(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/internet-explorer-can-not-set-checked-attribute-w-solution)This is an old bug, but I feel the answer should be blogrolled to death.

Internet Explorer can not, via JavaScript, set the checked parameter for radio and checkboxes BEFORE the element had been added to the DOM. So this bug is only a problem for people who build some of their HTML with JavaScript the CORRECT way (not the memory-hole innerHTML way). If your checkbox was part of the hard-coded HTML, you have no worries from this bug. The rest of us, just remember to add objected.checked = ; after the element has been added to the DOM.

Worse still, you have to wait until every element above your element that your element is attached to is added to the DOM as well.

Example:

<input ... >

You would have to wait to set the checked parameter after

was added to an element that currently exists on the page.

I'm not an ardent Firefox supporter and Opera pisses me off. All giants are evil in the end. So when I say I loathe Internet Explorer, it is because of what the software fails to do properly. Not what other software does better.

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/pingpressfm-220-delayed-a-bit)PingPressFM 2.2.0 has been delayed due to incompatibilities with Internet Explorer. Almost have then all fixed.

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/borked-mindy-ed)nI think my wordpress is messing up, the post is live, but not shown in the home page list.

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/future-post-test)nThis is a test of the future post trigger.

(My Original Blog Post: -*http://www.soldoutactivist.com/there-fixed-that-for-you)n
McDonalds and other fast food restaurants have taken to making their customers suspicious about something most of us wouldn't have otherwise questioned.

Did you know that your burger has 100% beef? I know, right? In this day and age, I would have said 75%, but 100% just seems like the big ol' corporates have dropped the ball giving us the screwjob.

Seriously, alerting us that your burger has 100% beef simply makes people question whether or not that burger always had such high protein count. So call that advertising campaign fail.

"110% Beef" is a better advertising scheme because it causes a different series of questions other than questioning the beef. The little tidbits on Taco Bell hot sauce are exactly what I'm talking about. "110% Beef" becomes a funny joke, a sarcastic little flip that makes people feel better and NOT THINK SO HARD ABOUT THE CRAP THEY ARE EATING.

Rule of thumb: when corporations act genuine, they aren't.

Next up is the Reality House minisodes from McDonalds:

I don't really have anything against this advertising campaign. Corporations failed to get real shows to build ads directly into their shows (so you can fast forward through them effectively), so they thought, wtf, we will make our own cheapass shows. Still, I think this particular venture is retarded, therefore:

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/sLnmf) The hurricane anyway. But now the power is back on and the air conditioning is flowing strong enough to cause a new blackout.

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/official-test-of-pingpressfm-220)The training wheels are coming off, and we'll see how the little bugger handles.

The plugin is beefier: 100% larger, but more sophisticated as well. The flat 3 default triggers have been replaced with unlimited customizable triggers. The interface has been upgraded, relying on JavaScript for interactivity. Scheduled posts are not supported. And you can select your triggers to fire only on certain categories or tags as well as setting it to use a combination of both.

Anyway, we are still a bit aways from a real release, but this will be a milestone test.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/r9v)
Live coding is often more effective than safe backup coding. That is, modifying the code of a site that the public can access while the public is accessing the site. Yes, you will rarely look like a retard when you've perfected the code on a secret copy of your site, but at the same time, it can potentially take you longer to achieve your goal. And you might have accomplished your goal in a roundabout way.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss." Chinese proverb (I think). But it illustrates my point. Working on private copy sites is like only going on group dates: you will always be safe, but will rarely move forward in your relationship goals. Live coding brings to the table a sense of urgency and tension that can sometimes be lacking when you need something more than caffeine for motivation. The fear of disrupting a user's experience is a scary prospect for any programmer that gives a shit, so the adrenaline flows and you should be on-the-ball about double-checking your work. Or at the very least, quick to address bugs that spring up.

You will also find that you are running against a self-imposed, imaginary deadline. Working on live code is like walking on hot coals. You can do it, but you certainly don't want to lounge around all day while your feet burn. Fear-based deadlines are so much more effective than calendar-based deadlines it is a wonder we stopped whipping people. Well, I guess there was the whole revolt thing. Anyway, when you drive, you slow down when you see a cop. When you were a teenager, you stopped trying to screw your girlfriend when her parents came home. And when your boss tells you he needs to see you on Monday, you clean your shit up and finish up those nagging projects like you should have. If you didn't, you deserved that speeding ticket, as well as that bitch slap from the father, and that pink slap I would have stapled to your face. And yes, we've all tried to keep going when her father came home.

I do nearly all my work in a live coding environment. Especially on my blog. And yes, often times, my blog is broken. But having a broken blog gives me extra incentive to fix the problem as quickly as possible. Not only that, some of my best solutions come from those crisis moments when a plugin has brought the whole site down.

