Abstinence – How about a little truth in advertising?

Posted on 2005-03-02 by Stephan Sokolow


NewScientist.com – Teenagers special: Going all the way A
little something I ran across in my collection of RSS feeds. To be
honest, I really don’t like how the U.S. is going. I find that kind
of corruption, religious fanatacism, and censorship disgusting.
Then again, I’ve always been a “Freedom as long as it doesn’t cause
someone else trouble” type of guy. One of the big pushes in the
abstinence-only sex education. They claim 100% effectiveness and
some say that condom effectiveness is as low as 30%. Well, assuming
that it’s always used correctly, a condom is around 97% effective
and if you decide to have sex after all, then you’re not “using
abstinence correctly” are you? See the article for the rest
including some info on where the flaws lie.

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Fanfiction – The Kitsune Lina Trilogy

Posted on 2005-03-02 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Kitsune Lina, Slayers Born, Slayers Bred
Author: Thrythlind
Source: Slayers
Rating: 6/6
Type: AU Continuation
Length: Episodic Trilogy (Three stories, over 100 episodes in total)
Status: Complete

A little something by Thrythlind (at last check, one of the three most prolific posters on the Anime Addventure) which I consider to be the best Slayers fanfic I have ever read. It’s a trilogy but, since it’s all one big story, I’ll rate it as one.

I don’t want to spoil the plot so I’ll just give brief summaries of the various episodes and I ask that, even if you don’t think you’ll like the series, you read the full thing before complaining. It has a way of changing your mind.

Kitsune Lina – What if Lina Inverse got turned into a Werefox and, as a result, lost her magic permanently?
Slayers Born – It’s now the next generation. What kind of trouble will the children of the Slayers get into?
Slayers Bred – Once again, it’s time to save the world.

I’ve re-read this story at least three times and 6/6 just doesn’t do it justice. As such, it’s getting awarded a slew of my bonus points. Here they are:
+1 for great original characters
+2 for managing to not only make an epic with good character development, but a comedic epic with good character development.
+1 for making a trilogy with story end and start points at appropriate places as opposed to one long story.
+1 for a believable happy ending without making everything sparkling and perfect.

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Fanfiction – “Elle 1/2″

Posted on 2005-03-01 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Elle 1/2
Sources: Studio Asynjor
Author: Gregg Sharp
Source: Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon
Rating: 5/6
Type: Crossover/Omake
Length: One-Shot

About the same time I ran across Hotaru 1/2, I also found Elle 1/2. It’s just a little omake but, when rated for what it is, it’s still quite good. It has some things that feel different from anything I’ve read before so it gets five points.

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Fanfiction – Hotaru 1/2

Posted on 2005-03-01 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Hotaru 1/2
Sources: 3-Episode version or Single file
Author: Gregg Sharp
Source: Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon
Rating: 6/6
Type: Crossover/Omake
Length: One-Shot/3 episodes (Available in two forms)

Yes, something by THE Gregg Sharp/Metroanime/Kestral/etc. Premise: What if Ranma wished for a fiance who actually listened to what he wanted and didn’t scare him? What if he got Hotaru?

I haven’t really been feeling very eloquent lately but I can at least say that this fanfic made me laugh and didn’t really fall into any of the big cliches. It did use some, but considering that who the author is, I can definitely cut some slack. Throw in the fact that this is my second full read of it (I once read only part because I was too busy) and I think it deserves a 6/6.

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Wikipedia

Posted on 2005-02-28 by Stephan Sokolow

It still surprises me how many people don’t know about Wikipedia. Whether it be research for your math/english/history paper, or looking up some obscure Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book/Anime/Manga term, they have it all.

In case you didn’t know, the wiki in Wikipedia is a term referring to a website where any random visitor can edit almost any page. Surprisingly, peer pressure and the dedication of other users keep trouble to a minimum. Since wikis keep a history of changes, and damage is easy to undo. Wikipedia’s stated policies concerning referencing sources and the peer review do the rest. I know this may sound unreliable, but don’t dismiss it before you try it.

I like to wander around Wikipedia when I get the free time and in fact, one of my future projects is a script to dynamically build a “My Home” page containing Wikipedia’s Entry of the Day as well as numerous Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, and Puzzle of the Day entries from around the web. Sort of a daily dose of genius. I’ll post it here when it’s done.

What specific benefits do I get from Wikipedia? Well, it helps me keep my trivia edge (I have always excelled at knowing the most pointless facts about anything other than sports or pop culture, my two least favorite areas) and, Sci-fi fan that I am, I did not know what unobtainium or Clanking Replicators were before wandering Wikipedia.

On a parting note, I should warn readers that Wikipedia may be a little slow lately, they’ve been experiencing a massive growth in popularity. In response, they are running a fundraising drive and have already raised 85% of their goal as of this posting.

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And now for something comple… err… a little different. (A.K.A. My Favorite Webcomics)

Posted on 2005-02-24 by Stephan Sokolow

This post has been moved to a more accessible home. Please visit the GoodWebcomics page on my website.

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Best Viewed Without Internet Explorer

Posted on 2005-02-23 by Stephan Sokolow

I suppose the title should really read “Best Viewed with a Standards Compliant Browser” but too many people don’t know how broken IE really is. Anyway, as you may or may not have noticed, this site doesn’t look very good on at least some Internet Explorer setups. I didn’t know about it myself since I use Linux exclusively. (well, and some OpenBSD)

I don’t intend to fix it since it’s far too much hassle to go to someone else’s house to test it. (This house is an IE-free zone and IE is locked out on the handful of WinXP machines) However, for those people who honestly didn’t know about the alternatives, I’ll list them along with any comments I have. I’ll also list the ones for other platforms just in case you use a non-Windows system and are curious. All links point to their respective browsers’ “Hey, look why I’m great” pages .

Windows:
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* K-Meleon (Uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla but gets a speed boost from strategic use of native Windows components)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

Linux:
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* Epiphany (
* Galeon (Uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla but, like Camino for MacOS X, provides a native interface.)
* Konqueror (My other favorite browser. It should be available as part of your Linux distro’s package repository.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

MacOS X: (I don’t own a Mac so I can’t test Mac-only stuff)
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Camino (Uses the Gecko rendering engine like FireFox does but also has the MacOS X look and feel.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* iCab (Feature set seems to be similar to Opera or FireFox. Pro version is not free. Not open-source.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)
* Safari (Comes with MacOS X. I’ve heard mixed comments about it.)

Other OSes: (no item is guaranteed but they’re proabably available)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

I know you can probably find tons of other browsers for Windows but they aren’t listed because every one that I’ve found uses Internet Explorer’s core to do their HTML rendering which means that all of the layout bugs and many of the security holes are still there. If you run something other than one of the above operating systems then look around for ports. For example, FreeBSD and OpenBSD have huge ports collections and package repositories.

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