Custom style sheet for xkcd

In February I wrote about custom style sheets. Basically they allow you to modify any web site's visual appearance to your liking. So here is a custom style sheet file for the xkcd web comic for you to download. Here are the deployment instructions for Opera again:

1. Direct Opera to xkcd.com
2. Hit F12
3. Select Edit Site Preferences...
4. Choose the Display tab
5. Into the My style sheet box, select the CSS file you hopefully just downloaded
6. Hit OK, then refresh xkcd.com.

Here is a screenshot of an xkcd comic before the custom style sheet:

And here's a picture after installing the custom style sheet. Notice how the comic now fully fits into the first screenful:

The top bar has been moved below the comic and the title-text of the image has been rendered visible. Some elements have also been made transparent so that they are less distracting.

New GMA500 drivers

After installing, trying and removing Portal yesterday I thought of the graphics card drivers and found out that there's a new version out. Intel calls it 5.0.0.2024 which is rather strange since the previous version was called 5.2.1!? This driver still has a newer date than the previous one and in the device manager it appears as version 8.14.10.2024 which is greater than before (8.14.10.2020). No visible improvement in the Windows Experience Index figures though, but go install it anyway.

Portal

For a few more days, until May 24th, the mega-popular game of Portal is free on Steam. I downloaded it and tried it on my Asus EeePC 1101HA and found out, less surprisingly, that it is entirely unplayable with this hardware. I kind of guessed that when the Steam launcher displayed a message that the Valve database has never even heard of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 graphics card. The game loads for ages, the sounds are jerky and the frame rate is about 1 frame per second, even with the lowest possible quality settings. Oh well, at least it has been tested now. However, I have no doubts that with proper hardware Portal is a great game anyway.

Software bugs and nerd humor

I recently came across a heisenbug: a software bug which disappeared or changed its nature when I added debug output into the program. The Wikipedia article explains other interesting types of bugs as well, such as a schroedinbug, bohrbug and phase of the Moon bug. Phase of the Moon bug links to another article, Time formatting and storage bugs. This article unfortunaly omits the favorite example of many: the Ubuntu bug #248619 where OpenOffice.org would not print on Tuesdays!? Matt Zimmerman writes that it's a great example of the aforementioned concept of bohrbug.

Related to bugs, the Global Nerdy blog recently compiled a list of New Programming Jargon. The list contains such gems as hindenbug ("A catastrophic data-destroying bug. Oh, the humanity!") and Loch Ness Monster Bug ("A bug that isn’t reproducible and has been sighted by only one person."). :)