How I Made the SMS Viewable (Kind of Techie,)

First, I used SMS Backup and Restore to save the SMS messages.

Then I viewed the XML file generated in Firefox, using the following style sheets I downloaded for a threaded view. (Direct link)

If you put the contents of the zip file in the same directory as the xml file.

It would would then show up on Firefox as this:



At this point, I thought that it was there, but I was wrong.

Basically, there was no way for me to get it out.

It did not copy and paste properly, and so I knew that the information was there, I just didn't know how to extract it to a blog post.

It turns out that if I use the link with the style sheets from above, there is one that generates a table in Firefox, and I can cut and past into an excel table, and there it is, with the sender, date, and content, whcih means that I can use my (not particularly) mad skillz at Excel text manipulation to generate the html code which set my stuff flush right, his flush left, added avatars, and had different background colors.

It also means that reordering texts to better reflect the order of the conversation (latency is a bitch)is easier:  Just insert a blank row, move the row there, and delete the now blank row.

Purists out there may object to my abuse of the table tag, which you can see on my earlier post if you look at the html code.

All in all, it comes pretty close to the way that it looks on my phone.

Still, it is a remarkably fugly way to do things, but fugly is what I do.

95 Years Ago Today

The Great Molasses Flood of Boston:

On January 15, 1919—an unusually warm winter day in Boston—patrolman Frank McManus picked up a call box on Commercial Street, contacted his precinct station and began his daily report. Moments later he heard a sound like machine guns and an awful grating. He turned to see a five-story-high metal tank split open, releasing a massive wall of dark amber fluid. Temporarily stunned, McManus turned back to the call box. "Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately," he yelled, "there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!"

More than 7.5 million liters of molasses surged through Boston's North End at around 55 kilometers per hour in a wave about 7.5 meters high and 50 meters wide at its peak. All that thick syrup ripped apart the cylindrical tank that once held it, throwing slivers of steel and large rivets in all directions. The deluge crushed freight cars, tore Engine 31 firehouse from its foundation and, when it reached an elevated railway on Atlantic Avenue, nearly lifted a train right off the tracks. A chest-deep river of molasses stretched from the base of the tank about 90 meters into the streets. From there, it thinned out into a coating one half to one meter deep. People, horses and dogs caught in the mess struggled to escape, only sinking further.

Ultimately, the disaster killed 21 people and injured another 150. About half the victims were crushed by the wave or by debris or drowned in the molasses the day of the incident. The other half died from injuries and infections in the following weeks. A long ensuing legal battle revealed several possible reasons for the flood. The storage tank had been filled to near capacity on July 13 and the molasses had likely fermented, producing carbon dioxide that raised the pressure inside the cylinder. The courts also faulted the United States Industrial Alcohol Co., which owned the tank, for ignoring numerous signs of the structure's instability over the years, such as frequent leaks.

The rest is even better, because they start to discuss things like Reynolds Numbers.

I got some serious geek on reading this.