Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Allah Sulu's Massive Tool's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
9:43 pm [allah_sulu]	““”̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿’̿’̵͇̿̿з=(•̪●)=ε/̵͇̿̿/̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿’““ Crazed gunner (Some weird and complex emoticons here.) (Comment on this)
6:38 pm [allah_sulu]	Heads For Sale I've had my own personal userhead for some time now: allah_sulu. Livejournal is now making that option available to everybody. If you want to know how, the info is in this post in the lj_userheads community. I can't guarantee fast turnaround, since I'm busy these days, but I can try to help out if anyone needs assistance making a custom userhead. Let me know. (Don't forget I have a large collection already; but I don't know that all of those would meet a moderator's approval.) (Comment on this)
Friday, April 13th, 2012
8:48 pm [allah_sulu]	Everything Old Is New Again LJ has changed their( . ) ( lj-cuts )… (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
12:05 pm [allah_sulu]	Subject: [Update] Allah Sulu's Massive Tool version 3.7.0 There is a new version of Allah_Sulu's Massive Tool available, which can be downloaded in a ZIP archive of files. These files can be extracted into a new folder (for first-time installers) or into your existing Massive Tool directory over the current files (make sure that you are not running the Massive Tool while you're trying to install/extract the update). I am NOT providing an installer (setup.exe) for this update, as the version I was using was not compatible with some versions of Windows (in fact, the program that I was using to create the installer does not run under the 64-bit version of Windows 7, which is the OS I'm using now). New changes to the Massive Tool include: The "Paste Special" option on the "Edit" menu now presents four different options for interpreting text formatting in the clipboard text. If you copy a block of text from a web page (or MS Word, or some other source with text formatting) and special-paste it into the Massive Tool using "HTML Format", the text will come with HTML tags to preserve the formatting (which, in the case of MS Word, will probably be messy). The "Unformatted Text" option merely corrects line breaks (in case you're copying text from a source that doesn't use CR-LF newlines) and removes tab characters. The "Unicode Text" option is the original code that "Paste Special" used to invoke; it converts Unicode characters like "Я" and "Œ" into ampersand codes like "&#1071;" and "&OElig;". (The "HTML Format" option also converts Unicode; but this option is for when you want Unicode converted without also getting HTML tags imported. All three of the above options do CR-LF correction and tab removal.) The fourth option, "Tab-Delimited Text", replaces (rather than removes) tab characters with spaces, lining up the text in columns. (The default column width is eight characters, but setting can be adjusted in the "Edit→Preferences…" dialog.) [Screen Capture] The "Replace…" and "Count…" options on the "Search" menu now have an additional option of only operating upon the selected portion of the document, rather than upon the entire document. The new "Swap Strings…" option on the "Search" menu allows you to simultaneously replace all instances of two strings with each other. This function is not case-sensitive, and will not work if one string is a substring of the other; but it does also have the option of working on the entire document or just the selected portion. I've done a lot of work on the "HTML→Body/Title…" screen, which is only relevant if you're editing an entire web page in the Massive Tool as opposed to simply creating code to post into LJ or other blogs/sites. (It's useful to me.) The page and text formatting is now done in CSS rather than HTML – just another instance where I'm trying to keep the code generated by the Massive Tool up to the latest standards. Plus, this allows more options, like a hover color for text links and removing the underline from links… and then, if you want to put in more specific CSS definitions for different tags or classes, you're already part-way there. I've modified the way that the Border controls work on the "HTML→Images…" screen. Previously, you needed to click on the checkbox to enable the numeric control before you could modify the value. Now, the numeric control is always enabled; and modifying the numeric value automatically turns on the checkbox. (Or, you can just click on the checkbox if you want border="0" in your <img> tag.) The new "LJ Like…" command on the "LJ" menu is used for implementing the <lj-like> tag. Select that menu option or click on the "LJ Like" toolbar button to get a list of options (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Vkontakte, and LJ Give); or right-click on the toolbar button to get a simple <lj-like> that will display all available buttons. The new "LJ Spoiler…" command on the "LJ" menu is used for implementing the <lj-spoiler> tag. Select that menu option and you'll get a screen which functions almost identically to the "LJ Cut…" and "LJ Repost…" screens. I replaced all of the standard Windows color dialogs (which are invoked in many different places within the Massive Tool) with a new custom-built color-selection window that I designed. It lets you select colors by color