Ground Control to...

Track the ISS! The shuttle is also available when it's up there. But why is Mir still even a link?

Steve Case leaving AOL

Reuters by way of Yahoo News is reporting that Steve Case is stepping down. He'll still be there, but in the background. What's next for AOL - taking off the blinders for its users? Dumping their proxies? No more extra image compression? Less SPAM?

Mozilla Extensions

I promised them earlier, so here's a roundup of the Mozilla extensions I'm using.

• Leech - Pull down all the files on one page or even a whole site in one shot. Makes getting that big page of photos from the last car show real easy.
• Preferences Toolbar - Quick access to key preferences, plus UA-spoofing and lots more.
• Tabbrowser Extensions - Mozilla's tabs are great on their own. This brings a ton of extra power and functionality to them. Per-tab permissions, highlighted tab groups (all tabs opened from one page have the same color), the ability to reorder tabs, and much, much more. I hope a lot of this finds its way into the main Mozilla build
• Adblock - Makes short work of annoying ads. You can use wildcards in your filters to slam large numbers of ads or sites in one swoop. And in most cases, Adblock will close up the space used by those ads to get more of what you do want on the screen. The filters I'm using so far:
  • http://images.slashdot.org/banner*
  • http://image.weather.com/RealMedia/ads*
  • *advertising.com*
  • *adserver*
  • http://cdn1.adsdk.com/bannerfarm*
  • http://images.sportsline.com/images/ads/*
  • http://www.hitsquad.com/ads/*
  • *atdmt.com*
  • http://creatives.as4x.tmcs.net/*
  • *sponsorbar*
  • *buttonxch*
  • http://oascentral.crain.com/RealMedia/ads*
  • http://ads.affiliates.match.com*
  • *scripps.com*
  • http://ad*
  • *adbutler*
  • http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/*
  • http://citi.bridgetrack.com/ads*
  • http://adfarm*
  • http://sfgate.com/place-ads/*
  • http://www.burstnet.com*
  • http://*doubleclick.net/*
  • http://m2.doubleclick.net/viewad/*
  I think Adblock does still download the ads, however. Mozilla's built-in "block images from this server" won't but doesn't have the granularity Adblock has and only stops image files (ignoring Flash ads), so you get some unintended side-effects. Each has a purpose though, and I use them together.
• livehttpheaders - Wondering what's going on between Mozilla and the server? This guy will show them all to you in streaming goodness. Quite helpful when trying to debug.
• Checky - Quick access to 18 validators/checkers for your web pages. Another huge help in debugging.

Another nice site layout

Geek Ramblings. At first the color scheme seems weird, but it works well. It's just not "normal".

Is this the way to fight linkrot?

And God Said: Let there be no more Linkrot explains how to use Apache to redirect users to pages after they've been moved. Noble idea, and I hate seeing dropped links after a site redesign/reorg, but this seems like an awful lot to have to do for each page that's moved.

I wonder if there's a better way. Maintain an index of old pages and their coresponding new names, and set up a custom 404 page to check that index and send an HTTP 301 pointing to the new page. Similar idea, but a couple advantages:

• A lot more user-friendly for the people managing the site (content managers) who may not neccessarily want to deal with .htaccess.
• Help the server admins by keeping people out of configuration files.
• Adaptable to any web server environment, not just Apache

Go get your CD money!

A friend pointed me to this story on SFGate.com about the settlement reached between record companies and 41 states.

Anyone who bought a CD, cassette tape or vinyl record at a retail store between 1995 and 2000 is eligible.

Now go get your $20!

DOM, Level 2

The W3C pushed forward last week and issued DOM2 as an official standard. Now we just have to wait a few years for IE to catch up and we can stop writing browser sniffs. Which we've been saying for a couple years already.