Tech

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

Reviewed!

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Last week I stumbled across Bloggy Opinions a blog review website. It seemed fairly entertaining, and the reviewers seemed to do a good even job of reviewing the sites they visited, so I went ahead and submitted ‘The Long Letter’ to them.

Bloggy OpinionsI got my review back today — and whaddaya know, not only was it good, it was really good! The review is posted on their site, but as there currently seems to be a slight HTML glitch that’s rendering my review invisible, I’m taking the liberty of copying it here.

DJWUDI — The Long Letter

Now here’s a blog I loved. It was excellent! It’s filled with multiple daily entries to keep you entertained, as well as a plethora of archived entries, features, and links that kept this reviewer busy for many hours. It generally amusing too, and though I’m sure a lot of work goes into the site, it appears effortless.

It’s the little things that make this site a gem in the drudge that can be the Internet. In the top right of your screen is an embedded applet that displays the mp3 that the author is currently listening too. It gets updated in real time and is the coolest thing I’ve even seen on a personal website! Unfortunately the version he uses is for the Macintosh operating system, so I won’t get to test it out on my blog. Another interesting feature is that he has implemented a help box on some of the more technical terms. Move your mouse over ‘Mbps’ and up pops a box displaying the full name ‘Megabytes per second’.

The layout is minimalistically beautiful. You’re not bombarded with a messy design; he takes a more newspaper, monochrome type layout. The text is the right size to read, and the font is easy on the eyes.

I can’t say enough about this blog. The author definitely deserves kudos. The only complaint I have is that he doesn’t seem to get that many readers, so the comment section is mostly empty.

Many thanks for such a glowing review!

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The Turing Test is in no danger

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Just some fun wordplay, from this MeFi thread dealing with AI, language, and other such goodies.
Some English sentences likely to trip up any AI program attempting to understand them:

  • We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry.
    We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were ripe.

    How do you determine what object ‘they’ refers to in each sentence?

  • It’s hard to recognize speech.
    It’s hard to wreck a nice beach.

    Say these two aloud.

  • Visiting relatives can be boring.

    One sentence, two ways to understand it.

  • We saw her duck.

    Three meanings (the least obvious involves a serrated blade).

  • Time flies like an arrow.
    Fruit flies like a banana.

    With thanks to Groucho Marx, I believe.

No more popups (almost)

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Since I’m one of the many people out there who believe, to the very depths of my soul, that popups are evil, I’ve removed the popup window for posting comments. Now, clicking on the ‘comment’ link will take you to the page for the post itself, and scroll down to the comment form. Simple, but much easier.

I still haven’t got the TrackBack popup banished. That’ll be a project for another evening (tomorrow)? I’m ready to quit for the night tonight.

Testing EspressoBlog

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Just making sure that this is working. I’m trying out EspressoBlog, an OS X app for posting to MT or Blogger powered weblogs.

Seems to work so far — I’ll know for sure as soon as this posts.

Two things I’m noticing that I may want to toss Phil‘s way to see if he’s interested in including in the future:

  1. It can only post to the ‘main entry’ field.
  2. There’s no way for me to put TrackBack links in

Those are hardly dealbreakers, though. This isn’t bad at all…

Found via Phil Ringalda

Nobody’s going to understand this one…

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…but every time I see one of the recent tech weblog posts about “RDF in RSS” (which, to be honest, I barely understand myself), I keep thinking that RDF stands for Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field:

reality-distortion field n.

An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers become passionately committed to possibly insane projects, without regard to the practicality of their implementation or competitive forces in the marketpace.

No matter how many times I see it, it always takes a slight moment for my brain to switch tracks after that.

The funniest thing is how some of these posts read if you use the incorrect definition. You don’t need to understand the technobabble — I often don’t — just reading RDF as ‘Reality Distortion Field’ lends a whole different feel to some of the suggestions.

They say the [Reality Distortion Field] in RSS 1.0 will let people do cool things. They say the [Reality Distortion Field] in RSS 1.0 will allow for unexpected connections.

