Ann Oyama Official Website

Inspired by the return of my favorite childhood anime (after Dragon Ball), I have finally emerged from my dark foggy underground cave to unleash a brand new website upon this world (wide web): BayAnime.com. Using only the primitive tool known as a “laptop” connected to the “internet” I have so far put nearly TWO WHOLE DAYS worth of work into it. Yes! Almost done!(?)

YAY!

Any local Bay Area anime fans interested in helping out? Let me know!

Oh, and I also finally got a Wii!!!

YAYAY!

Now I’m off to buy a ridiculous amount of accessories and try to track down a copy of Mario Kart. But first I must transfer my Mii to my computer…

Morphthing.com, another free web app dedicated to mindless entertainment…

Having just got an email in my inbox announcing a Google-provided shopping cart widget just a few hours ago, I decided to check out their demo:

http://checkout.google.com/seller/gsc/beta/demo/index.html

On first glance it all looks pretty nice and appears to work simply as expected. However I quickly noticed a couple of problems that render it unusable in its current state… Anyway, here’s what’s wrong:

- Add an item
- Go to checkout
- Hit back on the browser
- Add another item

Problem: cart widget removes the first item (and any previously added items), and shows newly added item(s) only

- Go to checkout

Problem: error!

Oops!
Google Shopping Cart Demo has sent Google a shopping cart with errors in it. We’ll contact them to ask that they fix this problem. As this could be a temporary issue, you can go back in your browser to try checking out again.

Hmm… looks like QA missed something…

Update!

I posted this issue in their forums and they’ve acknowledged it:

Good catch, thanks

Will be fixed.

So it should be fixed soon. Whee…

Still… it’s such an embarrassingly simple mistake for Google!

… is surprisingly GREAT! I’ve been using it HEAVILY for a few days now and in addition to the updated UI that gives it a performance boost over previous versions of FF, it’s actually WAY more stable and responsive than any version of Safari or Camino ever was on my Powerbook G4 (running OS X 10.4, since I really don’t feel the need to pay for bloat in an OS upgrade).

I’ve been complaining for years about the lack of a decent browser for OS X… that is, one that doesn’t crash every hour… or make that every few seconds when browsing ugly hacks like customized myspace profiles. FF3 has crashed only a couple of times somewhat randomly in the past few days which already makes it pretty awesome in my book, especially since it’s still in beta.

Anyway no matter what you’re running you should definitely check it out:
Firefox 3 beta 4 now available for download

By the way, I’d just like to say that Safari is absolute GARBAGE! Shame on Apple!

In other completely unrelated news… how is this possible?!
Woman Pried From Boyfriend’s Toilet After Sitting on It for 2 Years

I have Comcast broadband service at home and have determined that it is surely blocking my access to the website of one of my clients. I thus decided to contact Comcast tech support through live chat to try to remedy this. However I only succeeded in getting someone clueless who claimed it was a problem with my computer and kept repeating “Comcast does not block websites” when clearly my lack of connection while on Comcast to a website that I have verified is actually up and running and accessible while NOT on Comcast should be proof that they in fact DO have some kind of problem on their end, either a block or more likely (since they do not block websites!) some kind of routing issue.

I even pointed to MANY confirmed cases of others experiencing the exact same problem, all on Comcast:

A Letter To Comcast- You Blocked My Site!

WoW Forums -> WoW Website and Comcast Problem

But it was all to no avail. When I realized that she would not put in any sort of inquiry or request to try to get someone smarter to look into the situation (surely someone in their company with some knowledge must exist), and in fact wouldn’t provide any support other than to tell me to empty my browser cache (but “only on Internet Explorer as we do not support any other browser”) I angrily typed:

Me > This is worthless
Me > where can I file a complaint?
Me > I would like to file a complaint for your service

To which the response was:

Dawn > Analyst has closed chat and left the room
analyst Dawn has left room

It’s almost funny, really…

Having no internet access at my new apartment has resulted in my being shockingly productive offline — writing, reading, and reworking bits of code that I might have a use for someday.

One of my recent obsessions has been with tabbed content. In my opinion, every page offering tabbed content simply MUST degrade gracefully without Javascript; there’s absolutely nothing worse than completely inaccessible content! For smaller, less complicated content panes, I’ve found this tabber script to be the best as the markup is very clean and minimal. In the absence of Javascript support, this method will simply show all content panes on the same page.

However, what I wanted was to have a dynamically loaded tabbed content page degrade to static tabbed content pages that still looked and functioned the same way. A web search led me to the Ajax Tabs Content script from Dynamic Drive. Without Javascript, it simply loads the content pane by itself in the browser window. I wanted it to load the pane from within the template of the original page, so I devised a method to accomplish this by using some PHP code.

All of the original features of the script are intact, including external css and javascript file support… but as with the original script, once loaded they’re there to stay through subsequent tab switches. I’ll have to see what I can do later about unloading those styles.

I also added cookies to the original script so that it now restores current tab content upon reload.

How it works should be pretty clear from looking at the demo source, and the PHP code is used in the same way that you would to handle any static menu and page templates: designate the currently selected item on the tabbed menu list, include the selected external source file in the content section, and add any associated stylesheets/javascript files to the header. To get the Javascript bit working, the link rel attributes should contain the content container id, and the rev attribute should contain a comma-separated list of the external files, source page first.

I suggest using mod_rewrite to rewrite the urls so that the links look pretty and ensure that all pages will get indexed by search engines.

Demo
Download demo source

San Francisco public transit trip planner
http://transit.511.org

Next Muni (real-time updates for popular bus/train lines)
http://nextmuni.com

Now all I need is a Sidekick…

Having been deathly ill with the dreaded sore throat / laryngitis / hacking-cough-preventing-sleep combination, and also having not been hard-core enough to obtain this season’s hottest super toy known affectionately as the “Wii!”, I have had ample time recently to re-discover the wonders of surfing the internet whilst consuming insane amounts of chicken noodle soup.

I am referring mostly to the web comic titled “The Perry Bible Fellowship” located at pbfcomics.com. Surely, you have heard of it! If not, you MUST check it out! It is guaranteed to help you through those miserable dark times of horrible illness.

I also briefly looked for online backup services and ended up sorting through a bunch of “best of” reviews only to find that many of those newfangled Web 2.0 companies no longer exist. It’s cool that everyone’s starting to give everything away for free, but it’s not cool when the free things disappear in a few months…

Anyway I am back home in Hawaii for the holidays, and I made it through the airplane ride here without my ears exploding! HOORAY! Hopefully the warm weather will speed up my recovery time.