Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Kilts, not skirts!

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Brad, Brad, Brad — so close, and yet so far away.

Actor Brad Pitt said Sunday that fashion-conscious men may be wearing Greek-style skirts soon after his big-budget film about the Trojan War opens this week.

“Men will be wearing skirts by next summer. That’s my prediction and proclamation,” he said with a laugh. “The film answers to both genders. We were going for realism and Greeks wore skirts all the time then.”

Some of us don’t need to see Brad Pitt running around in a Greek-style skirt to be comfortable enough with our masculinity to wear something other than pants…and look damn good while doing it! ;)

iTunes: “Sweet Jane” by Cowboy Junkies from the album Natural Born Killers (1988, 3:23).

Kill Bill

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Prairie and I watched Kill Bill this weekend — the whole thing, renting Volume One Saturday night and going out to see Volume Two on Sunday. I’d seen the first half already when it was in the theaters, but Prairie hadn’t, and it was quite fun to watch them both back-to-back. I’ve got to say that I think that Kill Bill is easily the best work I’ve seen from Quentin Tarantino.

Violent? Well, of course — it’s Tarrantino. After watching Kill Bill, I don’t think Tarantino could film someone getting a paper cut without attaching a spurting jet of blood to it (which, to me at least, is a fairly amusing mental image). It was all extremely over-the-top, though, to the point where it’s extremely difficult to take seriously (I joked at one point that the Kill Bill movies could be subtitled “Quentin Tarantino goes balls-out nuts”).

Watching Vol. 1 the second time, I was struck by how perfect of a decision it was to flesh out O-Ren Ishi-i’s backstory with anime, as it allowed Tarantino to present what is really one of the most disturbing storylines in a manner that’s in some ways actually more intense than he would have been able to do it had he tried to make it a live-action sequence.

Elle Driver is easily one of my favorite characters in the film, I think. Of the five members of the DiVAS, much of the time she struck me as the most snake-like: cold, unfeeling, and vicious — which made the few moments when she broke that mold (her moment of pouting after Bill tells her to leave the bride alive in the hospital towards the beginning of Vol. 1) that much more amusing.

The fight with Elle in Budd’s camper was wonderfully done, too, with Elle constantly unable to draw her sword out of its sheath due to the cramped quarters. I’m quite curious if that’s an intentional movie reference by Tarantino that’s been missed on the Kill Bill References Guide, specifically to the trailer fight in the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. Not to mention that the bride’s final blow to Elle really caught me off guard — a perfect way to end the fight, but entirely unexpected (and cringe-inducing).

What really surprised me about Vol. 2 was the end, which was far more touching and tender than I ever would have expected from Tarantino. After around three and a half hours of violent, bloody revenge, to wrap it all up with sequences that manage to tug at the heartstrings without being schmaltzy was a surprising and perfect way to end the film.

iTunes: “Steamroller” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1994, 2:10).

Semacode

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Semacode for this website

Here’s a fun little tech toy that I discovered thanks to Jonas: Semacode, a two-dimensional barcode that encodes a URL in the matrix. With the newer breed of camera phones and the right software installed, the phone can read the barcode and automatically open the URL in the camera’s embedded web browser.

For a long time computer scientists have been looking for a cheap, inexpensive way to create a gate between the real world and virtual world of the internet. Semacodes provides such a solution. By means of special symbols, printable by anyone on any printer, and special software, available for camera phones, connections can be built on a wide scale in a totally decentralized fashion.

A semacode is a small symbol that encodes a standard, web-oriented URL. The URL is embedded into a two-dimensional barcode along with error correction information. When the semacode reader software snaps the barcode, it launches the embedded URL on whatever web browser is available.

Software to read the Semacode barcodes is already available on the Semacode website for Nokia 3650/7650, 3600/3620/3660, 6600 or 6620 camera phones.

There are all sorts of potential uses for this. Some of the following examples come from the Semacode website, some from Jonas, and some from me:

  • Bus stop transit information: Grab the Semacode posted on a bus stop sign and go right to the page listing the bus schedule, or if a system such as NextBus is being used, get up-to-the-minute information on when the next bus will be by.
  • Tourist orientation: Post Semacode stickers at landmarks or intersections pointing to MapQuest maps or Yahoo Get Local pages to help people instantly find out just where they are and what hotels, restaurants, or attractions might be close by.
  • Ticket sales: Include a Semacode on an event poster, newspaper, or magazine advertisement that links to the online ticket sales website.
  • Social networking I: Put the Semacode for your personal website on the back of your business cards.
  • Social networking II: Create a webpage detailing just what you’re looking for in a potential mate and then make a shirt with the Semacode pointing to that page prominently displayed to wear to the bar.
  • Advertising I: I’m thinking seriously about updating the designs on the shirts I’m selling through CafePress to include the Semacode for this site (or for a yet-to-be-constructed page specifically for the shirts) on the back of each shirt, logo-style.
  • Advertising II: Include the Semacode for a club or business on the flyers or advertisements.