Bottom line: if you find yourself stagnant or waddling in a boring project, try making it public. Then start tailing the access/error logs while you are coding. Does wonders for the motivation: at least for me.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/r8u)
Surprise, surprise: I read Slashdot. Today I clicked into an submission about Peter Moore, the current head of EA Sports. The end of the blurb claims that Moore said that the iTunes $0.99 per download was a ripoff. Obviously, I wouldn't be writing this if that were true.

From the original article:

Moore: [...] Steve Jobs comes to the rescue to figure out a way to charge you 99 cents or whatever you're paying in the UK.

Stuart: 79p

Moore: Is that what it is? You're being ripped off.

If you do the currency conversion of £0.79 pounds to USD, you get roughly $1.45 USD. That is what Moore meant: the UK is being ripped off everytime they buy from the iTunes store because it is cheaper in US Dollars. If that's not enough evidence, soon after the above passage, Moore goes on to explain some of EA's plans to use micro-payments in their games.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/q5n)
Not long ago, I posted about how much the iPhone 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates sucked. Well, the 2.1 update seems to fix a lot of the issues. And that's good, we are all happy. But my little gitch is how many of those problems fixed were from the updates that were supposed to make those same problems better.

All in all, as long as they got it done.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/qz6)


The power went out at 1:30 AM or so and reports say it could take weeks to come back, so naturally we are no longer in Houston at the moment.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/qop)

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/qnn)


It doesn't bother me that this is a Microsoft commercial. Watching this commercial and enjoying it will not make me run out and buy Vista. I won't even steal Vista, so suck on that.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/qng)
And shot your old man. And slapped your sister around while stealing your 300 dollar car with the 500 dollar rims. You need to step up on that fool.

A friend of mine twittered about this article, Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska, and because of that fact, I'll be nice because she's PrObama.

The offending paragraph:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers [...] that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.

On the surface, this indeed looks likes like the described Iraq-9/11 connection. Except for the fact that is incorrect.

Don't get my wrong, I'm not a Pageant Palin supporter. I believe she is simply dusting off her role as a beauty queen, adding some "no way he tapped that" glamour to McCain's campaign.

It is evident that she is talking about Al-Qaeda. And my reasoning is simple: Palin is just as useless as McCain. Her data is old, Al-Qaeda had lost nearly all foothold in Iraq. The insurgency is made up of mostly Iraqis. Hell there was an article yesterday on this very topic. But the government and those that follow are happy to portray the insurgency as al-Qaeda. It would be downright retarded for a politician to make the claim that Iraq is responsible for 9/11 in this day and age. Palin may end up sucking as a VP, but she isn't stupid. At least, dear god, hopefully not that stupid.

And Blah blah blah to the group of people that said to their monitors, "See?! We shouldn't be in Iraq!" That wasn't what this was about. This is about Palin being accused of saying something she didn't.

Basically, if Palin meant Iraq = 9/11, Obama meant "lipstick on a pig" = Palin. You can't hold up one politician as being innocent, and let the other hang. They are all politicians and therefore guilty of being politicians. A henious crime if you ask me.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/p0i)
Anyone following my blog for updates on my Ping.fm plugin, PingPressFM, will be happy to know that I am indeed working on the plugin. I've got new features lined up such as support for custom triggers and selective pings based on categories and tag. As well as support for future posts and a page where you can view what posts you've pinged already and the ability to reping old posts.

I don't have a deadline, but it shouldn't be too far off.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/pzn)
Or is it already too late?

I was catching up on my RSS feeds in Google Reader, there was only 12 thousand, and I found myself 3 links deep into Wired.com. First, @DarthVader? 11 Fake Twitterers Ripe for a Takedown, then Belly Dancer Turns Sci-Fi Fantasy Into Career, and finally: Clone Wars TV Show Touches Down, Looks Killer. And it was on the last link where my ire was raised by my douche-o-matron.

The article itself was pandering: the Clone Wars is a good show because the people have done other good things. Because Lucas didn't completely undo his good trilogy with the bad trilogy and then go on to make things worse by releasing a 'movie' that was really just television episodes glued together. Over-abundance corrupts all. Lucas was corrupted by success. Google is more and more corrupted by money. And I'm fat.

But I'm not here to discuss the article, rather, the comments were where the douche activity was the highest. So I'm going to correct some of their comments here. Because I want to.

Right off the bat, first comment:

Does the character design in this iteration of Clone Wars remind anyone else of the movie "Antz"? I find the humanoids to be very insect-like in appearance. I won't be watching this.

If you decide whether or not to watch a movie, or play a game, or read a book, or date a Cougar based on looks, then you've failed intelligence class. Granted that Antz had Woody Allen in it, but I didn't know that until I started watching the film. I personally think the visuals in Clone Wars is trite bullshit in a post-WallE world, just like unlimited ammunition is trite in a post-Matrix world. However, since Clone Wars started development before WallE was released, I'll let it slide until the second season.

