Pest in Midst
My Cynical Side
Wednesday 9 November 2016
Is It Pronounced “GIF” or “JIF”?
The Oxford Dictionary says it should be pronounced “gif” with a hard “G” a In and 70% of the world prefers it that way. But that’s wrong! Steve Wilhite, the lead engineer at the CompuServe team that made GIFs and widely acknowledged as the father of the GIF told The New York Times that it’s pronounced “jif” with a soft G, not “gif”. I extracted this from this site.
Tuesday 28 April 2015
Dinosaur with Multiple Species Traits
Scientists have discovered remnants of a strange dinosaur with an unusual combination of traits in southern Chile. It was named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi to honor the country where it was unearthed and the 7-year-old who spotted the first fossils. "The skeletal anatomy of Chilesaurus gathers characteristics of different dinosaur groups, like a floor is composed of mosaics of different shapes and colors. No other dinosaurs exhibit such a combination or mixture of features," said paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires. The modern-day version of such misfit is the platypus, an egg-laying, duck-billed mammal from Australia, Reuters reported on 27 April 2015.
Chilesaurus it is a member of the same dinosaur species as Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skull and neck bear a resemblance to those of primeval long-necked dinosaurs, and its vertebrae those of primitive meat-eating theropods which are the largest land meat-eaters in Earth's history. Strangely enough Chilesaurus ate only plants, given a beak and leaf-shaped teeth and two blunt fingers on each hand. It is a two-legged created with a bird-like pelvis. Unlike the three-talon feet of most theropods, Chilesaurus had a wide feet with four toes. Four nearly complete skeletons frames were found to establish these typical misfit traits. It was relatively small, reaching up to 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) long, although most specimens found were more the size of a turkey. It lived in a region crisscrossed by rivers approximately 145 million years ago.
University of Birmingham paleontologist MartÃn Ezcurra said, "The most interesting (aspect) about Chilesaurus is the story that it tells about how evolution works, 'Convergent evolution' is a process in which two unrelated species or groups acquire similar characteristics from living in similar environments or having a similar behavior," He used the example of having the wings of a bat and a bird. For 'mosaic convergent evolution,' it involves different parts of the body resembling those of other unrelated species.
Anything Under the Sun: Google’s Mobile Friendly Test
My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.
While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.
My Comments
Gambling News is a good anti-gambling site. The other reason I like it is because it has my name in it.
Friday 24 April 2015
Anything Under the Sun: John Key New Zealand Premier Hair Pulling Fetish
New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key ask for forgiveness from a waitress at his local cafe for repeatedly tugging on her ponytail. The waitress named Rosie criticized his behavior in a blog post. It began during last year's election season and carried on for a number of months and on several occasions. Eventually the cafe's manager made it clear to Key that his actions were uninvited, the CNN reported on 22 April 2015.
Key, told reporters that his behavior was in the context of "a bit of banter," but said that he had apologized when it was clear she was offended. "But if you look at it now, no. When I realized she took offense by that I just sort of immediately went back, gave her some wine, apologized and said I was terribly sorry," the leader added. Rosie’s blog wrote that she didn't directly make her objections clear verbally, her body language "screamed 'I don't like that.'" The blog also stated that the prime minister offered two bottles of his own JK 2012 Pinot Noir wine by way of apology.
Sue McCabe, chief executive of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, accepted that Key was joking and did not mean to offend, but criticized the premier in an open letter of the organization. "The fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top. Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it's our shocking levels of violence against women."
My Comments
Prime Minister John Key is a good liar because he managed to hide his fetish from his wife under guise of repartee. Waitresses always had to deal with being touched without their consent. The common problem is having their ass pinched, grope, or fondled. Although getting their ponytail pulled is unusual affair, it is still some form of sexual harassment. Rosie’s body language "screamed 'I don't like that,' and this reaction aroused Key’s inhibited desires that he would do it repeatedly.
Jack of All Trades: Chinese Strippers at Rural Funerals
Striptease had become acceptable at funerals in some rural areas in China. Troupes hired to play laments suddenly changed their tune and began to peel off their clothes. This a relatively recent phenomenon. Good attendance for funeral reflects the honor of the deceased. Some people would be prepared to pay troupes to play folk music and perform racy acts to get the numbers. "They want to have as many people as possible attend the funeral. In this way, they feel they fulfill their obligation of fidelity to their elders," said Zhang Chengdong, vice-president of the Jiangsu Festivals and Events Association.
