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Shog9
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1 year ago
in Rate your gas guzzler on Life is grand
For kicks, i tried finding my car in there. Wasn't, of course, so i picked the Maveric SW. 290g.
Ha!
Ha!
1 year ago
in iPhone’s missing features on Life is grand
Regarding the battery thing: if you're traveling, using your phone heavily, and won't be within reach of a charger for the duration... then having a spare battery is essential.
I'm not convinced the iPhone is a good match for that demographic anyway though; personally, i like cheap & rugged.
I'm not convinced the iPhone is a good match for that demographic anyway though; personally, i like cheap & rugged.
2 years ago
in Things to do before you die: #098 on Life is grand
What's up with the comments on the CV tip post? "pre condition failed"; huh?
2 years ago
in On rare books on Life is grand
Huh. Next you'll be poo-pooing the drinking of port or the smoking of pipes.
Now if you'll excuse me, i need to reprimand a servant for disturbing the alignment of fountain pens on my mahogany desk...
Now if you'll excuse me, i need to reprimand a servant for disturbing the alignment of fountain pens on my mahogany desk...
2 years ago
in Rashgadget on Life is grand
> Funny how the same rules that apply to professionals is coming around to apply to us “amateurs” as our popularity increases.
Uh, yeah. 'Cause lies and gossip are perfectly ok as long as you're obscure...
(i know what you're getting at, just find it a bit frustrating that basic courtesy seems to be such a foreign concept for so many bloggers... and journalists)
Uh, yeah. 'Cause lies and gossip are perfectly ok as long as you're obscure...
(i know what you're getting at, just find it a bit frustrating that basic courtesy seems to be such a foreign concept for so many bloggers... and journalists)
2 years ago
in When experts go up their own arses on Life is grand
No, the funny bit here is that there are actually threads dedicated to critiquing headlines, probably the most shameless trolls in all of journalism. I suspect you could pick up a newspaper anywhere on earth and find headlines misrepresenting or completely ignoring the actual story... it's like, the whole *point* of headlines.
What next, a hardware review site taking on the fake speakers sold out of vans in parking lots?
What next, a hardware review site taking on the fake speakers sold out of vans in parking lots?
2 years ago
in David doesn’t blog on Life is grand
You know he has a point.
I mean, he's a hack, punching out opinion pieces for the sole purpose of drawing readers to whatever publication happens to pay him. But, and i stress this point, he _does_ get paid for it.
As i type this, there are probably thousands of opinion pieces being pushed onto blogs, each just as much a waste of time as anything Mr. Bullard has written, but whose authors will never receive so much as a beer for their work.
And this is the crux of it - blogs are a very poor platform for discussion and at best a poor platform for publishing anything of value... but they are excellent soapboxes. You stand on your soapbox and preach to the world, and the world walks on by. Across the way, a stage is constructed, and Bullard stands atop it with his kin, faces lit by floodlights, amplified voices booming like gods in the ears of those scrambling for the privilege of listening. Now, don't you feel a bit silly, perched atop your shaky little box?
No? Because you know who you're writing for? Because that handful of people metaphorically standing at the foot of your metaphorical box are still listening**, and that's enough for you? Good.
**except for me, standing off to the side mumbling to myself. Just ignore me. I ain't right. Metaphorically, at least.
I mean, he's a hack, punching out opinion pieces for the sole purpose of drawing readers to whatever publication happens to pay him. But, and i stress this point, he _does_ get paid for it.
As i type this, there are probably thousands of opinion pieces being pushed onto blogs, each just as much a waste of time as anything Mr. Bullard has written, but whose authors will never receive so much as a beer for their work.
And this is the crux of it - blogs are a very poor platform for discussion and at best a poor platform for publishing anything of value... but they are excellent soapboxes. You stand on your soapbox and preach to the world, and the world walks on by. Across the way, a stage is constructed, and Bullard stands atop it with his kin, faces lit by floodlights, amplified voices booming like gods in the ears of those scrambling for the privilege of listening. Now, don't you feel a bit silly, perched atop your shaky little box?
No? Because you know who you're writing for? Because that handful of people metaphorically standing at the foot of your metaphorical box are still listening**, and that's enough for you? Good.
**except for me, standing off to the side mumbling to myself. Just ignore me. I ain't right. Metaphorically, at least.
2 years ago
in First thoughts on Silverlight on Life is grand
Ah... geez. ActiveX is dead, and has been for a while. Although i'm sure there are a few people doing the ".NET component embedded in a website" thing, it kinda sucks, and cross-browser support is important again (even if just as a bragging point).
