Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Surfin' Safari

by

Dave Hyatt has got to be one of the bravest people on the ‘net I’ve seen. Consider…

  1. He’s a developer for Apple, working on their Safari web browser…
  2. He keeps a weblog where he…
    1. Tracks and responds to what people are saying about Safari, good and bad…
    2. Reports on which bugs have been fixed and which are being worked on…
  3. …and on top of all that, he’s actually soliciting requests from readers as for what they’d like to see in Safari!

Kudos to Dave for being crazy enough to do this, and to Apple for allowing him to do this. More companies need to realize that this is a real, effective way to encourage their users. We know that Safari is being worked on, we know that it’s being worked on by someone who genuinely cares about the project, and we know that they care about and listen to what their customers want to see in the product. I can’t think of a better way to build and keep customer loyalty than that.

MT: SimpleComments

by

Thanks to a clever little hack by Adam Kalsey, all comments and TrackBack pings that I receive are displayed as a single list on each entry’s page, sorted by the time they were received. Much nicer visually than having two seperate listings of responses to one of my posts.

(Via Phil R. and Phil U.)

Creative Commons

by

There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently in the weblog world about the Creative Commons copyright licensing system. The CC meme spread like wildfire after it was introduced — spread, in part, by the recent Eldred vs. Ashcroft court decision that extended copyright terms. Today, Shelley wondered if she and Jonathan Delacour — who have both decided to forego the CC licence in favor of the more traditional “all rights reserved” copyright — “…can be the only two people who want to have some control over how our work is used. We can’t possibly be the only two people who believe this. Can we?”

Well, other people have already chimed in, but I can too — no, you two aren’t! I took a look at the CC licences when they first appeared, and considered adopting one of them for my weblog, but in the end, also decided not to. At the bottom of every page on this site, you’ll see the standard copyright line, and that’s how I intend to keep it.

Now, I sincerely doubt that anyone would ever go to the trouble of abusing the copyright I’ve claimed. Little of what I write here would really be publishable in any form other than that of a weblog — short comments, the occasional witty-in-my-head comment that very likely falls flat when read by anyone else, and the occasional long, rambling blather about my oh-so-(un)interesting life. However, whether or not it’s something that is of a quality to “deserve” copyright protection isn’t really the point — everything here that I’ve created, I’ve created, and I have every right to determine the ultimate fate of my creations (even if that fate is nothing more than getting lost in the great bit bucket of the Internet).

So — this space, such as it is, is mine, and copyrighted as such. Quote me if you like (preferably with a link back to me — I could use the traffic!), just respect the copyright and don’t steal from me. That’s all I ask. Simple enough, isn’t it?

The Hanscom Family

by

Today brings the debut of a project I’ve been working on for the past week or so — The Hanscom Family Weblog! This is (will be) a collaborative weblog, by and for the various members of the Hanscom family. From my introductory post:

This is a project that I started thinking about a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running my own weblog for a while now, but the idea of doing a “group weblog” had always bounced around in my brain. Suddenly, the idea hit me — why not make one for my family?

The Hanscom family members tend to be a wonderful combination of intelligent, opinionated, and locquacious, the combination of which seems like a natural wellspring for content. We’re also scattered across the United States, and currently the globe.

So, last week I sent an e-mail out to mom and dad, asking them to forward it along to the rest of the family, sounding out what they thought of the idea. So far, mom, dad, and Susan have all expressed interest, and I’m hoping that everyone else will join in the fray.

As things are just getting off the ground, at present I’m the only author, though that will change as soon as I get passwords assigned, e-mails sent out, instructions…instructed…anyway, all that fun stuff. In any case, we’re up and running!

Time to get nekkid!

by

[![First Annual Nude Blog Awards]]

[First Annual Nude Blog Awards]: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/graphics/2003/01/graphics/nudebloggies.gif {width=”88″ height=”31″}
Here I’ve been doing my best to keep this weblog of mine fairly solidly PG-rated, with the occasional slip into PG-13, and now I find that if only I’d shown some skin, I might have been eligible for the First Annual Nude Weblog Awards!

The really funny thing, is that I’ve had a few people over the years comment that given my thin/slender/wirey/anorexic (pick one) frame, I’d probably make a very good nude model. I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea, and wouldn’t mind giving it a shot at some point (thinking more along the lines of some decent black and white photography), but the opportunity’s never presented itself. Who knows, though — maybe next year, I’ll have a shot? ;)

Boy, wouldn’t my parents love seeing that pop up on the screen when they checked my page!

