So I finally took the time to convert http://farnorthracing.com to CSS instead of tables, and wrote a little perl front-end to allow me to separate content from presentation. Huzzah!

It has been a metric assload of work (with a little bit left) but the results are soooooo worth it.

Just one fly in the ointment - IE6. My nifty-keen layout works great in Firefox and IE8, but fails in IE6 - see http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets2.html for an example.

Any CSS guru-types know why?

DG

So I've decided to do a much-needed revamp of the Far North Racing websites. It looks like my second tour of Afghanistan may be iffy and I may need to get a job. Given that my website work is kinda my portfolio/resume, it's high time I stripped out the 1998-era table-based layout for some proper CSS.

Anyway, feedback encouraged. Lemme know what you think.

DG

As previously posted I am doing my little bit to try and help rid the world of the scourge of MS by participating (again) in the MS Bike Tour.

In an attempt to raise funds, I posted a little entry to the Donation Page to the following websites:

• Facebook (in a status update)
• MyFamily.com
• Slashdot, and
• An exclusive, members-only car racing website that functions like Fight Club.

The results within the first week are striking. Facebook and MyFamily - nil. Fight Club, 1 pers for $10. And Slashdot - 2 pers for an amazing $125.

Clearly - although the sample set is admittedly small - Slashdotters lead the way when it comes to supporting worthy causes.

I am now attempting to challenge the other members of Fight Club to donate more by appealing to their manhood (or lack thereof) by daring them to beat Slashdot's contributions.

You, gentle reader (previous donors excepted) can help make this more difficult by raising the bar by donating more money - and in the end, it is the MS society who wins.

Help me end MS!

DG

The MS Society of Canada has opened its fundraising website for MS Bike Tour 2009 and I've registered my team.

Help me end MS.

Donate Today

DG

It is hot and dusty, but I'm as safe and well as one can be in these circumstances.

DG

...assuming the wireless is working.

After 13 months of workup training, I finally get to go to war.

DG

J.K. Rowling didn't make enough money on Harry Potter, so she had to make sure that the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' was shut down. After a trial in Manhattan in Warner Bros. v. RDR Books, she won, getting the judge to agree with her (and her friends at Warner Bros. Entertainment) that the 'Lexicon' did not qualify for fair use protection. In a 68-page decision (PDF) the judge concluded that the Lexicon did a little too much 'verbatim copying', competed with Ms. Rowling's planned encyclopedia, and might compete with her exploitation of songs and poems from the Harry Potter books, although she never made any such claim in presenting her evidence. The judge awarded her $6750, and granted her an injunction that would prevent the 'Lexicon' from seeing the light of day.

An anonymous University of Michigan student targeted by the RIAA as a 'John Doe', is asking for the RIAA's investigator, Safenet (formerly MediaSentry), to be prosecuted criminally for a pattern of felonies in Michigan. Known to Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth -- the agency regulating private investigators in that state -- only as 'Case Number 162983070', the student has pointed out that the law has been clear in Michigan for years that computer forensics activities of the type practiced by Safenet require an investigator's license. This follows the submissions by other 'John Does' establishing that Safenet's changing and inconsistent excuses fail to justify its conduct, and that Michigan's legislature and governor have backed the agency's position that an investigator's license was required.

So in anticipation of my upcoming jaunt to South Central Asia, I got to work writing a web-based version of my Excel Suspension Dynamics Calculator.

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets16.html

It's all in Javascript, and it works.

It's also butt-ugly, both on the coding and layout sides, but the intent was very much "get it working before making it pretty".

That, and I'm a perl guy. This Javascript stuff is new to me, so I took the brute force, copy-and-paste approach to coding it, rather than try and duplicate the elegant stuff I know how to do in perl.

But now that it is up, I'm interested in seeing what all y'all suggest for layout and code cleanup. And in particular, I'm interested in seeing a good way to do tooltips for the input fields.

So if you're a Javascript or CSS code monkey, have a look at my steaming pile of shite, and suggest ways to make it better. T'would be much appreciated.

And if you're a car guy (or girl)... you're going to want to see this.