But MS needs that. For all the talk about IE being expanded to support existing and emerging web standards, that doesn't really help MS - the better the job they do, the _less_ likely they are to have the sort of vendor lock-in that is as tightly ingrained into the company culture as naive-yet-cynical rants are to my personality.
Silverfish is a given. It *has* to exist, in one form or another. There may never be more than a handful of MS sites or products that actually depend on it, but it still needs to exist and be pushed, just so the incredibly strong "try MS first" market has something to eat up.
See also: why IBM does a little of everything...
But MS needs that. For all the talk about IE being expanded to support existing and emerging web standards, that doesn't really help MS - the better the job they do, the _less_ likely they are to have the sort of vendor lock-in that is as tightly ingrained into the company culture as naive-yet-cynical rants are to my personality.
Silverfish is a given. It *has* to exist, in one form or another. There may never be more than a handful of MS sites or products that actually depend on it, but it still needs to exist and be pushed, just so the incredibly strong "try MS first" market has something to eat up.
See also: why IBM does a little of everything...
2 years ago
in Indirect digital education on Life is grand
How long did it take you to learn how to program the presets in your car? You know, where you push a button and it tunes to your favorite station?
It usually takes me a little while.
If you can remember them, consider the old, old car radios, the ones with big solid pushbuttons that you pulled out and punched in to set a preset, and physically moved the tuning knob to recall it. Those weren't exactly intuitive either, but you could pretty much figure them out with a little bit of free time, since there was only two things you could do with them: pull them out and push them in. Most radios now make you either hold the button in for a variable amount of time, or (shudder) enter some special "programming mode".
And that's a *very* simple feature.
By the way - have you ever stayed in a hotel where the bedside radio had a set of preset stations in lieu of a tuning knob? That's not a new idea - if you dig far enough, you'll find some *very* old radios that did the exact same thing. There were also dial radios (like the old rotary dial phones) and plenty of radios that allowed fine-tuning to frequencies inaccessible on the normal models (just because they were analog didn't mean you had infinite control...)
My point is, the system we're all so familiar with - turn a knob, select a station - was hardly the only game in town. It just so happens that it was both fairly simple to implement (the knob originally connected directly to a variable capacitor used to select the desired frequency) and simple to operate and understand. An improved system, where turning the knob would tune directly to the next assignable frequency without touching all the frequencies in between, took a good deal longer to perfect; although such systems existed prior to the advent of digital tuning, they were complex and expensive and (if poorly made or cared for) prone to drifting.
In computer land, we're not there yet. Web browsers all have subtly different ways of "tuning" - although you can usually enter a URL directly, entering a partial URL might result in several different things happening. (See also: why URL searches are so popular) And of course, once you've finally loaded the web page, things get weird - searching, scrolling, bookmarking *and retrieving bookmarks* all work a little differently, and they all have problems. But that's not surprising - even the (conceptually) simple task of _playing music_ presents a mind-boggling number of differing and bizarre interfaces. After, what, 12 iterations of WMP Microsoft still doesn't seem to have a clue what their users actually want the app to do (they suspect it's: "look shiny").
As programmers, we're amazing - we make impossible things practical. As designers, we're blathering idiots - unable to even learn from the triumphs and mistakes of the past, much less come up with anything better.
If you can find a good lending library, try to dig up a book on old radios. Alternately, seek out a collector or collectors' magazine. Now bring up a gallery of websites or app UIs. Note the similarities and have yourself a good laugh - you might as well practice, 'cause 30 years from now we'll all be doing that...
It usually takes me a little while.
If you can remember them, consider the old, old car radios, the ones with big solid pushbuttons that you pulled out and punched in to set a preset, and physically moved the tuning knob to recall it. Those weren't exactly intuitive either, but you could pretty much figure them out with a little bit of free time, since there was only two things you could do with them: pull them out and push them in. Most radios now make you either hold the button in for a variable amount of time, or (shudder) enter some special "programming mode".
And that's a *very* simple feature.
By the way - have you ever stayed in a hotel where the bedside radio had a set of preset stations in lieu of a tuning knob? That's not a new idea - if you dig far enough, you'll find some *very* old radios that did the exact same thing. There were also dial radios (like the old rotary dial phones) and plenty of radios that allowed fine-tuning to frequencies inaccessible on the normal models (just because they were analog didn't mean you had infinite control...)
