Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

I'm Sorry, Miss Fairy, You're Fired
May 12, 2006

Abby’s third baby tooth fell out yesterday on our way to dinner. Thankfully the tooth was not lost, as was the last one in a horrible “I swallowed it” crying fest.

No, this tooth was preserved and kept save, and upon our return home it was placed in a large purple zipper bag for storage. I say “large” because Abby had planned out how she was going to deliver this tooth the the tooth fairy, and in involved a small purple net-mesh bag with a gold drawstring that really was perfect for the task. Sadly, it got misplaced along the way, and we weren’t able to find it. So we were stuck with the larger purple bag.

Abby duly placed the tooth-containing purple bag under her pillow last night and awaited the fairy who never came.

WordPress Developer Function Reference
May 12, 2006

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, because I’ve been waiting to finish a few features. This one feature is still not complete, but I did something today using Google’s new Coop system that merits a little attention.

You may have visited RedAlt before for various reasons. RedAlt houses a cross-reference of WordPress source code, not just for the trunk (current in-development code), but for both the 2.0 branch (which is the current in-release version), and 1.5.2. These are generated with PHPXref, a tool (written in Perl?) that parses the PHP source code and creates all the links to output and such. So that’s pretty cool. There are a few installations of the XRef’ed WordPress code in various places on the net, but I’m not sure that all of those sites provide XRefs for prior WordPress versions, which may be of use if you’re still using the stable versions of old.

Tipping Point, 4th of July, MI:3
May 11, 2006

Over the past week, I’ve watched, read, or listened to all of these, and I thought I would give you my quick impression of all three.

Tipping Point is a book by author Malcom Gladwell that outlines the properties of epidemics. It presents the author’s ideas of what is required to make an idea, product, or fad “tip” from obscurity into the mainstream.

The theories seem well-thought, and the examples make for very interesting reading. The section on stickiness has me looking more into the Blue’s Clues kids show, which apparently puts a ton of effort into making the information it present stick in children’s minds. The sections on crime as a factor of an environment’s appearance and on why teens smoke are both very interesting.

The concepts in the book fail to pass the Berta test, though. In this test, I retell the theories to Berta, and they either make sense or sound fishy. She was skeptical. Plus, the book offers no direct practical advice for making something tip, which is probably why most people bought the blasted thing.