Month: December 2006

The Sixth Martian Invasion

England 1898. New Jersey 1938. Santiago 1944. Quito 1949. Los Angeles 1953. Buffalo 1968? Buffalo radio station WKBW updated the Orson Wells War Of The Worlds broadcast using their DJs and in-house news reporters playing themselves. Despite a month’s worth of warnings beforehand, 4000 people called the police and reportedly Canada sent some military units to guard bridges over the Niagara River. WKBW subsequently retooled the broadcast in 1971 and again in 1975. Listen to a mp3 of the 1971 version at Echoes Of A Century.

After so many sham invasions from Mars, you would think that the real Martians would finally get around to doing it for real.

FileMaker: Get Previous Monday

This calculation will find the date range between today and whatever the previous Monday was. Best used as part of a navigation script that takes you to a set of recent/current records.

Get ( CurrentDate ) - Case (
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "2" ; 0 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "3" ; 1 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "4" ; 2 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "5" ; 3 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "6" ; 4 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "7" ; 5 ;
DayOfWeek ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) = "1" ; 6 ;
0 ) & "..." & Get ( CurrentDate )

Posting this here for future reference in case I needed it again.

Breaking radio silence

Auto-posted del.icio.us links are the new way to say “hello I’m here, but I’m busy at the moment.” Think of them as the blog equivalent of on-hold background music.

Anyway, I can’t be the first person to think that last night’s story of a potential attack (sorry, CYBERATTACK) on the financial networks is a trial balloon to obscure a legitimate market downturn. Guess that’s just par for the course these days.