name, from an on-screen palette, by red-green-blue values, or by hexadecimal HTML code (and combinations thereof). The squares in the bottom row of the palette are dynamic, and change based upon the current selected color (for instance, the first two are a darker and lighter version of the current color, and the last is the negative of the current color). There is even a slider to select how much darker/lighter to make those first two squares. [Screen Capture] The Ctrl-K sequences for characters with umlauts now use a double-quote " instead of a colon :. For example, ^K A " results in Ä. This change was made to provide consistency with other Windows programs. As always, there are new icons, backgrounds, and macro modifications (e.g., the old Photobucket macro was modified to reflect changes in the way Photobucket displayed their pages). I also changed the text on some screens to replace "user tags" and "user icons" with the "userhead" term that LJ is using now. (I would have gotten this up sooner but I was having problems accessing my FTP site.) (Comment on this)
Friday, March 16th, 2012
7:26 pm [allah_sulu]	Testing a new LJ feature... [Read more...] It works! And it's in the Tool. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
9:56 pm [allah_sulu]	I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OK…  I sleep all night and I work all day.  He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch,  He goes to the lavaTREEE… On Wednesdays, he goes shopping; And has buttered scones for tea. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 7th, 2011
4:36 pm [allah_sulu]	The Latest These are some of my newest Userheads. I've been taking requests, and posting old and new ones at lj_userheads. Arab with Keffiyeh   Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood   Elves, Blond Hair   Elves, Drow   Elves, Wood   Frank the Goat   Genma Saotome, Ranma ½   Goth, with Wings   Hand Gestures   Kamina, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Lamb   Men in Black   Mexican Wrestlers   Obama, Barack So far I've put many, but not all, of these on the Reference Pages. LJ is going to be switching from 17x17 to 16x16 for Userheads, so I've started going through the hundreds that I have to make new versions. Some of the animated ones are a real pain, and have to be redone from scratch. Also, FYI, my Icon Maker doesn't work anymore, in IE or FF. A change in the Dollmaker code, perhaps? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
5:41 am [allah_sulu]	Firefox I upgraded to Firefox 6 when it came out a couple of weeks ago, and it's pretty much been a disaster. On two different machines (one running Windows XP, the other running Windows 7), it frequently locks up when I open up too many tabs at once (five or six; I used to be able to open dozens at a time), or a page with a lot of graphics and/or other embedded content (like my LJ friends page), or just for no readily discernible reason at all. I don't know how many other people are having this problem, but I just uninstalled it and reinstalled Firefox 5. This seems to have eliminated the problem. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
4:54 pm [allah_sulu]	May Be Helpful (Click to Embiggen) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
6:11 pm [allah_sulu]	Google+ Tips (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
7:40 pm [allah_sulu]	New Stuff Firefox has already jumped from version 4.0.1 to version 5.0 – that was quick. Now I've got to find out where it does things differently, and how this affects the Massive Tool. Related, there's a page called BrowseHappy.com that lists the most current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer; along with a brief blurb about each and a link to where you can get more info and install them. (Google Chrome, the newest guy on the block, is already up to version 12?!) For well over a decade now, I've been using Borland Delphi 5. That's what the Massive Tool is written in, and it's also one of the things I use at work. I thought it was time to look into getting a new version; so after some research, I decided to jump up to Delphi 7. Still several years out of date, but it's more advanced than what I have now without having changed so much that it will be unrecognizable and require me to learn a new system from scratch. With any luck, once I've gotten up to speed on it and moved my Massive Tool code from Delphi 5 to Delphi 7, it'll be more powerful and have more capabilities. (Plus, version 7 allegedly can create Linux executables as well as Windows executables.) No idea when that will happen. I've found yet another use for the Massive Tool: cleaning up and modifying stories in ASCII/HTML format (like this one) before transferring them to my Kindle to optimize how they look on that device. (Please, no more comments from people who seem to assume that now that I have a Kindle, I'm not longer reading paper books. They aren't mutually exclusive.) Anyway, at some point after I finish with the above (and who knows how many other distractions and tangents), I think I want to learn how to program active content for the Kindle. I wrote about the new <lj-like> earlier; they've announced it and listed the full set of parameters on lj_releases here. In addition to the Facebook, Google, and вКонтакте (vKontakte) options they had earlier; there are now Twitter and LJ Donate (where someone can donate LJ tokens to you) options. Finally, just for fun, I created this Dice Roller page last week. I just threw it together while playing with <form> and <script> elements for practice. If you ever need to simulate die rolls (using different sizes of dice), you can use this… Just select which die or dice you want to roll, and click the button. Refresh/reload the page to reset it. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 11th, 2011
