Extending Prototype.js

For javascript programmers, Prototype.js is probably the coolest thing around; easy to learn, but not so easy to wrap your head around all at once. Probably the hardest thing to grasp about it is the way it hybridizes Javascript's lisp-like internal structure with more traditional OO constructs like classes, construtors, and interators, then turns around and re-exposes those lisp-like capabilities with functional utilities like detect() and map().

But Prototype is not always complete. A noteable example can be found in PeriodicalExecuter, which takes two arguments: a function to callback, and an interval, and on the interval it calls the callback. The problem is that there's no utilitarian way to pause a PeriodicalExecuter; you can only stop and restart it. If the callback function has some state (which is possible in Javascript, now that closures in Javascript have become commonplace), tough.

So I wrote a PeriodicalExecuterToggled, which allows you to stop and start the PeriodicalExecuter at will and keep the callback unchanged.

( Javascript deepness )

Combined with something like the Scriptaculous Slider, this version of PeriodicalExecuter can provide for some interesting user-controlled experiences with javascript animation, regular updates from back-end servers, and other Web 2.0 services.

Sorry about this article bouncing around like this: I never realized just how frakkin' hard it is to post source code to LJ!

Back to the Pentium-2

Well, frack. There goes another one. The T23 exhibits the same symptoms under Windows as it does under Linux. I put in its old hard drive and tried to run it, and I still get the same intermittent screen failures and other screen artifacts that I was getting under Linux, so it's not the drivers. It died the first time when I first got it, but this is just annoying; it fell out of its warranty a few weeks ago (it was only 90 days). Now what do I do?

It's not like I'm cruel to my laptops. I keep them in a padded sleeve in my briefcase and yeah, I tend to run the software hard, but I'm not like, viciously cruel to them or anything. I don't drop them. This is really making me annoyed.

I've re-initialized the 600e. At least it hasn't failed me, although I have to replace the keyboard soon. The space bar is being held up by a pair of springs I cut out of an old click pen. But it's too slow to play movies or run some of my Japanese translation exercise programs. And it has one-quarter the memory of the T23, meaning I can't run more than one Mozilla product at once: Thunderbird or Firefox or Liferea. I'm getting good at restoring to the T23.