Web design piracy for dummies.
Every once in a swoop, some upstart codepunk decides to lift a chunk or two of my site for their own devices. While this kind of thing is mildly annoying on several levels, it really doesn't twist my knickers all that much. What boggles me beyond believe is when ridiculously obvious pieces of my site are reproduced verbatim. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. The latest knob to snarf some taggage is donut.foxed.ca. The skin-deep similarities are fairly innocuous. But once you dig a bit deeper and stumble across something like the 404 page (a screen grab of the page is archived here), you start experiencing a bit more contextual déjà vu. Hello? Wouldn't it make sense to have your error page point back to your own home page? Yeesh. Kids these days.
Posted 9:14 PM | Permalink
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Drop the IDE and back away slowly.
It is a pleasure to report I did not accidentally overwrite any portion of a certain web site today. Similarly, I did not cause any of the core functions of the aforementioned web site to abruptly cease working. I also managed to avoid executing a certain migration script which apparently could be implied as having a direct impact on the overwriting of said portions and therefore the subsequent inoperability of the core functions related therein. In fact, I avoided causing any manner of harm, destruction, erasure, obfuscation or engineering malfeasance whatsoever. Yes, today was a good day. Yesterday, on the other hand, it may well have been debated that allowing me to have access to a Windows-based development environment and semi-unrestricted network access, was perhaps slightly more than a minor oversight. Apologies all around.
Posted 7:14 PM | Permalink
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Reversioning.
Contrary to popular opinion, I'm actually a fairly easy going guy when it comes to doing my job. Or in this case, when it comes helping the folks around me do their job. If a certain piece of software is required to make even a small portion of a job a bit simpler, I'm generally quite open to installing it, even if it's only a temporary situation. Frankly, I'd be more than happy to install whatever release of Photoshop is required to open a particular image - providing it gets the job done. That's why clear, concise application messages - as in the above example - help make my job that much easier.
Posted 4:41 PM | Permalink
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Get smarts.
The available domain name of the week is undumb.com
Posted 7:32 PM | Permalink
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America onload.
I'm guessing they have this ready just in case.
Posted 10:48 PM | Permalink
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Photo of the day.
Weathered delivery truck signage. Memorial Drive, Calgary.
Posted 7:40 AM | Permalink
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Public service announcement.
If you've been looking for Typographica this weekend and wondering where it could have wandered off to, I have some information for you. It appears that recent events involving a certain regulatory institution from the great white north have caused the typographi.ca domain to be rather unceremoniously yanked from the airwaves. The CIRA can be a rather persnickety lot when sites purporting to be of Canadian origin do not completely comply with their blatheringly obtuse residency and ownership criteria. Nevertheless, while this situation is being resolved, the affable Mr Coles - proprietor of Typographica - would like to assure his readership that he does indeed have a great aunt living in Alberta so this misunderstanding should be cleared up shortly.
On a related note, Greg Storey of Airbag Industries has been enjoying pretty much the exact same adventure this week.
Posted 7:30 PM | Permalink
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Photo of the day.
Graffiti on metal fence. Kensington Road, Calgary.
Posted 1:13 PM | Permalink
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Find me first. Read me second.
Apple is infamous for releasing new versions of software and only making noise about the sexiest new features, or as in this weeks iTunes 4.6 revision, feature singular. Why does Apple insist on continuing to bury any clue as to what actually gets fixed in their releases? By throwing the old '... includes a number of other minor enhancements ...' blanket over everything but the headline act, I never know whether or not a particular release addresses any previous issues. The conspiracy theorist in me will debate that it probably has something to do with refusing to admit their mistakes, but I digress. Undeterred by this apparent oversight, I followed a link via Apple-X.net which pointed to an iTunes support document. The document specifically notes that upgrading to iTunes 4.6 fixes the problem with accessing large shared music libraries. An advanced search later, and I also discovered that 4.6 fixes issues with missing playlists and unexpected quitting when accessing streams. Hey Apple, how hard would it be to put those 'other minor enhancements' in the read me file?
Posted 11:15 AM | Permalink
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Freshly squeezed, from concentrate.
With age comes wisdom, patience, and apparently more frequent lapses in memory. With this observation in mind, I humbly present an update to the increasingly sporadic and currently misnamed available domain name of the week. Finally, four new weeks worth of tasty domain goodness await your perusal. The backlog has been cleared, and by golly if I don't walk so funny anymore.
Posted 4:03 PM | Permalink
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