Warning: gibberish ahead. Those of you who don't find Perl and Javascript really, really fascinating should probably stop now.

There, I'm all disclaimed. On to what I've been messing with this week:

1. WWW::Mechanize is fairly awesome — I wish I'd known about it back when I was doing everything with LWP. However! It isn't really up to the task of interacting with ASP.NET sites. I've generally had a pretty positive outlook on Microsoft's current web platform, but trying to interact with it via Perl is changing my mind — the Viewstate and Javascript stuff is just a mess.

   The site I currently want to talk to changes some dropdown options via Javascript based on what you select in other fields. This is a fairly bad idea, but it really sucks in this situation: because of a "feature" in HTML::Form, you can't submit a value via Mechanize that isn't available for that form element in the page's original HTML. Because of this Javascript situation, the value I need to submit isn't available and Mechanize throws an error.

   The solution seems to be to download the page to the disk, rewrite the parts that don't match my requirements, then point Mechanize at that local copy with a URI::File. For those who don't speak geek, take my word for it: this is a huge pain in the ass. And I'm still not sure it'll work, although I have all the different pieces working in a proof-of-conceptish way. Perl gurus would be welcome to chime in at this point.



2. Earlier this week Emily pointed me an an old post of Michael's complaining about PDF links that don't label themselves. I feel his pain, and because I felt like wasting 20 minutes writing Javascript, I wrote a GreaseMonkey script to fix the problem. That's not that exciting. What is exciting is that when I tried putting it through the GM script compiler, it actually worked (previous attempts were, um, less successful). So voila: a Firefox extension that does the same thing as the script without having to have GM installed.

   I've tried to mess around with writing FF extensions before, and it's been a mess (I've got no talent for XUL). The GM compiler still won't give you access to the cool, chrome-y things you can do with a real extension, but you can get a lot done with this.

Broken Social Scene - Shoreline (quicktime). Via cliptip.

I've mostly been listening to this CD and the Wolf Parade album this week, and although they don't sound much alike, it's occurred to me that both bands have a willingness to let a song reach its bridge/transformation/crescendo, then continue to explore that new state for another 60 or 90 seconds before wrapping things up — and to do it without descending into the jammy noodling that characterizes every Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction performance. I like that.

A hybrid vespa? Hmm. Seems sort of pointless to me: why not just ditch the gas engine entirely? Sure, I get that energy density is a problem, but surely a scooter has a weight and expected-range advantage over electric cars, which are at least on the edge of plausibility. Besides, those tiny scooter motors are dirty and inefficient — surely you could pack a day's worth of use into a vespa's-worth of batteries if you ditched the pollution-spewing lawnmower pieces.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this since the last issue of Make's feature on homebrew EVs. It's cool to see that people are spending some time on building electric vehicles for applications where they could shine — namely urban transport — rather than just waiting for them to become all things to all people.

the pitchfork festival line up has been updated again, for those interested:

Saturday, July 29

Main stage:

• Silver Jews
• The Futureheads
• Ted Leo/Pharmacists
• Art Brut
• Destroyer
• Mountain Goats
• Band of Horses
• Man Man
• Hot Machines

Biz3 stage:

• Dominik Eulberg *
• Matmos
• Ada *
• Ghislain Poirier
• 8 Bold Souls

Sunday, July 30

Main stage:

• Os Mutantes
• Spoon
• Yo La Tengo
• Devendra Banhart
• Mission of Burma
• Aesop Rock
• The National
• Jens Lekman
• Tapes 'n Tapes
• Chin Up Chin Up

Biz3 stage:

• Diplo
• Tarantula A.D.
• Tyondai Braxton
• Bonde Do Role

tommy, sommer and kyle will be making the trip. will you?

UPDATE: mother effer. i am not changing all those crapped out bullet points. sorry.

UPDATE 2: I'm enough of a dork that I will. -Tom

Ezra's excited about the trailer for Al Gore's new film, An Inconvenient Truth. I can understand his enthusiasm. I'd love to see Gore enter the '08 field, too (who else can save us from a Democrat-sapping Hillary run?), and we should certainly all be paying more attention to global warming. But this hyperbolic trailer makes me wince. "Did the planet betray us... OR DID WE BETRAY THE PLANET!?!?!" Ugh.

Also: "By far, the most terrifying film you will ever see." I donno, trailer guy. Receding glaciers are bad and all, but that one dude used an ice hook. And that leather-winged thing that drove the truck to kill the kid from Ed? He was pretty bad, too.

Sadly, I think you have to decide up front whether you're making an important environmental documentary, a launching pad for a candidacy, or an alarmist blockbuster (pitch: "it's like Deep Impact meets lecture series! The Day After Tomorrow, but even more boring!"). Declaring that it received three standing ovations at Sundance doesn't really help, either — I'm sure the film has also received glowing reviews from PETA and the in-house critic for the American Communist Party, but that may not translate into a big opening weekend.

And really, if you can't sell this to me, you aren't going to be able to sell it to anybody. Hell, I even buy the invented-the-internet bit — and as you might guess, I'm kind of protective about my internet. Recut the trailer, guys. I'm sure you've made a perfectly nice documentary (the footage looks beautiful). But if you think kids are going to start bring Inconvenient Truth lunchboxes to school, you've got another thing coming.

courtesy of npr, i think i have my weekend plans set. though i'm not going to do it IN MY MOUTH.

i think i kind of want to work for npr.

i agree with matt - the chicago lakefront is one of the city's best attributes, and on a nice day, running along it can become an almost enjoyable activity instead of the life-draining suckage of suck that it normally is. you see park, you see pets, you see rollerbladers (i love chicago. people rollerblade here unironically. i feel like that wasn't really the case in d.c.), you see bikers, runners, beach, water, statues, and a fabulous view of downtown as you round the bend around north avenue beach. i even had a moment while running out on a narrow concrete pier that curves around into the water that felt like i was back in cinque terre. beach, wind, sun, happy.

that said, i have no plans to ever go running in a skirt. what is up with this? (via bexgirl)

even with the gorgeous lakefront trail mere minutes away from my apartment, i have been getting somewhat bored with the running routine lately. so i briefly thought about fulfilling my promise to give yoga a shot...but ended up back in bed with spinning. except, apparently on thursdays now, they do a fun bit o' a thing called "big spin," which is 80 minutes of spinning as compared to the normal 45 or so. it was great! "big spin" makes you want to die, be resurrected so you can vomit and roll around in it, then die again. but i'm sure my butt will thank me for it later.