dsandler.org

I got an email this morning asking for help with ds-sleight.js. I subsequently discovered that Google didn’t know anything about it except what other people have written. So here’s some quasi-official documentation:

ds-sleight is a small blob of JavaScript I’ve been using since the year 200X to force Internet Explorer to render the 8-bit alpha channel in 32-bit PNG images. (You might recall me whining about IE’s miserable support for PNG transparency back in 2002.)

There’s a little by way of instruction in the JavaScript source; here’s a slightly more verbose version of the installation procedure:

1. Save a one-pixel transparent GIF (like this one) somewhere on your server (default path: /images/spacer.gif). Don’t hotlink it off dsandler.org, or I’ll hunt you down and kick your ass.
2. Copy ds-sleight.js to your server as well.
3. Add to any page that has a PNG with alpha:

   <script src="«path»/ds-sleight.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

It even (mostly) works on PNGs used as CSS background-images. Enjoy (if you haven’t already)!

Hmm. My trusty PBG4’s fan has started, er, um, groaning. Grumbling. Grinding. It makes the noise for a second or two and then stops for a while (seconds to minutes to hours). Occasionally it keeps on grinding for 10–20 seconds or so.

Want to hear? Turn your speakers down first, though. It’s loud. Of course, the PowerBook’s microphone is right next to the fan, so even the normal, quiescent purring (audible at the end of the recording) sounds kind of awful.

Houston has apparently moved to a “hurricane? what hurricane?” posture now that Dean’s trajectory has leveled off and will be taking it far south of us. Oh, well.

The funny thing about lightning is that even if it strikes twice in the same place, you don’t get any advance warning. You’re pretty much equally equipped for the second shock as the first; rationally, you can’t obsess over it.

Not so with hurricanes.

Before yesterday I hadn’t been watching local news or reading the paper, so my knowledge of the impending arrival in south Texas of Hurricane Dean was largely clinical. Where is the cone? Yes, we’re likely to be on the dirty side, even if it makes landfall at the border. Oh, but not until next week. Well, we’re likely to have more rain.

You might recall that the last time we had a hurricane hit near H-town, E and I chose early on to shelter in place. Other Houstonites didn’t, and—as you may have seen on the news—turned a greatly diminshed natural disaster into a highly amplified unnatural one.

Weather Underground 5-day forecast for Dean (latest).

So you’d think that, two years later, faced with a similar storm situation, this town’s hard-bitten residents would be composed, nonchalant, almost blasé. Oh, well, sure, there’s a hurricane, but I don’t live in the hundred-year floodplain, and my house has hurricane clips and a sturdy roof. A run on the grocery stores and gas stations isn’t warranted. We’re likely to have more rain.

My first clue that this was not the case appeared overhead as I drove on the highway yesterday. The looming traffic bulletin (and Amber-alert) signboard blinked rapidly between the following admonishments:

Anecdotal reports indicate that, indeed, lines are forming at gas stations, and supermarket shelves are starting to empty as well. Houston is whipping into a hurricane frenzy. The newspapers attempt to calmly prepare the public while local news anchors, giddy to discuss possible local death instead of recent local death, turn to their SUPER EXTREME WEATHER ASSAULT TEAM to wonder breathlessly about what might be in store and what you should do to prepare for the worst!

We are living in H-town. Hurricanetown.

E points out that all this activity could actually be a really good sign: Houstonians, once bitten, might be shy of evacuation and will hunker down until the storm has passed, armed with flashlights and fresh water and so on. They might even realize that it was the exodus, not the storm, that caused all the damage last time.

We shall see.

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[Afterword: O-Week (see also) starts today on the Rice campus, and when I go to work tomorrow morning I’m quite sure that instead of the usual anthems (Ride of the Valkyries, Back in Black, etc.) I expect to hear the residents of SRC bellowing the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” from their 14th-story Klipsch stacks.]

Looking at Amazon’s UK bestseller list I saw the above: apparently there exists an “Adult Edition” of the Harry Potter series. Finally, a version in which the reader does not have to undertake the mental effort of silently rewriting each occurence of “wand”.

I’m back. I tried using Twitter, I really did, but thumb-typing snarky updates on my phone is painful, and 802.11 service was spotty. (Clearly, this is a way of communicating that was made for the iPhone.)

What’s more, there wasn’t really a lot to be snarky about, at least not a lot that fits into 140 chars. To wit:

I’m traveling for a couple of days for a workshop, so expect even less frequent updates here (but it’s as good an excuse as any to start up my Twitter stream again).

A little lazyweb question, though, before I go. I like to carry a selection of my writing instruments with me, but air travel poses a bit of a problem for the fountain pens. I’ve read various places that you should have your FPs either totally full or totally empty to minimize the impact that changing cabin pressure has on the chambered ink. Yet, somehow I always seem to end up with at least one pen that gets a little over-excited and has an accident. My solution has been to always stuff the FPs into a Ziploc inside my pencil bag to contain any leakage, and then clean things up after I arrive.

Short of ditching the fountain pens, is there some trick I’m unaware of for keeping things dry? (I suppose I could carry only cartridge pens and then load them when I get to my destination, but I’ll still have issues on the way back.)