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This is splorp.

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Wednesday, January 31, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

MacHTTP Lives!

Somewhere around four years ago, before I moved this site onto the Quadra 950 that's running the show right now, I used MacHTTP on a cute little IIcx with an infinitesimal 8MB of memory. MacHTTP was the original web server software for the Mac and after a six year hiatus, it seems to have resurfaced thanks to its creators, including the indubitable Chuck Shotton. The cool part? It runs under System 7, requires less than a megabyte of memory, and it's still free. Nummy. The delicious Test Pilot Collective font poster I politely requested arrived in the mailbox today. A pale blue, double-sided sheet of chewy font goodness. Thanks to Joe Clark for pointing out a slightly confusing passage in my previous post. Arial is not at all humanistic in the typographic sense of the word, as I had apparently implied. What I had meant to say was that it was reasonably friendly towards humans, so I have adjusted the text accordingly. Which Fonts Do Children Prefer to Read Online?
 
A small, but interesting study of on-screen legibility. It's no surprise that the softer, humanistic friendlier typefaces such as Comic Sans and Arial were preferred by children, as my daughter has told me that she doesn't like reading web pages set in small serif typefaces. I'm a bit disturbed that Comic Sans turned up at the top of the list. It has got to be the ugliest excuse for a typeface released over the past few years. Thanks to Microsoft, it's unfortunately also one of the most pervasive. For further reading, there is also a related study on determining online fonts for adults. Via webword From Mac to PC: Apple Ideas in the PC's Future?

Well, color me graphite. A self-proclaimed PC "enthusiast" site actually admits that Apple has been the source of innovation, industry standardization, and hardware æsthetics, obviously influencing the Windows-centric software and hardware world.
"When Apple blazes a trail today, you can bet that others are paying attention and, if the idea is good, you may see it in your PC someday. Read on to find out what apples we think the PC industry is going to pick from the tree of Apple's knowledge."
By usurping and implementing all of those good ideas, the PC industry has been inadvertently complementing Apple, albeit backhandedly. Of course, we knew it was happening all along. It's just nice to hear someone else admit that it's true.

Monday, January 29, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

MailMole is a quick and dirty little chunk of JavaScript which lets you easily disguise email addresses on your web pages by passing the canonical, second level domain, and the subject as arguments to a function. I'm not convinced that this will stop robots from dredging address from pages, but it might slow them down a bit. Theoretically, you could add a bit more oomph to the script by encoding the argument values in the link to obfuscate them even further, and then have the function decode them before passing them along to the mailto. Once again, international fame awaits in the referrer logs. Háztelo tú mismo is an article from the Spanish online magazine en.red.ando that makes mention of my spiral logo critique along with just about every other online tribute to stupid logo design there is. If Bablefish didn't fracture the native language into tiny, ill-defined shards of English, I might be able to tell if it was a well written article or not. As best as I can decipher, the author is contrasting the very nature of uniqueness that the web can afford individuals with the wide-spread homogeneity of corporate group-think. Of course, we were all perfectly aware of this before, having been inundated by the constant stream of near identical logos, confusingly similar tag lines, and questionably-derived naming conventions found in the dot com world. Inevitably, for every original idea hatched out of pure, inspired thought, there will be a dozen off-key mocking birds screaming louder to be heard. Regardless, I'm just happy to be mentioned.

Saturday, January 27, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

"Send Over 30 Million Spam Free Emails per Month!" That's what the subject line said as I glanced through the contents of my inbox. How could you possibly go wrong using a company that sends you unsolicited messages offering this promising, and obviously legitimate claim? The ethics and standards behind a business of this calibre must be as outstanding as their sales pitch. That's right, "30 Million Spam Free Emails". The mind boggles at the opportunities this affords the common man. In the same emphemeral vein as the strangely enticing Who Would Buy That? blog, I just noticed that after his brief sojournal respite, good friend Mike has relaunched his canned eBay search page. And just to be clear about this, I mean "relaunched" in the true sense of the word.

Friday, January 26, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Hey Howie! Thanks for finally adding permalinks to your blog. Now I have absolutely no problems linking to provocative, newsworthy items such as this.

