Archive for October, 2008
Vista: A Year Later
Oct 25th
I’ve been running Windows Vista at work for about a year now. I’ve blogged about Windows Vista before, and I’ve been mostly let down by it. But I’m here to confess today that Vista has overtaken XP for me. Yep, it’s true. I kinda dig Vista.
If you perouse the internet, you’ll see – pretty much everywhere – that Vista sucks. You’ll also see a super harsh, super successful Mac compaign aimied squarely at the PC and Vista, and you’ll see Microsoft abandoning the name “Vista” in their marketing initiatives in favor of their new “Windows, not Walls” slogan. Lastly, you’ll see Steve Ballmer telling you that waiting for Windows 7 is okay by him. So Vista, by pretty much all accounts, is a flop.
When I first began using Vista in February of this year, it was killing me. Application after application wouldn’t install. UAC prompts were bombarding me faster than I could “ok” them. The system couldn’t copy across the network faster than I could retype my documents (it seemed, at least). It was absolutely unusable.
Almost a year later, I have to say, I’m really at home in Vista. I’ve only ever seen 1 blue screen event, and, ironically, it was due to Apple’s iTunes 8 Vista USb driver fiasco. Service Pack 1 fixed the network copying issues, pretty much every app has goten situated so that it works in Vista, the icon previews are nice, and there are only a few remaining annoyances; but XP has plenty of those too.
I’m a Mac guy at heart, but truthfully, Vista is the prettiest Microsoft OS ever to come out of Redmond. Whereas with XP I had to disable Luna just to not want to poke my eyes out, Aero is smooth and comforting. The ribbon has grown on me, and the system doesn’t gradually become slower and slower, at least as fast as a naked XP box will.
So there ya go – Vista is a decent product, albeit, after 2 years in the market. I’d still recommend people wait for Windows 7 – no point in training users and getting them comfortable if Windows 7 will be a fraction of what the E7Blog is suggesting. But the Vista/Windows 2008 combo is a good one. I’m not suggesting it beats Leopard, but it’s certainly better than XP/2003.
Buh Bye, Picasa Web Albums
Oct 22nd
After settling in on Picasa Web Albums, I’ve taken my album offline and cancelled by Google paid storage. I’m going to be deciding on a new picture host soon. Hopefully one that actually support subfolders, password protection, and has a good, quick, easy iPhoto plugin. This is when I wish MobileMe wasn’t so damned expensive.
Picasa Web Albums, even with their incredible face-recognizing people tagger, is so sub-par compared to every other photo album out there. Its feature-poor interface lacks so much that it makes using it a chore for me. I’ve tackled this before: Picasa Web just ain’t cuttin it.
Heroes Verdict: Meh
Oct 22nd
Not too long ago, I said “Heroes has replaced LOST as my #1, mostly because the plot advances comfortably.” I’ve blogged about Heroes in the past, too. But now, comfortably into the realm of the show, I can safely say that Heroes is the poor man’s sci-fi. Heroes is ill-thought out from the get go. As my friend Eugenia has said before, the writers made the Heroes too powerful up front, and as a result, the storylines are seeking to limit them where possible, and just flat out ignoring them at worst.
Firstly, Peter, Sylar, and Parkman’s dad, at a minimum are all extremely powerful, yet none of them really “use” their powers, even when it would make sense. Sylar, for example, didn’t hear something whispered just 20 yards from him, yet it was explained in season 1 that he had super-hearing. Hiro makes the dumbest mistakes in the world, and doesn’t use his power to fix them (like going back in time to just not open the safe, or better yet, putting a fake version in his hand before Daphne swiped it.)
The entire story arc often feels like a bunch of ninth graders writing a “wouldn’t it be cool if” story, without really laying out the entire storyline. Peter is impetuous and rarely thinks before acting – not in a realistic way, but in an “it’s a good plot device” kind of way. Nathan’s family just… evaporated. Hiro digs up Adam Monroe rather than just zapping him out of the coffin, which, by the way, is how he got him in there.
The truth is, the massive cast, which includes useless Mohinder, pointless Maya, and wants-to-be-interesting-but-just-isn’t Parkman needs to be trimmed down. And why ignore cool characters like The Haitian? The last truly great episode was “Company Man” in season 1.
Although I’ll still watch it for now, Heroes is just, sadly, not that good of a serialized drama.
Firefox is Still King When It Comes to Development
Oct 17th
At home, I prefer Camino. At work, I use Google Chrome. I find both to be very pleasurable experiences. But no browser out there comes even close to challenging Firefox when it comes to development.
First of all, extensions such as Stylish and Firebug are invaluable. In fact, scratch Firebug, the default Firefox error console alone is aces to me.
