Habanero peppers are hot and their oils can cause a burning sensation. Do not let these oils contact sensitive body areas such as the eyes or nose. Also use impermeable cooking surfaces. I did not wear gloves while chopping the peppers but will the next time as I had 1 finger that had a mild burning sensation on and off for about 24 hours.

Ingredients

• 6 habanero peppers
• 2 roasted jalepeno peppers
• 2 tomatillos
• garlic
• onion
• carrots
• tomatoes
• dried cranberries
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• olive oil
• vinegar
• water

All ingredients should be diced or minced. Save the peppers for last.

Process

In a heavy skillet with olive oil, saute the garlic, onions, and carrots. Next, add the tomatillos, tomatoes, cranberries, brown sugar, vinegar, and some water. I wanted a paste-like consistency and therefore minimized both the vinegar and water. When everything is mixed and heated well, add the peppers. Stir until well heated.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor or blender and puree. Add water to aid the puree and reach the desired consistency.

Eat directly, mixed with a mild salsa, or blended in about a 2/1 ratio with heavy cream. Makes a great chicken marinade, spicy salsa, or pasta sauce. Enjoy!

Update your version automatically or visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ggis-subscribe

This version fixes plugin usage of the WordPress functions get_option() and update_option() by removing automatic serialization and unserialization of the plugin’s settings. The bug should have only affected those users who updated ggis-subscribe settings under WordPress v 3.0.

Thanks to Jan Reilink for finding the bug and submitting a patch.

Update your version automatically or visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ggis-subscribe

Spaniard’s Advantages

Disease

The invasion of the new world was led by a wave of sickness and disease. Old Worlders were generally resistant to these but New Worlders had never been exposed to them and were decimated. Even conservative estimates place the deaths from newly introduced diseases above 65%.

Transportation and Mobility

Spain had ocean-going ships, the wheel, and horses. New Worlders had none of these. The most important of these in the establishment of military superiority was the horse. In a battlefield, the horse provided speed, power, height, and opened a whole new set of tactics.

Armor and Weaponry

The Spaniards had steel armor which native weapons were mostly unable to pierce. They also used sharpened steel blades that rendered all native armors ineffective. On the open battlefield their kill ratio was something like 2000 to 1, very impressive.

Information Transmission and Retrieval

Spaniards had the written word and books, even though many were illiterate. The Incas had quipu i.e. talking knots, which only a few highly trained could decipher.

Tactics

Simple really, they had horses and therefore all of the additional tactics that come with having cavalry. A great advantage.

Worldview

The Spanirds had a much better understanding of the larger world and where they stood in it than New Worlders. New Worlders started out unaware of the dimensions of the world, how large the enemy forces could be, and the full extent of the world’s resources.

Additionally, the Spaniards already had success in defeating the Aztec empire and they knew exactly what they wanted and what they were willing to do to get it. The Incas had no real knowledge of the world beyond their empire. They had no idea who the Spaniards were nor what their motives were. The Incas initially thought the Spaniards were marauders who would soon leave and not amoral conquerors with no regard for those they conquered.

ET Invades

Wave of Disease

Our world-wide population would be quickly decimated by novel diseases. From the moment the first ETs interacted with us, multiple diseases would be unleashed upon earth. Earth’s current population is about 7 billion, if 65% were killed by disease that would mean more than 4.5 billion people would die within a short time. Imagine the effects.

Political structures, economies, and social structures are either destroyed or severely impacted. The impact of this wave cannot be overstated.

Horse

My fevered mind created a horse for ET, only based upon technology and not biology. Directed Wavefront Travel (pulse) allowed ET to travel short distances at extremely high velocity with high impact forces enveloping them through their travel path.

Armor and Weaponry

ET uses an energy-based body armor (decel suit) that decelerates all momentum based weapons. This renders all projectile and impact weapons useless and also greatly decreases damage taken from explosive impact waves. As a weapon, ET uses a nano-machine deconstructor (nan) keyed to human genetic markers. Nan can kill quickly or slowly dependent upon their programming. Most nan have a 2 hour half-life, though some are thought to have a 24 hour half-life.

Ad Hoc Intel

ET wears a skull cap that provides ad hoc mesh networking for its wearer. This allows ET to have full situational awareness via locally deployed monitoring nano-systems as well as tightly integrated communications with other wearers. Additionally, the skull cap seems to provide some command and control to nans and other nano-systems.

The monitoring systems are known to use at least the following methods: all wavelengths (light, sound, electro-magentic) are monitored for anomalies, chemical detection, pheromone detection, energy detection, and force detection.