Thursday, January 25, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Busy day tomorrow. Busy, busy, busy. OS Has a Face You Can Love
"The first beta is out for Athena, which will be a customizable object-oriented interface that can sit on top of any operating system's kernel including Linux, Mac OS and Windows. The modular design enables developers to write one source code base that can be run on all three platforms without rewriting the code."
Hmmm. This is sounding like a bastard marriage between the promise of Java's ubiquitous run-anywhere execution, the partially accepted flexibility of XML, and a high school student running loose with a pirated copy of Photoshop building skins for WinAmp. At the very least, it leaves me perched teetering on the fence post.

Wednesday, January 24, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Microsoft's New Operating System

My apologies if you've seen this already, but it was forwarded to me this morning and for some reason I found it particularly funny today.

Tuesday, January 23, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

I made an interesting discovery this morning after seeing a Google reference in the search term and referrer data for this site. If you search for "blog" using Google, my own blog - yes, this very page - shows up in the number five spot. Wow.

Monday, January 22, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Coincidental software burp, or conspiratorial stifling of information? This weekend, Jeffery mentioned that his page counter had been reset and was no longer a stalwart purveyor of the truth. Today, he linked to my post about the weird-ass CSS shtick over at eyemodule.com, and thinking that I should monitor the extra traffic load courtesy of the kind Mr. Zeldman, what should I notice? My web server has stopped recording log entries as of sometime Friday evening. It's as if the members of some nefarious third-party group, who are obviously afraid of the movement to support web standards, are covertly attempting to cover their trail. Of course, you're certainly welcome to share your own theories.

Sunday, January 21, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

What on earth are they doing with their Style Sheets over at eyemodule.com to warrant the display of this pop-up window? I have yet to try the site using other browsers besides IE 5 Mac and Netscape 4 Mac, but I suppose that any browser where the user can change the virtual display resolution could be an issue. Man, that's weird.
EyeModule Web Site Font Warning Window Jump on this one before Apple lets the intellectual property dogs out and the software gets pulled off the shelf. Aquamatic streamlines the creation of shiny, Aqua-esque buttons. It's a single trick. But it's a trick done well.
Crikey! Splorp a la Aqua
I used Adobe's Frutiger 55 Roman in the example above, but for best typographic results, find a copy of Lucida Sans Roman and start popping out snarky little, lickable buttons to your hearts content.

Saturday, January 20, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

A serendipitous hypertext journey.
 
On Friday, überlinkster Garret had a posted a link to The Ohio Art Company's online Etch-a-Sketch and it triggered something that made me think of an article in an old issue of Byte magazine where some geek wired up an Etch-a-Sketch using serial controlled stepper motors. Since Byte's sorry excuse for an online archive only goes back as far as 1994, and I knew for a fact that the article in question was from the mid-eighties, I had to try something else. Not wanting to dig through my boxes of back issues under the basement stairs, I plopped a query into good old Google but couldn't find any reference to the original article. However, I did manage to find another geek with similar passions. Neil Fraser has apparently been building Meccano-based robots since he was a young pup, and has his own version of the Computerized Etch A Sketch. As cool as this was, I poked around his site until I came across his design for an Infrared Mouse Trap that apparently met it's own untimely demise:
"It turns out that this mouse trap has an Achilles heel. Because it is made out of junk, it looks like junk. As a result it was inadvertently thrown out by a well-intentioned relative who took it upon herself to do some cleaning."
I felt a brief pang of empathy for Neil, and I suddenly remembered the sound that small plastic and metal objects make as they're sucked up a hose when your mother is vacuuming the shag carpeting in your bedroom. Not one to dwell on childhood trauma, I followed a link at the bottom of the page to Doc Fizzix, "...your complete source for mousetrap car know how." What more could a person ask for? I'll tell you. Did you realize that the distance record set by a mousetrap-powered vehicle is 111 metres? Beats the crap out of the Kub Kar racers I built as a kid. Even the tiny chrome hood scoops and exhaust pipes that I glued onto my wooden automobiles didn't help. They ended up falling off once the glue dried anyway, and probably got tossed out by one of my well-intentioned relatives. Sigh. I've always said that it pays to register your software, sometimes in ways you never imagine. Since I'm a registered user of Illustrator, Adobe sent me an email this past week requesting that I participate in a web-based survey pertaining to daily usage, feature needs, and other such market research. I'm sure tens of thousands of other registered uses received one as well. After perusing a couple of the questions specific to future features and enhancements, I really started wondering what Adobe had up their sleeve for the venerable victor of vector. Check out these two wish lists, copied from the survey.
 
