LOL...I guess they're web designers first and Microsoft employees second. I don't know if you'll find a web designer out there who hasn't been very annoyed at IE at one point or another.

That is funny because many of us have been there: you're trying to figure something out only to discover some stupid bug has been holding you up for hours. In your anger, you give the fix variables names like "godDamnThisShit" or "fuckThisStupidThing"

The best is alternating curses and the name of whoever is forcing you to do the work for variable names. Makes for interesting code.

I wonder if they run Policheck on CSS files.

Yeah, I am surprised that got past their checking stuff.

The Linux kernal seems to be tame compared to some of Chuck's code rage:

http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/

Even with a low incidence of fuck, its interesting to see the word counts based on version releases ect. DE

Funny story, so in college I generally was pretty liberal with my usage of swear words in school projects, either in the comments or naming of variables.

One particular project we had to do was a branch and bound, NP hard scheduling program. I completed it several weeks before the project was due because I was competing with some of my current housemates. (note I normally would have completed it at midnight before it was due)

Anyway the night I had to officially turn it in I found out that i also needed to submit a non-graded description on my optimizations. Weeeeeeell. I kinda had gone to see a concert that night, and then gone out partying. I might have been a wee bit drunk. I type up the description of my algorithms in vi at 4 am and submit the project.

The moral of the story is I was the 2nd fastest program in the classroom. And I scored 100% on the project for correctness. However the grader subtracted 3 points for "excessive swearing in comments and code" and 2 points for the awful grammar and spelling in the ungraded algorithm description.

those swear counts are great!

I didn't realize "penguin" was a swear word. i'm gonna have to start using it more often...

Um, Joe? Couldn't you have waited to put this up until *after* the BSG season finale is download?

That's pretty slick, Jet. I'll be sure to use it often.

I'll admit. The shit is tight.

Is it possible to add some missing neighborhoods?

Eastlake, Phinney, Ravenna have bars with happy hours. They probably should be included with other places.

edit: I guess eastlake is with U Dist and Wedgewood

Might actually make more sense to break up some of the sections. I mean Wedgewood and the U-District aren't really the same neighborhood.

Yea but if a neighborhood has only a couple of bars, then it's not a bad thing to group them. Wedgewood has what? 2 or 3?

I hate Wallingford. I wish it wasn't grouped with Fremont.

Other than that, it's awesome Joe!

Yea the code isn't tricky but its a little disorienting to insert into those tables. I got it right on the 2nd try.

I think Phinney can be included with Greenlake and Greenwood.

should there be a different page for the queen anne/westlake neighborhood, joe? i went to add melting pot, but then realized that the rest of the page shows fremont/wallingford places at that link...

also, i didn't need to type any login/password to edit; i don't know if you meant to have it that way...

I'll do some Georgetown/Beacon Hill/Columbia City research for y'all. Representin' the SouthSide up in here!

Is there some way we could let people add comments to each bar after they've visited? Jen and I hit some Belltown stuff and I feel like it'd be nice if people had a chance to get some idea of what others thought. Also, Axis closed around Christmas.

ok I gave it a try on some of the Belltown bars. Seems to work alright.

It gives them a premiere running back for a long time. I look it more like a 6 year contract, since getting anything out of him after he's 35 would be a bonus. And he could be very very good for a large portion of the next 6 years.

I think it was a good move. We know that Alexander plays well with our offense, and the best bet is to keep a good player who fits in rather than taking a chance on someone else. The offensive line is pretty well set, I'm pretty sure Hutchinson was the only free agent & we're keeping him. The guys we let go to sign Alexander were Dyson & Sharper, 2 players we who we did just fine without. I think Alexander can be a top level back for another 2 or 3 years at least. I'm kind of surprised he was ok with 8 years because there's no way he'll play that out & we can always cut him once he stops being productive, but that's probably why so much is due at the beginning. I don't think we overpaid too badly at all.

I look at it as a 4 year contract...no guarantees in the nfl. Look at all the contracts that are truncated. Not a bad contract for the seahawks overall.

I think he's the best back in the league right now. I also don't think Seattle can contend with a real runner, so retaining him is definitely the right move. Whether or not the money is the right amount is harder to judge these days. If the only expense is Dyson & Sharper then it's definitely the right move.

So what's the deal with no cap in '07? I've been hearing a lot about this, but I don't understand why it's happening. And then the cap is coming back in '08?

They explain it here: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2351462

2007 is the last year of the current CBA, so the league would have to agree on something before 2008 or there would be no rules as far as signing players, apparently owners would lock the players out if that happened.

I haven't read that yet, but I thought the current contract negotiations are only for one year, so '07 will be capless no matter what happens now?

The current contract negotiations would extend it beyond 2007, it would also probably put a cap in place for '07 and would have made the cap bigger this year.

