Yay! New episodes of Monk! And hey, Andrew McCarthy was on this week’s episode (spoilers for episode are there, so beware). I didn’t recognize him at first, but the voice sounded so familiar so I had to go look.

Over on Surfin’ Safari Dave talks about browser standards charts and why he doesn’t like them. For example:

In a fit of honesty, I’ll even give an example from Safari. Many standards charts have asserted that Safari supports min-width and max-width . How wrong you are. Safari only supports these properties on non-positioned non-replaced elements, but I fooled you, didn’t I? I managed to implement just enough to pass the common test cases, because the feature wasn’t deeply tested by those of you building your charts. Mozilla’s support for this feature is superior to Safari’s, but the two browsers have been ending up with the same “score” for min/max-width support. [Surfin’ Safari]

I thought this was pretty interesting. I’d never really thought about how they tested browsers or even how completely. Now I’m going to have to pay more attention to such things a bit more.

Going through my aggregator this morning I found a link to Bryan Bell’s web page where he comments on IE a few times.

I personally feel that IE has now taken Netscape 4’s old position as the boat anchor being dragged behind the internet. So yeah lets start a badge campaign to complain about the lack of development/innovation in Internet Explorer. [Bryan Bell] [via Scripting News]

There’s some nice notes in the comment for that post also. He also points some interesting points to do with IE no longer being standalone:

If IE truly does become an OS-only product, then the common web request of “Please upgrade your web browser” will become completely irrelevant. Instead, web developers will have to politely ask, “Please get in your car, drive to Comp USA, and purchase the latest, greatest version of the Windows operating system.” Ass-backwards technological progress. [Todd Dominey] [via Bryan Bell]

Woke up kinda early this morning and was kind of heading towards sleep again till I took my Provigil. That’s helped me get through the day so far (though I do feel like napping right now). Emilily and I went to Soundbites for breakfast. It was her first time and I think she enjoyed it. Most people seem to. She got this big waffle covered with fruit. I had the 2^3 royale. MMMM, apple cinnamon pancakes. Then we made our way over to Harvard Square to pick up our copies of Harry Potter. I’m probably going to start reading tonight. Oh yeah, and I picked up Wario Ware for my GBA cause I’d downloaded a ROM for it and liked it a bunch (though the emulator is kinda jerky on my machine).

I know my smoking friends are probably not too happy about this, but on June 9th the Cambridge City Council passed an Ordinance Change to make ALL Cambridge workplaces tobacco smoke-free. It goes into effect October 1. Also, one passed in Somerville too! Happy Happy! I’ll be able to go out in Cambridge again!

I haven’t answered one of these in ages, but here goes this week’s Friday Five:

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short? My hair is fairly straight and I tend to wear it short (except times like now when I’ve been lazy about making it to my hairdresser.
2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime? Oh my, in many different ways. It’s been long before. It’s been black, blond, red, brown. Short and Spikey. Normal. Asymetrical. I’ve done a bit of hair experimenting over the years.
3. How do your normally wear your hair? These days, fairly short, and I lately I’ve been dying it kind of mahogany.
4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like? Well, since I haven’t been to the hairdresser in like two months (and I’m going on Tuesday finally). It would be short again and not look all scruffy like it does now.
5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened? Well it wasn’t TOO bad, but years ago we were trying to beach some red out of my hair and it wouldn’t come out and it just ended up looking horrible. It was kind of bright red and it took forever to grow out.

Hmm, so I definitely need to get a new lung soon so that I can start dancing some more again. Wouldn’t want to suddenly start having dementia.

Scientists have come up with yet more evidence to suggest that keeping the brain active can ward off senile dementia. [BBC News]

Researchers in the United States have found that dancing, playing musical instruments, reading and playing board games can all reduce the risks of developing the condition.

So I took some of my s00per-cough syrup last night and now I’m still feeling all spacy. I think there may be some kind of interaction with one of the meds I’m on because I woke up briefly around 6am, checked my mail and was all set to get up and start the day and then I closed my eyes a moment and it was noon. Pretty trippy I must say. Of course now my day is half gone. Hopefully I’ll be back to post more while I’m doing laundry.

Lewis Thomas: “The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.” [Quotes of the Day]

The cops shut down a little girl’s lemonade stand because she didn’t have a temporary business permit.

A six-year-old girl was heartbroken when her small lemonade stand was put out of business because she didn’t have a temporary business permit. A neighbor called the police and her stand was shut down. [NBC2 News Online]

I personally think they should track down the neighbor and egg their house or something. That’s just mean to do to a kid.