9:19 am [allah_sulu]	Curse You, LJ!! I was just trying to reply to someone's post with this as a comment (I even replaced the CSS styles in the original with LJ-comment-friendly <center> and <font> tags) when I discovered that LJ no longer permits the <marqee> tag in comments either. STAR WARS Episode IX A New Prince Now, this is a story all about how My life got flipped-turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the prince Of the planet Bel Air In Coruscent City born and raised On the playground was where I spent most of my days Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool And all shootin some b-ball outside of the school When a couple of Sith Who were up to no good Startin making trouble in my neighborhood I got in one little fight and my mom got scared She said 'You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air' I whistled for a ship and when it came near The license plate said "Fresh" and it had dice in the mirror If anything I can say this ship is rare But I thought 'Now forget it – Yo homes to Bel Air' I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 And I yelled to the cabbie 'Yo homes smell ya later' I looked at my kingdom I was finally there To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 10th, 2011
7:02 pm [allah_sulu]	The picture is an lj-cut: ( . ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 5th, 2011
10:51 pm [allah_sulu]	Please *LIKE* This Video …it's for a contest. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
5:04 am [allah_sulu]	I Like This, a Bushel and a Peck Looks like LJ is trying out another new feature, although I don't know if it works for everyone or just the Russian users (and those who've opted into Cyrillic Services). I found out about it from robby_roboter in this post (English translation). Apparently, if you insert this code into your post: <lj-like /> …you get this result: You can also enter parameters, like so: <lj-like buttons="google, facebook" /> …in case you want to select which type(s) of button to display. Presumably, buttons for other services may be available in the future. I don't have a Facebook account, so when I view this in Firefox I only see the Google button. However, when I view this in Internet Explorer, I see both the Google and Facebook buttons – because it's in IE that my wife Q logs into Facebook, so LJ must check for cookies before displaying the buttons. So how many buttons do you see… two, one, none, more? EDIT: Now, in IE only, I see a third button which appears to be for a Russian social networking service. EDIT: The Russian site is named ВКонтакте, or "vkontakte" in non-Cyrillic characters. I mention that just in case anybody wants to use that as a parameter, to only allow a "like" button for that service: <lj-like buttons="vkontakte" /> As near as I can tell, Facebook, Google, and ВКонтакте are the only services that LJ provides the "like" buttons for … so far. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
5:01 am [allah_sulu]	«£§©¾ß¡¿» Here's another way to get some of those characters that aren't on your keyboard, without making you look up ALT-key combinations or other techniques. The site is copypastecharacter.com. All you do is click on the character you want to use, and it gets copied automatically onto your clipboard. You just need to paste it wherever you want it. Click, switch tabs, CTRL-V (or whatever "paste" is on non-Windows systems). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
4:40 pm [allah_sulu]	Thank God for Search and Replace I just went back and corrected all of the embed codes in this post because LJ wasn't recognizing the old code format anymore. I understand why they feel the need to make some of the changes that they do; but do they have to make their changes retroactive so that old posts which functioned perfectly before are now broken? It's one thing to have to learn the new rules before making new posts; it's another thing entirely to have to constantly be going back to re-code old posts which used to work but have now become broken. "Grandfather clause" is the idea I'm trying to get across here. (Comment on this)
5:24 am [allah_sulu]	Let The Music Play In this old post I provided the code for embedding an MP3 into your LJ post via a shockwave MP3 player. Well, unfortunately, the odeo.com MP3 player is no longer available, so that code no longer works. Here are two other methods you can try. Livejournal supports both of these codes in LJ posts, but neither of them in LJ comments. <embed src="http://DammitJa.net/audio/Q&A - Faced Oddity (USS Murgatroid).mp3" autostart="false" height="45" width="300"></embed> This code embeds the MP3 directly in your browser, using whatever method your browser has configured for playing MP3s (assuming it has one at all). On my system at home, the MP3 is embeded and played via Quicktime drivers (on both IE and Firefox). Your mileage (and that of the people reading your LJ) may vary. Note that spaces in the URL are allowed. <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf?audioUrl=http://media.khemorex-klinzhai.de/audio/Klenginem.mp3" height="27" width="320"></embed> This is a shockwave MP3 player which comes from Google, so it's likely to be around longer than one from a never-heard-of-them site. It seems to have a problem with URLs that contain spaces. It works on both IE and Firefox on my work PC, but only on Firefox at home. (I probably just need to upgrade my shockwave drivers.) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 16th, 2011
