Old graphicx Bug

I just ran into a bug using the LaTeX package graphicx. I tried to include a graphic with a file name of the form "name.txt.png" and the file really is a PNG file. However, graphicx said ".txt.png" is an unknown graphics extension. *Sigh*...thanks for the hot tip.

A quick Google and I find that this has been a bug since 2004! This is such a simple fix. Why hasn't this been done???

Past Weather

There are a multitude of sources to learn about today's, tomorrow's, or next weekend's weather. However, I have never found any source about what the weather was yesterday...until now.

I always use weather.com for my weather information. I just learned that the (somewhat new?) Monthly view not only displays previous high and low temperatures, but also the amount of precipitation.

Now if only their Android app wasn't ridiculously slow...

Favorite Video Game Music

Having fantastic music can be the difference between a video game being good or great. That said, here is my selection of favorite video game music:

1. Super Mario World, Castle Theme (1990)
2. Donkey Kong Country 2, Lockjaw's Saga (1995)
3. Halo, Theme Song (2001)
4. Warcraft III
   • Human Theme Song (2002)
   • Night Elf Theme Song (2002)
5. Braid, Downstream (2003)
6. Battlefield 2, Theme Song (2005)
7. Portal, Still Alive (2007)

LaTeX: Change Format of a Custom Counter

I just spent more time that I would like to admit trying to figure out how to change the display format of a custom counter. Specifically, I was trying to get the counter to display as a capital letter. I found several examples that

1. claimed that this is done with the \Alph command and
2. gave an example on how to change a NON-custom counter.

What took me forever to figure out is that the command for a counter called CounterName is \theCounterName. Thus, the command I was looking for is:

\renewcommand{\theCounterName}{\Alph{CounterName}}

I hope this post can help others.

Google Chrome Security: Less than Perfect

One of the major features touted when the Google Chrome web browser was introduce was its vastly improved security features. Their actions triggered other browsers to implement similar features, thereby improving the web for a much larger user base. However, their security is still not perfect.

My beef with Chrome is that it frequently prompts me that the file I am downloading might be dangerous for my computer. First off, I use Linux so even if I did download a "harmful file", it still cannot do anything that harmful unless I give it sudo rights...which I won't. But even if I was using Windows, I still think that this message appears too often.

The false positive rate for this feature is something like 50% but should be no larger than 5%. This message is supposed to be a security feature, but an alarm that is always going off is ignored.

I created a bug report for Chromium, the open source browser on which Google Chrome is based, about this issue. Hopefully people will see it, take it seriously, and provide a fix.

Android Video: arcMedia

I could make this post very long, but instead I will give the short and sweet version.

(I am generalizating somewhat from my case to the mostly likely affected scenario.)

If you want to play a mov video file that uses an mp3 codec (such as the video files in the Dimensions video series) on your Android 2.2 based phone, the audio does not work when using the default video player. I (more-or-less) submitted a bug report to Motorloa about this, so hopefully future versions will work correctly. In the meantime, the (free) arcMedia app plays the video correctly.

In addition to actually supporting some audio and video codecs that Android is supposed to, arcMedia also supports many other formats that Android does not, such at wma and wmv.

This is the kind of functionality that I expect from VLC Player, which is not in the Android market yet.

To download arcMedia on your Android phone, scan or click the following QR code:

Four Chord Song

Did you know that "all" the musical pop hits of the last few decades are really the same song with different lyrics? Just listen to the comedy rock band Axis of Awesome preform their Four Chord Song for proof.

(Foul language is used twice back-to-back before the songs start and once more in the last song. Proceed with caution.)