Enhancements you feel should be made to Adobe Illustrator:
  1. Apply freeform enveloping to text and artwork
  2. Apply vector-based (not raster) effects like drop shadow, bevel, emboss, and glow
  3. Apply warps to artwork
  4. Apply warps to text (as in Photoshop 6)
  5. Asset Management functionality (WebDAV support)
  6. Automate Illustrator through the use of JavaScript
  7. Change art to Symbols for space saving and convenient export
  8. Create and preview rollovers
  9. Create dynamic charts for web sites
  10. Create dynamic artwork (like Generator)
  11. Distort artwork using Liquify tools (ala Photoshop 6) that work on vector artwork
  12. Export HTML pages
  13. Export SVG-based filter effects (bevel, emboss, glow, shadow, etc.)
  14. Import SVG files
  15. Integrate more seamlessly with other Adobe products
  16. New tools for quickly drawing lines, arcs, grids, and flares
  17. Optimizing portions of artwork via CSS
  18. Optimizing portions of your artwork via slicing
  19. Path combining abilities like those in Photoshop 6
  20. Prepare a file for hand-off by including fonts and images
  21. Save selections for use at a later time
  22. Save text styles to apply globally
  23. Select vector artwork using a Photoshop-style Magic Wand
  24. Speed and performance improvements
  25. Support for metadata in XML format
  26. Use alternate font glyphs from OpenType fonts
Other possible enhancements to Adobe Illustrator:
  1. A more modern interface
  2. Automatically convert scanned photos into editable vectors (like Streamlines)
  3. Blend colors between two spot colors
  4. Color Adjustment controls (Curves, Levels, Variations)
  5. Create 3D type and objects
  6. Create artistic graphs using Excel data
  7. Create dimensions for lengths, arcs, diameter and circle center
  8. Create flowcharts
  9. Create multiple pages
  10. Customizable menus/palettes/tools
  11. Display dithered color for web output
  12. High-end typography enhancements
  13. Interactive/animated help
  14. Make all tools "live" like Illustrator's 9.0 Effects
  15. Place a stroke on the inside or outside of a path
  16. Record an undo history like Photoshop's history palette
  17. Simplify the process of creating gradient meshes
I shudder to think what "a more modern interface" could entail...
 
Certain items from both of these lists popped up more than once through the course of the 64 question survey. Topics such as dynamic generation of illustrations from external data, automation via JavaScript, XML support, SVG import and export, and Cacading Style Sheets all made several appearances. The mind boggles at the possibilities. Adobe might just have an alternative cooking to counter much of what the new Macromedia/Allaire juggernaut has to offer. Illustrator has always been a powerhouse creative tool for static print media projects. I've been using it on everything from packaging to typeface design to flowcharting for nearly 14 years. If it could be turned into a dynamic content image engine using XML, SVG, and CSS - whoa. I won't hold my breath, but something biggish is definitly afoot at the big red "A". ResExcellence has a quick and dirty tutorial on extracting fonts from Mac applications so they can be used in any program. Via MacNN

