Saturday, June 10, 2000
from webdesign-l: "You can't make a folder called "prn" on a Windows machine - 95, 98, NT (Workstation or Server)." wild... just tried it on w2k and that's also true. good thing all of the is very well documented (can't wait for some of penfield's ruling to take place).
interesting /. comments in response to a dumb mac article
wow, i've never been to InfoDesign before. i will have to make my way through this (eventually).
Friday, June 09, 2000
one i wish the blink tag would work. leads me to wonder if someone will modify a broswer (im thinking moziall would be easiest) to render based on dtd, or customize rendering to emulate certain browser rendering/parsing bugs. might be neat. of course, i'd much rather be able to dynamically turn off javascript functions (window.open in particular), presentation tags, and animated gifs. nothing lots of people haven't thrown out in the air before. of course i won't be of much help. didn't get a chance to even begin looking at writing any xul stuff.
jz reviews a bunchload of interactive ad agency websites. definitely of interest to anyone redesigning their company website. *cough* *cough* also of amusement, jz snuck in a link to praystation in the article.
speaking of cool business sites, i find myself liking vir2l's site a lot, despite it's crappy usability (what good is a next generation ecommerce site if you can't bookmark pages?).they have some really spiffy designer's working there, and great eye candy, at least. i can admire it, but i don't think i could in good conscience ever ape that kind of web design style. (and i'm too immersed in backend schtuff to go balls to the wall on any clientside design right now, but i definitely need to get back in the swing of following the latest trends in web design).
ooh, looks cool. fic has the web page up for their crusoe powered web pad - AQUA3200 WebPAD. if it had a slightly higher res screen. i am a bit bothered by it's wireless support. it says it has 802.11 support via pc card slot, but it only has one type II socket available and one compact flash slot. if i'm decoding the specs right, that means that if you have the wireless card in there and pretty much no storage (personally, i'd be happy with one extra pc card slot so i could transfer from my camera's cf card to a typeII hd (while still having wireless access).
good lord. it's 9pm. i have no life. of course, i didn't get home today until almost 8pm, so i don't feel that bad. but i still have no life.
for some strange mysterious reason, jon katz was trying to find something good in the $cientologist pos battlefield earth. this anonymous coward was up to the challenge:
I liked Battlefield Earth!
I went to this movie on a date with this chick named Kelly. We were actually double-dating with my buddy and his girlfriend who were going to go see a show at a theater complex a couple of miles away. It was one of those chick-flick luvvy-duvvy shitfests that his girlfriend made him go see. I will not see movies like that, period. I was a bit curious about Battlefield Earth, though .. I liked John Travolta in many of his recent movies and I thought "What the hell?" I called up Kelly and asked her if she wanted to go (we had been out once before) and she said sure. My buddy and his GF dropped us off at the theater and went to their flick. They would be back later to pick us up.
Well, turns out the movie sucked so bad that we were ready to leave about halfway through. The only problem was that we didn't have a ride .. my buddy was suffering through some pansy-ass chick flick that wouldn't be over for over an hour! This left us with the problem of what to do for that hour. We didn't want to just sit around and do nothing. The sky was overcast and as I recall it was even drizzling a little bit.
Across the street from the theater was one of those fleabag motels .. you know, the kind of place that has hourly rates. Slyly, I asked Kelly "You ever wonder what it would be like inside one of those motels with hourly rates?" I didn't know how she'd take it, dude .. like I said, it was only our second date. Well, imagine my happiness when she got this little smile and said "Well, now seems like it would be a good time to find out." What followed was an hour of the most unimaginably raunchy, sweaty, athletic, mind-blowing sex I've ever had. We even had time for a quick shower (though I won't describe the state the bathroom was in .. yeesh!) By the time we were heading out the door, my buddy was just pulling up to the opposite curb.
So the bottom line is, Battlefield Earth was responsible for a very interesting afternoon. So I would like to thank you, Elron Hubbard! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You might be a freak, Elron, and your Scientology cult might be a complete sham, but at least your piece-of-crap movie got me laid real good and proper-like!
