Mokka mit Schlag

I’ve upgraded the WordPress engine on this site to the latest version, 2.1.3. Initial results look positive, but holler (preferably via e-mail) if you notice anything going wrong.
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What if any tools are available for reading HTML, finding missing width and height attributes on img elements, and filling in the relevant values? So far all I’ve found is this Perl Script from Randal Schwartz circa 1999 and this Perl script based on ImageMagik from Marc Merlins. I haven’t been able to resolve the dependencies for Schwartz’s script yet. Merlins’ runs, but is not XHTML savvy. That may be easy to fix though.

BBEdit almost does this, but it replaces existing height and width attributes too, including ones you’ve deliberately set to a different size. I only want to fill in missing height and width attributes, not change existing ones.

I’d love to find a simple open source GUI tool that could pull this off for an entire site.

Over the years I have rented from every major U.S. auto rental chain with the exception of Avis. Over that time I have had almost every problem imaginable with almost every one of them: extra fees tacked on at rental time, cars that had mechanical failures, cars missing pieces in the lot, cars that simply were not available despite a confirmed reservation, cars that could not be dropped off where I was supposed to drop them off, rental offices that were closed during their operating hours, insurance that I didn’t need but was required to purchase anyway, “unlimited” mileage that wasn’t, outrageous gas prices, gas I was charged for but didn’t use, frequent flier miles that were promised and not credited, and more. About the only aspect of car rental service I’ve been lucky enough not to experience is what happens when your rental car is in an accident or stolen.

The latest variation was on a trip to California where I planned to spend some time birding on windy mountain roads with very small pull-offs. Consequently I’d reserved a compact car at Dollar. Instead they saddled me with an effective tank, possibly the single longest car or truck I’ve ever driven. Over six days they claimed to be unable to find a compact car to replace it with.

Recently it occurred to me that there is exactly one car rental company I have never had a problem with or a complaint about: Hertz.
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I’ve been avoiding comment on the whole Sierra/Locke/etc. dust-up lately. Most of the commentary seems pretty on-the-mark, but a few usually sensible people are starting to overreact and call for self-censorship. Once the mainstream media gets hold of this next week, expect the customary cast of Congressional idiots to elevate that to calls for government mandated censorship. However the problem has been blown way out of proportion. There’s one thing that I think needs to be said that hasn’t been said yet to put this whole sordid mess in its proper perspective:

Death threats are no big deal.
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Well isn’t this interesting. Details are slim, and this may yet prove to be false, but first reports are that Apple seems to be accessing users’ AppleTVs without notice or permission to disable user installed software and cripple the devices the users’ purchased. If I wasn’t already convinced I wasn’t going to buy an AppleTV, this would do it. Frankly, if this proves to be true, it will make me think twice about buying Macs.

When are manufacturers get it through their thick skulls that they do not own the machine after the customer hands over the cash and takes it out of the store?

Proper use of the abbr and acronym elements is good for accessibility and good for conversational style writing. No longer do you have to write phrases that grate on the ear such as, “Many problems are much easier to solve with a native Extensible Markup Language (XML) database and XQuery than with a relational database and Structured Query Language (SQL).” Instead, you just assume 99% of your audience knows what you’re talking about, and instead you write:

Many problems are much easier to solve with a native <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> database and XQuery than with a relational database and <abbr title="Structured Query Language">SQL</abbr>.

However, there are two problems with this:
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