robot guy

A while back I posted the code necessary for the scrolling blogrolls in my sidebar. Recently Rob Singleton had some questions about how to implement these scrolling blogrolls himself. The problem is that he is using different blogging software than I am, and my previous instructions didn't make sense with his type of template. So, I have come up with a simplified version of the scrolling blogroll code, which can be implemented in pretty much any web page at all. To add a scrolling blogroll to your own blog or website, just copy the code in the text area below and paste it into your website or blog template code. In the case of a blog, that would likely be somewhere in your sidebar code, anywhere you like. Then, make changes to the code to customize it for your own site; the comments within the code should help guide you with the necessary changes.

I haven't posted anything on this blog in a little while, and as is usually the case when that happens I have been working on something big.

When I first started reading blogs, I would just keep links to them in my Favorites list, and read them from the start of my list to the finish. Of course, I kept adding more and more blogs, and pretty soon I just couldn't keep up with all of them, and couldn't afford to spend time loading a blog that hadn't been updated. Then I found Bloglines, which allowed me to bundle all my reading into one page, displaying only updated material. And that was a good solution, for a while - but as I kept adding more and more feeds, I once again ran into a problem. There was just simply too much to read. If I didn't visit Bloglines every day, and spend at least an hour, then I would find that the new blog posts and news stories just kept piling up, and piling up, and piling up; if I took a couple of days off from the computer there would be thousands of posts to read. There was just no way that I could read all of them on a given day.

What I needed was just the most recent postings from a combination of all of those feeds, not all the postings from all the feeds. I didn't need to see what Instapundit or Drudge had written three days ago, as that stuff was already buried under a mountain of new posts. However, I couldn't just aggregate everything together into one giant feed either, otherwise the most recent posts would all be Instapundit and Drudge.

I had made a step in this direction with my Space Feeds site, which is good if all you want to read is space stuff. However, I needed something a little more general so that I wouldn't end up spending hours and hours on Bloglines.

And, I figured that if I was encountering information overload, then chances are that other people were, too. What is needed is basically a small-scale newspaper, updated continuously, where people can get a snapshot of the news and latest blog entries, in a number of categories.

So, I decided to make my own newspaper on Blogger. The result is Speedy News. On that page, you will find everything that one would expect from a newspaper, plus blog feeds. Included are the latest feeds from Pajamas Media, some big blogs, some of my favorite blogs, world news, US news, science and technology news, space news, science blog feeds, business news, environment news, health news, sports, entertainment news, and travel news. Clicking on the title of a news item will bring up the first paragraph or more of the story, and clicking on the >> symbol beside a title will open up the web page from which that item originated.

In the sidebar are links to the Craigslist classified ads, the Darkgate Comic Slurper, Weather Underground, WebSudoku, Horoscopes, a list of links to other media sites and some cool links.

I figure that if Speedy News catches on, then lots of people will want to put a button for it on their blogs or websites. So, here is the necessary code for the Speedy News button:


It is my hope that the Speedy News site will be a useful tool for people who are pressed for time but still want to stay informed. No more wading through hundreds of items in a feed aggregator, just the very latest news.

I had noticed recently a strange URL showing up in the status bar when I tried viewing this blog, from specificclick.net, a few weeks ago. It would show up during the loading of the page, and I knew for a fact that such a URL was not in my blog template anywhere. I didn't know what it was all about until I read this:

It’s so sad for me to hear that SiteMeter, a well-known web stats providers, is pushing specificclick tracking and advertising cookies on to visitors of sites using their service.

Well I happen to think that a stunt like that is total BS. Sitemeter wants to put cookies on the computer of everyone who visits my blog? Well to heck with that noise. I'm giving Sitemeter the heave-ho, and using Statcounter instead.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Sitemeter would shoot themselves in the foot like this. Not only are people going to drop them like a hot potato, they have probably irrevocably destroyed their brand name as well. This is basically going to completely destroy their business, all for a few dollars (which they aren't going to be getting paid for very long, as I don't see how their business can survive a body blow like the one that's coming over the next few weeks, as more and more people find out about this). What a waste.