My point is, the system we're all so familiar with - turn a knob, select a station - was hardly the only game in town. It just so happens that it was both fairly simple to implement (the knob originally connected directly to a variable capacitor used to select the desired frequency) and simple to operate and understand. An improved system, where turning the knob would tune directly to the next assignable frequency without touching all the frequencies in between, took a good deal longer to perfect; although such systems existed prior to the advent of digital tuning, they were complex and expensive and (if poorly made or cared for) prone to drifting.
In computer land, we're not there yet. Web browsers all have subtly different ways of "tuning" - although you can usually enter a URL directly, entering a partial URL might result in several different things happening. (See also: why URL searches are so popular) And of course, once you've finally loaded the web page, things get weird - searching, scrolling, bookmarking *and retrieving bookmarks* all work a little differently, and they all have problems. But that's not surprising - even the (conceptually) simple task of _playing music_ presents a mind-boggling number of differing and bizarre interfaces. After, what, 12 iterations of WMP Microsoft still doesn't seem to have a clue what their users actually want the app to do (they suspect it's: "look shiny").
As programmers, we're amazing - we make impossible things practical. As designers, we're blathering idiots - unable to even learn from the triumphs and mistakes of the past, much less come up with anything better.
If you can find a good lending library, try to dig up a book on old radios. Alternately, seek out a collector or collectors' magazine. Now bring up a gallery of websites or app UIs. Note the similarities and have yourself a good laugh - you might as well practice, 'cause 30 years from now we'll all be doing that...
2 years ago
in Quitting Twitter on Life is grand
One nice aspect of talking to yourself is that when you stop, you don't have to listen to anyone complaining about it...
2 years ago
in Image concatenation and favicons on Life is grand
Well, say your auto-gen CSS looks something like this:
#BC7DDA8826EF4c0b8F452622B8B6C8CF { background: url(iconset1.png) -128 0; }
...for each icon. And it could probably be shorter. But even then, for 300 entries you'd have only about 22KB of CSS, which isn't even as bad as it sounds since if you want 300 images you'd have to associate them in *some* way anyhow, and it's not gonna get much more concise.
Of course, you're right - you're not gonna have 300 icons on-screen at once, and a reasonable browser is gonna load the ones on-screen first - so you'll benefit from intelligent loading *and* caching browser-side.
Still, an interesting little problem.
#BC7DDA8826EF4c0b8F452622B8B6C8CF { background: url(iconset1.png) -128 0; }
...for each icon. And it could probably be shorter. But even then, for 300 entries you'd have only about 22KB of CSS, which isn't even as bad as it sounds since if you want 300 images you'd have to associate them in *some* way anyhow, and it's not gonna get much more concise.
Of course, you're right - you're not gonna have 300 icons on-screen at once, and a reasonable browser is gonna load the ones on-screen first - so you'll benefit from intelligent loading *and* caching browser-side.
Still, an interesting little problem.
2 years ago
in Image concatenation and favicons on Life is grand
Ack, i didn't even think clearly - 8bpp is probably terribly impractical, since if you have more than a few icons using different palettes you'll end up having to choose a single palette and map them all to it. I've done this before, writing a tile manager for an old DOS game - it sucks, even when you have an artist you can ask to re-draw images for a given palette. Of course, these are tiny little icons, and most probably use just a handful of colors - but still, with 300 images, you're gonna have problems. Even just one icon like your green balloon thing would suffer if it had to share a palette with (say) a shaded red balloon.
So you'd want to go with full-color. You could be talking 100KB for a full set of 300 images, maybe a little less, but probably in that ballpark. You'd *definitely* want to cache that somehow.
So you'd want to go with full-color. You could be talking 100KB for a full set of 300 images, maybe a little less, but probably in that ballpark. You'd *definitely* want to cache that somehow.
2 years ago
in Image concatenation and favicons on Life is grand
First thing that strikes me - you're talking over half a MB uncompressed for 300 16x16 indexed (8bpp) icons. Even if you can compress it down to only a tenth of that size, you're still talking 64KB of uncached image data - whereas, you could probably cache the plain favicons extremely easily.