It was a smart move. Knowing that it is so fucking hard to put together a Superbowl caliber team, they are essentially bringing back the core team for the next couple of years (when they have a shot at the title) and sacrificing the team's chances after Alexander starts to decline. The basic point is: We have the chance to win next year, so lets forget about the future (after next year) and get the superbowl again.

Good move.

very fascinating. I love the guy for admitting what he does. He's got a great "this system is screwed up, but until it gets fixed, I'm going to work it in my favor" attitude.

Charles, I hope Kevin hates you for loving this guy for milking the tax system so shamelessly. The way I look at it, he is stealing from the public, and therefore he is stealing from me (and you and Kevin).

The great thing that these wealthy blatches have going for them is that it won't be enough to simply eliminate the loopholes in the tax code (a hefty task in itself). Better enforcement is needed, and enforcement is bought with tax dollars, which are less abundant than they should be, due to a combination of tax cuts and abuses.

In my job, I encounter clients every day who are setting up illegal LLCs and Trusts in order to avoid paying taxes on their luxury toys. Mainstream legal and financial institutions have jumped on board, adapting products and services to sell to these folks, thereby lending a sense of legitimacy to the greedy cheaters.

In response to the Iraqi flat tax commentary, I must say that Dr. Mitchell appears to have positioned the carriage before the horse:

"A prosperous and growing Iraq will be less susceptible to radical politics -- and less fertile territory for terrorist groups seeking new recruits."

That's the biggest roadblock to adopting a better keyboard arrangement--the ubiquity of QWERTY.

I did read about this new keyboard that's coming out soon that has little LCDs on each key and you can completely customize the layout...maybe if those things catch on, your keyboard layout can just be one of your OS preference settings or something.

Nice skin, btw. ;-)

Amanda might be able to shed some extra light, but court typists don't actually transcribe in QWERTY. They have their own shorthand system that makes things go far faster.

As for the Chinese keyboards, while in Taiwan I've watched locals write emails and they are damn fast. I guess with everything else you simply get more efficient as you keep using it. Chinese keyboards are harder to come by here in the US so my parents like to use a touchpad and stylus combo to write out their messages. They're also pretty fast, but of course they actually know how to write in Chinese.

BTW, here's a link to that keyboard I was talking about:

http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/

What would be even cooler is if you could control the arrangement of the physical keys themselves.

Have you seen these new gaming keyboard with extra layouts? It's a great business idea. Every time a new cool game comes out, they make a new layout that is good for that game.

http://www.zboard.com/us/

I'm pretty sure court reporters use a special system, like Ray said. Something like 22 keys that generate shorthand documents.

court reporters have a special shorthand machine (stenography machine) that require much schooling to learn...in order to become a certified court reporter, you must be able to type 225 words per minute.

any more questions, ask me! I"m currently studying to become a court reporter, for those of you who don't know. I'm up to 140 wpm now.....

on our shorthand machine, we type by syllables. One stroke per syllable. "the" is simply "t". the word
"reporter" would be three strokes, but for common multisyllablic words, there are briefs, so such words as "excellent" is only one stroke. And common phrases, too ("Ladies and gentlemen of the jury" is one stroke...)Our machines have 25 keys total, on which we can type everything that is on a normal keyboard. And you can create your own briefs with the program so that anything you use regularly can be shortened to one stroke.

The shorthand machine is great, but how would that work on a normal keyboard? I guess multiple strokes would word, were the keyboard set up to do that. Typists use autocorrects in Word to type really fast at my work (I'm a transcriptionist, and most of the employees use normal keyboards) but that doesn't work on other programs, I presume.

Also the cool thing about a stenography machine is that not all the letters are on there...for example, there's no "n" or "m" on the machine, but we have a stroke for those letters, hitting two or three keys at once. for "n" it's "tph" and "m" is "pl". Makes sense, huh?

Okay, I'll stop now since this is really long. But shorthand is cool! Oh, and I have the ability to type from my machine into most programs;- for example, I could have used it to type this blog, which would have been way appropriate, but I didn't have the program open, so I didn't.

my god that's a long comment. kudos to anyone who actually reads it :)

This site has a keyboard layout of the stenograph machine on it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/stenotype

i read it :D but, that sucks that there isn't an M!! WHAT, how can they not have the coolest letter of the alphabet?! hmph. and, why on earth would you have to type a T, P, AND H just to make an N?

just to make my life complicated :)

oh, and you hit 'em all at once, so it's not difficult or anything. they're right next to each other.

