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User Journal

Journal Journal: Magnetic Cell Phone Docks 6

Journal by chill

Just a short note. I picked up an Air Dock back when their Indigogo campaign was under way. I have now had this thing for a little over a year.

In general it works fine and does exactly what it says. I use the CD-mount, which has a nice picture down on this page.

The one flaw with that mount is the bolt and nut used to tighten it are fairly large, and extend beneath the mount. On DIN I sized radios, with the CD slot on top of the unit, the nut blocks the view of the display.

The one other thing I have discovered is that after a year of use, it has magnetized my phone! The Nexus 5 comes with small metal plates built in to the back to allow for the native use of devices like this. After all this time they have become magnetized, and that totally screws up the internal compass.

Now any time I start the compass app it complains the magnetic field strength is way too strong and it doesn't give accurate readings.

To be clear, this happens when the device is undocked and I'm walking around.

My next dock will be non-magnetic, as I do sometimes use the compass.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Texas 2, ISIS 0 4

Journal by RailGunner
Texas 2, ISIS 0

Nice shooting, Officer.

And considering (statistically) people with CHL's are even better shots than police, and that there's over 2 million CHL holders in Texas....

The old saying is true: Don't Mess With Texas
User Journal

Journal Journal: Gun Fail of the week

Journal by damn_registrars
Safe gun storage does not include leaving your loaded and unlocked weapon rolled up in the sheets of the bed where your two year old is playing .

The 2-year-old boy who used a family gun to accidentally shoot himself in the face on Thursday night was in stable but critical condition on Friday morning, according to Peoria police.

Detectives said the gun belongs to the boy's father, who was not home at the time. Preliminary investigation indicated that the gun was rolled up in sheets on the master bedroom bed.

And, as usual:

no criminal charges are pending at this time, police said.
User Journal

Journal Journal: How to make "mobile-friendly" web pages 3

Journal by mcgrew

I finally got the full texts of Nobots and Mars, Ho! to display well on a phone. My thanks to Google for showing me how, even if the way they present the information is more like trial and error, but it's actually easy once you jump through all their hoops. I'll make it easy.

First, you need to make sure it will fit on a phone's screen. I've been preaching for years that it's stupid to use absolute values, except with images; if you don't tell the browser the image size and you are using style sheets, your visitors will be playing that annoying "click the link before it moves again" game.

Some of you folks who studied this in college should demand your tuition be refunded, because they obviously didn't teach this.

Giving tables, divs, and such absolute values almost assures that some of your visitors will have that incredibly annoying and unprofessional horizontal scroll (*cough* slashdot *cough*).

None of the elements (images, divs, etc) can be more than 320 pixels wide, and you need to tell the browser to make it fit on a screen. To do this, add this meta tag to your page's head:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Next, you need to make sure the text is large enough to read without double tapping. The <p> tag does this:

<p {min-height: 16px}>

This needs to be placed after the <body> tag and before anything having to do with text.

To test it, just pull the page up on your phone. If it scrolls sideways, you need to work on it.

If you're worried about your Google pagerank, Google has a "mobile friendly test" here. If you flunk, well, when Google says "jump"...

My main index page fails their test. To make it pass the test I would have to ruin the desktop/tablet design. As it is now, the text is readably large on a phone but it has a sideways scroll, which is tiny if you hold the phone sideways, and I added a link at the very start of the page to a version that will pass Google's test, looks fine on a phone, not bad on a tablet but looks like excrement on a computer. The main index works fine on a tablet, since I've made it as "mobile-friendly" as possible.

I'd have it redirect if it saw Android or iOS, but it's been fifteen years since I've done that and I've forgotten how.
User Journal

Journal Journal: President Jarrett really should teach her no-talent rodeo clown to lie better

Journal by smittyoneeach
IowaHawk:
WH: historically cold winter to blame for weak GDP
WH: we're having hottest year in history

I'm not really ashamed of my country, but #OccupyResoluteDesk is a total piece of work. To say nothing of his sycophants littering this site.
The real question is whether President Jarrett can submarine Her Majesty enough to allow running Michelle, so that President Jarrett can hold power for another 8 years.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Chronicle: Sample Merchandise Sale (2)

Journal by Chacham

After last year's Sample Sale i was very excited to go to this year's. It was $10 promptly asked for at the door, and no real $1 table.

