the newest action figure featuring puss ‘n boots as a character in shrek 2 definitely has a creative design. esp. in
this photo
reminds me of my puppy bubo humpping his daddy’s leg. LMAO.
Monthly Archives: June 2004
bush and lightbulb
i thought this is brilliant
How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb?
The Answer is SEVEN:
1. One to deny that a lightbulb needs to be replaced
2. One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the lightbulb,
3. One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new lightbulb,
4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of lightbulbs,
5. One to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton Industries one million dollars for a lightbulb,
6. One to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the lightbulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag,
7. And finally one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.
bush or kerry
altho i can not vote, i can’t help to take interest in the hottest american political issue – 2004 presidential election of course. i always love political debates. after i’ve had 3 weeks of intensive american politics study, i now have a better understanding of american politics than ever. the biggest surprise i learned is how the federal budget looks. bush led the federal deficit of fiscal year of all time high. it’s reaching $500 billion. realize that’s only for one year, the total national debt is actually over $7.1 trillion now. isn’t that lovely?!
take a look at this graph! the net loss under bush administration is $410 billions while clinton had a net gain of $523 billions.
that alone is reason enough to get bush out of the office.
the budget will be a big problem once all the baby boomers hit retirement age. the fact is most of federal budget is spent paying social security and medicare. right now we have 15 working person to support 1 retired, by 2020, this number will decrease to 2. if the system doesn’t change, either the working class will have to pay more tax or the old people will have to get less money. since old people are more likely to vote, you can expect they will not vote to decrease their social security checks. it’s really important for the system to change right now.
i visited both bush and kerry‘s websites. one thing i noticed (unless i overlooked) is that bush doesn’t allow any open discussion on his site. you can not leave comments on his blog entries nor does he have a public forum like on kerry’s site. that’s not very democratic, isn’t it? for a person like me who truly enjoys reading educated debates, WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT on bush’s site.
i’m happy to read many Republicans are leaning toward Kerry. as the history shows, most people still vote according to their party alignment. it’s those who are independent or moderate liberty or conservative are likely to vote fully based on issues and integrity.
i’m not sure how Kerry will turn out. but i’m convinced bush is an incompetent president.
Learning the lessons of Tiananmen Square
a piece of writing worth saving in my booklet. it is written by Tiananmen Square protestor Wang Dan (2), who spent years in prison following the crackdown. The publication comes from here which is blocked in china. i read a few comments about june 4 on BBC, apparently the sentiment toward the protest is still overwhelmingly controversial. one of the most laughable statements made by a mainlander is: “(From BBCChinese.com): Why is it that the supporters are all outside China, and that all the witnesses are in the US? by FM, Yunnan, China”
well what you think? esp. after most supporters are imprisoned if not killed. and website for missing person hunt for the protest leads to the sentencing of the webmaster? who can survive being a supporter of the protest in china?
Continue reading
transparent PNG background
I’m happy I learned something cool and new today. So I’m gonna share it with you 
You may know that the filter “alpha(opacity=100);” in IE changes the intensity of an object. What you might not know is the PNG image has the ability to change its own opacity as well. To learn how to make such a PNG image with photoshop 7, click here. I wrote a tutorial at dnw that teaches you how to apply such an image as a background of a table. So effect like this can be reached on not just IE but ALL BROWSERS!
WARNING: Please note IE link bug comes with this trick. You may want to find alternative ways here if you want to have links in your table cell! Btw, I also demonstrated a solution I used at my dnw tutorial.
Why is this better than the filter?
In addition to the fact that all browsers support this trick, it changes only the opacity of the background. IE filter would change the opacity of everything that is in a table cell which gives you less control.
What’s tricky about it?
Everything will be cool if IE correctly supports partly transparent PNG. It does not so we must find ways around it. Regularimg src or background does not show the transparency of PNG file correctly. IE uses a AlphaImageLoader filter. It’s a dumb solution and in fact there’s a petition for proper PNG support in IE for Windows. As long as IE developers don’t plan to make improvement, we will have to rely on this trick to make partly transparent PNG correctly show in IE.
What is the trick?
This trick is written by Erik Arvidsson. There are also different tricks but I find this easiest to install. He modifed the css behavior of img to allow IE to use its AlphaImageLoader filter to load all PNG files while other browsers maintain the original code. His code works only withimg tag. alt=” ” I modified his .htc file to allow the same replacement in the background tag.
Click here to learn how to use this trick to apply semi transparent background to ALL BROWSERS!