(hat tip to Transterrestrial Musings)

Update: There has been some question as to what the precise problem is here, so some further explanation is necessary. Specificclick.net is a daughter company of Specific Media, part of the Realplayer borg collective. They are putting tracking cookies on the computer of everyone who visits a site with sitemeter, and tracking that user's browsing habits. Basically, they are putting a small piece of code on user's computers, allowing the user's own computer to spy on their browsing. Then the resulting information is sold to other companies. In other words, Sitemeter is putting spyware onto people's computers.

I know I've been pretty silent these last couple of weeks. For a few days there my internet was out, and then I've spent the last week or so refurbishing the Space Feeds site. I'm quite a bit happier with the look of that site now, although I expect I shall be tweaking it a bit more over the next few days. Go ahead, check it out.

I expect that I shall be blogging more now, hopefully every day or so.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the this blog. Over the last couple of days you've probably noticed some changes - most notably, that row of navigation buttons above, where Day by Day used to be. Don't worry, I haven't gotten rid of Day by Day, I just moved it down with the rest of the comics.

I'm always looking to make this blog more fun, constantly experimenting with the template. Seeing as how it is the start of the fifth year that I've been doing this, I figured I'd do something special. If you click on the Arcade button above, you'll see that I have added three classic arcade games to the blog: Pacman, Asteroids, and Tetris. (Man oh man, the amount of quarters I went through as a kid playing these games...) I've also updated the Sudoku game, and added another puzzle (Flood It!) at the bottom of the page. And although it still needs some work, I have managed to improve the chess game rather a lot. All in all, I'm fairly satisfied with the changes (which all work for me in IE6, Firefox, and Opera, though your mileage may vary).

Does that mean I'm done tinkering around with the look of the blog? Not bloody likely. Expect to see more little changes here and there over the next couple of months, as I approach my 1000th blog post.

A few days ago I added a chess program at the bottom of my sidebar, based on the JavaScript Chess With CPU Opponent program available here. That program had a few bugs, which I managed to straighten out, and didn't allow for the threefold repetition rule or the 50 move rule. I had toyed with making the program more capable, adding multiple levels of difficulty, but play at those levels simply became too slow. So, I just added the threefold repetition rule and 50 move rule. If you want to add the javascript chess with CPU opponent game to your blog sidebar, simply download the code from one of the links below (right click and Save As) and follow the included instructions.

There are two versions of the code available. The first version is verbose, with a bunch of documentation and proper indentation, and the second version is much more compact, for a file size of about half that of the verbose version (at the expense of readability). If you want to tinker with the program to improve the game, I strongly suggest downloading the first version. (links updated May 13 2010)

Update: Of course I can't leave well enough alone. I've been fooling around with the program, and now there are two levels of difficulty available: a fast, easy mode, and a slower, harder mode. I'm going to keep on working on this program, off and on over the next little while, and see if I can speed it up a little bit more. Right now, the hard mode is a 4-ply alpha/beta search, and if I can wrap my head around the algorithm then I'll change it to a negascout or some other fast algorithm. Once I'm satisfied with the program - which could be a week or more - I'll post the updated code.

I am forever updating the template for this blog: adding something here, removing something there, making big changes every so often, all in the name of making this page fun and easy on the eyes.

A few days ago I decided I wanted to add more games. I've had a sudoku game just above the cartoons at the bottom of the page for ages, and that was fine, but I wanted more. So, I searched around a bit and found Peeptin by Flooble. I put it at the bottom of the sidebar. You've probably played this game before, with a set of jumbled up tiles numbered 1 to 15 in a 4x4 grid, which you need to slide around to put back in order.

And that was fine, as far as that went. But, I wanted another game, something a little more challenging than Peeptin. So, I went looking for a javascript chess program that I could put in the sidebar. And, I found a fairly decent one, here.