I got:

The canary was $20, the bag $5, All the rest went for $10 each. Had i realized what these were, i would have skipped the Toystate wired(!!) car, and just bought more of the Kyoshos. I really did not give the boxes the attention they deserved.

--

"Plain Old Text" doesn't seem to like HTML anymore. </LI> elements are being treated like new <LI> elements. A blank line after <OL> is treated the same way. The new guys just like breaking stuff, don't they.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Journal Journal: Arm the teachers? 6

Journal by damn_registrars
We recently had a school shooting in Washington state where the (student) shooter was stopped after firing but before hurting anyone. He was indeed stopped by a teacher from that school.

Did the teacher draw a weapon and send lead flying down the hallway? No. The teacher tackled the boy to disarm him. The school principal also helped to hold down the student until police arrived.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Chronicle: New glasses and contacts (2)

Journal by Chacham

I have tried two more brands of contacts, both hydrogel and toric, with little success. The first pair had the right eye not so bad, but the left was blurry. Ultimately, my appointment was for Sunday, and when i was late i received a phone call. Oops! I guess i've been relying on those reminder calls a bit too much.

He looked at them and they seemed ok, though he caught the left contact being off (rotationally). He mentioned he could correct for it by getting me a lens that would (mostly) work at that rotation, but it sounded a bit to risky. Math is good and all that, but it sounds risky to rely on the contact being off.

So, second pair. That was weird. When the light was on i saw better. And, he didn't see anything wrong when shining the light in my eye. Ostensibly, when my pupils dilated, the contact moved and my vision was worse. I was able to see that difference easily. Ultimately, i was seeing double vision on that second pair, with a shadow of each letter to the right, slightly up. I thought i was funny when i could position my head at the right angle (no pun intended) to see the letters without the shadow to the side.

He had one lens from the third pair, the other being on order. It was no better.

He said i was the worst case he had ever come across. Aside from being happy about the title, it looks like contacts are not for me. He said maybe there is a curvature of my eye too slight for the machine to pick up. Or, possibly, all the contacts had defects. Whatever the case, he suggested i was unlikely to find a good pair, and we agreed that i would just give up. I know the doctor from the community, and i trust his judgement. I'll just have to suffice at feeling special. :)
User Journal

Journal Journal: For "Lying with flair and abandon" values of "some mistakes"

Journal by smittyoneeach
Clinton Foundation admits making mistakes on taxes. Do. Tell.
I pretty much think every utterance from a Clinton is at least corrupted, if not mostly a bucket of lies.
In response to Barabara Hudson's JE, I should have also said that, sure, Schweitzer is peddling a book, and has a history of selling books with heavy claims. To address d_r's inevitable accusation, I'm not saying that we should take Baltimore-style action outside of a proper legal proceeding.
Restated, just because Her Majesty uses the Rule of Law like a chamber pot is no excuse to join her degeneracy.
Rather, there should be support for actual reform.
Anyway it hasn't mattered Fig #1 these last years. The electorate seems to crave hell. Well, there are people who will deliver.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Sorry I haven't written...

Journal by mcgrew

I have two new stories nearly finished, but I've decided to see if I can sell first publication rights to a magazine. If everyone rejects them, I'll post them then. If one is accepted, it will likely be quite a while before I can post.

With three books in the works I've been really busy. Hell, I've been working harder since I retired than I did when I worked! I got the index pages to my three published books and the "coming soon" page for Yesterday's Tomorrows "mobile-friendly". I don't know why I'm bothering; almost nobody surfs in on a phone or from Google. But at any rate, I got the book Triplanetary and the first two chapters of Mars, Ho "mobile friendly" as well. The Time Machine is next; the epub versions of my books are better than the HTML versions, on a phone, anyway. Twain, Dickens, and God are going to be mobile-hostile for quite a while because of all the artwork in them.

I couldn't make the main index "mobile friendly" without making it look like crap on a computer screen, so I made a copy "mobile friendly", posted it as mobile.html and added a link from the main index.

Site stats say Google has spidered, so I tried to find Mars, Ho!" by googling on the phone. Nothing but Marsho Medical Group, Andy Weir's The Martian, and a facebook page for someone named Mars Ho. Googling "Mars, Ho! novel" did bring up Amazon's e'book copy halfway through the page.