Chinese officials are launching a campaign to crack down on striptease and other lewd shows that have become popular at funerals in some rural areas, the Ministry of Culture said Thursday. "Illegal performances such as strip dances have been occurring in rural areas from time to time that have disrupted the cultural market and created a negative influence on the social environment," the ministry said in a statement posted on its website. The ministry cited two cases in which the shows' organizers have been penalized, the China Daily reported on 24 April 2015.
Traditional opera were once popular at funerals. Six performers with Red Rose Troupe, an art group from Handan, Hebei province, participated in a performance at the funeral of an elder in Handan's Cheng'an County on Feb 15. The performance was characterized by elegies with traditional music and traditional dance. The performers ended the show by stripping of their clothes. Li, the troupe manager, was given 15 days in detention and a fine of 70,000 yuan ($11,000) by the police and county cultural authorities. In the other case, three performers delivered what was said to be an obscene act at a funeral in Zhangtang village of Suqian, Jiangsu province, on Feb 27. Photos indicated that children in attendance at shows featuring scantily clad women.
My Comments
Chinese are filial and they willing to pay to show it but striptease for funeral is a bit out of context.
Wednesday 15 April 2015
Asian Beer Market
A legislative bill had been tabled to ban the sale of alcohol in Indonesia. The two Islamic parties supporting the bill cited “the protection of the children of the nation” as the reason. Bestowed with the world’s largest Muslim population, the parties recommended draconian jail sentences for offenders. Tourism officials are concerned about the economic effects of extending an alcohol ban to tourist spots like Bali.
A recent Nielsen survey found that just 2.2 percent of Indonesians over 20 had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months. Beer sales have increased by more than 50 percent over the past decade. The overall consumption is considered small for a population of over 250 million. Breweries giants Diageo, Carlsberg and Heineken are bracing for the worst in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country. On the brighter side, the beer market for China is growing fast and expected to overtake the United States by 2017 the Reuters reported on 14 April 2015.
Anything Under the Sun: Think Small to Design Websites for Mobile
Deciding on picture size is my next task in getting my website to be mobile friendly. In my previous blog on this topic, I figured that reducing the size of navigation menu is a good place to start to design a website to fit mobile device. I used single word for title and double word for subtitle. This seems to work out some of the problem. I figure the next step would be to have a universal width for all pictures. Ideally the picture could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the multiple platforms without losing too much picture quality.
Given the size of webpages, stretching and shrinking a picture is not the real problem. Pictures who are magnify twice or reduce by half are never too shabby when it comes to quality. This should be enough do the trick to fit an image into a website. The bigger concern is manipulated images sometimes take a longer time to load. The 4G phones are great for speed but as the best for the current technology they are a minority user. Most people would have the lower 3G speed on their phones. The loyalist to old phone will still surf with 2G and there are still a number of these mobile surfers out there. These people will favor sites who were sufficiently fast for their devices.
I went window shopping for mobile phones using google and decided that I have 3 categories to please. Based on their minimum screen width, I simply name them mini (80 pixels), midi (321 pixels) and maxi (481). After throwing some math around, I decided that all images on my website will be 240 pixels wide. Shrinking 240 to 80 (the lower end of the mini) is one-third reduction. This will likely cause some problem in loading speed. For the higher end of the mini (320 pixels), the image is stretch less than 50% which is acceptable. For the 481 pixels width, there is no stretching of image. The image with text displayed by the side will be at least half of the screen.
I now had all my pictures resize to 240 pixels width. Going through the pictures one by one had been a tedious exercise. Some of my image were name by their sizes. A cat image, for example, had been named cat330x250. The 330 represent the width and 250 is for the height. I still maintain the old name of the image. It would sound silly but once something is publish it is not advisable to make changes. Keeping the old name will ensure that people who link my pictures will not get a blank image. I actually have three manga pages outstanding. These three cartoons are at least 600 pixels wide. The task will be to break them down to smaller pictures who are 240 pixels wide. The main picture that will adopt the old name while new pictures will carry the old name with a sequential numbering suffix.
Going through image by image can also make you see things from a different angle. I redraw two images. I hope the people who had link the old pictures prefer the new pictures. I had also came up with 5 new pictures. These are for the pages which previously did not have a picture. The remaining task, unless new development crops up, I will drop the navigation menu for the mini users.
My Comments
This is information for me when I build my website.