Unda Units

Although other tactics have been witnessed, the tactic that has proven devastating to earth forces involves ET’s unda units. Unda units use pulse to breach our perimeters and stun our forces, then they deploy nans prior to pulsing out. Nans have also been directly deployed using pulse but ET seems to take pleasure in personally deploying their nans.

Galaxyview

Unbeknown to Earth, the ET invaders had been given dominion over earth by the their emperor the Great Nova named Conflagration. They had as resource a thousand planets, the populations of which were desirous for the glory of empire.

Results

Let’s just say those of us still living try our best to learn the languages and serve our masters well. We have suffered every insult imaginable and know that within a few more generations our planet will be depleted. Maybe then, maybe then…

What is an SVG?

An SVG is a vector graphic that is described by its XML file. That means, for example, that each shape may be created or manipulated by simply modifying the XML descriptive text. I use the open source Inkscape software to create my base graphics.

About this Tutorial

The intent is to create a simple SVG with layers (groups in SVG) and then show or hide those layers dependent upon user actions on a web page. The demonstrated example may be viewed at bd-designs.com. All links in this post and all references used to develop the demonstration may be found via my delicious. Let’s get started.

The SVG Drawing

Create the drawing

1. Import a scanned drawing into layer1 of a new Inkscape drawing
2. Add a layer for the head
   1. Use the oval drawing tool to draw the head as a simple vector shape
3. Add a layer for the body
   1. Use the Bezier curves tool to draw the body sides
   2. Use the oval tool to draw the body bottom
4. Continue to add layers and vector shapes until the drawing with colors is complete
5. Delete layer1, the layer with the scanned bitmap
6. Save the file

Derive Layer Information from SVG

An SVG is a XML formatted text file. This means it may be viewed and edited in any basic text editor. For this demonstration, we are interested in only a few of the XML fields.

The <g>…</g> tag means group in SVG and is similar to the concept of layers when drawing. The id is the name of the group. Make a note of all of the groups and relate them to the layers you created in your drawing, shown by inkscape:label.

Set Scale and Viewbox

How your image appears in an HTML page is controlled by a number of settings, both in SVG and in HTML. For this demonstration, the whole SVG should appear in the page and its size will be set by HTML. Therefore in SVG set:

• viewBox=”0 0 width height”
• width=100%”
• height=”100%”

The width and height attributes already exist but you may have to add the viewBox attribute just after width and height.

The HTML Page

The intent of the page is to show how to draw a ballerina. The various steps are to be shown in an accordion menu. When each step is clicked, the drawing should show the layers associated with that step. When a user clicks back any number of steps, those subsequent layers should be hidden. This is done using the jQuery UI Accordion and svgweb.

Load the Libraries

In head place the following or similar code:

<script src="svgweb/src/svg.js" data-path="svgweb/src/"></script>
<link href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8/themes/base/jquery-ui.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>

Set the On-Load Actions

In head place the following or similar code:

<script>
  $(document).ready(function() {
    // SET THE UI ACCORDION
    // TO JQUERY UI
    $("#accordion").accordion();

    // ACCESS THE SVG ON LOAD
    // TO SVGWEB
    window.addEventListener('SVGLoad', function() {
      var doc = document.getElementById('ballerina').contentDocument;
      // GET THE SVG ELEMENT
      var lay_head = doc.getElementById('layer2');
      ... other layers
      // SET THE SVG ELEMENT'S ATTRIBUTE
      var attr = 'display:none';
      lay_head.setAttribute('style', attr);
      ... other attribute sets
    }, false);
   });
</script>

At this point, the document is ready to have its accordion menu fully implemented in HTML and the SVG may be displayed in its initial conditions. Some modifications to the above javascript will be needed later but lets move on to  the HTML portion.

Accordion Container

The markup of your accordion container needs pairs of headers and content panels:

<div id="accordion">
  <h3><a href="#"><b>Introduction</b></a></h3>
    <div><p>Here you will learn how to draw a ballerina.</p></div>
  <h3><a href="#"><b>Step 1: Head</b></a></h3>
    <div><p>Draw a circle.</p></div>
  ... more accordion items
</div>

Image Object

If you are working with HTML 5, you may insert an SVG image directly but I find it more familiar to use the object tag. The object HTML must make exceptions for earlier versions of IE. The width and height set here are the actual display width and heights. If the viewBox was properly set earlier, the SVG will scale to fit the dimensions set here.

<!--[if !IE]>-->
  <object data="images/ballerina04.svg" type="image/svg+xml" id="ballerina" width="282" height="416">
<!--<![endif]-->
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
  <object src="images/ballerina04.svg" classid="image/svg+xml" width="282" height="416" id="ballerina">
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte IE 9]>
  <object data="images/ballerina04.svg" type="image/svg+xml" width="282" height="416" id="ballerina">
<![endif]-->
  </object>

Toggle Layers

Once this point is reached, the document successfully displays the accordion menu and the SVG graphic in its initialized state. What is missing, is the ability to change the layers displayed depending on the accordion menu selected. More specifically, we need to act upon the change event of the accordion menu and that action depends upon which menu is active. Conveniently, the jQuery accordion menu provides just what we need.