Thank you, Elron! Thank you!
also pretty good is rimrod's response: "It's giving Britney Spears and Bill Gates some needed competition in the "Worst Thing Ever To Happen, Ever" category". and ucblockhead has a good comment:
It entertained millions.
By providing something easily trashable, it allowed hundreds of reviewers to write hundreds of mild-to-very amusing reviews trashing it.
I have personally spent probably a total of twenty minutes being entertained by reviewers topping each other at amusing anecdotes of the filmatic crapulence of this film. And I didn't even have to spend a dime! Multiply that by the millions who encountered reviews and you get something that entertained many more than would have a merely mediocre film.
according to the WHO: "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries."
let the game begin. traa laa, la laa la laa (its the smurf's theme for the tonally impaired).
sony's eMarker device looks pretty cool, records the time of when you hear a song on the radio so it can connect to server and look everything up later. looks like xenote has been doing it for a while already.
MP3.com settles copyright suits; shares rise
BMG First Label to Sell Streams
Thursday, June 08, 2000
good one:OK, I'm not exactly a techno-geek, but with seven years of Hah-vud Law School behind me, I think that a bit of Latin has rubbed off on me. Here's the explanation:
"Virus" comes from the Latin word "Vi", meaning "crappy text editor". It is pluralised because one is creating the concept of multiple vi, adding feature after feature to create a completely bloated, horrifically crappy text editor.
To then double-pluralise it, one would be creating a concept of a text editor bloated beyond the point of reason, so that you actually question your own sanity.
I therefore submit that the plural of "Virus" is "Emacs".
What's the Plural of `Virus'?
hmm, if i had known that generating js array code in js was such a bitch i would have just done it in perl. actually, it wasn't that bad, although i'm sure that the way i did it was more convoluted than need be. results at the bottom of the page. reload to your heart's content (avg load of my server right now... 0.00)
derek says helvetica is poised for a comeback. i don't think so. i stopped by business 2.0's site earlier tonight. they had just redesigned. completely illegible. tiny, horribly hinted text, bold text that was so crappy that the letters actually are physically melded together. yeah, you know the point already. helvetica is evil. and so are the assholes who use who specify font sizes in px.
well, i just lost a fair bit of typing because of a browser mishap. doesn't that suck for me? anyway, i got a around to looking through my las vegas photos. nothing really spectacular, (need to call nikon when i get a chance about my huge annoying stuck pixel (and how because of it i get a bright green 9 pixel spot) as well as my ever-disattached camera grip) but i did find a couple of shots i really like.
here's a shot of bellagio's fountains going off, which we went to see on thursday, the first night we were there. this is the best one i got of the actual fountains. there are a lot of pipes powering that thing.
this shot from the hotel room i was staying in at the monte carlo. you can see part of the fading sunset. it was pretty spectacular a few minutes earlier. i'm sort of sad that i didn't get a picture of the whole thing, but i guess i'm sorrier that i can't really visualize it anymore, even though i told myself i would try to remember it. saddest of all is my crappy account of the situation, but what good is a personal website if you aren't free to write what you want?
last shot i'm going to post up for now is one i took the night before flying out. the window slid open enough for me to prop my camera against it and take a few shots. most of 'em came out blurry or a bit too blown out, but this one was pretty nice. vegas looks good at night - almost convinces you that it might have some actual worth.
hmm, wasn't that fun. better than doing real work. fills up some time while i redesign. and i get to look back at this in a few years and alternatively cringe and wonder at my prose. meta meta. also, i only got carded once on the floor. of course, i didn't really gamble or drink, so...
argh, i spent 3 hours wrestling w/ some regular expressions for no good reason today.
this is random but fun. kismet is an autonomous robot design for social interaction w/ humans, part of the cog project (building a humanoid robot). followed the links from a recent feed article (which is worth the time to read).