Is there anyone who can tell me why no browser besides Firefox has a “View Background Image” link even as an option? How come no other browser has developer friendly stuff? I know that the Web Inspector in Webkit browsers is really cool – I love Webkit – but ultimately, it’s Firefox I often resort to when I’m doing real work.
Things in General
Oct 16th
Lots of really interesting stuff is going on right now, most of which I can’t talk about just yet. It has kept me, in large part, from focusing on firsttube.com, which I regret. I don’t want this site to devolve into reposting of political crap. But many things are keeping my occupied. I promise I will chronicle “things” soon enough, as soon as I know how everything shakes out.
In the meantime, today is my baby girl’s first birthday. It’s odd thinking she’s been around for a full year now. It really seems like just recently she was born, and yet, at the same time, I can’t really remember life without her, so it feels like she’s been around for much longer than just the last year.
It is truly amazing, the experience of parenthood. You never think it will be, but it constantly is.
Hmmm…
Oct 13th
I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic’ and ‘different.’
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re an American story.
If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you’re a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, then you’re well- grounded.
If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, help register 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, 8 years as a State Senator of a district of 750,000 people, chair the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, sponsor 131 bills, and serve on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
If your resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town of 7,000 people, 2 years as governor of a state of 650,000 people, you’re qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, left your ill wife, and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the use of birth control, you erode the fiber of American society.
If you staunchly advocate abstinence-only education, while your teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, you don’t represent America’s family values.
If your husband is called ‘First Dude’, has a DWI conviction, didn’t register to vote until 25, and was a member of a group that advocated secession of Alaska from the USA, yours is the quintessential American family.
And, finally, if you’re famous for your quick temper, you’re the one to have your finger on the red nuclear button.
OK, much clearer now.
I’m not sure the source of this, but it sure makes an interesting read.
Oh Yeah!
Oct 7th
That Kool-Aid guy, who does he think he is? Just smashing through walls with no afterthought? Does he realize the mess that will need to be cleaned after his fat ass leaves?
I’ve had Kool-Aid, and while it’s generally pretty tasty – especially the purple – I’m not sure it’s worth smashing through the family room wall.
Mad Dog Palin
Oct 6th
Mad Dog Palin
Choice words from the rollingstone.com article:
Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
Ouch.
Using the abbr tag
Oct 2nd
Kroc Camen, long time OSNews reader and frequent IM buddy of mine, has an interesting piece examining the use of the <abbr> HTML tag. Kroc is one of those people who is very serious about the presentation and efficiency of his code, a trait I do not share, at least in practice, at least, to the same degree that he does, and it makes us good companions. My focus is typically on clean, fast, scalable code that forsakes beauty in favor of performance. My code, in the form of OSNews, has sustained a simultaneous Digging and Slashdotting, something of which I’m very proud.
But my CSS isn’t going to win any awards, my javascript could be collapsed a lot and made much more efficient, and my HTML often suffers from “div-itis” and “class-itis.” Enter Mr Camen, whose motto, “code is art,” is evident upon initial inspection. Kroc’s code is not only well written, the source itself is actually beautiful. We have collaborated on both CSS and PHP in the past and both are the better for it.
That said, we have strikingly different positions about publshing on the web. Kroc writes his website for himself, and as a result, publishes in HTML 5; his site doesn’t work in IE, his mindset being “if you choose to use a subpar browser, you will have a subpar experience. ” Indeed, his site is a complete mess in IE 7, the fault only of IE and its abysmal CSS support, not the code itself. I, conversely, attempt to code with a much more conservative bend, coding to the masses, at the expense of using several great tricks.
Getting back on track, when it came to discussing the <abbr> tag, both of us found ourselves remarkably on the same page. Although one can get into the nitty-gritty details and find the whole conversation trivial, I think there’s something to be said for using tags properly and getting your information properly parsed. After all, screen readers exist with regularity today, XML is very popular (most commonly in the form of RSS), and search engines spider the majority of popular websites several times times a day if not every hour. Using tags, and using them properly, should be important to content publishers and republishers.
I also agree with Kroc’s point that it’s not your job to educate your reader like an encyclopedia. The <abbr> tag is not so much about education as it is about properly marking up your code.
As the second wave of the browser war heats up – as Tracemonkey, Squirrelfish Extreme, and V8 start really setting themselves apart from IE in even larger ways, coding to standards will become even more important. Understading lesser used tags is elemental in writing the best, most concise code and ranking well in search engines.
PHISH IS BACK!
Oct 1st
The first time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The last time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The best Phish show I saw was in Hampton (11/22/97, best Piper ever!).
It would be awesome to see them in Hampton in 2009.