// GET THE INDEX OF THE ACTIVE MENU OPTION
var active = $( ".selector" ).accordion( "option", "active" );

and

// CALLBACK FUNCTION TO ACT ON THE CHANGE EVENT
$( ".selector" ).accordion({
  change: function(event, ui) { ... }
});

Its time to put it all together and modify the previously created call to create the accordion menu:

// SET THE UI ACCORDION
// TO JQUERY UI
$("#accordion").accordion({
  change: function(event, ui) {
    var active = $('#accordion').accordion('option', 'active');
    // active is a 0-based index to the active menu option
    // MANIPULATE THE SVG
    // GET SVG OBJECTS
    var obj = document.getElementById('ballerina');
    var doc = obj.contentDocument;
    var lay_head = doc.getElementById('layer2');
    var lay_body = doc.getElementById('layer3');
    ... other layers

    // SET SVG ATTRIBUTES
    var attr = 'display:inline';
    switch(active){
      case 1:
        lay_head.setAttribute('style', attr);
        break;
      case 2:
        lay_body.setAttribute('style', attr);
        break;
      ... other cases
    }

    // SET SVG ATTRIBUTES = HIDE
    var attr = 'display:none';
    switch(active){
      case 0:
        lay_head.setAttribute('style', attr);
      case 1:
        lay_body.setAttribute('style', attr);
      ... other cases
    }
  }
});

Conclusion

The page is now complete with basic interactivity. Please do view the source of the example page, it has the full, working code for that menu and that image. I am certain you will think of many uses for layered SVG images and that is just a sample of what can be done using SVG and javascript.

Version 1.0.1 is released to the community on December 17, 2010. It is available for download from the WP plugin directory. This is a maintenance release that simply replaces the current mail() function with that used internally by WordPress. It has been tested with WordPress version 3.0.3 and should work without issue for all WordPress versions greater than 2.5.

Changelog

1. UPDATE:    Change mail function to use the WordPress function wp_mail()

Usage is covered in the readme  and on the ggis-subscribe page.

Changelog

1. NEW:    Add Plugin Usage and Information to the admin options page
2. NEW:    Add option that sets the form’s title
3. NEW:    Add ability to use an alias in place of the list’s email address

Usage is covered in the readme  and on the ggis-subscribe page.

Once that is done, I knock off as many of my daily tasks as I can. Usually, that means I am running a little behind on my daily task list (who isn’t?). So for my clients, a big thank you for your patience in any delays in addressing your tickets. For my family a big thank you for dealing with my earlier than normal wake up hours and very unruly schedule. To my friends, I’ll catch up with you next week.

1. Domain guessing
2. Internet keywords
3. Keyworded bookmarks

I turn off Domain guessing and Internet keywords; and instead use Keyworded bookmarks extensively. Accessing two of these settings requires entering about:config in the address bar. This provides direct access to Firefox’s configuration settings but is not recommended for novices. Learn more on about:config. When you are done with your settings just close the window/tab displaying about:config.

Domain Guessing

This feature converts a poorly formatted address and guesses what properly formatted address you really wanted. See Domain Guessing for details. I disable Domain Guessing as a security enhancement. I do not wish to be automatically taken to a web site based upon my mis-typing.

Disable it

1. Go to about:config
2. Search for the setting browser.fixup.alternate.enabled, easiest to just type fixup in the filter bar
3. Double click the entry to change it from true to FALSE

Internet Keywords

This feature submits any word entered in the address bar to a search engine and then automatically directs you to the first search result. See Internet Keywords for details. I disable Internet Keywords for security reasons.

Disable it

1. Go to about:config
2. Search for the setting keyword.enabled, easiest to just type keyword in the filter bar
3. Double click the entry to change it from true to FALSE

Keyworded Bookmarks

Now that I have disabled two features that provide shortcuts for address bar entries, I will add my own keyword shortcuts. Once done, I can just type in:

• mail to be taken to my corporate webmail
• wiki to go to my wiki
• blog to be taken to my blog’s login page
• etc

The simple steps are (in Firefox 3.3.6):

1. Add your most used web site pages as bookmarks
2. Use the menu Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks (or Ctrl+Shift+B)
3. Select a bookmark
4. In the bottom left click the More button
5. Add you keyword
6. Close the window

Now type your keyword into the address bar and quickly access your most used sites.