I’m sure there are a lot more possibilities here.

Of course, the really ironic thing about all of this is that not only do I not have a cell phone, but I have no intention of getting one, as the fool things annoy me to no end (though, really, it’s not the phones themselves that annoy me as how incredibly rude cell phone users can be), so aside from slapping my Semacode around, I can’t really take advantage of the technology. That doesn’t make it any less interesting to me, though.

iTunes: “Dragula (Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare)” by Zombie, Rob from the album American Made Music (1999, 4:37).

This is just goofy

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Okay, so when I had to reinstall my system the other day, I ended up with an older version of iPhoto (2.0). Since I picked up the iLife package a while back with iPhoto 4, which changed the library format, iPhoto 2 couldn’t get into my photo library. Not a big deal, all I need to do is reinstall the iLife package.

Which was where things got odd.

The iLife package comes with two install discs: a DVD that includes iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and GarageBand, and a CD that has everything except GarageBand (for those poor shmoes stuck in the dark ages of computing). Me being just as organized as ever (in other words, not at all), I wasn’t sure where the install DVD was. No biggie, GarageBand shouldn’t have been touched by the system update (since it isn’t part of a standard system install), so I figured I’d just install the minimal iLife package from the CD installer.

Popped in the CD, launched the installer, and then got this:

iLife won't install from CD

What?

I’d be pissed if it weren’t so damn funny. That’s just goofy, though — because I have a DVD drive, I have to install from the DVD? The install CD is entirely useless to me? Honestly, that’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen from Apple to date.

I found the DVD, though, so I should be good to go from here.

iTunes: “Gangster Tripping” by Fatboy Slim from the album Go (1999, 5:19).

Custom kids, made to order

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How would you feel if a major reason for your existence in the world, possibly the primary reason for your conception, was to act as a genetically guaranteed donor to cure your older sibling of a disease?

Kind of weird to think about.

Sure, this kind of thing has been done for years, just without the benefit of Gattaca-style genetic screening to ensure a compatibility match, but it was a far more private matter. With the news stories surrounding these more recent children, how might they feel if somewhere down the line, when they’re old enough to understand, what if they somehow find out that they are one of these kids?

“Well, we weren’t planning on having another child, but then your brother got sick….”

Better or worse than finding out you’re adopted?

What if there was any favoritism — real or perceived — in how the two children were treated before this aspect was discovered? If the older child (the recipient) was seen as the “favorite”, how much could that affect the younger child’s perception of themself? Or if the younger was perceived as the “favorite”?

That could easily be enough to screw you up for a long, long time.

Karma just kicked my ass

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Apparently I pissed someone off with my self-righteous indignant babbling about IE (and, implicitly, Windows) being inferior to just about everything else out there (including, but not limited to, the Mac).

Last night I installed the latest Security Update for Mac OS X, and something tweaked out right at the end, locking up the computer. When I did a force restart, the computer wouldn’t boot — it got to the grey startup screen with the Apple logo and spinning progress widget, and just sat there, happily spinning away, but never progressing beyond that.

I poked at it for a while last night, resetting the PRAM, figuring out how to get into Open Firmware and reset the NVRAM (whatever that is) that way, nothing helped. Bleah. Tried to reinstall Panther from the 10.3 discs, and realized that by participating in the Apple Up-To-Date program, I’d been sent upgrade discs rather than install discs, and they wouldn’t let me put a fresh 10.3 install over 10.3.3.

Bleah. Went to bed.

Got up this morning, dug out the System Restore disc that came with the G5, installed 10.2, upgraded to 10.3, and ran through Software Update a few times to bring me up to 10.3.3 plus all current updates (including the Security Update that freaked out last night). Everything’s back up and running rock solid again, but that was a good three hours (one last night, two this morning) that I’d much rather have spent in more productive ways.

Ah, well, at least it’s done. On the bright side, while I won’t claim that OS X is completely trouble-free (and I don’t think I ever have made that claim), I still think this process, on the whole, was preferable to a Windows reinstall. For instance, even after a full system reinstall from the ground up, I still have all my applications, documents, and system preferences right where they were when the whole ordeal started, and don’t have to re-install or re-configure anything. That in itself probably saves me another couple hours of recovery time.

iTunes: “Hooked on a Feeling (Ooga-Chaka) (Ooga Chaka)” by Baby Talk from the album Hooked on a Feeling (Ooga-Chaka) (1998, 3:02).

It’s still not my fault…

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Okay, first things first.

This is a personal website. I speak for myself, and myself alone: not for my employer, my friends, my neighbor, my government, my country, or anyone else. Just lil’ ol’ me. And, me being me, I will occasionally be a bit — or even more than a bit — of a boneheaded, ranting ass. I might even enjoy it. That’s just the way it happens every so often.

