Spotlight on: Wikipedia

Wed Nov 14 21:20:20 2007

I've actually been meaning to put this up for a while, but I found some gems on Wikipedia a bit ago:

Recursive Acronyms

Recursive acronyms are well-known in the tech world, with some fine examples such as PHP ("PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") and GNU ("GNU's Not Unix"). I do feel that some of them could be more creative though, as most follow the form "XINY Is Not Y" or similar.

RAS Syndrome

I love this one - I wouldn't say it is something that has bothered me per se, but I have been constantly aware of it for some time. RAS is Recursive Acronym Syndrome (so RAS Syndrome is Recursive Acronym Syndrome Syndrome). Some amazingly common examples of this are "PIN Number" and "ATM Machine."

List of tautological place names

This is somewhat related to RAS Syndrome because of redundancy. Usually, though, the redundancy comes from multiple parts of a name deriving from different languages. The best one is definitely Torpenhow Hill, which (in four different languages) comes out to "Hill Hill Hill Hill." Check it out.

Genericized trademark

Genericized trademarks have always been something that has fascinated me, although I didn't know there was a name for it until recently. We use Kleenex, Band-Aids, Rollerblades and many many others to refer to whole classes of products, even though these names really refer to specific products put out by specific companies. The ultimate result of dominant mindshare.

I admit that I can spend hours on Wikipedia. Just go and check out these articles.

Back to school, for a short while

Sun Sep 23 13:36:27 2007

It has been too long since I've posted something here, so here are some things on my mind at the moment:

I must say that I am loving it now that I'm back in college for one more semester. It's amazing being around my closest friends from the last 4 years, something I missed dearly over the summer. I get to go to football games as a civilian now and that is also amazing. I have even been enjoying going to classes, which is something I haven't done for nearly a year.

The thing that weighs on me constantly is that I really won't be around for much longer. After I graduate, who knows where I will end up? There is a very good chance that I will be going far away from here for the rest of the foreseeable future; does that mean I will be leaving behind this life and all the people in it? I was able to delay real life for eight months, but even now at the beginning of the semester, I can feel it pulling on my sleeve. Even when everything seems to be going your way, life ain't easy.

California Weather

Tue Jun 5 23:47:26 2007

I have been in the San Francisco Bay area for almost two and a half weeks now, and I must say that I adore the weather. It has been a consistent low-70's and sunny every day except two. Combine that with the fact that we have a pool in our apartment complex and it makes for some very enjoyable living conditions.

Resume Updated

Thu Sep 20 22:26:40 2007

After a throrough critique of my resume, I have updated it extensively. That's all.

Resume Added

Mon Sep 3 19:03:46 2007

Finally, I have gotten around to putting my resume up. You can check it out on the about page.

New Music Lists

Mon Jul 9 01:32:36 2007

I have added two new lists: tricky beats and long intros.

Minor CSS Update

Wed Jul 11 23:39:24 2007

I am now using three stylesheets. The first is a base sheet with the basic colors, font styles, and other stuff that comprises the essential "look" of the site. The other two then deal with specific positioning and formatting for screen and handheld media. Should look exactly the same, but this will make it easier to keep the look consistent between the regular version and the mobile version.

Definition of Irony

Sun Apr 29 04:54:30 2007

After posting a news item about my IE max-width-with-percentages hack, mysteriously the image at the top of the home page lost its max-width functionality. After struggling with the fact that it was the only page with this problem, I finally realized that the <pre> block I used to display the CSS code was causing the page to expand, so the picture had no reason to shrink based on the rules I set. Oh well, it will fix itself when that item is too old for the front page...

Button-Style Links

Tue Apr 24 18:55:07 2007

A friend of mine was asking how to have an html form button function as a regular link. The answer of course is to make a bogus form and set the action to the desired page, but the problem could more correctly be solved using CSS. The CSS I came up with is the following:

a.button
{
	text-decoration: none;
	color: black;
	background-color: #D6D6CE;
	border-style: solid;
	border-color: #FFFFFF #848484 #848484 #FFFFFF;
	border-width: 0.125em;
	padding: 0.125em 0.3125em 0.1875em 0.25em;
	position: relative;   /* friendly reminder to IE to render borders correctly */
}
a.button:hover
{
	cursor: default;
}
a.button:active
{
	border-color: #848484 #FFFFFF #FFFFFF #848484;
	padding: 0.1875em 0.25em 0.125em 0.3125em;
}

There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to achieve this effect, but I haven't seen any that use em's, move the text when activated, and block the cursor change. So, I like mine the best! I don't plan on using it anytime soon, but I figured this would be the most appropriate venue for sharing it.