Earlier today, I happened upon old posts (never published) about Parisian restaurants. I decide to publish them, for no reason. My friend Alaina reads them and thinks, "Meg will like this Parisian food weblog. I will email it to her." She does. I read the email and then load up Chocolate & Zucchini in my browser. I am instantly in love, even before I see the entry for Oeuf Cocotte. I am now anxiously awaiting the time to read all the archives, and even more anxiously awaiting my (currently unscheduled) return to Paris. I've got a serious Paris jones. I've got a serious Chocolate & Zucchini crush.

Update!! Chocolate & Zucchini author Clotilde is a software engineer! But wants to leave it all behind for a cooking a career. She's my French twin!

While poking around looking at other stuff, I stumbled across these old photos from the Pyra webcam back in the day. You can see pb and Matt Haughey on what was apparently Matt's first day at Pyra. Looks like he didn't get much work done. I like finding these remnants of that time.

Following yesterday's post about XHTML validation and the script tag (which I assumed to be a browser problem, not a code problem) I got an email from megnut reader Maurice saying,

Script element should always have an end tag and really can't be considered a singular or "empty" type tag like, say, the Image tag or something. I guess it must be a minor glitch in the validator or something.

Since that didn't sound right to me, I decided to go to the source: XHTML 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, Section 4.3: For non-empty elements, end tags are required. It says,

4.3. In SGML-based HTML 4 certain elements were permitted to omit the end tag; with the elements that followed implying closure. XML does not allow end tags to be omitted. All elements other than those declared in the DTD as EMPTY must have an end tag. Elements that are declared in the DTD as EMPTY can have an end tag or can use empty element shorthand

So I examine the DTD and see that <script> does not contain EMPTY, which would support Maurice's assertions that the code was in fact, not valid, and there was a glitch in the validator. But then I looked at the definition for <p> and it doesn't contain EMPTY either. But you can use <p /> instead of <p></p>. Or at least, I thought you could. Plus it seems weird since a <script> in reality can be empty, like in my example when it's linked to an external file. So why's the DTD saying it can't be? Anyone actually understand what's going on here?

The other day, I wrote a post saying weblogs are ruining Google. I hate to do this, I hate to explain a joke, but it seems there's been too much confusion. No, weblogs are not ruining Google. I was kidding because, see, this is what people do: they search for something on Google, a weblog is one of top responses, and then they piss and moan about weblogs ruining Google, etc. Do I need to resort to writing "J/K" next to all silly posts?

The other funny thing — at least to me — is that both times I used the expression "text wrap" in my query, rather than the more common "word wrap." So it extra made sense that Google would return my post to me. And funnier still was the fact that I'd forgotten I'd already looked for a text wrap plugin for Eclipse months ago. So you see the levels of humor here? Did you ever suspect megnut posts had so much depth to them?

So for some odd reason, my alpha Kinja design that was visible in IE, Camino, Firebird, and Safari on IE and Mac suddenly stopped rendering on IE/Mac, IE/Windows, and Safari/Mac (didn't test the others, was too busy freaking out). I tried everything I could think of, validated the code (clean XHMTL 1.0 Strict), validated the CSS, had some friends take a look, and nothing. "View source" showed code, but nothing appeared on screen. Finally, after commenting out code line by line, I nailed it. In my header, I had:

http://megnut.com/functions.js

and all is right with the world again. I write this because I'm sure I'll have this problem again, and then Google will help me (hi idiot Meg from the future making the same mistakes again!) In the meantime, it may help you.

Doing some stuff in Eclipse this afternoon I thought, "I'd really like a text wrap plugin for Eclipse" so I go to Google and type in "Eclipse plugin text wrap" and this megnut post — of me wishing for a text wrap plugin — is the first result. Doh!

I just installed this neato Sendmail Enabler for OS X (but not Panther, for Panther you need Postfix Enabler) to fix some mail problems I was having. This enabler is a one-click app to launch and configure sendmail. So far, it's great and easy.

With the temperature suddenly 21° (with a 9° wind chill) in New York City, those who haven't succumbed yet to the flu could well be on the verge, including me. Here's some good information from the CDC, Influenza: The Disease. Of course, the most troubling bit was this, "A person can spread the flu starting one day before he or she feels sick." It might be too late for us all!

I hadn't been over to Meetup, the web site that "organizes local interest groups," in a while. So when I visited last night, I was astounded by a statistic I saw on the front page. Meetup has 779,451 users (as of this writing) and the National Dean in 2004 Meetup Day has 135,378 members, far and away the largest Meetup group. Which means that roughly 17.4% — nearly 1 in 5 — Meetupers are signed up for Dean meetups. That's incredible, and totally cool.

If you're a fan of BoingBoing, perhaps you've noticed the site's been MIA for the past few days. There have been some hosting "issues" and BoingBoing is now in the process of moving to a new host. In the meantime, you can access the site at http://216.126.84.59/. Xeni says that, "'BoingBoing.net' will work again in a day or two."