My camera is back from Canon's service center

I got my Digital Rebel XT back from the Canon service center this weekend. While I haven't had the chance to really test it out, the service performed on it is listed as "Replace TFT LCD Ass'y/Back FPC Ass'y/Main PCB Ass'y. Cleaned and quality checked all features & functions."

The replacement of the LCD is a surprise to me. I have no idea exactly what the "Back FPC" or "Main PCB" is, but as long as it is fixed, I don't really care.

Uncommon XHTML Tags, Part 4

I always see the <code> tag in a non-HTML form for various forums and bulletin boards, but rarely see the HTML tag used on a website.

Of course the point of <code> in HTML is to give meaning to the content within the tag. In this case, I am guessing it is used for complete computer code, as the <samp> tag is for sample computer code. Both come up with an appearance by default of smaller text type to fit as much code as possible on one screen. Other tags somewhat related to <code> are <kbd> (keyboard text), <var> (variable), <cite> (citation), and one I'll be going over at a later post: <dfn> (definition term).


<?php
echo "This is using the code tag.";
?>


If you're looking for new music to listen to...

The Cruxshadows is one of the few modern bands I can stand listening to these days, with most of my music likes coming from the classic rock genre. The music of the Cruxshadows is beautiful and the lyrics deep. The concerts are fun to go to and the band members are great people. Sophia is their newest single. Give it a try!

Domo arigato Mr. Spamato

I came across a new Thunderbird extension a few days ago - Spamato. Not only is Spamato available as a Thunderbird (as well as Mozilla) extension, but it's also an add-on for Outlook. If you don't use any of these programs for e-mail, they also have a proxy that you can download and use with just about any other e-mail program.

Spamato uses the following filters to filter out spam:

• Bayesianato - your standard bayesian filter. Requires 100 ham and 100 spam e-mails to activate.


• Comha - a Collaborative Multi-Hash filter


• Domainator - a URL-based filter that queries Google for URLs/domains of a message. According to the number of Google results, messages are either marked as spam or ham.


• Earlgrey - this filter checks the URL on Spamato's servers to see if it is listed as spam. Jean Luc Picard not included.


• Razor - more information about this filter can be found at Razor's project site


• Ruleminator - apparently this filter is like "Spamassassin from the old days"

The current version of Spamato requires Java 1.5, which was more work to install than it should have been. Spamato includes charts and graphs so you can see how it is performing. So far, even though it has only been 4 days, Spamato has been giving me a 93 to 95% success rate, according to it's statistics. It has classified a few good e-mails as spam and hasn't caught a few pieces of spam. Still, I haven't gotten enough hams and spams to activate the Bayesianato filter yet and it feels like it is catching more spam than Thunderbird's junk mail filter (a bayesian filter) did. I'll probably stick with Spamato unless it feels like it is starting to not catch a lot of the spam that comes through.

Dear blogger.com

Telling me about the new beta, but not letting me get to my blog until I try to sign up for the beta, only to tell me you can't do it, is a royal pain. Do or do not. If you're not going to do it, just tell me about it, but then let me move on with my life.

Thanks.

Uncommon XHTML Tags, Part 3

This one is short and simple: the address tag - <address> </address> for putting address information.

Why use it? Simply because XHTML gives meaning and structure to data.

Uncommon XHTML Tags, Part 2

Similar to the <abbr> </abbr> is the acronym tag: <acronym> </acronym>.

The acronym tag should be used at the very least on any site a beginner or student to the site's content would visit. It's also a good idea to use to prevent any confusion on an acronym. Most browsers will have a small, yellow tag appear (showing the contents of the title attribute) when the mouse cursor hovers over the text enclosed in the acronym tag.

For example: Am I talking about HAN or HAN? PHP or PHP?

Uncommon XHTML Tags, Part 1

In my own experience with HTML and XHTML, I would usually see the same tags - anchor tags, line breaks, paragraphs, images, horizontal rules, unordered lists, ordered lists, list items, the various table tags, and various formatting tags for bold and italics (though formatting should be taken care of through cascading style sheets). I've decided to take a look at the other tags out there that I don't see that often, starting with:

<abbr> </abbr> - The abbreviation tag

The usage of the abbreviation tag, in combination with the title attribute, could be used as a good reminder of what an abbreviation means in the context in which it is used, which can also help reduce confusion. When the title attribute is used, some browsers will show what the abbreviation means. In Firefox, a small yellow tag will hover with the text that appears in the title attribute when you place your mouse cursor over the abbreviation. Try placing your mouse cursor over the follow example to see what happens in your browser: NV

Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Going Nuts

I was printing out three PDFs - the first one printed just fine, but the other two would just not print. I rebooted, I restarted the router (an Asante FR3004FLC - too bad they don't make routers anymore) which acts as a print server, and still they would not print. I connected the printer (a Samsung ML-1430) to my computer (running Gentoo Linux), and still had problems printing those other two PDFs. But the printer could print it's own test page. I could send it a test page. It printed the first one fine again. I switched to another PDF viewing program (from evince to the Gnome PDF Viewer - I also tried KDE's viewer, but I couldn't print the pages) and the PDFs printed fine. Maybe when I have the energy I will switch the printer back to the router.

I even tried printing from my Macintosh Powerbook running OS X while trying to figure this out. The printer made noise but then just stopped. I have never been able to get the printer working in OS X and have pretty much given up on it, but maybe I will try it again someday.

In other news, I finally found two books that I have been looking for the last few weeks -

1. 1. Sword & Fist - the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition book for monks and fighters. Found in a box along with my 2nd edition collection for some reason.


2. 2. My Canon Digital Rebel XT English manual. Buried underneath the Spanish one in the box the camera came in, even though I searched the box before.

Now to figure out the problem my Digital Rebel XT is having with a CF card. I was unable to download photos from the camera to my computer, but was able to read from that card and get the pictures when I put it into my Powershot G6. I had one problem taking a picture with that card and the Digital Rebel XT - it didn't seem to take it, but a second shot had no problem. Reformatting the card didn't help either, so I'll probably try putting in one of my other cards in there, just in case. If I see the same problems there, it's time to contact Canon.

I've got plenty to do tonight, but hopefully I will post a little bit more this evening with an idea I've had running through my head.