Indistinguishable from Jesse

The WebKit Nightly Builds page uses the Boot Camp logo to represent Windows. Looks like John Gruber was right about the purpose of the Boot Camp logo.

In the past, I've complained about banks not using https for login pages and software providers not using https for downloads. Both of these practices put large numbers of users at risk of financial harm through man-in-the-middle attacks, including attacks against unsecured wireless networks.

Starting today, I'm practicing what I preach: sections of my site that offer software, such as Firefox extensions and bookmarklets, are now served using https. I'm using the following .htaccess magic in each of those directories to redirect http requests to the correct https URL:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Supporting https will cost me about $65 per year: $17.99/year for a domain validation certificate from GoDaddy and $47.40/year for a unique IP from my web host.

David Farber's hobby (in the xkcd sense): twisting common phrases. My favorite Farberisms:

• A hand in the bush is worth two anywhere else.
• Don't just stand there like a sitting duck.
• He's cornered on all sides.
• I could count it on the fingers of one thumb.
• I haven't gotten the knack down yet.
• I read the sign, but it went in one ear and out the other.
• It's burned to shreds.
• It's more than the mind can boggle.
• It's the old Paul Revere bit ... one if by two and two if by one.
• Just remember that, and then forget it.
• Let's shoot holes at it.
• My mind is a vacuum of information.
• No loaf is better than half a loaf at all.
• You're blowing it all out of context.

These almost make the original clichés and idioms sound ridiculous, don't they?

I didn't like the existing Wikipedia userboxes that say "This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox" because they use a non-standard Firefox icon. (There are strict license restrictions on userbox images, for reasons I haven't tried to understand.) So I created a more specific userbox, using the "Minefield" icon, which happens to be more free than the Firefox icon.

For fun, I created a few more userboxes for my user page:

• This user goes to eleven.
• [In Soviet Russia] Wikipedia uses HIM!

Feel free to include them on your Wikipedia user page :)