Two space compliance (2)
My site is now officially two space compliant!  This means that sentences with two spaces after the period are shown with two spaces after the period!  This sounds like a simple concept, but HTML makes things pretty difficult by only showing a single space whether there are two or a million.  Scott Reilly's Text Replace plugin to the rescue!  It's painfully simple:  It searches for a specified piece of text and replaces it with a different specified piece of text.  In my case, it looks for two spaces and replaces them with a   and a single space (a single space and a   didn't work quite right; neither did two  ).  It doesn't save the changes into the database; it's just a front-end aesthetic thing.  It's the most useful thing I've come across in a while. #technology

New favicon
In line with the recent (and unimportant) theme trim, I just updated my favicon. 
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I wanted something a little "nicer", and I ended up pretty much copying off of del.icio.us (though unintentionally at first).  I used Microsoft Paint to make the PNG and Dynamic Drive's FavIcon Generator to convert it into an ICO.  I also updated my theme to include link rel="icon" as well as link rel="shortcut icon", as mentioned in Wikipedia's article. #technology

Weather control
I hope it doesn't rain tonight. 

And China agrees.  In order to have perfect weather during the 2008 Olympic Games, the Beijing Weather Modification Office has been shooting chemicals into clouds via anti-aircraft guns.  The chemicals actually make it rain sooner, which also increases the chances of it clearing up sooner.  It sounds about as reliable as weather prediction (i.e. not reliable), but it's better than nothing. 

In some ways, I could see how this is a bad thing.  Shooting chemicals into the air sounds like a bad idea.  But what if they were good chemicals like oxygen or hydrogen?  Then there's the whole argument about not playing God.  I can see the reasoning behind that, but it hasn't exactly stopped us from doing things in the past (crossbreeding, in vitro fertilization, etc.).  And what about the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa and causing a hurricane in Florida?  How does that translate to pummeling clouds with artillery shells?  Sounds like the end of the world to me. 

But at the same time, I could see it as a good thing.  I'd like to play basketball after work today.  If it rains, I won't be able to play.  If it rains, I won't get to go in the pool tonight.  If it rains, it'll affect my weekend plans at Busch Gardens.  If it didn't rain on August 14, 2004, I would've gotten married on a beach.  So many things are dependent on such an unpredictable and unavoidable occurrence.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit of control? #entertainment