Friday, January 19, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

According to this Go2Mac article, Apple has officially declared that the machine that serves up this very site (and thirty other domains at last count) is now considered "vintage". Where does the time go? In reality, all this means is that if this old coffee grinder Quadra finally craters, I won't be able to rely on Apple to provide servicing or replacement parts. Not that it was an issue to begin with. It's hanging in quite nicely, thank you very much. When it has finally rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, I'll just dive into that growing pile of surplus bits in the basement and yank out something else to run the server on. It's Friday. It's late. My wife and eldest daughter are off in the hills west of the city for an overnight winter Guiding camp. My other daughter is asleep in the adjacent room, accompanied by a mountain of stuffed animals. The budgies downstairs have finally stopped chittering for the evening. The house is extremely quiet. And somewhat lonely. I may just settle back and finish reading the first Harry Potter book, which I am not ashamed to admit, I am enjoying quite a bit. Of course, I also enjoyed reading Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, the classic Zen and the Art of Resource Editing: The BMUG Guide to ResEdit, and practically every Calvin & Hobbes compilation that has ever fallen into my lap. What does that say about my predilection for a particular literary genre? Who knows. I'm just a bit of a geek I reckon. Due to some recent software issues he has been suffering through, Ed has unwittingly contributed to my collection of favourite quotes. What a gem.
"Every single person who was involved in
the development of Word 2000 is a moron."
You have both my sympathy and my empathy, Ed.

Wednesday, January 17, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Fresh from the "...it's sort of like fan mail but not really" department:
"I read your blog just about every day, and I've gotta ask: What's up with the MS bashing, huh? You use a Mac, hell, even a Newton, so why do you focus so much attention of M$? It should be a non-issue to you. I can see in web design that you'd need to test your sites in IE and Netscape for Windows, but other than that, I don't get it."
If I had to explain this, it's because I tend to pick up on things about Microsoft that just plain bug me. It might by the fact that it's getting harder to escape from being exposed to their software, and being forced to use it in my current corporate environment. It might be that every time I use Office, or Outlook, or Windows, I end up audibly cursing at the way some user interface element or command or function has been implemented. Yes, I am firmly rooted in the Apple/Mac/Newton camp, and that's my preference. However, on a daily basis I use Windows and other Microsoft products, not only because I have to, but because I should at least try to be vaguely familiar with them on a professional level. But that doesn't mean I have to like those products, or promote them, or encourage others to use them. I'm not lashing out blindly at Microsoft, I do have some experience to back up my ranting. I think Al and Bill really need to get their stories straight.

Tuesday, January 16, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Some mornings, like today, the best thing about the trip into work is watching the slivers of color gradually soak into the clouds as the sun starts peeking over the horizon. And then there's the perfunctory pleasure of driving over the bridge that arcs past the water treatment plant, specifically when the north wind is blowing. Ack.

Monday, January 15, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Titanium Lust
"...why would you want a chunky ugly slab of buggy Windows-enslaved mush when you can have something tactile and intelligent you actually want to use and touch and play with..."
Amen. Don't you just love being added to mailing lists purely by association? I found the tidbit highlighted below in a flyer advertising something that obviously means a tremendous amount to me, a workshop on Supporting, Troubleshooting, and Optimizing Windows 2000. You all managed to catch the sarcasm there, right?
The Hidden Tool
Of course, you can just feel what's coming next, can't you? Number one: if a piece of software has been programmed to properly handle and display exceptions, any error messages that do occur shouldn't need additional explanation. Number two: if indeed the software could not be programmed to properly handle and display exceptions, then why is the specific diagnostic tool that is used to help explain those exceptions hidden? Oh dear. Another solution to a problem you didn't know you had. Mapping IP addresses to domain names using a local hosts file that sits on your computer is a very good thing. At street level, it can speed up browsing of the web by eliminating the need to perform DNS lookups on frequently accessed sites. Most people have never touched their hosts file mainly because they probably didn't know it existed, and if they did, editing it was a chore. Apple mentions the hosts file deep within the bowels of a technote on Open Transport TCP/IP Configuration, but who the heck is going to read through all of that acronymonic soup unless something is really busted. In fact, Apple pretty much writes off the use of the hosts file altogether:
"In general, use of the Hosts file is discouraged, as it often simply wastes memory by permanently configuring data that may only rarely be accessed. It is also highly susceptible to misuse by users who try to configure far too much information internally in order to avoid accessing DNS servers. Besides tying up memory, this practice is exactly the reason that the Domain Name System was developed in the first place - to eliminate the performance degradation caused by use of enormous hosts files."
Well, that's a bit overblown if you ask me. Is it any wonder that people have been scared off from using this technique. No more excuses. Enter Hostal, a super simple host file editing tool for the Mac, and the whole point of mentioning this stuff in the first place. And yes, there just happens to be a version for all you wacky Windows folk too. Via dangerousmeta Dictionary of English Slang & Colloquialisms of the United Kingdom