The problem is that QWERTY was designed to prevent typewriters from jamming up when fast typers were using them. I personally have no problem with QWERTY, but I learned to touch type at a young age so at this point, switching to another style probably won’t increase my wpm.
Jet, part of the problem is that the English language is not one based off of syllables the way Asian languages are. Sushi in English is 5 letters, whereas in Japanese, it’s only 2 characters. Each character/letter requires a keystroke, so the same sentence in Japanese may only take me a total of 10 keystrokes to complete, while in English, it could take me 20-30.
For example:
Good morning, how are you? (26 keystrokes)
Konnichiwa. Ogenkidesuka? (15 keystrokes), By syllable: Ko-n-ni-chi-wa. O-ge-n-ki-de-su-ka?
If it seems like Asian languages are faster to type, it’s not the keyboard it’s the language itself.

oh, asian languages are based off syllables? interesting! That is exactly the idea in stenography, too. Yeah, i much prefer the syllable idea, it makes a lot more sense. it is hard to change keyboards and typing styles, though, especially if, like you Will, and most of us, you have learned it as a very young age.

But like Jet is saying, it would be a good idea to learn a type of shorthand when first learning to type, because it is totally possible to be able to type at least twice as fast with shorthand as one would with a normal keyboard.

But your statement that Asian languages are faster to type because of the language itself makes no sense to me. Our language has syllables, too, so we could theoretically type by syllable too (and some do) so that means it IS the keyboard, since a keyboard can (and has) be created to type syllabically.

And incidentally, I could type "Good morning, how are you?" in 8 strokes, including punctuation, at the maximum. (i actually do it in 7) so actually, our language could be typed faster than Japanese. The only difference is that our language does have several letters in one syllable rahter than japanese (i assume, i know very little about japanese) but with the right keyboard and typing theory, all the letters in one syllable can be typed with one stroke.

Amanda, I think Korean and Japanese (in particular, katakana) are written via syllables. Chinese and the other form of Japanese (kanji) are written via symbols--little pictures that represent ideas.

Jet, Chinese is a very efficient language, meaning it generally takes fewer words to describe a thought. Combine that with the fact that adults who learned the language as children can write very quickly (the strokes don't have to be perfect as long as it looks like the word overall), it turns out to be a fast system.

However it seems like it's the older generation likes this input method. People our age, who are more familiar with computers, appear to be faster with the keyboard. From the various styles described in the article, I know one would take a maximum of 5 keystrokes for any character.

Japanese is entirely syllabic, there are 46 basic sylables (that can be changed with one of two punctuation marks) and that's it. The Kanji is actually used to represent groups of sylables (which can be written in Hirogana and Katakana - as a side, my english spelling of Japanese is abismal due to my having only learned kana and kanji). From what I understand (and have used) Japanese computer software will translate from kana to kanji much like autocorrect.

And Amanda, English is not Syllabic in the way Korean and Japanese are. Yes, we do have sylables. But we are also dumb in that we have homonyms. In terms of Sylables, they're, there, and their are the same. As are meet and meat. I've never heard of such a thing in Japanese, Korean, or Chinese.

Personally, I don't think teaching people shorthand is a good idea at all (unless they are going into stenography). Stenography is a record of spoken word, which is very different from that of written communication. Contrast this with a research paper. The type of language and need for clarity ismuch different. We have too many sylables that sound the same that are spelled differently for the default style of typing to ever be like that of stenographers.

but it's not like we don't write homonyms correctly. we have different strokes for each. we don't just write there when we mean their or something. the court record has to be perfectly correct, grammatically. We have to know the difference like anyone writing a research paper. I don't see how stenography and the court documents are any different than a research paper or any other sort of writing. One of the main requirements of a stenographer is to have excellent English skills and to know the difference between their, there and they're and write them accordingly.

In short, a record of the spoken word such as we do in stenography is no different than written communication. Our transcripts are perfect in every way, and although sometimes we are perfect to the point of putting every uh and um in there, other other situations, we omit those for clarity. Stenography can be used in many different ways depending on the need. Stenography is also used not only for spoken words but for typing of any sort, transcribing from written document and can be used to type a research paper.

Is this making sense? I'm reading your comment that stenographers using shorthand can never write research papers or something because we don't know the difference and/or can't write teh difference between homonyms, and that is a major misconception. Don't you think for court documents they're going to want the correct form of meat/meet? And that they're going to expect the highly trained court reporters to know the difference?

I stand by my statement that stenography can be used just as well as normal typing, and considerably faster.

Will -- homonyms are all over the place in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (just google "japanese/korean homonyms"). There are entire nursery rhymes in Chinese which play on the multiple meanings of same-sounding words. My grandma and me and Alan have had pretty good laughs over homonym confusion (inside joke Alan: "cou4 de bu4 de2 liao2!")

I stand corrected, Amanda. I still think it's a bad idea. And I may be biased. I also know that it would make my life a living hell, but then again, I spend a good deal of my day typing things that aren't actually words.