Of course, if it's *always the same 300 icons*, you can ask the browser to cache the concatenated image as well, and you're really ahead of the game. But assuming that isn't likely, the next best thing is probably to estimate a "sweet-spot" - how many images are likely to stay the same between each request? If users are generally viewing the same sites, this is probably fairly high - say 80%, or 240 images. Now, if you could group images into smaller sets based on their probability of being displayed, you can still generate the CSS and the images in a particular strip together, cache them server- and browser-side, relying on the browser pulling in however many sets are needed. The sets should be large enough to reduce the total number of requests, but small enough that it won't be too onerous if the browser has to pull down a few more than what would be optimal (total number of icons > 300).
I suspect you could come up with a formula for this, though i'm not seeing it right now.
Just when i think you're being utterly dull, you surprise me with an interesting little puzzle like this... :-)
Of course, if it's *always the same 300 icons*, you can ask the browser to cache the concatenated image as well, and you're really ahead of the game. But assuming that isn't likely, the next best thing is probably to estimate a "sweet-spot" - how many images are likely to stay the same between each request? If users are generally viewing the same sites, this is probably fairly high - say 80%, or 240 images. Now, if you could group images into smaller sets based on their probability of being displayed, you can still generate the CSS and the images in a particular strip together, cache them server- and browser-side, relying on the browser pulling in however many sets are needed. The sets should be large enough to reduce the total number of requests, but small enough that it won't be too onerous if the browser has to pull down a few more than what would be optimal (total number of icons > 300).
I suspect you could come up with a formula for this, though i'm not seeing it right now.
Just when i think you're being utterly dull, you surprise me with an interesting little puzzle like this... :-)
2 years ago
in Image concatenation and favicons on Life is grand
oh. Ohhh....
So you could do server-side concatenation of the favicons, generate CSS to display them at the same time, and send one moderately-sized image and one .css file down instead of 300 tiny images.
I like it... :-D
So you could do server-side concatenation of the favicons, generate CSS to display them at the same time, and send one moderately-sized image and one .css file down instead of 300 tiny images.
I like it... :-D
2 years ago
in Image concatenation and favicons on Life is grand
Huh? How is such a technique in any way useful for favicons? There's... only one.
Are you thinking that it'd be groovy if you could store the favicon in the same image as other icons on the page? 'Cause i gotta say, that sounds like just a maintenance nightmare...
Are you thinking that it'd be groovy if you could store the favicon in the same image as other icons on the page? 'Cause i gotta say, that sounds like just a maintenance nightmare...
2 years ago
in Web Design Survey on Life is grand
Huh. That was boring. Thank goodness for the few open-ended text fields...
2 years ago
in MySpace vs. The Internet on Life is grand
I'm OUTRAGED!
A service i despise and refuse to use has blocked access to another service i don't care about! The horror!
It can't be long now 'till the nazi comparisons hit... :rolleyes:
A service i despise and refuse to use has blocked access to another service i don't care about! The horror!
It can't be long now 'till the nazi comparisons hit... :rolleyes:
2 years ago
in Blogger code of conduct on Life is grand
> I am on the side of anarchy in this. It comes down to the individual how
> they run their domain. So long as it is legal I don’t want interference from
> any party. It is the readership that decides what they read.
Uh-huh.
Look, the whole thing's reactionary. Someone got scared by a bunch of assholes, and the "leaders" are looking for some way to wield the power that they don't have so as to avoid being accused of complacency. Meanwhile, all the usual suspects are screaming "censorship!".
IMHO, all the shrillness just hides the obvious: it's *your* blog, it's *your* site, BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT'S ON IT!
If you don't mind vulgar comments, then let 'em be - but when someone gets offended, don't loose your backbone: it was your decision to leave 'em open, and you ARE responsible, morally if not legally, for what others posted. This isn't USENET, or an open message board - it's a web page that allows limited kibitzing, nothing more - and you ARE the defacto moderator, and if you choose not to moderate, then you've given your implicit approval to whatever is posted.
You can make all the comparisons to "Real Life" that you want, but there's only one that's apt: the network TV show. This is Paul Live, Paul Coast-to-Coast, The Paul Show. You may not get to pick the guests, but you sure as hell are responsible for what they do on your stage, and how much of that gets broadcast.
So don't wear a star. Don't wear a ribbon. Don't posture.
Just open up that admin page that only you have access to, _and do your damn job_.
> they run their domain. So long as it is legal I don’t want interference from
> any party. It is the readership that decides what they read.
Uh-huh.
Look, the whole thing's reactionary. Someone got scared by a bunch of assholes, and the "leaders" are looking for some way to wield the power that they don't have so as to avoid being accused of complacency. Meanwhile, all the usual suspects are screaming "censorship!".
