One Shining Moment, that lame montage song they play after the NCAA basketball championship game, is now available on iTunes. They’re calling it the NCAA basketball anthem. You can get the song 8 different ways, with Luther Vandross and Teddy Pendergrass singing.
I think it’s funny, and somewhat sad, but mostly lame. In other news, bring it on Duke… We’re ready. As long as Bruce doesn’t buy that MP3 and make the team listen to it.
Given Marc’s birthday Christmas present, I thought he’d get a kick out of this.
I found that posted outside someone’s door at work. The department probably ordered 500 of those chairs for the new building. And I was wrong Marc - I do have the 10 degree forward option, and I’ve had my chair on it for as long as I’ve had it. I turned it off and rocked back, and wow, it’s like my desk chair turned into a recliner. And my lean-back stiffness was set to about the same as yours.
Be sure to link off to the haiku in the article, and read the comments some people have about these chairs. It’s pretty great.
Brits going at It Tooth and Nail (from Wired)
In short, randy Brits are using bluetooth phones to send short text messages to nearby people for some quick, anonymous in-out. Cell phone technology is more advanced in Europe. The main toothing site is an interesting read.
Guinness and Reese’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups rock. Maybe not together, but certainly by themselves. Also, Murphy’s cards for lunch on March 17th. And it was busy. And they had a great corned beef sandwich on rye with good fries.
That’s all.
This week’s Friday Five:
1. What was the last song you heard?
I don’t know the name of it, but it’s off the Fountains of Wayne CD that’s in my car right now. It’s after the country song I skipped over.
2. What were the last two movies you saw?
Lost in Translation and (according to Netflix) Big Trouble in Little China, although that was last month and I swore I’ve seen a movie since then. 50 First Dates?
3. What were the last three things you purchased?
Three Plantronics headsets for my cell phone. They are all different styles, and the idea is to have one in the office, car, and home, so there’s always a headset around when I need it.
4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?
Watch Big Ten basketball. Laundry. Watch Big Ten basketball. Drink.
5. Who are the last five people you talked to?
Three of my students, Chuck, and probably Nate.
What’s your Friday Five?
Recent PHP / mysql work at work has made me want to go back to the blog and add some of the features I’ve been missing. After a day or two of idle prototyping, I’ve got two new improvements.
The first automatically turns some words into links. So if I say miserable failure it automatically does the right thing. This is mainly for keywords I use a lot and want to be links (like TiVo) but am too lazy to type out a full URL each time. It also works well for friends names (Eric, Josh, Marc, etc.)
The second feature addition is trackbacks. I need to fix the way my add page sends trackback pings, but before I did that I wanted to fix my ping receiving side. I believe I’ve done that. My site should now properly handle a trackback ping. Now I just need to decide how to handle / display that data. My plan right now is to integrate comments in, and display trackbacks and comments the same way. I’ll probably go with the popup route that CK is using. We’ll see how quickly I get to that. (Andrew, I’ll try my trackback to you, but I bet it’ll fail - either because of my end, or your non-standard SSL stuff.)
Wheeeeee.
I’m playing with some new functionality for the blog tonight, and have a PHP question about preg_replace(). Here’s an example:
$string = "Some PHP functions are complex.";
# \b is a word boundry, and i means ignore case
$translate["/\bsome\b/i"] = “most”;
$new_string = preg_replace(array_keys($translate), array_values($translate), $string);
echo $new_string;
Which would output (note the case) “most PHP functions are complex.”
What I want the match to do is match on any case of the word but keep the original capitalization (so that if the word starts a sentence, its replacement is capitalized, but if it’s in the middle of the sentence it’s not.) I think I should use preg_replace_callback() but I don’t know if it sends the original non-modified to the function or not.
*Dave codes some stuff*
By the time I asked the question, I knew how to test it, and did so. I’ll answer my own question.
preg_replace_callback() does pass the original value with its original capitalization, and write a function to look at that and make sure it’s replacement capitalization matches. (This means, and it should have been obvious earlier, that putting the /i modifier on the scan just matches what it accepts as a match, it doesn’t alter the source. My problem was putting all of my replacement text (the values in the $translate array) as lowercase. The function solution should fix that. A regexp to check for case, and the ucfirst() function should fix that right up.
Sweet. But that’s enough coding for tonight. More about my weekend tomorrow.
What was…
1. …your first grade teacher’s name?
Mrs. Muerer. She could have done more to challenge me - I was bored a lot in first grade.
2. …your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
Saturday morning cartoon? I remember the afterschool ones better. I seem to recall getting up early on Saturdays to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
3. …the name of your very first best friend?
Andrew Engfer, my next door neighbor. He moved away before we started high school, and we never kept in touch. I’m not even sure I’m spelling his name right anymore.
4. …your favorite breakfast cereal?
Dude, they’re magically delicious.
5. …your favorite thing to do after school?
Eat. I was usually so hungry by the time school was done, and whatever my after school stuff done. For a while, I also had piano lessons after school, band and theater stuff, or work. But before I started all of those, I always had a snack.
What’s YOUR Friday Five?
I’m 55% dixie. It’s interesting that it ranked most of my questions as “midwestern/Great Lake states” dialect. Okay, considering that’s where I grew up and live, it’s not THAT interesting. But still.
Yankee or Dixie Quiz (borrowed from Deb’s blog.)
Warmer weather is finally in Champaign, just in time for March. The Siebel construction people decided a few months ago not to turn on the chilled water that would make the building cool when it’s hot outside. We discovered this when our offices were 80-95 degrees again yesterday. So, some union guy went to a processing room somewhere, turned a crank, and a few hours later our offices got cooler. I guess I’m just worried that if they didn’t turn on the chilled water line because they were afraid the pipes would freeze, what are they going to do next winter?
Wil has been talking about Hold ‘Em tourneys lately, and it’s pushed up my poker playing obsession. I think the Internet is a bad influence on me. (Leo called it a mass distribution method for gossip and pornography - maybe he’s right.)
I think it was a bad year to make a movie, considering the Academy was awarding the LOTR epic, and not just the final movie. Peter Jackson only made one snide, “it’s about time” comment in his acceptance speeches, so it’s okay. And Nemo won too, so it was a good year. I still don’t get Lost in Translation. I think they’re just stroking Coppola’s daughter. Or it’s artsy fartsy filmmaking, and I just like stupid, fat hobbits. (Speaking of that, Sean Astin is cracking me up lately - 50 First Dates, and now a Las Vegas (TV show) appearance.)
Handin is becoming a priority again. (You might find that interesting, Andrew.) I’m not sure how we’re going to move forward with Andrew’s code, or if we’re just going to hand it off to grad students, or EWS.
I set a Wiki for CS yesterday. I still think they’re a little weird, but growing on me. It’s so easy to publish data with them, and move it around, etc. But ThisIsNotAGoodWayToMakeAHyperLinkIMHO
I’m going to STL this weekend to see my family, and even better, file my income tax. Woot, refund, woot!
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