Skispcs: December 2009

Thursday, December 10, 2009

CSS Hell

Cascading Style Sheets can be very powerful tools. However debugging them when things do not go according to plan can be a real pain.

I decided to try my hand at a little Drupal theming and I am off to a rocky start. Some of the important files are:

themename.info — A required file that is new to Drupal 6 which provides information about the theme.
page.tpl.php — The main template that defines the content on most of the page.
style.css — The CSS file that sets the CSS rules for the template.
node.tpl.php — This file defines the content of the nodes.
block.tpl.php — Defines the content of the blocks.
comment.tpl.php — Defines the content of the comments.
logo.png — Your logo, if you are using one.
screenshot.png — This is a screenshot of your theme that is used in the admin panel and in the user account settings if you have enabled more than one theme so that visitors can choose which theme they want to use.
box.tpl.php — puts a box around things like comments.

How to make a Drupal theme.

Scientific Method

Scientists should use the scientific method and publish all of the source data and methods. It is not science if it is not reproducible.

I love this quote:

University research is the closest thing to legalized prostitution that exists in this country today. Scare the crap out of enough Congresscritters and you’ve got funding for your research group to last your entire career, data be damned.

Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline

Climate Model Hoaxing for Dummies
Because Computers Do Lie When Humans Tell Them To

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Climate Comedy

As someone who writes code for a living and a hobby I was interested in the source code downloaded from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The comments in the code make for enlightening reading. The HARRY_READ_ME.txt contained some nice comments about the quality of the code and was summed up nicely by one of the commenters.

Simplified code for CRU to use (from an average programmer with no climatology expertise):

For intYear = 1400 to 2009;
floatGlobalMeanTemerature = floatGlobalMeanTemperature + WHATEVER_THE_HELL_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_BE;
intYear++
next

Print “Holy Crap! We’re all going to die!”

After reading through some of the comments and code it is entirely clear that all of the data has been manipulated to fit an agenda.

Wattsupwiththat has some more in depth coverage of some of the code comments.

For your viewing pleasure.