crazed monkey

I’ve decided against spicing up the look of my weblog. The more I look at its present design, the more I like it. It’s clean and simple. Any attempts I have made to add graphics have just made my weblog look tacky. As we all know, less is more, right? Right? Sure it is.

Posted on July 29th, 2002 in meta, site - No Comments »

Those litigation-happy Americans are at it again. It seems that a group of rotund Empire State inhabitants are suing several fast food joints for serving unhealthy food. Consumption of the scrumptious morcels that those merchants sell has increased their weight, so the claim goes. As I see it, there are two main reasons why a person is overweight: you either have no willpower or you have a glandular disorder.

Some people are obsessed with eating, and sometimes rightfully so. However, if this obsession endangers your health then perhaps it is time to sit back and rethink your eating habits. If you don’t, it truly is your fault for succumbing to the siren call of Bill’s Burger Bonanza, not Bill’s offerings of grease-laden slabs of beef-like products. Ah, you say, but what about smokers suing the tobacco industries to compensate them for diseases brought about by decades of smoking? Isn’t this the same thing? When studies prove that a Big Mac is physically addictive, I will be right behind you in your legal battles with McDonalds. Until then, you’re just a fat slob with no willpower.

I will be the first to admit that not all people are overweight because they lack willpower. Glandular disorders exist which fail to inhibit the chemical signal to eat once the person is full, as described in this BBC article. However, like all disorders, special care should be taken to limit one’s diet once one is aware of posessing such an ailment. If you know your body can’t disable its signal to eat, then regulate your eating habits and your food intake appropriately. Diabetics don’t sue Nestle’s, Hershey’s and Coke for selling sugar-laden products; they either regulate their sugar intake or take insulin.

Of course, there’s always the third reason behind obesity: you’re a stupid, ignorant dimwit who deserves to die under your massive rolls of flesh. Yes, I mean you, Caesar Barbar, with your claims of “I always thought [fast food] was good for you. I never thought there was anything wrong with it.” (BBC: Fat americans sue fast food firms) I also include you in that statement, David Ingrams, the pudgy kid at Fremont High in Oakland, who attested “Junk food is good for the body. You can’t live without junk food in your life. Who lives on vegetables every day?”. (BBC: Junk food battle hits US schools)

What the hell is wrong with you people?

Posted on July 26th, 2002 in culture - 1 Comment »

I disabled comments when I first posted this weblog as the W3C complained about an ampersand in an URL to the Javascript source file for comments. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where the <%commentLink%> macro was located in Radio.root. However, thanks to Adam Curry and his description on how Radio works, I now have a W3C-compliant comment link! (Scroll down to the section on radio.weblog.render.)

Look, I know that this isn’t that exciting, but when you lead a joyless life such as mine you have to take pleasure in the little things.

Posted on July 25th, 2002 in meta, site - No Comments »

I’m not sure how expensive this puppy is, but it looks like a great solution to the large and loud desktops out there. Having read the reviews of the Shuttle SS51’s predecessors, this would be my machine of choice if I were to get another PC. The Shuttle series machines are small, quiet, can hold more power than I’ll ever need and seem to be reasonably-priced. My only concern is whether Linux, my PC operating system of choice, will be able to support a Shuttle-brand motherboard. I really don’t need a new machine now and will probably only buy one if either my current machine dies or if I run into a vast sum of money. No doubt someone will install Linux on it, and then we’ll see how that goes.

Note that I said if I were to get another PC. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that my next machine will be a Mac, probably a laptop. Again, this is if I run into some money that needs spending. As it stands, there are other purchases which need to be made and, oh yes, the recovery of the tens of thousands of dollars I have lost to the stock market.

Posted on July 25th, 2002 in computers - No Comments »

After a day or so of diddling Radio, I now have a weblog which adheres to HTML 4.01 Strict and CSS2. Special thanks goes out to the following:

• Bryce’s Radio Experiments for details on where Radio stores its scripts.
• Tsja for his translations on how to make Radio W3C-compliant.
• And of course, the Going Crazy With Macros series.

Now that everything is solid as far as the W3C is concerned, I think I will look into creating prettier templates. This one is OK, but it’s not as flashy as I would like. A few graphics might help, but I still haven’t figured out how to use radio.macros.imageUrl() inside a stylesheet. I should also add a few more content boxes to the right.

Fortunately, I have succeeded in separating form and content. You’ll note that, aside from the calendar, there are no tables in this page. The DIV element has always been my friend and now with CSS2 I am considering graduating it to “confidant”. Oh baby.

If I feel so inclined, I might document my adventures in a story containing detailed pointers on how to make Radio pages W3C compliant. We shall see.

Posted on July 24th, 2002 in meta, site - No Comments »