my website and JavaScript stuff

I was setting-up an old desktop to be a server, but it made a loud popping noise when I turned it on. Hence – for now – I'm using my laptop to serve my website. Which is a horrible idea. But it's what I've got.

http://nicolas.is-a-geek.org

Currently the front-page is one of those cool kid photos. Primarily because I'm obsessed with my hair as it's never been this long before.

A little less vanity: I dug into asynchrony in JavaScript for a pet project I've been working on, so I wrote up a summary of my autodidactic^† endeavor.

Remember, unless you catch me with my laptop on at home, my website won't be loading for you.

† Who uses that word?

twords... *palm to the face*

My inner pubescence will never die: "Parker, let's just see what they're up to and keep each other aboob of tonight's activities."

KA CHING

And Parker wanted me to share Nickchalant. I'll leave it to him to explain that one – apparently I have "a way". I hope it's akin to a pirate smile.

JavaScript doesn't do dos

Well, JavaScript on Firefox does dos. You can name a variable do, even though it's a language keyword. Safari and Chrome barf on that.

I don't like languages that don't admit keyword variable names. It's called scoping, people – look it up. Also, context-sensitive parsing: "Woo woo! All aboard." A loop construct doesn't follow a period. And dynamic LHSes never hurt anyone, especially in a late-binding language. Arg.

Quoridor

If you like thoughtful board games, we've always had a good time at my house with Quoridor.

Our most recent Quoridor-phase got me in the mood enough to make this interactive assistant. At the moment, it's just a virtual board that allows exactly the same moves that the physical board does. However, it helps you track all of your moves and provides some rich navigation such as undo and redoing (with branching and tagging (kind of like git)).

Try it out!

(I've tested it on Firefox 3.5.4 and Safari 4.0.3 on OS X 10.5.8 and my friend says we're golden on Google Chrome 3.0.19.27 on Vista. Please let me know about other platforms.)

Free albums

The free songs link was removed, but check out are all the free MP3 albums on Amazon.com.

Chicago Falcon by The Budos Band

Chicago Falcon by The Budos Band just came up in my iTunes and knocked me over (which is impressive, as I'm reclined on my couch). So, I wanted to share &ndash and who better to share with than you?!

I think I'll do this often, because of how many free samplers I tend to download from Amazon.com. (They used to have a page showing all free songs, but that URL is dead now... big surprise.) So... any suggestions regarding a better way to do this sharing or an online place to catalog the list?

clever girl

Unexpected Netflix shipping of My Little Pony and Showgirls implies that someone is messing with the queue I'm using. Conveniently, I don't pay for it.

So I solved the problem by bumping the plan to send me more DVDs. Riposte! We can discuss extra expenses later.