel showed it to me a while ago, but for some reason I never quite recalled the URL once I sat in front of a computer, and for a long while I’ve been using the far inferior flash-based site at walla. In contrast, mapa is much more like google maps, except, it can be used for places I actually care about, rather than for overseas curiosities.

A funny thing I discovered, while playing around with the site, is how it handles inexact locations. For example, if you ask it for a route from “Tel-Aviv” to somewhere – for instance, here’s a route from “Tel Aviv” to “Givatayim”, it will locate the city at the exact point in the map where its name is indicated – apparently somewhere on Rotschild Ave., between Maaza and Balfour…

Categories
Software and Programming

Geek Tips

Just storing these in the blog for future reference.

WordPress Rich Text Editing

When upgrading wordpress (Hebrew wordpress, 2.3), there can be a problem where the rich text editor doesn’t show up.

First, check if the rich text editor javascript is being loaded (you can do this with firebug, or just view source). There should be javascript files calledtiny_mce_config.php and tiny_mce_gzip.php loaded into the post-editing page.

If those files show up but are damaged, you might have luck with removing bad old locale files (delete the wp-includes directory and upload it fresh instead of copying over an existing one), and scrubbing out any cached javascript.

If the files don’t show up, then check the database. in the *usermeta table, make sure that the user has a property called “rich_editing” with a value of “true“.

Firefox multiple instances

Say you have both Firefox 2 and a nightly build or beta release installed. You know about having separate profiles for each, so you don’t mess with your settings, bookmarks, extensions, etc. You run one of them using the -P flag to specify the alternative profile, like so:

 /home/dotan/software/firefox-nightly/firefox/firefox -P minefield

But you can’t run both at once, and when you click a link, it will open in the currently running firefox.

There’s apparently a simple solution to this, though, which I found on a page explaining how to set up a working environment for developing firefox extensions: setting an environment variable called MOZ_NO_REMOTE.

So, on my (Ubuntu) desktop I changed the shortcut to run the firefox nightly build to use this script:

#!/bin/bash
export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
/home/dotan/software/firefox-nightly/firefox/firefox -P minefield

Tricky angles to consider are that if minefield (nightly firefox) is running, I can’t properly launch firefox (it doesn’t have the MOZ_NO_REMOTE setting, so it will look for a running process to delegate to, find minefield and do strange things). So I need to have firefox running before starting minefield.

I could set firefox to use the MOZ_NO_REMOTE environment variable too, but then (I suspect) it might have problems opening links I click elsewhere.

Hmm.



		


	


	

		
	


	






	



	


		
			

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					Blather Software and Programming				

			


			
Windows Vista – a direct reaction to 9/11

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
Nir on Windows Vista (rant in Hebrew):



If the twin towers had been designed by the Vista development team, they would have been built underground, at the center of a maze, and no one would be allowed in, and those who got in by mistake would not be allowed out. The latter people whould be scanned periodically to ensure that their identity had not changed, and woe upon the poor soul whose weight had gone up a trifle because he’d just eaten a tuna sandwich, or who had lost a hair from his nose.



		


	


	

		
	


	






	



	


		
			

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					Comics				

			


			
Watchmen Movie

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
There’s a blog for the Watchmen Movie; so far they’ve posted some impressive production shots (click the images to see them full-size) and casting details, which are better viewed on IMDB, with faces and past credits (I actually plugged in a couple of names manually before realizing I should just look up the movie). Those are helpful as most of the actors aren’t stars (because this isn’t some fantasy cast, this is for real). The actors playing Nite-Owl and Rorschach both appeared in  Little Children.


Watchmen Film Set


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

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					Blather				

			


			
Dream Profundity

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
So, I was having this late-morning dream, the kind I linger in because they’re the one place I get to meet chicks, although this was about a congruency of people (brother, uncle, Roger Moore) fighting each other as they struggled down a slope.


“Everyone has an Imaginary sibling”, my subconscious mind was moved to say, “and their relationship with this imaginary brother or sister affects their relationship with their family.”


My subconscious likes to offer such two-cent psychological insights when I wake, a consolation for getting me all emotional about people that don’t exist. Its observations do tend towards the blindingly obvious, although this one came at me from  an angle.


My younger brother once did a comic about a kid who fantasized about having a cool and tough older brother to protect him, someone very much like the rock star my brother was re-imagining himself as. As his real-life older brother, that comic made me uneasy, confronting me with feelings of my own inadequacies.  But today I asked myself, who was my brother’s actual imaginary sibling, the rock star protector or the kid who yearned for a hero?


And what’s my imaginary brother/sister like?