The SVG Open is shaping up fast. The call for papers has been out there for a while now but if you're quick you can still present a paper or run a workshop but the deadline to submit for papers and courses is April 18 and that'll be here before you know it. The SVG Open is the conference for people doing SVG.

On Pavlov.net talking about some improvements in memory handling on Firefox 3:
It isn’t reasonable to expect all those authors to write code to manually break the cycles themselves.

This reminded me immediately of an MSDN article that took a decidedly different stance on pretty much the same problem in Internet Explorer:

I know I've written about a couple of the OpenSearch plugins that I've done but there are a few more I published and never really mentioned. I had a UPS tracking number for a package and I saw that Google could look them up easily (just put in the tracking number as your search) but going straight to the UPS site was actually slower. So I wrote a search plugin using the same URL structure that Google does.

Then there was the time a friend asked for a search plugin that would just look for Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr. I whipped up something quick.

I've got a new update for the search plugins I wrote for the World of Warcraft Armory. Blizzard changed the search results URL slightly and that broke my old version. While I was at it I added a general search (all realms) that might work for Taiwan and Korean realms.

If you're a new user, the basic idea I've used is that sometimes people want to search all realms for a character name but usually you want to look for a character only on a specific realm. Looking on a specific realm is a lot more useful since most of us only play on one realm or at most a few. You can install the realm-specific search for each of the realms you play on and the name shows up when you pick which you want from Firefox's search box.

The search plugin shows up on the top right corner of Firefox. It might also work on Internet Explorer 7 since it's written as an OpenSearch plugin. It doesn't add anything to the browser except this new search engine provider - it's not as big as a normal Firefox add-on.

Something came up a while ago on Slashdot about taxing Internet service in the US and the idea that VoIP would be excluded in a new bill that extends the tax free status of Internet access. As usual most of the details of the proposed law are completely lost in the movement from the bill as it's written to Infoworld to Slashdot. In the course of discussion when I asked about how to see the bill itself, someone kindly provided a link to Thomas, the legislative information resource at the Library of Congress. Unfortunately the search results there aren't RESTful - there's no way to get a permalink to HR 3678 (apparently the bill in question). Anyhow, after looking up that bill and seeing the sponsors I thought it would be informative to look up the politicians named on the bill at Open Secrets and see who funds their campaigns.

There were a number of names and what I found was interesting in relation to the changes outlined in this bill. I'll just quote the reply I made on Slashdot.

At the risk of turning this into an Apache fan blog, I have to mention the handy directive I found today. Many webmasters run in to mod_rewrite at one time or another and every one of them will have at least a little trouble with it. I just came across the RewriteLog Directive and corresponding RewriteLogLevel Directive. You're not going to be able to turn these on with shared hosting, they can't be used in .htaccess. To set up a debugging log for mod_rewrite, you need to add them to your httpd.conf somewhere. In my case I'm working on a server at home so I added

This has bugged me for a long time but it just took a little searching to fix. I enter the URL http://copper/ and Firefox can't connect so it decides that I really meant http://www.copper.com/. This is never what I meant. I don't know who runs copper.com, but they can rest assured that they'll stop getting requests from me for the internal web services that I run at home. The same thing happens even if you use the name localhost. I fully expect that most visitors at http://www.localhost.com/ are Firefox users who are trying to access a web server on their own computer.

I've finally got the search plugin I made last month to work for European Realms. The idea is the same, so the info in the original release still applies but I'll recap here.

Background

This is an OpenSearch plugin, it only adds a search provider to the list at the top, not generic functionality for Firefox. Since it's done with OpenSearch, my understanding is that it might work in other browsers too. My instructions and experience are specific to Firefox though. If you still don't have Firefox, you can go get it from Mozilla.

I've approached the search two different ways, one way is to search all realms for a character. The other looks for a character only on a specific realm. I think looking on a specific realm is a lot more useful since most of us only play on one realm or at most a few. You can install the realm-specific search for each of the realms you play on and the name shows up when you pick which you want from Firefox's search box.

Firefox has a feature whereby you can press Ctrl with numbers from 1-8 to activate the corresponding tab in the browser. Put another way, Ctrl-1 activates the first tab (counting from the left) and Ctrl-8 activates the eighth tab from the left. I thought Ctrl-9 would do the ninth tab but it's actually the right-most tab. I'm a keyboard guy, but this feature never mattered to me much. I used Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab to cycle through my open browser tabs. Then I realized that there are a few pages, which some could describe as web-applications but that's less important, that I almost always have open. I mean things like webmail or Pandora. I made a simple change of always having those tabs on the first few spots and now I can always get to them easily.

The Armory's a pretty cool addition to the World of Warcraft site. Finally I can take comfort in knowing that while that rogue who jumped me is all decked out in purples and though I don't stand a chance against him in PvP, I can out-herbalize him any day. That's right - somehow he got to level 63 without getting past 150 herbalism! So that Felweed is mine all mine.