C-SPAN Podcasts: C-SPAN is now offering podcasts of some of its most popular programs.

After some hacking and slashing (and knowing eventually it’ll become some sort of necessity for someone) I put together another Vanilla extension. This one lets you choose a Google AdSense ad unit to display in the panel section of your Vanilla-based forum.

Google Ads Extension (v0.1)

MochiKit - A lightweight Javascript library

MochiKit is a highly documented and well tested, suite of JavaScript libraries that will help you get shit done, fast. We took all the good ideas we could find from our Python, Objective-C, etc. experience and adapted it to the crazy world of JavaScript.[…]

We build real applications with this thing. So even though development can move fast, we make sure to get tests written. This also makes platform compatibility issues much easier to detect and resolve than the “guess and check” style of quality assurance seen in some of the other libraries out there. It’s not broken.

There’s a new documentation wiki for people using it (or the Lussumo filebrowser).

If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t tried Vanilla yet, you should. It’s one of the bestest forum apps out there (plus it’s PHP, GPL licensed and totally open-source). I installed a copy for myself and people are welcome to go play with it.

When Mark (yes, I’m going to talk about him like we’re the best of friends or something) put it together he did include an extension to allow people to use Markdown syntax in their posts, but I don’t know Markdown. Sure you can use HTML, but what’s the fun in playing with something like this if you can’t add onto it. So I put together a preliminary hacky version of Textile for it. So, without further ado:

Textile Extension for Vanilla, v0.1 v0.2

Update: Ichigo on the Lussumo community/support forum pointed out a bit of character encoding weirdness which should be cleared up now. (Thanks, Ichigo!)

I guess nothing good comes for “free” forever. Or at least, not until the next crack shows up.

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. has kicked off a new program aimed at severely curtailing the ways people using pirated copies of its Windows operating system can get software updates.

When a computer user starts to download updates, the new program, called Windows Genuine Advantage, will scan the machine to see if it’s running an authentic version of Windows.

Whole story (from Yahoo! news).

Update: It took less than 24 hours for someone to crack this restriction, and (go figure) it’s a single line of JavaScript that disables it.

…I spent a lot of time watching food network. No, really, I mean A LOT of time watching food network. So I can say, without a doubt, that I am happy as hell to find out there are other people out there who think Rachel Ray is totally goddamn insane and annoying.

I stumbled across Appreciate the Cheese while looking up sites that are (geographically) close to me, and figured I too would pass along the link to eight episodes of NOVA for your online viewing pleasure including one with a large section on string theory.

Apple Plants a Seed to Help Raise Podcasting

What, you don’t have a podcast yet?

That’s this year’s version of, “What, you don’t have a blog yet?” Podcasts — downloadable audio clips that you can listen to on your computer or on a digital music player such as an iPod — are riding an extraordinary wave of hype.

Came across this while surfing the popular del.icio.us links and thought it was worth remembering.

AJAX from Devmo

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is not a technology in itself, but is a term that describes a “new” approach to using a number of existing technologies together, including: HTML or XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, The Document Object Model, XML, XSLT, and the XMLHttpRequest object. When these technologies are combined in the AJAX model, web applications are able to make quick, incremental updates to the user interface without reloading the entire browser page.

FiveSevenFive: news and such blog, haiku style.

It seems Mr. Eckard has called me out as part of this ongoing book/reading meme. So who am I to say no?

On the Shelf: between Andrea and myself we have about 90ish books in the apartment. We used to have more before the fire (including some good ones I still need to replace), but we’re pared back down nowadays.

Last Purchased: I picked up a copy of Stylin’ With CSS at Flash Forward in NY for something to read on the way home. I’m still sort of peeved over the XHTML chapter so I haven’t put much more time into reading it.

Last Five Read

I have a terrible habit of starting like 3 books at a time and never finishing any of them, so these are the ones I feel like I can honestly say “I read the whole thing” about.

• PHP 5 : Your visual blueprint for creating open source, server-side content
  I originally bought this because I know Toby and know his geek-fu is strong. But it really did turn out to be one of the most easily accessible, best-written technical books I’ve read in a long long time.
• Firefox Hacks
  My only O’Reillymon on the list. It made me wish there were more hours in the day to be actually playing with all the great stuff that could be done instead of just what I am doing.
• Batman: Year One
  Andrea’s a big Batman fan, and after we saw Sin City and heard that Batman Begins was going to be based on more of Frank Miller’s work she picked up a copy of this and I read it before she even got the chance to open it.
• Take The Cannoli
  I first heard of Sarah Vowell on This American Life and loved her pieces on there. Her book took some of those as a base but kept going beyond what her airtime would otherwise allow. (Tangental: she did a great job as the voice of the daughter in The Incredibles as well.)
• Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim
  David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers (right up there with Gibson, Burroughs and Welsh) and another This American Life discovery. Everyone should at least own Holidays on Ice if not all his books.

Next Round (provided they’re not all just too cool to take part in shenanigans like this.)

• Michele Howley
• Alex Giron
• Chris Casciano
• Pete Prodoehl
• John Riviello
• Andrea Chappelear

…than making games?

Tripods!: Tripods is an online, multiplayer Google Maps game.

Hosted by a fellow Dreamhost user.

No, not that Django, another one.

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Developed and used over the past two years by a newspaper Web operation, Django is well-suited for developing content-management systems. It was designed from scratch to handle the intensive deadlines of a newsroom and the stringent requirements of experienced Web developers. It focuses on automating as much as possible and adhering to the DRY principle.

Just Curio.us: your new home on the web for fast answers to important questions.