After obtrusively using the word crikey in the previous post, I couldn't help but share this resource of all things knickered and knackered. Parental guidance is suggested. Crikey! It's unbelievably hot in the office this morning. Nice to see we can still afford to pay our heating bills I guess...

Saturday, January 13, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Apple has posted a few updated Mac OS X screen dumps specifically showing changes to the Dock, the Finder, and the menu bar. Thank whatever supreme being you want, somebody down it Cupertino has been listening to the feedback. It's the small, indispensible conveniences that you gripe about when they're missing, but barely notice when they're present. The Apple icon is back where it should be. Click it and something actually happens. There's a clock back in the menu bar. By clicking and holding on icons in the Dock, you can access useful things like directory paths and open documents using pop-up menus. And dig the nifty customization features of the revamped Finder window. So nice. Via Mac OS X News Flash: 99% Proof

After finally dipping my toes into the dirty, tepid water of the Macromedia tool pool yesterday, what should appear but this timely and eerily appropriate editoral by my friend Chris MacGregor. Flash won't kill anybody. Irresponsible designers "drunk on the power" will.

Friday, January 12, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

In what some acquaintances of mine might call a futile attempt to expand my brain, I'm attended the first of two all day introductory Flash sessions, graciously paid for by the my place of employ. I know what you're going to say. I'm collapsing under the voluminous weight of interactive peer pressure, shedding all remaining scraps of dignity and diving into the heinous, skip-intro world of cheese-eating, high school computer lab web site design. Within weeks, I'll forsake my trusted text editing companion, BBEdit, for those acres of attractively arranged tabbed palettes, strewn wildly across my monitor like so many complementary shrimp cocktail coupons along the Las Vegas strip.

Dim prospects indeed.

At some point I decided that I needed to learn about creating content in formats other than flat HTML and chunks of optimized pixels. I tried forcing myself to slog through a Flash tutorial over a year ago, but only got as far as launching the application and getting utterly confused. After these sessions, at least I'll be able to decide for myself whether Flash, as a design media, warrants any further investigation. Or deserves any more of my time.

Thursday, January 11, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Lovely. I hadn't been by in a while, but today I noticed that typographer.com has rejiggied it's welcome mat to include even more type industry tidbits to digest. There's also a few nifty articles in the magazine section that I seem to have missed on previous visits. I'm adding this one to my list of regular stops. How could you not want one of these? My friend Noel is down at Macworld this week surveying the splendiferous bumper crop of new Mac goodies, and he teasingly sent me a few closeups of the Titanium G4. This thing really does ooze pure metallic sexiness. Click on an image for a larger (approximately 100 KB) version in a new window. Enjoy.
Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin
Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin
Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 - Photo Copyright © 2001 Noel Rubin
Oh yeah, I probably should mention the fact that all of these photographs are property and copyright of Noel Rubin. Thanks for understanding.

Wednesday, January 10, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

And it's got an extremely short radioactive half life to boot. Everything you could probably ever want to know about Titanium. The alloy, that is. Not the PowerBook. Via applelinks.com Someone has their hype machine cranked up to eleven for this shindig. Join the movement. Everybody is wondering what the heck it is. Truly bizarre.
 
[ Update ] All sorts of links about "it" can be found in the January 10th entry over at boing boing, including these pictures. I hate the stomach flu.