Wednesday, June 07, 2000
interesting info for those who think the ms judgement won't change anything while the case goes through appeals (it should get kicked up to the supreme court soon anyway)
those wacky mit guys. conversion map v 0.01: an interface for very large-scale conversations.
like many things recently, this has snuck up on me, scott mccloud's sequel to understanding comics, reinventing comics .
man, i've been so behind the times for the past few months. so much to do, so little time. agkckckajdlkfja;slkjfasdlfjalsdfj;a
packet-switching scheduler uses opto neural net. looks like fun
Tuesday, June 06, 2000
photo.net has undergone a huge overhaul. i'm impressed. a whole team is working on it now. i had some more to say, but i hit the friggin escape key by accident again. who's bright idea was that? blech.
more gee dubya commentary. you gotta ask, who the heck has been voting for him? shudder...
kottke points to some badass stuff today. i especially like golan levin's stuff.
Sunday, June 04, 2000
hmm, looks like on june 5th, some interesting stuff will be going down in sealand.
omg, alphanumerica's total recall is exactly what i need. i inevitably end up with abou 30 browser windows open, and remembering browser states is a godsend.
hmm, looks like this might be pretty easy to extend. i might try adding some features next week if i have some free time. (big one would be seeing the best way to save and restore a per/window history...)
flazoom writes about bad flash. ultimately, that kind of stuff is going to negatively affect flash in general, which is sad, because vector motion graphics should have a place on the web, and properly used can be very effective.
ok, so thursday i fly down to vegas for our company summit. lotsa fun, just got back. the rest of this post is gonna be me bitching about primeco (ostensibly part of verizon wireless, although from my conversation's with the serive reps, they don't seem to know that), so if you don't want to read about it, you can just move along now, just keep in mind that primeco sucks ass.
so i'm in vegas, trying to make a call on my cell, and i get a message my credit card number to incur roaming charges, which comes as a surprise to me, since i'm paying a nontrivial monthly premium on minutes for the verizon singlerate plan that's supposed to give me national access w/o having to deal w/ any of that shit.
The next day, I called for service, and was transferred to a PrimeCo representative. After a 20 minute hold, I was able to reach someone who could (ostensibly) help me. I related my problem to him, and he matter of factly replied that the reasons for my problem was because I did not have the PrimeTravel roaming package. Only after several minutes was I even able to convince him to recheck that because of the Verizon package I was on. After being put on hold yet again, he confirmed that I was correct, but was unable to fix my problem. He told me that he would look into it, and when I asked him for a time frame on when my problem might be handled, he told me to simply keep trying. I was not very happy with how I had been handled and asked him if there was anyone that I could complain to. He said he was that person.
In the afternoon of the next day (6/2), after trying to call multiple times, I called for service again. I was transferred to PrimeCo service again, and I encountered the same problem of having to explain to the representative the workings of the SingleRate plan that I was on. After many minutes spent on, and having to press multiple times to have the service representative re-confirm, I was finally able to have her listen to my problem. She then told me that I would need to use the phone and then when asked for roaming, and to enter my credit card number. I was skeptical, but I asked her if she was sure I would not get charged, and she told me that this was most definitely the solution. If there are any problems I should just call back (and waste another half an hour of my time, presumably).
So, I place a call, enter my credit card information. Luckily for me, the automated authorization does not work and I am sent to the roaming operator, who informs me that I my credit card will absolutely be billed, at $1.95 per minute.
So, I place another service call, and this time, beg the Las Vegas representative not to transfer me to PrimeCo support. Can you blame me? After explaining my situation he told me he would look into it, after a few minutes he told me that my phone was improperly programmed and got it working 10 minutes later.
i can't believe that any company has customer service that is this bad. i'm definitely regretting doing my easymove from Airtouch (Verizon in LA, which I've had no problems with). bottom line, primeco sucks ass, and reading through my contract (there's a whole nother story about that...), there's liability for interruptions or defects in service which affect the customer for more than 24 continuous hours... i'm bitching them out presently, but suffice to say i'm really, really, really pissed.