And Dan, I stand corrected about the homonyms. I apperently just never learned any. I always knew my japanese teacher was a quack.

and Will, fair enough. it owuld take just as much time to write things that aren't words on a steno machine as on a normal keyboard (although it definetely can be done) so although if it was learned from the start, it could be just as fast.

But for other typing needs, it is definetely faster.

And in all of this, there is no suggestion that yu or anyone who knows how to type should learn shorthand now, that is ridiculous since we all know the normal way so well. But we're talking people who are fluent in the normal way.

Know that I just don't want any misconceptions about what can and cannot be done on a shorthand keyboard, I am not saying that it is absolutely the right way. Know also that I still use my normal keyboard for many many things, such a writing all these comments :) That is mainly because i am more familiar with it than a stenography keyboard, but if i had learned it from the start, I would prefer the steno one. And it would be taht way with any sort of keyboard one learned on. You ARE biased becuase you learned on it, and that's okay. It's just a matter of whether it's the best one for future generations.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox :)

Wow, I seemed to have missed the boat on this conversation. Languages that are syllabic are actually called "syllabaries." In addition to Japanese kana, the (now defunct) Linear B writing system of ancient Mycenae was also a syllabary.

And of all the pictographic/logogram languages, i.e. Chinese, Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs, and cuneiform, all those languages are basically extinct except for Chinese. That always bothered me. You might say that Japanese kanji is also around, but that's basically Chinese. I think one of the only reasons China still has a pictographic language instead of raping someone else's alphabetic language is because China has the, how do you say, "uber-tight" culture, I guess.

No, Chinese isn't syllabic. =P Syllabic languages are 1 symbol per syllable. Chinese is 1 symbol per word. Syllabic languages are pretty rare. Syllabaries are different from logograms.

Also, Japanese and Korean symbols are basically raped off the Chinese. =P

Japanese is definetly not pictographic. They took their own language, and retrofitted chinese characters to stand for groups of kana. Which is funny, because kana are ripped off Chinese Kanji.

I guess I didn't make this clear. For the Japanese language:

Hirogana/Katakana = 1 sylable per character
Kanji = one complex character which represents multiple Hirogana/Katakana sylables. In fact, the Japanese will write the smaller hirogana/katakan characters,called Furigana (literally means small kana), above kanji if they want to make sure people know what it means. Chinese is actually a much more complex language than either Japanese or Korean.

The piggy language isn’t all that complex, but a hoofonomically correct keyboard certainly does help. Also, we favor Roman numerals over Arabic numerals because we can make Roman numerals in the mud with our hoofprints.

heh. in my sleep deprived, half blind state i thought you wrote "RAMEN" numbers :D i think i associate that word with you...

hahahaaa... thanks to deb & jeff's last visit, there's a stockpile of like 200+ packs of ramen here at The Vortex (the chili-lime shrimp ones are all gone tho, hadta eat those first :)

They have laser keyboards also...a laser projects an image onto a flat surface and you procede to use it just as any other keyboard. I see no reason why you couldn't customize that. Not that I would. I don't know how to type, but I know where all the keys are on a qwerty keyboard, so I don't ever really have to look down at it. I like qwerty just fine...

Will is right - the QWERTY keyboard is designed to be the _SLOW_ since typwriters jammed. Therefore on a QWERTY keyboard 33% of the keystrokes on the top row, 33% in the middle, and 33% on the bottom. Your hands have to move the maximum distance to get the words out.

Also - mad props to Joe for using Dvorak...but points off for swtiching back. The solution for speed freaks is this keyboard layout. The Dvorak keyboard puts 66% of the average keystrokes from english writing on the center line so your fingers move less. The bottom line is that this makes for much faster since you are moving your fingers a shorter distance to type the same number of words. You do need to learn a new language though...trying to switch is a bitch.

You can make this change easily in any version of Windows since 3.1 I believe. Its easy to switch a normal keyboard into a dvorak keyboard with a windows keyboard setting - just dont look at your hands (if you still do that). Tip for making the transition: Print out a keyboard lay-out, put it on the wall, and start typing. You can also buy a few kits online to place stickers on your keyboard - i did that once.

Its really nice to have A-O-E-U-I as the primary left five keys and D-H-T-N-S on the right hand...those are the most common letters that appear in words....get that figured out and you are hauling ass.

Make the switch and learn more!

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html

yeah, someone at my office (transcription office) uses Dvorak, and she showed it to me once and explained it to me. very interesting! It is learning a new language (as is stenography.)

It's actually not so much about being slow as it is about the mechanics of the typewriter. My grandmother apperently had a speed near 100 wpm on a manual typewriter. Around that speed, anything faster isn't going to be helpful to anyone except a stenographer. For most people, QWERTY is "good enough" to get the job done.