R.I.P. Opera

by

While there had been rumors of an Apple-branded web browser for a while, Safari‘s introduction at this most recent MacWorld took a lot of people by surprise, and watching the reaction has been quite interesting. Yesterday, Opera Software (makers of the Opera webbrowser) announced that they may stop development on the Mac version of their browser.

I’d say bummer — except that every time I tried Opera on my Mac, I was severely unimpressed.

The C|Net article, however, made me raise my eyebrows quite a few times as I read it over.

Specifically, [Opera CEO] Tetzchner said that he had asked Apple whether it would be willing to license Opera either to replace KHTML, or to supplement the current Safari version, which Apple said is a stripped-down affair with a minimalist interface and limited feature set.

“We have contacted Apple and asked them if they want a third-party browser, and we’ll see what the answer is,” Tetzchner said. “They could say we want to use Opera as the core engine. If they want KHTML as a simple little browser, and also something more advanced, we would be happy to provide it. Obviously, if we don’t get any positive signs from Apple, then we have to think about it.”

You’re kidding, right? After Apple has taken the time to create Safari, which has been getting good reviews all across the web, does Opera really think that they’ll suddenly decide to reverse direction, tear Safari down and rebuild it with an entirely different rendering engine? One that isn’t open source, and isn’t nearly as solid as the KHTML engine that Safari is currently using? I just don’t see that happening. And, apparently Apple doesn’t either:

“We think Safari is one of the best and most innovative browsers in the world, and it seems our customers do too,” the Mac maker said in a statement. “No one is making Mac users choose Safari over Opera — they’re doing it of their own free will — and Opera’s trashing of Safari sounds like sour grapes to us.”

Later in the article, C|Net gives us this:

Last quarter the online music service MusicMatch decided to drop its service for the Mac, following Apple’s release of the competing iTunes application.

At the time, MusicMatch reasoned that with Apple directly competing with it for an already small pool of users, maintaining development on a Mac version no longer made business sense.

Now, the PC version of the iPod uses a custom version of MusicMatch Jukebox on the PC for all the features that iTunes provides on the Mac! Sounds to me like even if MusicMatch did decide to drop their native Mac support, they didn’t exactly end up entirely on the losing end of the deal. While quite possibly a technically correct few sentences in the article, C|Net sure makes it sound like Apple did MusicMatch far worse than is actually the case. Anyway…

“It’s not a platform where we’ve earned a lot of money,” said Tetzchner. “It’s a business decision. We have been putting a lot of resources into the Apple version and think we have a much better product, but it’s still a question whether it’s worth it.”

Well, y’know, if you’d made a better browser, maybe you would have fared better. The times I tried Opera, it was slow, kludgy, had some very odd rendering issues, and had a huge, obnoxious ad banner embedded into the free version. When there are other free browsers available, even pre-Safari, that were smaller, faster, more accurate, and less intrusive, why would I choose Opera? Sour grapes, indeed.

(Via Safari developer Dave Hyatt)

I need a drool cup

by

Oh my lord.

Apple just revamped their desktop line and dropped prices — severely — on their monitors.

Their Power Mac G4 line is now available in single-1Ghz, dual-1.25Ghz, or dual-1.42Ghz models, and the mid-range dual-1.25Ghz model starts at \$1999.

Prices on their LCD monitors have dropped precipitously. The 17\” model dropped \$300, from \$999 to \$699, they introduced a new 20\” model at \$1299, and their top-of-the-line 23\” model dropped \$1500, from \$3499 to \$1999!

I really need to get my money saved up….

This is a test

by

This is only a test.

If this were a real post, there would be some actual content worth mentioning.

Thank you for your patience.

Deathwish

Another test: View image.

MT upgrades

by

I’ve just added a new plug-in to MovableType — SmartyPants. It’s a relatively minor thing, but one that’s nice to have — it automatically converts common characters into their typographically-correct versions. Quotation marks display using ‘curly’ quotes rather than ‘straight’ quotes, a series of three periods will be transformed into the ellipsis character ( … ), and two dashes surrounded by spaces ( —- ) will be converted into an ’em dash’ ( — ).

It’s purely for looks and presentation, but I like it better this way. So there.

I’ve also altered the code for my individual entry pages using a trick from Burningbird and Phil so that in addition to displaying any TrackBack pings I get on the pages, those pages are also rebuilt at the time of the ping. Previously I’d been using a PHP include to put the TrackBack information in, but that resulted in a slowdown when people requested pages, as the server had to process the CGI script that listed the TrackBack pings every time a page was served. This way, TrackBack pings will take a bit longer when they happen, but pulling individual pages from my server goes much faster (half a second as opposed to 2 to 3 seconds on average).