5:46 pm [allah_sulu]	[Update] Allah Sulu's Massive Tool version 3.6.2 It's been almost a year since the last update, so there is a new version of Allah_Sulu's Massive Tool available. It can be downloaded either in Windows installer format (setup.exe etc.; good for first-time installers but may not work with Windows 9x/Me) or as a simple ZIP archive of files which can be extracted into your existing Massive Tool directory over the current files (in either event, make sure that you are not running the Massive Tool while you're trying to install/extract the update!) I'd done a lot of little tweaks here and there since the last update; new changes include: There is a new "Edit" menu option, "Select a Word". It does what you'd expect it to do, and can also be called up by hitting CTRL-W. The "HTML" menu no longer has the "Greek Characters…" or "Special Characters…" options, since all of those characters (and more) can be accessed through the CTRL-K system. The Greek characters are not hardwired into the Massive Tool, but can be defined by running the Greek.RIM macro. Just about all of the "special" characters are already accessible. (The Greek.RIM macro also demonstrates how you can define your own CTRL-K keyboard macros.) ( It's All Greek To Me ) The "HTML→Font / Format" screen has undergone some changes; the most visible being the push buttons for common codes like boldface, italics, and so forth. The coding under the hood, on the one hand, makes it easier to generate the <font> tags required to perform some types of formatting in LiveJournal comments; on the other hand, some of the other HTML code which is generated by this screen has been updated to make it more compliant with evolving HTML standards. Part of this is the new ID data entry for links within a document, since the <a name=""> tag will no longer be supported. ( Screen Shot ) The "HTML→Images…" screen has been slightly modified; the "Image URL" entry is now at the top, having switched places with the "Alt/Title tag" line. The "HTML→List…" screen has been slightly modified. There are new alignment controls for the "Table (two columns)" option. The "LJ→LJ Cut…" screen has a new checkbox, "Select entire document". If this box is checked, then the <lj-cut> tags will be placed around the entire document regardless of which part of the document, if any, has been selected. There is also a new "LJ→LJ Repost…" menu option, to insert the new <lj-repost> tags. It looks and functions almost exactly like the "LJ Cut…" screen. As always, there are new icons, backgrounds, and modifications to the internal language used for coding macros. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
5:50 pm [allah_sulu]	I Shot The Serif - FONT Tags Redux The HTML <font> tag has been deprecated for some time. That means that it's still supported in the current HTML 4.01 standard, for backwards compatibility, but its use is strongly discouraged … You're supposed to set your font attributes using CSS properties. In fact, the <font> tag does not appear in the HTML5 working draft at all – Meaning that, at some point in the future, some or all browsers may eventually stop supporting the <font> tag as HTML5 becomes the new operative standard. (I don't know when that will be; but when it happens, it will mean a number of changes will have to be made to my Massive Tool to address old codes that are no longer supported and new codes that are. In some cases, I've already made tweaks in anticipation of HTML5.) As I said, people have been discouraging the use of the <font> tag for years. I'm pretty sure that I even wrote a post or two on the topic myself several years back. Livejournal places some limitations on inline CSS usage within posts, but you can still accomplish everything <font> does and more via the style attribute. However, the style attribute is now completely blocked outright in LJ comments; so the <font> tag provides the only alternative for doing some types of text formatting in your comments. For that reason, I've occasionally been forced to revisit and use the <font> tag when I want to use different text colors within comments for whatever reason, or occasionally set the font size or face. (Sometimes I need to make sure some or all of the text I'm using is either in a serif or a sans-serif font, for instance.) I post this as a reminder in case any of you have also noted the removal of CSS capability within comments, and looked for a work-around. Be advised to use the <font> tag sparingly, however, because (although I don't expect it to just disappear anytime soon) it won't be around forever. You're still encouraged to eschew <font> in favor of CSS on any other web pages/blogs/whatever you work with, wherever possible. I'm only using it in LJ comments where it's the only choice remaining. ( HTML examples ) (10 Comments |Comment on this)