Archive for November, 2006
Darn it! Something Bigger May Be Wrong Here
Nov 30th
I switched to Flock, and you know what? I dig it! It’s really nice, and it’s got some great features to boot!
However – this is after a day’s work. Know what else slowly swallowed my RAM? Firefox.
Goodbye, Firefox. Hello Flock.
Nov 30th
Well, I’ve made the jump from Firefox to Flock. I’ve complained about Firefox for long enough, and a few days testing has shown that Flock will serve my needs just fine. I have a few observations though, so keep reading for the details.
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To Thread Or Not To Thread
Nov 28th
I saw an article today called Flat or Threaded? which examines the practice of “threading” a web forum. This has lead me to do some serious thinking about threading. Read on for more…
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Why You Probably Should NOT Buy a Zune
Nov 27th
If you’re finding this on Google or another search engine and you’re considering a Zune, it’s really important that you read this. There is information that I believe definitely proves that a Zune is a dangerous investment. I’m going to explain to you why investing in a Zune may be a huge, and ultimately very costly, mistake.
If you’ve read my blog over any period of time (and I’m relatively certain that no one has), you’ve probably noticed my not so subtle conversion from Windows to Linux back to Windows and then firmly to a Mac. We are all Mac at my house now, and I don’t try to cover that up. At work, where I choose everything from a technology standpoint, we are Windows 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server, so I’m not especially anti-Microsoft. Anyway, fair disclosure.
Read on for the details.
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Wii! Wii! Wii!
Nov 24th
I am looking forward to getting a Wii. Although I’ve owned a few game systems in the last few years, I’ve only somehow “come across” them, I’ve never bought one new. So really, the last home video game system I was really into was Super Nintendo, and truly, the last and best game system was NES. I still have and use my NES to this day.
I will be excited when I get my Wii, but most definitely not THIS excited:
But you have gotta admit, it is nice to remember how much something like this could make your day when you were younger.
File Under “Misc”
Nov 22nd
Quote Abuse
Man, this is “funny.” via Flickr.
Claygate
Yikes. This is where we’re gotten as a society. Rosie O’Donnell, who I didn’t mind that much until today, has declared Kelly Ripa – who was, I thought – a friend of the gay community, a “homophobe” because she told Clay Aiken, when he put his hand over her mouth on the air to shut her up and she said “That’s a no-no. I don’t know where that hand has been.” Okay, run-on sentence aside, this is cuh-razy. So, remember kids, if you’re a professional interviewer and you’re interviewing someone live on TV and some lame ass guest host slaps his stupid dirty hand on your piehole, embarassing you and touching your face in one dirty concoction, if you make a seemingly innocuous, possibly but not definitely snarky comment, you’re a gay-hater.
Rosie O’Donnell is a very outspoken voice for the gay community. To accuse someone of bigotry who (a) has no history of it, and (b) makes a VERY cloudily interpreted comment, and (c) is making this comment to someone WHO ISN’T EVEN GAY (admittedly, at least… and I’d add YET to that), she ought to be ashamed of herself. Rosie really ought to apologize.
By the way, ho-ly crap. Pictures of animals … in the womb.
I mean… seriously… check out the picture of the elephant. If this isn’t amazing, I don’t know what is.
Price is Right close finish
Nuff said.
Okay, that’s all for now. Have a great Thanksgiving.
New OSNews Project
Nov 19th
I’ve been off the radar with firsttube.com this last week, mostly because my free time was spent working on a new project for OSNews. I hope we’re going to roll it out after Thanksgiving, but it’s definitely the nicest code I’ve written thus far and probably the nicest site. A lot of what I wrote here is going to influence the way we move with OSN4.
In the meantime, this new project is hopefully going to be launched in the next week or two and I’m hoping it makes a splash. In the meantime, I need a few beta testers to provide some feedback. If you’d like to help test a new site we’ve been working on, please post a comment below and I can explain what to do.
Planning OSNews Version 4
Nov 10th
So we’re really beginning to talk about the next iteration of OSNews. There are several things we’re talking about right now, but since I’ve gotten a lot of web experience since the coding of OSNews 3, written several new and powerful web applications, and since we’ve, since rollout introduced several new features and several new optimizations, including multiple caching techniques, I’ve been trying to decide whether it’s best to just fool with the interface, or whether I want to actually rewrite parts of the front and backend. I’ve written lots of apps for work – some are completely AJAX based, some don’t use Javascript at all. Some are completely object-oriented, some are procedural. Some are very tied to MySQL, some use Microsoft SQL Server.
There are definitely ways to continue to optimize OSNews, but it would require some major changes. I’m not sure I’m up for that, and it would also mean changes to the mobile site. That said, I think the smartest thing to do is to do some rewriting.
I told David today that I have some requirements – yes, requirements, if *I’m* going to be coding OSN4. At the top of the list is reliance on CSS for the majority of layout and liberal use of javascript for the UI. I want freedom to go for the whole kit and kaboodle — AJAX (where it makes sense) and javascript in many places to accomplish what we can on the client side. Things like moderation should not require a page load – or two, as it currently is.
I love our claim that we render everywhere, it’s unique and we are probably one of the best sites on the net for mobile use. But I’m so over coding in HTML 3. It took me less than an hour to get threading working properly on this site. It took me days to plan and code it on OSN.
So, as I approach the run for OSN4, I’m thinking of what we ought to be implementing and the best way to do it. We’re going to do some slimming – we’re probably give up themes initially. We’ll probably give up multi-mode comments: you’ll get to choose between flat mode (all comments, in order) and expanded threaded. We’ll probably scale back some features, but expand others.
Either way, it’s sure to be an adventure as we get there.
Suggestions for Improving digg.com
Nov 9th
How do you digg? Do you digg up articles that fascinate you? Articles that your friends recommend? Articles you want to check back on later? Do you use it as a social news system, as intended, or as a bookmarking system? The problem, as I see it, is that as cool as digg is, there’s no real guide as to how to use the site. I think it can be fixed with a few minor changes. Read on for more.
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