Especially one that hits you so fast that you barely have time to react. So far this season, I've managed to escape all other strains of the bug, in part due to the flu shot I had back in November. Today my luck ran out. I arrived at work this morning with a slight knot in my stomach, which I immediately attributed to the extended coughing fit I had during the night. I am just getting rid of the last bits of gooey sputum from a short-lived cold, and my stomach muscles always hurt after hacking and spitting for an hour or so. But it wasn't my muscles. The pain keep getting stronger, the knot tighter, and my entire system queasier. I was in the midst of a conversation with a co-worker, when a wave of nausea swept up and down my body as if I had drenched with a bucket of tepid liquid. Excusing myself as quickly and politely as the circumstances allowed, I dashed to the little boys room.

I'll spare you from the details of my extended porcelain adventure, but I ended up not woofing my cookies. I just stayed put hunched over the bowl, deep-breathing through the twisting pain in my gut, and sweating. Incredible sweating. Soaking the entire surface of your head sweating. When I finally got up and made it over the sink, I glanced in the mirror. My hair was standing on end as if I had been hugging a Van de Graaf generator. I then laid down on the couch in the office kitchen, gathering hushed comments from people pouring their morning coffee. "Oh, Grant must have worked all night..."

I came back home, had three small sips of peppermint tea, and passed out in my bed. Right now, I'm feeling much better, thank you very much. Still not completely back up to speed, but getting there. This bug has been popping people in the office for the last couple of weeks. I know of at least three other co-workers that got smacked by it yesterday. Thank goodness it's over quickly.

Tuesday, January 09, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Dancing a Microsoftian jig that even Uncle Bill would be proud of, Apple released iTunes as a free download. Given that iTunes does pretty much everything that Audion does, save for skins, do you suppose the boys over at Panic are a bit pissed this evening? I would be. Just in case you haven't finished slobbering with a fetishist's desire over the new gizmos Apple announced today, MacCentral has graciously posted additional helpings of titanium-encased hardware porn captured on floor of MacWorld. Good old Stevie wonder. He did it again, didn't he? Do you ever get the feeling that there's no one driving the car at Corel? Sooner or later that vehicle is going to swerve across the median and collide headlong into a tanker trailer full of methylbenzene. Now, as attractive as that outcome sounds, someone over there really needs to start concentrating and just pick a lane already. Gabriel Martin passed along this entomological clarification regarding the description accompanying one of my Behind The Curtain photographs.
"Your stick bugs are of the Carausius morosus species, originating in India. C. morosus is a Parthenogenetic species, meaning that the females reproduce without any assistance of the males. They are not Hermaphrodites. Just thought you may want to know."
I have updated the caption to reflect this corrected information. My jar full of insects are literally ungulfed in phasmidic splendor with the cathartic handling of this previous misconception. Excuse me for a moment, while I tune into the stream to watch Steve manipulate his Reality Distortion Field around the masses down in San Fransisco today. Always entertaining.

Monday, January 08, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

My word, there's been a lot to talk about since the new year started. I'd better pace myself. I wouldn't want to pull a muscle or anything. It's the Simplicity, Stupid

Palm CEO Carl Yankowski claims that PDAs, specifically his own pocket-sized interest, will shape the future direction of personal computers because of their simplicity. I don't doubt that handheld devices like the Palm and the Visor, are popular because their are reasonably simple to use and obviously more portable than a laptop or a desktop computer. Heck, you can probably still squeeze out a couple more months of perceived cool geek factor by whipping your Palm out at a party or in line at the local latte outlet. But being simple doesn't necessarily mean being better, or more prone to ubiquity. The thing that really gums up my intake is the fact that most digital devices that are supposed to be simple, are in fact stupid as well. The Palm in particular. Sure, making secure payments via your Palm using some sort of eWallet software, logging each of your transactions, and then synchronizing the whole shebang with your Quicken data once you get home sounds like a wonderful, simplified world indeed. Unless your battery dies. How many people out there have lost data when the battery drained dry in your pocket. Does this sound like a device that you'd want to trust with your financial and personal data? It may sound convenient, but you had better keep your other wallet as a backup. Thomas Tempelmann has started writing a REALbasic plug-in for accessing the Newton data soup from a desktop computer. This could be the start of something extremely interesting for all of us diehard Newton users, especially in terms of multi-app, cross-platform data synchronization. Woo hoo! Magically changing the tangible stuff into bits and back again. It's all about the art of analog. Design production snag of the day. I was trying to take a screen capture of the default cursor under Windows without going through the process of searching for and installing some piece of third party software. The solution? Open up the Mouse Properties control panel, click on the Properties tab, and Print Screen the window. Paste into Photoshop and edit all those superfluous pixels away. It doesn't get much quicker or dirtier than that. A show of hands please. When was the last time you used the <acronym>HTML</acronym> tag? MacEdition shares a bite sized bitch about the sorry state of web standards compliance and the people who avoid using the standards that actually work well in modern browsers. Given the enormous dumps of crystalline precipitate landing elsewhere around the globe, I'm almost sorry to mention this. Almost. It's early January and I'm starting my second week of wearing my shorts to work. We expect to have reasonably regular bursts of this sort of mild weather during our elongated prairie winters, but this has been a phenomenal treat. When the temperature continues to run between 5 and 10 degrees higher than the long term average for weeks on end, I can't help but love living on this side of the Rockies. I probably should have road my bike today.