IMHO, all the shrillness just hides the obvious: it's *your* blog, it's *your* site, BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT'S ON IT!
If you don't mind vulgar comments, then let 'em be - but when someone gets offended, don't loose your backbone: it was your decision to leave 'em open, and you ARE responsible, morally if not legally, for what others posted. This isn't USENET, or an open message board - it's a web page that allows limited kibitzing, nothing more - and you ARE the defacto moderator, and if you choose not to moderate, then you've given your implicit approval to whatever is posted.
You can make all the comparisons to "Real Life" that you want, but there's only one that's apt: the network TV show. This is Paul Live, Paul Coast-to-Coast, The Paul Show. You may not get to pick the guests, but you sure as hell are responsible for what they do on your stage, and how much of that gets broadcast.
So don't wear a star. Don't wear a ribbon. Don't posture.
Just open up that admin page that only you have access to, _and do your damn job_.
2 years ago
in @username on Twitter on Life is grand
This is... fascinating. Reminds me of a story i heard once...
...Seems that years ago, back in the heady days following the Rural Electrification Act, those crazy kids out in the hills of Southeast Minnesota had a rather interesting way of communicating at a distance. They'd strung stout copper wires from poles along the road, and with the aid of a device installed in each home, could send messages through it. Since these were busy, hard-working folk, they couldn't exactly stand around watching an LCD screen to find out who was talking (plus, LCD screens didn't exist) so they hit upon a rather unique solution: each user had a custom "ring", and a bell attached to each communication device would reproduce this "ring", thereby informing all users of who the current message was intended for (strikingly similar then to your @username system). Of course, anyone was free to listen in, and many interesting occurrences came about because of this...
Of course, like all good things, this system came to an end. The Man ripped out all of their nice stout copper cables, and replaced them with buried, insulated wire - and a separate circuit for each home. Now deprived of their means of common communication, this formerly-vibrant community, degenerated into sets of isolated families, and for many years the only reminders of what once was were the remains of the copper wiring strung up in pastures and electrified for the containment of cattle.
Now, with DSL and Twitter, a new day is dawning...
(or, you know, something)
...Seems that years ago, back in the heady days following the Rural Electrification Act, those crazy kids out in the hills of Southeast Minnesota had a rather interesting way of communicating at a distance. They'd strung stout copper wires from poles along the road, and with the aid of a device installed in each home, could send messages through it. Since these were busy, hard-working folk, they couldn't exactly stand around watching an LCD screen to find out who was talking (plus, LCD screens didn't exist) so they hit upon a rather unique solution: each user had a custom "ring", and a bell attached to each communication device would reproduce this "ring", thereby informing all users of who the current message was intended for (strikingly similar then to your @username system). Of course, anyone was free to listen in, and many interesting occurrences came about because of this...
Of course, like all good things, this system came to an end. The Man ripped out all of their nice stout copper cables, and replaced them with buried, insulated wire - and a separate circuit for each home. Now deprived of their means of common communication, this formerly-vibrant community, degenerated into sets of isolated families, and for many years the only reminders of what once was were the remains of the copper wiring strung up in pastures and electrified for the containment of cattle.
Now, with DSL and Twitter, a new day is dawning...
(or, you know, something)
2 years ago
in First time users on Life is grand
> I put in UI elements that are aimed at fast, efficient, repeated use but which are difficult to figure out on first glance. They take a bit of learning.
There's where i love the whole "learning by example" strategy:
http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2006/10/as...
Nothin' like giving someone a nice template to follow and relying on trial + error taking 'em the rest of the way...
There's where i love the whole "learning by example" strategy:
http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2006/10/as...
Nothin' like giving someone a nice template to follow and relying on trial + error taking 'em the rest of the way...
2 years ago
in My ID is Open on Life is grand
Interesting...
I've had this livejournal account for... ages now, never posted anything with it, but needed the login to view family member's "friends only" entries. Now i can also use it to get me one of these new-fangled "open eye deez". *Fan*tastic!
...now i just need to find a use for an OpenID...
I've had this livejournal account for... ages now, never posted anything with it, but needed the login to view family member's "friends only" entries. Now i can also use it to get me one of these new-fangled "open eye deez". *Fan*tastic!
...now i just need to find a use for an OpenID...
2 years ago
in The Twiterati on Life is grand
"Those celebrity stalkers are just lame. Not me though. Nothin' *keeps it real* like peepin' in your neighbors windows out in the *boondocks*!"
;-)
;-)
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