DG

Well, I was afforded the opportunity to write for a slightly different audience -- the judges who belong to the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association. I was invited by the The Judges' Journal, their quarterly publication, to do a piece on the RIAA litigations for the ABA's Summer, 2008, 'Equal Access to Justice' issue. What I came up with was 'Large Recording Companies vs. The Defenseless : Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigations', in which I describe the unfairness of these cases and make 15 suggestions as to how the courts could make it a more level playing field. I'm hoping the judges mod my article '+5 Insightful', but I'd settle for '+3 Informative'. For the actual article go here (PDF). (If anyone out there can send me a decent HTML version of it, I'll run that one up the flagpole as well.)

Tiffany's has lost its bid to hold eBay liable for trademark infringement of Tiffany's brands taking place on eBay. After a lengthy bench trial (i.e. a trial where the judge, rather than the jury, decides the factual questions), Judge Richard J. Sullivan has issued a 66-page decision (PDF) carefully analyzing the facts and legal principles, ultimately concluding that 'it is the trademark owner's burden to police its mark, and companies like eBay cannot be held liable for trademark infringement based solely on their generalized knowledge that trademark infringement might be occurring on their websites'.

So home for a month before deployment, and I have to find a way to diffuse some of the stress and anxiety building up in the ol' household.

Walking through Best Buy, I find that the PS2 version of Rock Band is on sale for less than $100. Niner used to be a professional musician, and I've always wanted to learn how to play drums, so what the hell?

OMFG, Best Game Evar.

We have turned into Rock Band junkies, with me flailing away on the drums, and Niner rocking the guitar and vocals.

The absolutely amazing part is just how well suited the user interface on the game is to teaching how to play a drum kit. I actually wish it had a training mode that had teaching exercises from actual music lessons on it, because the UI makes practice fun.

In the space of a week, I've gone from failing out of songs on Easy, to mid-90% scores (on the basic songs) on Expert.

Back in the Stone Age, I played a little trumpet, so I get what it is like to learn to play an instrument - and this is astounding. I'm actually capable of maintaining a couple of different basic rock backbeats, and I'm starting to get a grasp on off-beats, limb independence, and other real-world drumming techniques.

OK, so there's a long way to go before I'll be subbing in for Alex Van Halen, and "Run to the Hills" on Expert seems unobtainable in my lifetime... but I haven't gotten such a sense of accomplishment from a game since GT4.

And I find myself air drumming all the time now....

Seriously, seriously cool.

DG

According to commentator Therese Polletti at Dow Jones MarketWatch, "the RIAA's tactics are nearly as bad as the actions of mobsters, real or fictional. The analogy comes up easily and frequently in any discussion of the RIAA's maneuvers." Among other things she cites the extortionate nature of their 'settlement negotiations' pointed out by Prof. Bob Talbot of the University of San Francisco School of Law IP Law Clinic, whose student attorneys are helping private practitioners fight the RIAA, the illegality of the RIAA's use of unlicensed investigators, the flawed evidence it uses, and the fact that the RIAA thinks nothing of jeopardizing a student's college education in order to make their point, as support for the MAFIAA/Mafia analogy.

Recommended reading for all interested in the RIAA's litigation war against p2p file sharing is the amended class action complaint just filed in Oregon in Andersen v. Atlantic. This landmark 109-page document (pdf) tells both the general story of the RIAA's campaign against ordinary folks, and the specific story of its harassment of Tanya Andersen, and even of her young daughter. The complaint includes federal and state RICO claims, as well as other legal theories, and alleges that "The world's four major recording studios had devised an illegal enterprise intent on maintaining their virtually complete monopoly over the distribution of recorded music." The point has been made by one commentator that the RIAA won't be able to weasel its out of this one by simply withdrawing it; this one, they will have to answer for. If the relief requested in the complaint is granted, the RIAA's entire campaign will be shut down for good.

Although based in San Francisco, and only an amicus curiae in the Phoenix, Arizona, case of Atlantic v. Howell, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is sending its senior intellectual property lawyer Fred Von Lohmann to Phoenix to argue the Howell case, on behalf of the defendant, who is not represented by counsel. Due to the RIAA's attempt to take advantage of Mr. Howell's being undefended to try to convince the judge that merely 'making files available for distribution' -- i.e., just having them on one's computer in a manner that is accessible to sharing -- and that copying files from one's cd onto one's computer in mp3 format is itself "unlawful", EFF filed an amicus brief in January. Now it's taking the unusual step of actually sending someone to the courthouse to orally argue the motion.