Tutorials

I'm playing Farkle a lot on Facebook. It's a mindless but somehow interesting game. The idea is that you throw 6 dice. If any of those dice make one of the scoring combinations, you can pick them up and roll the remaining dice again, hoping to score some more. If you run out of dice, you get to continue with 6 more. If you reach at least 300 points, you can "bank" the points you've made this turn and start with 6 fresh dice.

The trick is that if, at any time, you roll no scoring combination, you "Farkle". You lose all the points you made this turn. Farkle three times in a row, and you lose 500 points, to boot.

Being the mathematically inclined person I am, I've been trying to find the most advantageous method of picking up the dice.

Don wanted a way to block access to his blog while he was fiddling with it. He found information about the 503 code online.

Of course, they want to return different codes for search engines and for users. We figured we wanted to return the same thing for users and search engines; after all "Service Unavailable" is the actual status, regardless of who's visiting. The only exception should be the blog maintainer.

Here's the .htaccess we worked out:

And here's the 503.php file I like:

We use a PHP file so that we can set the header, and so we can include a retry period for search engines.

If you're one of the few whose server allows [R=503] in the .htaccess, there's an even easier way outlined in the article details.

The "criterion" Template

Judebert.com may be powered by the Serendipity blog engine, but it's really more like a website than a blog. There's a lot of information, some of which is not dynamic, like Contraction Timer or the EV conversion diary.

To make the information more available, I decided to redesign. I visited Free CSS Templates to find a template with big, immediately visible tabs, clear text, and a well-defined separation for links and sidebar items.

After some searching among many excellent alternatives, I picked criterion for my website. Although it was presented as a corporate template, it looked like it would fit my layout without too much modification. An easy fit was important because this would be my first template port.

The Bulletproof template made porting a breeze. Here's how I did it.

I'm considering adding a star rating tool to my website. But I don't like using JavaScript if I can avoid it. Luckily, I found a tutorial on creating a star rating bar using pure CSS on the web.

Using the lessons learned in his tutorials (note the plural), I had a few insights and made a few improvements. For instance, the rating bar can vary in color or shape from one end to another. It can even be animated! Finally, I made the current rating parameter easier to generate for blogs and such.

Wow, did that ever bring out my Alpha Geek! This just needs to be recorded as a HOWTO. Too bad my style is so narrative.

All I wanted was to remotely start an X server that my kids couldn't get to. I'm running Debian unstable, and I routinely use an ssh tunnel to connect to my home computer from anywhere: work, travel, friends' houses... I use x11vnc to export a real X display, providing all the comforts of home.

This time, the kids were already running a desktop of their own. I could've reconfigured gdm to start multiple displays, but when I restarted, I'd probably kill their desktop. I needed a way to start a new X server -- preferably using my standard X session, restoring my accustomed desktop -- on a display other than :0. And hey, while we're at it, let's start it on something the kids can't get to with CTRL+ALT+(<F6> through <F12>) , like :10.

Thus began my descent into the Xwrapper.config, startx, and xauth...