licentious radio

Saturday, August 9, 2003
[11:31:18 AM]

Ha ha.

licentious radio is the first site in Google search results for "licentious". We're proud, mighty proud.

We'd like to thank all the *little* people who made this possible. We never expected this honor. We only try to do our best. If we can cause one smile, we feel like we've accomplished something. We'll use any notoriety from this honor to promote world peace and save the animals.

Saturday, May 3, 2003
[12:59:49 PM]
Random Rant on the font tag....

Putting a font tag in every freaking table cell was pretty silly.

On the other hand, it worked. "Worked" in the sense of letting users pick the default text size, and reliably scaling the text size from there across platforms.

The fact that some designers picked the typically unreadable "font size=1" for body text was not the fault of the font tag.

CSS has a way to do essentially the same thing, but Microsoft broke it by picking different relative sizes than the rest of the world. That is, the CSS equivalent of size=2 is one step different on Windows IE than on most other browsers.

Then there's a Windows IE bug for sizing text with em units in CSS -- some users will see .9em as unreadably small.

I'm sure Billionaire Bill's heart breaks when he hears about these bugs that make it vastly more difficult to create websites that look OK on both Windows IE and other browsers.

Monday, April 7, 2003
[2:31:54 PM]
A little problem with the tabs at the Google search engine....

Problem: mouse cursor changes over the tabs, but only the text is clickable.

This is actually *very* bad usability... needlessly tricking people. (This affects Gecko -- Netscape/Mozilla...-- browsers, and at least IE 5 -- windows and Mac.)

Solution: Add to the .q styles (the 'a' tags in the tabs):

width: 100%; display: block

With the width at 100% of the table cell, the entire tab is clickable. Gecko browsers need "display:block", though IE5win doesn't.

When the entire tab is clickable, you don't need the cursor style in 'td' tag for each tab:

style=cursor:pointer;cursor:hand;

That way you even save a few bytes. (Even if you don't add the CSS for the "q" class, you should take out the cursor styles.)

You could also add "width: 100%; display: block" to the style for tabs on the news page (.d).

Monday, March 10, 2003
[11:39:08 PM]
Google queries that led people to licentious radio today:

george bush 11 september speech
what do you think of bush's radio address on iraq
/usr/lib/ipkg/info/opie-irdaapplet.postinst configure' failed
republican voter fraud
greenspan interest rate
Neil Bush
linux for ipaq 3800
Israel halliburton
ipaq install network card
humor radio
emil ruder
CSS div absolute table cell
"ordered list" stylesheet
Interest rate - greenspan
madplay radio
hitler breaking treaties
ipaq radio
George Bush press conference, transcript
ipaq and radio
typography golden section
12 iraqis surrendered march 2003
neil bush
interest rate greenspan
neil bush
"I'm the person who gets to decide, not you."
"download microsoft fonts"
graphics kind of peace
Schwarzkopf france deer hunt"
"zapping electronics"
squeeze breast
usability humor

On a good day, a few people find answers to technical questions, and a few people find entertainment.

We're on the second page of results for "Neil Bush". You can tell Neil is in stealth mode (after nearly getting Reagan whacked, and stealing A FREAKING BILLION DOLLARS from American taxpayers, and having Corrupt Brother Jeb shovel money down his throat).

Every now and then somebody takes the time to say 'hi' or asks a question.

Friday, March 7, 2003
[10:38:12 AM]
If Google ads are so tied to the search query, why did "mozilla html object tag" give me an ad for: "GirlSummer Academic Camps"?

Thursday, February 27, 2003
[9:59:45 PM]
Dave Winer [userland.com]: "Here's what Google can do for weblogs that would be a service to the weblog community -- classify and group them. Give me an accurate list of all the librarian weblogs, and all the lawyer weblogs, and all the weblogs of people who have implemented an XML-RPC stack. You get the idea. They have been able to do this with news stories, it seems they should also be able to do it with weblogs. This is the biggest unsolved problem I see in this world, and I don't know how to solve it, it's not what I do. Postscript: Tom Matrullo wants this too."

My suggestion is use the Open Directory categories -- maybe enhance them -- and let weblog writers self-select. There's no reason to restrict this to weblogs, of course. It would let you establish a context for your search phrase. Search for "mustang" under horses, or under cars.

Google's trick of categorizing news articles is slightly different from categorizing weblogs and websites: Google has a very small number of categories for news, and most news articles are about one topic. If the software isn't sure about one article, it can just leave it off the front page. If it ever guesses wrong about an article, the article disappears off the front page in a matter of hours.

Thursday, February 13, 2003
[4:43:06 PM]
The case for Google for Big Brother of the Year award.

We just mention this Google stuff, we're not necessarily complaining about Google ourselves.