We've made an update to MemeStreams that hopefully improves the look of the site. There are also some security fixes in here, as well as some new features which should help us fight spam more effectively going forward. In addition, I contributed some improvements to the MemeBox to make it easier to sort and keep track of new messages. We'd also like to thank Eric White for some HTML input that helped us improve the look of the site and Terratogen for some graphics work.

As always, let us know if you discover anything that isn't working right...

(Safari users may find some color misalignment. We're going to address that in a future update. We wanted this out and we decided to optomize for FF and IE for the time being. Safair literally displays some colors differently in some contexts.)

MemeStreams Look and Feel update

Insurgent propaganda video of US solders getting sniped.

YouTube - Juba the Sniper

Clinton Impeachment Proceedings

Gingrich also acknowledged cheating on Ginther while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

ABC News: Gingrich Admits to Affair While Pursuing Clinton Over Lewinsky

Holy moly that is a close up zoom of a camel (see my screenshot above) – and it works for other place on Google Maps too!

Yes, it turns out that you can zoom in much more deeply onto Google Maps by doing this:

* Select a location and switch to satellite view
* Zoom in as far as you can, and click “link to this page” at the top right
* Now replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery

Super-Close Google Maps Zooms hack

This is, quite possibly, the coolest, round-about compliment I have ever, ever received.

Mark Frauenfelder (whose name apparently means "fields of women" in German) appeared on the Colbert Report, talking about Make Magazine. I wrote for Make and my article on reading magstripe cards appeared in the first issue. From the episode:

Mark Frauenfelder: Things like an electric card reader, so you can swipe your credit card or driver's license and swipe them through and see on the computer all the information thats stored on them.

Stephen Colbert: So, so, so, so this is a magazine for people are like in real life, like Matthew Broderick from Wargames.

[begins singing We are the Champions...]

I was (indirectly) on the Colbert Report!

This is what happens when you hire idiots that get their on-air graphics from a Google Search without even looking at the results.

WOW! Just, WOW.
Click the image to see full graphic that WAGT broadcast to all its views.

Livin’ in Cowtown by Corey Spring » NBC Affiliate Gets Goo All Over Their Faces -- Uweekly.com

Me: One day, I will double clap my hands, and dancing girls *will* appear. And that well be a good day.
Chet (to our female co-worker Nidhi): It's ok Nidhi. One day, I will double clap my hands, and dancing boys *will* appear. And that well be a good day."

Paste this into your IE address bar:

javascript:for(x in document.write)f(x)

This can also be placed inside a block and nail anyone who comes to a website.

Update: Null pointer dereferences can't really be 0wnabl3. Oh well.

Crashing IE with 39 bytes

How to list all IP addresses for a computer using JavaScript

Now, let us try to develop a simple script (JavaScript) which shows the technique for retrieving all of the IP addresses for a computer. The entire code for the sample is as follows:

While its been known for over 7 years that Java applets can access a local IP, it seems people are "rediscovering" it. It also seems these same people never heard of LiveConnect, allowing Netscape derived browsers to directly instantiate Java objects. To be fair, this is rather obscure. I only know about because I had a project my freshmen year at GaTech controlling an Applet with JavaScript so this was kind of old hat.

Anyway, as noted this does not works with IE. But I came across this link on how to do it in IE. LiveConnect is not being used, instead a weird ActiveX object is instantiated and queried.

Grabbing local IPs with JavaScript and IE

The simple example I use in this article is an Intranet application that looks up employees in a SQL database based on parameters provided by the user. The example allows the user to enter any combination of Last Name and/or First Name . The application then queries the SQL database using an ASP page and shows the user the entries in the database that matched the query without performing a hard refresh.

This is an article written in 2000 by a co-worker of mine at SPI which discusses using the XmlHttpRequest object (then known as XMLDOM) to do "Ajax" operations.

Dennis loves to tell me how he has been doing it all these years, and in fact, he has. But I like to pull out a slide from one of my presentations:

* Why didn’t this happen in 2000?
* Many reasons
  * Lack of standards compliant browsers
    * JavaScript implementations all different
    * DOM manipulation/Eventing all different
  * CSS support lacking
  * Lower connection speeds
  * Lower processing power

The long and short of it: Screw the Microsoft IE team and Netscape Navigator team from the 1990s. Their petty bullshit set web application development back 4 years. We could have had this stuff in 2000 if they had stopped slitting each other's throats and actually worked with the W3C. I find endless amusement in the fact that the IE 7 exists because of some hippie programmers.

Solving the Hard Refresh Problem Using XML and ASP