"Mars, Ho! mcgrew" brought up Amazon's e'book first, followed by the mobile-hostile main index, THEN the actual Mars, Ho! index which IS "mobile friendly" (it passed their test). And I thought "mobile friendly" was supposed to raise your ranks? What's up, Google?

The second copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows came yesterday. I didn't expect until the day after tomorrow. I went through it twice yesterday and it's almost ready; there is still a little work before it's published, but it won't be long.

It's a really nice book, with stories by Isaac Asimov, John W Campbell, Murray Leinster, Frederik Pohl, Neil R Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, A. E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Phillip K Dick, Frank Herbert, James Blish, Lester del Rey, and Jerome Bixby. Covers of the magazines they appeared in are shown, with short biographies and photos of the authors. It's also well-illustrated with illustrations from the original magazines.

Random Scribblings: Junk I've littered the internet with for two decades will probably be next year.

Oh, how do you like my new shirt?
User Journal

Journal Journal: Neglected Slashdot Feature: Message when friend posts JE 7

Journal by damn_registrars
It seems that some people might not be familiar with this function, so I thought I'd mention it as I find it useful. Slashdot can send you a message when someone on your friends list posts a Journal Entry (JE). This feature is under "Message" in the "User Preferences" settings. If slashdot renders as oddly in your browser as it does in mine, you now get to User Preferences by clicking the icon that looks like a 6-toothed gear that should be near your name in a small panel on the front page. Then once that is open, find the "Messages" settings (in my case it is the last link on the right). Scroll about half-way down until you see Journal Entry by Friend. In there, you'll see several options
  • No Messages
  • E-Mail
  • Web
  • AIM
  • REST API

I find the Web option to be the most useful myself, by YMMV.
User Journal

Journal Journal: "O'Keefe takes his case against John Doe to U.S. Supreme Court" 30

Journal by smittyoneeach

As promised, Eric O'Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth are taking their First Amendment fight with prosecutors of a secret John Doe investigation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I guess our favorite Pavlovian degenerate will claim this is just a stunt, there's no "there" there, and it doesn't matter until certiorari is granted.
What's the difference between a mallard with bird flu and a Wisconsin Lefty?

Oh, and I guess the WSJ urging SCOTUS to take the case is just an example of conservative media bias, or something.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Rant: Bring your Daughter/Child(ren)/Son To Work Day 2

Journal by Chacham

Okay, first came Take Our Daughters To Work Day, which was implemented as Take a Child to Work Day, now "officially", Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, but personally i consider it Take Our Cuties To Show Off Day.

Ostensibly, the original reason was to encourage the young ladies about the work place. Or was it to let mothers be known. Regardless, this well intended practice was aimed at women, for women, by women. In a sense, (good) discrimination to fight (bad) discrimination. Adding boys to this messed the whole thing up, right?

If the purpose was for the girls, that would mean the girls should be tweens. Old enough to understand, yet young enough to not have angst. 70 years ago, the participants would have been teenagers, but times have changed. Teens are the real tweens. They're young adults we treat as children, regardless of so much evidence otherwise. But, i digress.

Now, it seems the (average) age group here is 3-5. Parents spend half their time taking care of the children, and the other half attending events for the children. The only benefit seems to be showing off the children. And even that is discriminatory. They only show their children to friends, and seem wary of anyone else.

Just before, i heard one mother ask if child if he went potty already. Seriously? This is the kid you bring to work? Though, i guess it lets us see the more motherly side of these women (few men seem to take the option, and the ones who do, rarely show off) and they probably don't want to bring older children, for fear of what they might say.

Next up, bring your mom to school day. Wait, they already have that useless thing too...
User Journal

Journal Journal: Slashdot's Favorite Governor Rides Again 11

Journal by smittyoneeach
Scooby Snack (no-Chiptle division) for the haters who gotta hate my links. Mother Jones:

Scott Walker Celebrates Earth Day by Proposing To Fire 57 Environmental Agency Employees

Happy Earth Day! Today is a day we can all band together and share our love for this beautiful planetâ"or at least drown our sorrows about climate change with nerdy themed cocktails. Later today, President Barack Obama will mark the occasion with a climate-focused speech in the Florida Everglades. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, had a different idea: Fire a big chunk of the state's environmental staff.

Troll level: Grand Master.

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