— Phil Ringnalda

I’m not trying to downplay other’s concerns or existing work or effort, and I realize that I have a better understanding of [Reality Distortion Field(s)] than most of you (not bragging, but give me this as an accepted for discussion purposes at this moment) and that this gives me an edge when working with [Reality Distortion Field(s)].

— BurningBird

Keeps me amused, at least.

iCal questions

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It’s been out for a couple days now, but I just donwloaded iCal, Apple’s new calendar/scheduling application. I haven’t even got it installed yet, and I’m coming up with curiosities.

  • Why use a .pkg installer?

    One of the great things about having a Mac is how easy most programs are to install — just drag them over to your Applications folder. Apple even touts this in an article aimed at Windows programmers moving to developing for the Mac:

    The commonly used “Setup” application, along with Install Wizards, are discouraged on Mac OS X. Use a drag install instead, which is simpler and preferred by Mac users.

    So why is it that Apple’s own programs (such as iCal’s, .mac‘s Backup, and so on) are distributed using .pkg files, requiring the use of the Apple Installer program?

  • Why does it need my password?

    Tied into using the Installer, why is Administrator access needed to install iCal? Is it really that tied into the system itself? Just seems odd.

Maybe these questions will be answered as I go along…I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

:-)

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Everything’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Back in 1982, this post showed up on the CMU CS general bboard…

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

And the world has never been the same!

Mike Jones has the full story.

Good kitty…nice kitty…

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Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)Long story short — after two weeks of waiting, and a good few hours of ‘puter work, I’ve just upgraded my main mac (and webserver) to the newest version of Mac OS X, ‘Jaguar’ (v10.2).

What does this mean for you, the end-user? Um…nothing.

For me, though, it’s definitely a good thing. Even on my rapidly aging 350 MHz G3, the system is noticeably faster than prior versions of OS X were. Man, do I wish I could afford a newer machine that can actually take advantage of some of the optimizations built into this! Ah, well. Someday.

(Also, many thanks to two articles that helped me make sure I had everything up and running correctly under the new system: Apache Web Serving with Mac OS X and Setting up a site server with Jaguar, both from the MacDevCenter.)

Accessibility statement

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I’d done this once before, but as it got lost in my site crash, I took a few minutes to go through Dive Into Accessibility and make sure that my site was up to spec. I’m good to go, so here’s the official babble:

Note: This accessibility statement was written for my old site at djwudi.com. While the majority of it will still correspond to michaelhanscom.com, I’ve yet to go through and double-check everything. Please bear that in mind. Thanks!

Accessibility statement

This is the official accessibility statement for www.michaelhanscom.com. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at djwudi@myrealbox.com.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

  • Access key 1 – Home page
  • Access key 4 – Search
  • Access key 9 – Feedback
  • Access key 0 – Accessibility statement

Standards compliance

  1. All pages on this site are at least Bobby and WCAG A approved, AA and AAA when possible. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not.

  2. All pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call.

  3. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check this page for XHTML validity.

  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for the header, H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles, etc. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+4.

Navigation aids

  1. All pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).

  2. The home page and all archive pages include a search box (access key 4). Advanced search options are available at the advanced search page.

Links

  1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).

  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

  1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

  2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers.

  3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.

  2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.

  3. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.

  4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

  5. Dive Into Accessibility, a comprehensive guide to implementing these guidelines in websites, with a focus on the most popular blogging software.

Accessibility software

  1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.

  2. Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.

  3. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.

  4. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.

  5. Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility services

  1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.

  2. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.

  3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.

  4. Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

Related resources

  1. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.

  2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.

Recommended reading

  1. Joe Clark: Building Accessible Websites. Comprehensive but not overwhelming.

  2. Jim Thatcher and others: Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Less comprehensive than Joe’s book, but goes into greater depth in the topics it covers. Gives screenshots of how various screen readers and alternative browsers interpret various tags and markup. Also has an amazing chapter on the current state of legal accessibility requirements.

Thanks to Dive Into Accessibility for the template for this Accessibility statment.