This is where my geekiness comes in. I took the original program and shrunk down the images of the board and pieces so that the game would fit in the sidebar. Then I started playing it. Well, it isn't the strongest player, certainly not the strongest chess program that I've played against, but it was fairly adequate for a little diversion. But, I started noticing some annoying little bugs in the program.

When I was about 12 years old, my great-grandfather gave me some advice: "Learn lots of languages". I'm sure that he thought that he was advising me to learn lots of human languages, and I did study French in high school and German in university. But where I really followed his advice was in learning computer languages.

Over the last couple of dozen years I learned language after language (probably about 15 or 20 so far, I've lost count), and it became easier and easier to pick up more as I went along. After a while, computer languages all look very similar, and it merely becomes a matter of figuring out the quirks of syntax, the similarities and differences to other languages.

I've never programmed in javascript before, but I wanted to get rid of those bugs. So I started looking at the code, and my nightmare began. None of the code was documented, nor was it indented. The variable names and function names were non-descriptive names like "au" or "Z" or "ma". The programmers reading this out there probably shuddered when they read those last two sentences.

So, I went through the code and put in indents where I thought they should go, and started making a list of function names and variable names, with descriptions of what I thought each one did. Along the way, I was learning javascript by reading the code.

The bugs in the program were:
- allowed castling while in check
- castling on the queen side was intermittently disallowed even though the conditions for allowing castling were met
- it wouldn't let either king into square A8
- pawns would only promote to queens, no matter what was selected in the drop-down list
- if "CPU White" was selected, the human player still had to make the first move for the computer
- the border around the board looked strange when the board was shrunk down to a size that would fit in the sidebar

Then there were some things that weren't bugs per se, but still annoying. The original programmer hadn't included the rule that if a board arrangement repeated three times, then it is a stalemate. The player could only play one game; to start over or to play another game, one had to reload the entire webpage (which isn't really a good thing when one's page is as big as this one). Finally, the game log would only display the first 60 moves of the game.

So, I started playing with the code. I added the New Game button, and changed the game log so that it would display an unlimited number of moves in a scrolling panel. Then one by one I tackled the bugs, and with a lot of experimentation I managed to get them all worked out. I modified the pawn promotion algorithm a little so that the human player could choose what piece to be promoted to, but still forced the computer to promote its pawns to queens. Finally I added the code necessary to compare the current board arrangement with previous arrangements, counting the number of duplicate occurrences and declaring a stalemate if the board arrangement repeated three times.

I'm not done with this chess program yet. I have a number of ideas of ways to make it a better player. By the time I am done, there will be some radio buttons to select a skill level for the computer. After that, I will post the revised code, so that anyone who wants to have this corrected and improved javascript chess program on their website can just copy and paste the code.

Over the course of doing this I learned a lot about javascript programming, and I still want more sidebar games. I think one of these days I'm going to write a version of Tetris for the sidebar, and I might just rewrite the whole sudoku section as well.

Excuses Excuses

On this post, an anonymous commenter asked me "why do you not post daily?" Well, that's a good question and it deserves an answer. There are a number of (削除) reasons (削除ここまで) excuses as to why I don't post every day.

Some days, after having spent quite a bit of time reading through all the space blogs, I find that all those other space geeks have already said what I wanted to say. It's a little disheartening to come up with a great topic and then find that 20 other people who share my same reader market have already written what I wanted to say, but did it better.

Sometimes, rather than blogging myself, I will just leave comments on a whole bunch of other blogs. By the time I've left a comment on Bad Astronomy and Comics Curmudgeon and Transterrestrial Musings and Cosmic Conservative and Selenian Boondocks and small dead animals and Angry in the Great White North and Betsy's Page and Lone Pony and Classical Values and Posthuman Blues and on and on and on and on... well, by the time I've written comments on all those blogs, I've said pretty much everything I've wanted to say for the day, and writing a blog post on top of that would be redundant all over again a second time.

