Category: nerd

The summer I was working in a plastic extrusion plant (1999), I often mentally built the computer I wanted as a distraction from how hot the building was, or how monotonous putting freshly made bags in to boxes gets. Near the end of the job, I finally ordered my nearly new G3 and purchased a Sylvania F91 CRT monitor at Costco for the amazing price of $349. I chose it because it had a 3 year warranty. I chose it despite the fact that it was boring, beige cube that weighed 50 lbs.

This morning while checking e-mail, the sound of water on a hot skillet filled the room and the picture started dancing around, shrinking and expanding, until the classic poof of the screen failing to black left me with the smell of a recently fired cap gun. That’s probably not good. The warranty is nearly 2 years out. Anyone looking for birthday ideas?

Microsoft has just released Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Some more prudent folks have been trying out the test releases on computers to see which, if any of their applications are affected. Many of us don’t have that kind of time and some of us just don’t care what it breaks. Its not like we have any recourse except to

1. Uninstall the patch – again exposing ourselves to god knows what
2. Find work-arounds for all applications that have problems
3. Wait for upgrades to all of those applications

Troy is working on updating his office’s computers because running Windows Update should only be done by professionals. He’s tested a number of office functions on the test machine except one of the most important uses of technology in today’s workplace – interoffice junk e-mail.

He recently shared a piece of mail that had been circulating around work. It was a quite a work of unrealistic isolationist crap that wanted us out of Iraq, the UN, Nafta, etc. It was a real gem. I suggested he test out the new service pack by sending an absurdly obtuse political message teeming with sarcasm then say that he was just making sure the new upgrade wouldn’t interfere with normal office tasks.

I’ve updated the Listening To section in the menu bar to the left so that it will get updated both when I’m at work and when I’m at home.

At home I’m using a modified version of TrackReporter, an applescript that polls iTunes for the artist and track, then prints it to a small php file that gets dynamically loaded each time someone views the page. It was easy to edit and configure.

WinAmp was another story. I started with Now Playing, a plugin for WinAmp that once again polls the track’s IDv3 tag and outputs to a file. The plugin allows for FTP publishing to a server, but I don’t want to use FTP. Instead, I output a php file, then have a batch file that uses Putty’s scp command line utility to upload the file at 5 minute intervals with Scheduled Tasks. Command line scripting in windows is lame.

Its not perfect yet on the Windows side, but its a start. I can already tell that I’m going to get tired of the command window that pops up when it uploads the file.

The All Music Guide was recently reborn with a new, rather attractive design. Sadly, the site became much less usable owing to some of its new features and design cues.

I spend a fair amount of time on the site, and several of the features really are starting to annoy me:

• Bios & Reviews all require you to click Read More even if there are only 3 words not showing.
• You have to click the Discography tab to see the album list, then several tabs within the discography tab to view main albums, compilations, singles, etc.
• all the links on the page are protected by javascript to prevent you from opening them in a new window, tab, or even just copying the link to send to a friend.
• the page titles are excessive in their use of ((( Unuseful characters ))). Did the artist grow gills?
• The pages just generally look worse in Safari than in Mozilla. I’m not sure how they look in IE – I don’t use it to avoid viruses.
• Primus’ Frizzle Fry is not selected as an AMG album pick, and is rated lower than The Brown Album. That must be a dotNet bug….

Evidently I’m not the only person that is upset. Adrian Holovaty has released a Firefox plugin to defeat several of these annoying features.

Though I can see problems with the site-specific plugin approach, I’m going to use it because given a circumvent doing something the stupid way, I’ll choose it.

A former design department head from Apple is suggesting Apple get out of the PC business and focus on multimedia devices. The designer, now working for HP and Microsoft, is afraid that Apple will repeat its failures of the last decade.

Shut-it, sellout boy. Just because you’re making windows more mac like doesn’t mean the mac can’t improve. As far as I can tell, its improving at a much quicker rate than the horde. Hell, if Apple dropped out of the PC market, who would you copy? Oh, and who would be proof that you weren’t a monopoly?

There were a few corrupted entries in the move. Something to do with content spam and greymatter 1.3. I was able to repair the damage thanks to the way back machine.

While looking at CSS quirks in IE, I somehow googled across an IE for Solaris discussion. The concept intrigued me – mostly out of the irony of the product. After some digging, I found the Microsoft is no longer developing or distributing the program, but I found an archived copy.

Installation was really simple, and the command line script asked if I wanted to make IE my default browser. Uh… no. Then it asked if I wanted to install Outlook Express for reading e-mail. Again – no. Amazingly, it allowed me to install and run without ever using root.

After installation, I fired it up, got the standard EULA, accepted the terms, and IE promptly died. I messed with the files and tried starting it with different parameters, then gave up. Who really uses a GUI with Solaris anyway?

Well, to try out our new network, I fired up WinaXe and connected to Solaris. I clicked the internet globe icon and IE started. So I went to my homepage. I didn’t think about checking to see how the design looked in IE5 for Solaris, but here it is – nearly identical to IE for windows. I almost have to give them credit for consistency.

I was fortunate to attend this year’s WebVisions conference with a couple other coworkers. Most of the presentations were good, and some were great. Anil Dash told us not to be ashamed of blogging, and that he too hates that word. Jason Fried shared a few brilliant yet simple tips for interface design followed by a few examples of really bad error pages from commercial sites. I really would like to meet the person who created the double-clicked error page.

It was quite nice to see such a plethora of mac users at the conference. Some using keynote, other using powerpoint, and one with a dock icon that bounced anxiously until the speaker explicitly told the application that he didn’t want to update to the latest version just yet. It would have been interesting to have used a Rendezvous enabled application open at the event to see who stumbled upon you. Something akin to a million monkeys and their typewriters – a million mac users using SubEthaEdit to pen a classic. Being mac users, you could at least expect something intelligible.

I’ve been working on a site redesign for some time now. Most of that time has included not doing any work. However, over the Forth of July weekend, I showed Michelle a mockup I wasn’t to happy with. She also said that she wasn’t the biggest fan. So I started over. The next mockup I created we both liked, so I spent most of the weekend in the hammock messing with it. Its the first time I’ve done the coding primarily from hand, and combining that with drinking a beer in a hammock, I felt pretty special.

Some of my enthusiasm was dashed when I looked at the page in IE for windows – you know – that browser that 90% of the world uses. It had some significant quirks, one which my friend Ben quickly pointed out an alternative for. After making the change, I collected 4 screenshots. One from Mozilla 1.7 for windows, one from IE 6.x from Windows, one from Firefox 0.9.1 for OS X, and one from Safari 1.2 for OS X. The results, in that order, are below. The image links to a larger version of itself. Notice anything?

Small differences that drive me crazy. The site is still not done yet – you’ll notice when it is. I’m still grappling with how to piece it all together so its easier to update in the future. I hate to suggest you change your browser just for a better viewing experience – so I’ll suggest that you do it to avoid security holes, spyware, viruses, and all sorts of crap that targets IE – stuff that make me laugh with glee until I have to help uninstall it.

After bowing to extortion to get a Gmail account, I’ve shared the G-love with some friends. Michelle wasn’t working fast enough.