This visual quality argument is the argument that RPG fans have had to put up with for decades. First with paper RPGs: "How can you play a game with no board?" Reply: "Imagination, bitch. The game is about creating your own fun." Then on the SNES when RPGs generally looked like horseshit, same argument: "How can you play a game that looks like crap?" Reply: "Besides the fact that all games on the SNES look like shit (save Star Ocean), RPGs place more value on the story and character-building than how it looks." And then there was Spor- I mean, EVO, which was a bitching game, to be sure. Today, when a game looks like shit, it is because there wasn't enough money to go around and the developers reached too far. Peggle is a brilliant little time-waster that probably cost a few thousand to make and sure as shit banked at least ten times that amount. On the other hand, when the game looks too good, everything else suffers. *couch* Infinite Undiscovery: a two-DVD RPG that is barely 30 hours.

I said that Clone Wars, both the TV show and the movie, would blow, but not because of how it looks. When I saw the trailer when watching Kung Fu Panda, I said to my friend that it reminded me of Star Wars Battlegrounds.

[...] People need to stop judging the movie like a movie, and judge it like the few episodes of the TV show it is. [...]

So now we can't expect a movie to be a movie? Because Lucas puts 4 episodes together and calls it a movie, we should not only know that, but allow for lower expectations because it wasn't really supposed to be a movie? Well, gee, dipshit, if it wasn't supposed to be a movie by movie standard, don't release it in a fucking MOVIE THEATER.

[...] The target demographic for Star Wars has always been kids. [...]

Fail. Star Wars was never about children. Light incest. Appendage loss. Bondage + Bikini. Slavery. Genocide. Slaughter of children. So kid-friendly. "But Jar Jar Binks-" You, my retardalot friend, are confusing selling to kids with storytelling for kids. The TV Show may be for children, but that is only the latest attempt by Lucas to mangle his own creation into continued profitability.

All in all, Lucas is a failure. Everything he does from Episode 6 on is an example is how to fail. The TV show will suck, but succeed like all Lucas failures. Only just a little less than the last attempt.

That includes the upcoming Star Wars game involving Darth Vader's secret apprentice. Not because the game will fail, it does sound interesting, but because as a STAR WARS game, it fails Star Wars. Darth Vader was not the kind to keep secrets. And why would he in a world mostly devoid of Jedi? Answer: He wouldn't. Therefore: Star Wars game belittling Star Wars lore = Fail.

Failing all the way to the bank, sadly.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/nmk)
Not like you noticed.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/mq3)
I feel the iPhone is the Matrix of the cell phone. The first iPhone (what I like to call the iPhone Classic) was far beyond what anything similar was in most cases. And now we're on the sequel, which not only sucks in terms of the new body, but the firmware is crashing hard into the pavement like we all wanted Neo to so many times during that superman scene.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware is absymal. And two massive "bug fix" updates have only made it worse. Every single application now suffers from frequent lag and crash issues. In 1.0 land, my iPhone only lagged when I was listening to an MP3 while typing in a particular complex web page. Even then, It shouldn't have lagged by sheer 'wtf it isn't like this is lossless FLAC audio, you codpiece" reasoning.

On top of it all now, they took 0.15gb more of my 8gb iPhone (semi-early adopter, yay). You can't call it an 8gb phone when you now have only 7.08gb in reality. This is different than the 8GB/8GiB argument. And it isn't about the fact they are using the extra space. It is that they are making it worse by using that extra space. Generally, when you ADD code to fix speed issues, you make it WORSE. The bloat they added now affects all applications for whatever reason.

Therefore: fail. I'd *headdesk* but I'm afraid the ghost of Heath Ledger would sneak in and put a pencil in the way. And if you don't get that, that makes me sad and homicidal.

Plus, we won't get into the issue of their 'secretive' 'bugfixes'' patches. If you won't disclose what you are fixing, fuck you and your fail. It will only make things worse when the truth is discovered.

"Apple programmer leaves donkey show office party references in the comments of a text file on the exported fimware."

Okay, so we got into it a little.

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/ktu)
ProgTuts has a bit on making a flat accordian-style menu with only CSS. And the menu is nifty, but the demo fails on usability. The "theory" hides the icons for the menu link until the user hovers over the menu item. But icons are meant to help the user visually identify actionable items without having to explicitly read the text.

Case in point: government signs. Male/Female bathrooms, handicap, hazardous, and other such signs are meant to be seen and not read. Icons on the web are supposed to serve the same function. Put a wrench next to the Settings link and a good percentage of your users will find that link organically when they need help. Put the twitter 'T' next to your blog from-twitter section and only the twitter-ignorant will question the content.

This demo from ProgTut, while nifty, should be utilized for a different purpose. Like substituting numbers for the icons that have relevance. For example, if the link was to the forum, the number could signify the new posts since the user last visited the forum.