The Blog of Harald

My car has a “Kick Me!” sign on the back; I’m convinced of this. Or maybe it has glasses with tape across the bridge…

My _fourth_ interaction with an idiot driver who insisted that he go in front of me, despite the vast, prarie-like expanse of empty road behind my car, almost ended in an accident.

Picture me following close behind the Jeep Cherokee in front of me. In fact, I’m technically tailgating, since there is less than a car-length between him and me. Picture at least 150′ of empty lane behind me. Picture the guy who, completing a right turn beside my car, first accelerates, and then starts “aggressively drifting” across the lines into my lane (without signalling, of course).

I honked at him, to remind him that there was actually a _car_ already occupying the space he was trying to claim. Apparently he is deaf as well as blind, because he proceeded to try to _force_ his way into the gap that was too small for his car!! Fortunately the lane to _my_ left was empty.. several more horn blasts were required before he gave up.

At which point he accellerated again and jumped in front of the Jeep.

My “new favourite show”:http://www.tv.com/eureka/show/58448/summary.html has a products page!

Made in Eureka

I want a laptop transporter :-)

TheStar.com – Cape Breton joins space race

They’re building a private launch facility in Cape Breton, launches planned by 2009 or 2010.

I wonder if they need any network security people? :-)

Kung Fu Monkey- “Wait, Aren’t You Scared?”

bq. Errr, no. And if you are, you frankly should be a little goddam embarrassed.

bq. marvel as cool, well-trained, ruthless law-enforcement professionals — who spent decades honing their craft chasing my IRA cousins — execute their job magnificently.

Schneier on Security- Last Week’s Terrorism Arrests

bq. None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 — no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews — had anything to do with last week’s arrests. And they wouldn’t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn’t have made a difference, either.

bq. Instead, the arrests are a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and investigation.

Schneier can be a bit heavy-handed with his analyses, but I don’t think he’s wrong…

globeandmail.com – The $2-million comma

bq. This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.

From a contract between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc. for the placement of cable lines in Eastern Canada. Aliant cancelled the initial 5 year term in 2005 after only 3 years. The cancellation will force Rogers to pay an extra $2.13 million to use utility poles. The placement of the second comma in the sentence above permitted the contract’s cancellation, to the surprise of Rogers.

(via the “Quotation of the Day”:http://ca.geocities.com/quotationoftheday/index.html mailing list)

I love thunderstorms…

| Date & Hour | Conditions | Temp (°C) | Humidity (%) | Dew Point (°C) | Wind (km/h) | Pressure (kPa) | Vis (km) | Humidex |
| 2 Aug 2006 22:00 EDT | Thunderstorm with Rain | 22 | 90 | 20 | W 30 gust 55 | 100.8 | 24 | 30 |
| 2 Aug 2006 21:00 EDT | Cloudy | 30 | 71 | 24 | WSW 30 gust 39 | 100.6 | 24 | 41 |

In case anyone is wondering, my brain has left for vacation in Greenland, or Iceland, or somewhere else not-as-damned-hot-as-Toronto.

It turns out that we didn’t _quite_ set a temperature record yesterday; we missed by 1/10th of a degree. But as they’ve been commenting on the news, we may have set a new record for the highest low temperature; on Monday night the temperature dropped to 27°C at about midnight and then stayed there until morning, never dropping further. Last night we had the same thing; the low temperature was 27°C, but again it stayed that temperature most of the night.

It was ~30°C in the house. We all slept (fitfully) in the basement last night.

I’ll be one of the many happy people when the cold front comes through tonight/tomorrow (update: now? the temperature just dropped 4°C between 3PM and 4PM…).

I was asked for my title links plugin (See “wordpress filter”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2006/06/10/wordpress-filter/), so here it is:

“title-links-1.0.zip”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/title-links-1-0.zip

Updated with a brute-force fix for a conflict with the “pretty quotes” functionality in Textile:

“title-links-1.1.zip”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/title-links-1-1.zip

This plugin will create links between WordPress posts whenever the title of the target post appears in the text of another.

You can specify alternate link keywords for a post by creating a Custom Field named ‘link_names’, containing a set of alternate phrases surrounded by square brackets. e.g. if the ‘link_names’ field for the post titled “Lady Danielle de Barbarac” contains

[Lady Danielle] [Danielle]

Than any occurence of the either phrase in another wordpress post will create a link to the Lady Danielle article.

You can see this plugin in action on “The Queen’s Guard”:http://www.the-gang.ca/roleplay/queensguard/ and “Five Rivers”:http://www.the-gang.ca/roleplay/fiverivers/ game log sites.