Now, I don’t mind at all if someone calls me on it — matter of fact, it’s a good thing that there are people who will call me on it when it happens. I’d hate to see where I could end up with an entirely unchecked ego! ;)

That said, IE still sucks, and it’s still not my fault. ;) However, progress has been made on that front, thanks to the absolutely mindblowingly incredible technical wizardry of Dean Edwards‘ IE7 hack, which uses CSS and JavaScript wizardry to beat IE into behaving like a modern, standards-compliant web browser. The hack has been installed on the main page of my site (with the rest of the pages soon to follow), and the difference it makes is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Many thanks to bethlet for reminding me of that piece of code.

Last night’s post was written in a fit of frustration (and really, one that I go through just about every time I work on a redesign when I get to the point of battling with IE). While my “screw it” attitude was a bit extreme (and probably wouldn’t really have lasted more than a couple days — I just shot my mouth off this time instead of stewing quietly until a solution was found), I fully stand behind the sentiments behind it. Other people have said it before me, and will say it again later on (though possibly with more tact). Outside of corporate-decreed lock in, there’s really no real reason to be using IE as your primary browser anymore, and there are plenty of benefits to switching to a modern browser.

However, as in the real world IE is (unfortuately) not likely to go away anytime soon, all ranting aside, I will continue to at least make an attempt at supporting it. I won’t code for IE, but I’ll at least do my best not to code against it, either.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. ;)

It’s not my fault IE sucks. Get a real browser.

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I expected this, of course, but it’s still a bit disheartening. I spend a lot of time working up a change to my site design, get the basics up and running, just have a bit of tweaking to do…and then I take a few moments on a break from work and take a look at it under Internet Explorer 6 for Windows.

And cringe.

And you know what? I don’t care. I’m not even going to bother fixing the various oddities that crop up under IE. It’s not worth the time, trouble, and headaches that it would entail.

No Internet Explorer

It comes down to this, quite simply: Internet Explorer sucks. It’s buggy, shares responsibility for many of the security issues in Windows, offers far to many ways for people to compromise your system, and doesn’t support modern web standards. Sure, I know that IE makes up somewhere over 90% of the web browser market, and I know that because of that, it’s quite likely that somewhere over 90% of the people who stumble across my site won’t be seeing it the way that they should.

I don’t care.

Thanks in part to the fact that I do pay attention to modern web design techniques and standards, people using IE are quite able to read my site. All the information is there, it’s just not presented how it should be. But that’s not my fault — it’s IE’s fault — and that’s not worth me worrying about.

Use a Better Browser

As proposed by Tim Bray, Eclecticism now joins the “Use a Better Browser” campaign.

If you were looking at this in any browser but Microsoft Internet Explorer, it would look and run better and faster.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer may currently have the largest market share, but it has been stagnating for a while. There will be no new Internet Explorer version until Microsoft’s next operating system. It won’t be available for several years and you’ll need to pay for Windows to get it.

Meanwhile, other web browsers have been innovating and are becoming more and more popular. Today, these browsers run faster and look better than Internet Explorer.

By using a better browser your experience will be better. Plus, you will help to foster a competitive environment in which browser technology can continue to innovate and make everyone’s web experience more pleasant and exciting.

So that’s that.

Get Firefox. Get Opera. Get Konqueror. Get a Mac and use Safari.

Just get away from IE.

iTunes: “Glory (Cajun Dub)” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album Glory (1993, 5:31).

Happy Birthday to me, new site design

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First things first: I’m 31 today. Woohoo! Go me. :)

Now that that’s over with, I’m also turning on the “new” site design. As I mentioned before, visually it’s only a partial redesign, in that I’ve moved it from a single-column layout to a two-column layout. Code-wise, however, it’s been redone from the ground up. The majority of the work is done though, aside from some work on fleshing out the sidebar and fine tuning things.

Of course, that means that there are very likely bugs. Feel free to post anything you might notice in comments, and I’ll get it taken care of as soon as I can.

(TypePad’s caching mechanisms may be playing games with my stylesheet — while the new stylesheet is in the system, they seem to be serving the old stylesheet. If things look completely wonky at the moment, that’s likely why, and there probably won’t be much I or anyone else can do until the servers catch up with the changes I made. Sigh.)

iTunes: “Difficult Listening Hour – 02v2” by Various Artists from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2000, 1:04:41).

List of Dangerous Bloggers

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Twilight Invasion recently posted a list of people who’ve been fired because of their weblog. Interesting to read the stories other than mine.

Apparently, this list should also include Stephen Stewart, though with only a post-by-post method of trawling the archives, I didn’t attempt to dig backwards through 18 months of posts to see if there’s a more specific mention on his site.

Anyone else?