I have created 3 searches to add to your firefox search bar:

Add PHP Documentation

TobyDietrich.com

Del.icio.us bookmarks (of the currently logged-in user)

I have been using Google Analytics as my preferred tool to obsessively monitor blog traffic. In the first three weeks of blogging, I have been surprised at the international appeal of my blog. First I became fashionable on the continent and in India and China, but more recently my runaway appeal has crossed the channel to the British Isles. Of course I am popular back home too…though not so much on the west coast, as of yet.

I will keep you posted on further progress, and inform you when my reach extends to all seven continents. Since Google Analytics does not show Antarctica, I hereby christen Greenland to take its place (especially since it looks so big on the map).

For the pseudo-physics engine, I was looking for a way to eval() expressions. This isn’t built into ActionScript 3.0, but there is an EcmaScript 4 parser/interpreter in the Tamarin project. Pretty cool. Now I have to figure out how to feed the results of eval back into the swf.

I chose to mess around with the pseudo-physics package this evening. I probably should have done work, or slept. Probably slept.

Anyway, I cleaned up the code…er, all the physics stuff is in one place. More importantly, there are controls for the equations.

The green box in the top right sends parameter info to trace. No use to you.

The dark blue circle is friction. Friction greater than 1 means things accelerate on their own accord.

The translucent purple dot is the black-hole, center of the universe.

You’ll figure the rest out.

[Pseudo Physics Simulator]

I came across this website http://www.newstudent.umsl.edu/grad/grad.html. Look for the change color link on the left of the menu bar.

I’m glad to see that someone is using technology to enhance the user interface

I gotta admit, this is one of the few web designs that really makes me feel happy. Perhaps because I like Calder. Seriously, I like how the image of the mobile is not contained by the box formed by the image, and cleverly the designer has made the mobile image open to the background of the page, a sort of knowing nod to the effect of the image.

[Guggenheim Venice]

Found out about a cool Eclipse plugin – Azzurri Clay – lets you define databases in eclipse.

I also like

PDT – PHP editor

Subclipse – Subversion plugin

Ron Maimon and I worked on this flash animation program the other night at Stella’s. I really like it and want to do more. Half the fun was changing the pseudo-physics equation.

[Click image to view animation]

The charlesdietrich.com website has gotten a new look. I expect to asymptotically approach the ideal template, so there are future changes in store. However, I think this is a big improvement. Though not as big as an improvement as the previous change, from the WordPress default theme to the Connections theme…ah, asymptotes!

The current theme is equiX, with a few customizations. There’s a blog that I visit sometimes that uses this theme, so I hope I don’t look too similar.

The image is a current screenshot from my research project…I’ll probably use a photograph later, like I did for Julie (I designed the website, but the excellent photo is courtesy of Luke Walker).

Well, I was hoping that wordpress had a user model that could restrict access to pages and posts, but it appears…not. In fact, are there some hard coded roles in the system? I think there are. You get a subscriber (basically a request to become something else), a writer, an editor, and an administrator.

Then there’s this strange post-password thing, where you see the title of the post and when it was posted, but you can’t access it unless you enter a shared password.

I assume that someone is working on this.

Otherwise, WordPress is pretty cool, in my opinion.