Darth Vader burger - from Quick press release - look, no mintinbox.net watermark

The black-bunned Darth Vader burger, being offered by French fast food chain Quick, is for real, but you wouldn't know it from reading the story on internet news outlets. When examining the story on several major sites (CNN, ABC News, Fox News, Huffington Post, CNET, to name a few), I noticed that almost all of them are using an image with a mintinbox.net watermark. Mintinbox.net is in French, but appears to be a Star Wars fan site. I'm not a reporter, but I don't think I would rely on a fan site for news without proper fact checking.

Yet, all of these major news outlets apparently based their story on the mininbox.net post. Amazingly, this thing is for real, I think a more accurate story could be obtained from Quick's own press release (in French, but I've added a very rough English translation, via Google translate). I don't read French, but it is pretty clear from the release, and the image above, that the promotion for the Darth Vader burger lasts from March 2nd until March 5th, even though most of the news stories cite March 1st as the end date. CNN, at least quotes a French news site as its source, but looking at that page also reveals that site culled the image from mintinbox.net, and the story from a French geek blog.

It appears this story originated with the mininbox.net post, but didn't the reporters covering this "story" think to dig a little deeper than a fan site - it really wasn't very hard to find the official press release, and I don't even speak French - you would think that CNN employs at least 1 person that could read French. None of the articles/posts I've read seem to go deeper than this mininbox.net post. Let's just regurgitate something we found on the interwebs and call it sourced. Welcome to news in the 21st century.

Next, we'll take a look at a veterinary website in the UK.
http://petany.co.uk/east/home.html

As you may have noticed, these two websites look remarkably similar. I developed the VCA website while working at the Designory. This website from the UK has no association with VCA Animal Hospitals. Let's take a look at the source code for PETANY.

After reviewing the source code, I have created a short, non-exhaustive list of things to do when stealing someone else's work.

• Change the meta author tag - this one is a dead giveaway, it still says "Designory.com"
• Change analytics ids - a little bit trickier, because they aren't as obvious. Look, attention to detail is important to a programmer, especially important to a programmer who steals.
• Change API keys - Google Maps provides a free API for developers, all one has to do is apply for a key at no cost. On the Map & Directions page, PETANY is using the api key for vcahospitals.com, tsk, tsk.
• Change site verification keys - duh
• Ensure that forms do not post back to the site you stole the code from. PETANY is going to have a hard time accepting appointments online because the form is posting back to vcahospitals.com
• I did not do the creative for VCA, but when stealing a logo, if your client is in the UK, you probably should not include an outline of the United States (as is found in the original) in the logo.

One last thing to consider when stealing someone else's work, you should make every effort to disassociate yourself (developer) from your client's website. I searched Google for "petany.co.uk" (in quotes) and came up with one Facebook profile (Hi Alain).

The jQuery Plasma Plug-in now has an official project page, which will always contain the latest releases and sample code.

Well, let's see it in action...

Stop Start Faster Slower Sharpen Blur Destroy
It may take a few clicks on some buttons to see results.

The jQuery Plasma Plug-in now has an official project page, which will always contain the latest releases and sample code.

After my efforts, I still really don't grasp what is going on with the math involved, but hell, I got it to work in JavaScript.

EDIT: Did some tweeking, bug fixing, and packaged up everything. This is definitely alpha software, use at your own risk.

EDIT 2: Updated to Version 0.2. Added start, stop, and destroy methods. Improved delay timer performance. Exposed all settings in jQuery data object, allowing for on the fly changes to settings (see example.html).

A friend was asking me about this, because he had seen it on a couple or websites recently. So, I started investigating, and found jQuery Tubular which seemed to do the trick. Now, a word about methodology, I have nothing against jQuery plug-ins, but as a former plug-in author, I know a simple, neat plug-in will bloat out of control with feature requests. So, I generally look at the code, and pull out the functionality that I need, and then rewrite the code for my purposes.

So, here is a blog post with a pretty YouTube background video and not much else.

Now, we have Blu-Ray (don't get me started - looks awesome, software nightmare). Was DRM built into the spec before companies started making Blu-Ray players (even though the companies that created Blu-Ray knew that a few people on the internet may want to pirate content)? No. If your Blu-Ray player was built before HDPC, tough luck - I haven't found a firmware update for HDPC. And speaking of firmware updates, who the fuck decided it would be a good idea to start manufacturing Blu-Ray players before the spec was even finalized. I have never had to update the firmware on any of my DVD players, but it seems that each new release on Blu-Ray has some new tech that requires a firmware update (if the manufacturer provides these updates in a timely fashion).

So the end result is that I turned off my Netflix Blu-Ray subscription. Too unreliable. Check craigslist in the coming days for a slightly used Blu-Ray player. Oh, and that Blu-Ray disc that would not play? Found it on BitTorrent.

This JavaScripot tool converts RGB colors (values of 0-255 for each red, green, blue) into hexadecimal notation (#1a2b3c).

Feel free to comment (they are moderated), and comment spammers can bite my shiny metal ass.