Friday, January 05, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

2600 JAMMA Joystick LX

I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but the release of the Atari 2600 was the effective zenith of my game playing experience. I have never even touched a PlayStation or NES, let alone been sucked into something as testosterone-pumping as Doom or Quake. Give me a crack at Yars' Revenge, and it's another story all together. Which brings me to the point of these rambling fragments.

Goatstore.com has just released their industrial-grade joystick replacement for the 2600. I've been cursing all the Atari-branded controllers I've pounded into dust over the years, just waiting for a beast that can actually stand up to a realistic amount of body language. Arcade-quality buttons, user replaceable parts, and a lovely selection of case colors. Chopper Command, here we come... Macworld is nearly upon us, so the timing is perfect. Why not start a new beleaguered company takeover rumor? Seems reasonable to me. Xbox Pictures Leak on Net

In some way I've always had the feeling that Microsoft was deliberately peeing on our pants legs while we were standing in line waiting to use the internet. For whatever reason, this headline confirms my suspicions.

Thursday, January 04, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Tasty, tiny, and TrueType. Joe Gillespie over at Web Page Design For Designers has released a wonderfully compact screen display font family called Mini 7. Now you can pack even more characters into the same, limited number of pixels available in your interface designs. It's not free, but we're talking real, down-home font quality folks. Too bad. So sad. Blogger is hemorrhaging again. Actually it's closer to massive systemic arrest. As soon as my PayPal account gets activated, I'm going to make sure they get a few of my hard earned pesos so they can beef up their backend. If you use Blogger, think about dropping a couple of digital ducats into the Blogger Server Fund as well. It'll feel good. It's one thing to post a bunch of random thoughts and commentary on this site with the hope that someone out there will find them vaguely amusing or even partially useful. It's an entirely different situation when you realize that people actually do read those same ramblings, and then feel compelled enough to comment on them. That amazes me. In a good way.

Following up on yesterday's post about the Microsoft house of the future, Garrett Vreeland shares his concern for the safety of others:
"i won't look further. you can't make me. the dining room was enough.

i visualize that when your microsoft house (c) reboots itself, the murphy beds close up in the wall, suffocating the occupants.

of course, the Microsoft House NT Option Pack 1 will not fix the problem, just allow manual release of the murphy beds.

i'd prefer judy jetson in a bikini showing me my atomic dishwasher. what's scary is that some marketing hacks in microsoft actually believe this is a grand sweeping view of the future."
Ellen Odehnal chimed in as well:
"Since you asked about the Microsoft Home, here's my favorite quote from it: "When your home is connected like this you'll see some big changes in your day-to-day life."