Some days, real life interferes and I just don't get a chance to even get on the computer, much less write a blog post. I might be on the road, or just really busy at work.

And some days, I get really lazy and would just much rather play video games. Generally if I have spent all day working on programming or on the lathe or mill, I just don't feel like writing anything on the blog, so I start up Mechwarrior or Age of Empires and just lose myself.

How about the rest of you? For those of you who have blogs, but don't blog every day, what excuses do you use to explain that? Leave them in the comments.

Update: When I wrote this earlier, I forgot one major reason why I don't write every day. Sometimes, I have a Big Idea pending, and I take several days to collect my thoughts on the idea. The gaps over the last couple of weeks are mainly due to precisely this reason. I have what looks like it is going to be a series of three and perhaps four blog posts - about environmentalism, conservationism, and space - pending, and I want to get all my ideas in order before I put them out there for the world to see.

Over the last couple of years, I have been involved in the Red Ensign Brigade. The reason for the Brigade can probably best be summed up by this quote from Dust My Broom:

There is no core idealism in the group other than we love our country [Canada] and take pride in its history.

Since mid-2004 (that's a millenia in blog years) the members have been taking turns hosting the Red Ensign Standard, a sort of Carnival of the Canadians. While that might still happen from time to time, an easier way to aggregate the Red Ensign bloggers' posts is now available.

Over the last couple of days, I have put together the Red Ensign Standard blog aggregator as a permanent home for the Standard. On that page is the brigade blogroll, a list of the previous Red Ensign Standards, and an aggregate of the 50 most recent blog posts by the Red Ensign bloggers.

Joining the Red Ensign Brigade

It is easy to join the Red Ensign Brigade. Simply send an email to Nicholas at Quotulatiousness, giving us the name of your blog, your blog URL, and the URL of your blog RSS or Atom feed.

We only consider blogs that have an at least six month track record. After we check out your blog and make sure it isn't spam, our Membership Committee will discuss it and see if it likes what it sees. If the answer is "yes," then Nicholas will add your blog to the blogroll, and he'll provide you with the code to display the blogroll in your sidebar, and I will add your site feed to the Red Ensign Standard blog aggregator.

That's it, that's all there is to it.

If you want to get a little fancier and do the scrolling blogrolls like I have in my sidebar, you can find the necessary code to do that here.

Technorati Tags: Red Ensign

I belong to a couple of blogrolls, such as the Red Ensign Brigade, LLP, and others. One thing that I would like to see is a similar blogroll of all the space bloggers. We could even have the Carnival of the Space Cadets or something like that.

So, if you have a space blog and are interested in getting into such a blog roll, send me an email at spider_boris-at-yahoo.com, and I'll add you to the list. Make sure your email includes the name of your blog and the blog URL, and please put Space Blogroll in the subject line.

To display the Space Blogroll on your site, add the following script to your blog template (updated December 28, 2010):



To display the Space Blogs logo (158x158 pixels) above, include the following in your template:



Now, I already have a bunch of space blogs on my blogroll; if you find your blog already on the space blogroll, you don't have to do anything, but it sure would be nice if you would include the blogroll on your page.

If anyone comes up with a better button, then send me a link and I will put the code here on this post. The existing button points back to this post so anyone who wants to join the space blogroll only has to click on the button to find out what it is all about and how to get on board.

For instance, this button (200x164) was put together by Sector 4 Command. Here's the code for his version of the button: <a href="/index.cgi/larger-text/http://robot_guy.blogspot.com/2005/11/space-cadets.html">Space Blogs</a> <br>

Afterthought: If you find that your blogrolls are getting very lengthy and want to see how I do the scrolling blogrolls in the sidebar, you can find the necessary code for that in the first text box above, all the stuff in the div statement.

yet more, added January 11,2011: The Space Blogroll by itself might be nice to have, but you may also be interested in the latest blog feeds or space news feeds, as I have in my current right sidebar. The code for those is as follows.

Latest Space Blog Feeds:


Latest Space News Feeds: