Ultrasound: 10.5 weeks

June 8, 2008 Uncategorized 1 Comment

This last Friday we had another ultrasound. We could see the baby swimming around… it was very active. Things are progressing good.

Ultrasound at 8.5 weeks

Slow-motion video of the Apollo 11 liftoff

June 7, 2008 Did you know? No Comments

Apollo 11I saw this video about 6 months back and I was really impressed. The most interesting part to me is after the rocket clears the base… very surreal. As a side note, the Discovery channel is beginning a special this Sunday about the US space program called “When We Left The Earth”. I expect this video to be a part of it.

A few facts about this video:

  • The stuff falling from the rocket is ice. The Saturn engines burned liquid hydrogen and oxygen, which is VERY cold.
  • The engines generate a strong vacuum, which is why the ice and smoke are initially sucked down into the opening in the launch pad base.
  • The short section of dark exhaust coming out of the nozzles (right before the exhaust fire gets bright) is due to the cool liquid hydrogen that is used to cool the nozzles.

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

Rodrigo and Gabriela playing Metallica ‘Orion’

June 6, 2008 Tunes and Grooves No Comments

Okay, I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile. These guys are amazing… they play both guitar parts, the bass part, and percussion all using only 2 acoustic guitars. Thanks for the link Ray!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

Awesome pop-and-lock break dancing

June 5, 2008 Oh So Random No Comments

I’m sad to say I wish I could do this :-)

(Click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

And this:

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

Adding reCAPTCHA to Wordpress

June 3, 2008 Code Monkey 2 Comments

reCAPTCHASo, I finally added a CAPTCHA to my blog to prevent comment spam. I chose to go with reCAPTCHA from Carnegie Mellon University for a couple reasons:

  1. It’s pretty popular right now so I know the code will be actively maintained (important, because CAPTCHAs are broken all the time with bots).
  2. There’s a Wordpress plugin for it, so it was easy to integrate (check out WP-reCAPTCHA).
  3. It offers a benefit to society by helping to digitize old books (read more HERE).

I got the plugin installed, activated, and configured but the CAPTCHA wasn’t appearing in the comments section of my posts… problem. After some searching, I discovered that the Wordpress theme I’m using was missing the following line of code in Comments.php:

<?php do_action(’comment_form’, $post->ID); ?>

This line of code should be placed within the <form> block for submitting comments.

Once I added the above line of code, everything worked. However, my pages wouldn’t validate anymore (arg!). The reCAPTCHA code uses the <style> tag in the body, which can only be used in the HTML <head> block. Here’s the offending line of code in the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin (version 2.8.1, line 300):

<style type=’text/css’>#submit {display:none;}</style>

Since this code simply tries to set the style of the ‘Submit’ button, I just commented it out and everything validated again.

—

UPDATE 7/22/2008: Paul over a BlogLESS has an addition to this method that fixes a problem with double submit buttons being present. I took his code (HERE) and tweaked it slightly for my theme and added it to my comments.php file (located with my theme files). I replaced:

<input name=”submit” type=”submit” class=”submit1″ id=”submit” tabindex=”5″ value=”Submit Comment” />

with:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
//<![CDATA[
/* Cf. http://www.designlessbetter.com/blogless/posts/making-recaptcha-validate */
document.write('<input name="submit" type="submit" class="submit1" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" />');
//]]>
</script>

Thanks Paul!

Ultrasound: 8.5 weeks

June 2, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments

Okay, so I’m a little late in posting this (by 2 weeks). Here’s our ultrasound at 8.5 weeks. Now it’s starting to look like something…

Ultrasound at 8.5 weeks

Metallica sings “If You’re Happy and You Know It”

June 1, 2008 Oh So Random, Tunes and Grooves No Comments

Remember comedian Jim Breuer? He did AC\DC singing the “Hokey Pokey”. Well, here is is again impersonating Metallica singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It”… with the band members in the audience.

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

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