Uh huh, like an inability to communicate other than clicks and grunts. Plus, I would estimate there would be a sharp increase in the amount of overall ennui and angst in that household since they're forced to put up with shoddy MS products... but that's just me..."
And after asking for an explanation as to why half keyboards would be useful, the technically circumambient Joe Clark obliged with the following:
"Half a keyboard is better than other input systems for:

* one-handed users
* systems too small to support a hardware keyboard
* systems too small, or too stupidly-designed, to support an onscreen KB (which never manage to include word prediction, which is more than half the battle)

Most people already know how to type. Edgar's system "leverages," as the marketing types say, that capacity. I used it years ago and wrote a story http://www.joeclark.org/halfqwerty.html (but I may have flubbed the URL). It is a niche solution to a problem no one has particularly solved."
That first bullet point alone made me blush with embarrassment. Some things just aren't that obvious when you have two usable hands to work with and take for granted. I now understand this product. It's industrial design and implementation are fascinating me to the point of brain fatigue. I might just have to pick one of these up to play with.

Wednesday, January 03, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Macromedia Announces Name Change

Hot doggie, it's been a fine day for link picking. This particular hypertextual instance is a prime example of what happens when software tries to be too smart. Check out this whacked Associated Press financial news article about Macromedia changing its name to the North Jersey Media Group Inc. I've posted the entire announcement below just in case Yahoo! wakes up, realizes something is kerflunky, and yanks the original page.
Wednesday January 3, 7:12 pm Eastern Time

Macromedia Announces Name Change

Hackensack, N.J. (AP) -- Macromedia Inc. (Nasdaq NM:MACR), the parent company of The Record of Hackensack and the Herald News of West Paterson, announced Wednesday it was changing the name of its main operating units to North Jersey Media Group Inc.

The company, which also publishes 19 weeklies in Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties, said it was discontinuing the names of its Gremac Inc. and Bergen Record Corp. units.

It has established a new Web site at www.northjersey.com.

Company officials said the change was made because to strengthen brand identity and unify its properties under a common corporate name. They also hope to eliminate confusion about The Record's name and to let people know the paper covers more than just the Bergen County area.

"Brand identity in this market is important," company president Jon Markey said. "You have to take the confusion out of it, so you know you're talking about the same thing."
Could you ask for a more ironic closing quotation? Could someone please explain to me why half a keyboard would be more usable, portable, or even preferable than a full sized one that folds up? Other than the reason stated in the marketing copy, of course:
"The same size as your Palm, the Half Keyboard allows you to type with just one hand, leaving your other hand free for other things..."
Other things indeed. As if there wasn't enough techno-cultural paranoia being propagated all over the blessed place already, here's the top ten privacy stories of 2000 for you to fret and stew about at your leisure. No Place Like The Future

This is just so Microsoft it hurts my face. Even something as ethereal as a well-intentioned physical manifestation of the future ends up being as bloated and dysfunctional as their software.
"This bit of publicist theater feels like nothing so much as a weirdly flawed version of those kitschy fifties industrial films that heralded the "House of Tomorrow" - magical, futuristic places where hausfraus in pastel dresses prance around praising the inherent liberation of the robotic kitchen. But where the older films perfectly captured the mix of consumer desire and social anxiety that characterized the newly modern home, Redmond's vision of the future gives the viewer a bad case of cognitive dissonance."
The Microsoft Home of tomorrow or the future or next week or whatever deserves no end of additional mocking. Please do your part and send me a quick comment or two. My first day back at work in a nutshell...
Error Message - CopyAgent Cannot Be Found

Tuesday, January 02, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Nuts. It's back to work tomorrow. In absolutely no hurry to return to the grind, I began to inadvertently think about the following issues. I wonder how many items, previously placed in pre-holiday stasis, will blink with epileptic urgency on my to do list now that I'm back? Likewise, how many hand-scribbled requests for immediate feedback, regarding projects that have completely escaped my attention, will populate the already sticky-note encrusted perimeter of my monitor? Of the dozens of carefully arranged and creatively acquired office supplies surrounding my desk, how many will have vanished without so much as a parting wave or a backwards glance? And ultimately, what ungodly number of unsolicited messages offering "diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities" await patiently amidst the rest of my email for a swift kick in the ass from my diligent delete key? Part of me is hoping I forget how to drive to the office.

Monday, January 01, 2001 Link / Comments (0)

Now is the time to reflect.

Furthermore.

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