Yard Bird
This little guy ended up in my yard a lot during the week or so it took him to learn how to fly. He was quite talkative.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Awesome. Things I remember about this game from my childhood:
* The goal of the game is to get Larry (your character) laid.
* Before playing you had to answer a series of questions to prove you were an “adult” (which is kind of unfortunately not part of this online version).
* At some point in the game you slip a receptionist of sorts some “Spanish Fly” and she gets all worked up, only to run off to have sex with her boyfriend. I remember being very disappointed at this point in the game.
Kindle DX
This is the most appealing Kindle I’ve seen yet. I kind of want one, but I’m hoping Apple will introduce a similarly sized tablet-esque device sometime this year, so it’s worth waiting a while (that and I don’t have $500 to burn at the moment)
IE passive-aggressive about underscores in host names
Underscores aren’t allowed in host names, so say RFC-952 and RFC-1123 (don’t actually follow those links unless you enjoy reading technical specifications). I didn’t know this, maybe because I prefer hyphens (yes, I have an opinion on underscores vs hyphens, get over it).
It seems IE “enforces” this by quietly blocking cookies from any host that offends the rule. Of course, IE won’t complain when you visit a twisted, underscore-flaunting host, but if cookies are any part of the equation (say, required for login to work) IE will quietly ignore them. This will undoubtedly lead to hours of fun for anyone who is responsible for making the site work the way it should.
Cookies on ASP pages are blocked if the server name contains characters that are not supported by Domain Name System (DNS). For example, you cannot use underscore characters (_) in the server name. This behavior is by design.
Granted that’s an old change, 2002 old. Still, it interfered with my week so I’m taking this opportunity to complain about it.
Safari 4 Beta
I’ve been playing with the new Safari 4 beta for the past hour and there are some pretty notable changes. All in all I think it’s a pretty great update, I might finally be able to ditch that sluggish behemoth known as “Firefox” once and for all.
I’ll leave a real breakdown of the features to someone who is good at writing those things, but the short list is:
- The Windows version is now sporting a native Windows UI. The Apple UI has never looked quite right in Windows, I think this is a great change and a big step towards getting people to actually use Safari in Windows.
- Tabs in the title bar, similar to Google Chrome and Stainless. I’m not 100% sure why, but I expect it was well researched given the technical hassle it must have presented.
- Speaking of tabs, in old Safari once you started dragging a tab left or right you could no longer drag it out of the window, this is fixed in the beta. Kind of a nitpick but it’s been bugging me for a while.
- Bookmarks and History views now use coverflow. I think this is a hugely useful addition, I’ve been using SafariStand largely because of the coverflow history view it offers and I’ve found it very helpful.
- A “top sites” start page similar to what Google Chrome and Opera offer.
- Everything from Webkit. This primarily (to me) means the new, speedy javascript engine and a much improved web inspector.
Prettified Apache Indexes
For kicks I applied some jQuery and CSS to Apache’s directory listings.
Before:
After:
You can see it in action and download it. Some assembly required.
Not so easy
I sort of want a job making simple tasks look overwhelmingly complex in infomercials. How fun would it be to come up with a way to make washing your hands seem daunting, or opening a door, or petting your cat? Maybe I can moonlight as an Obfuscator of the Obvious.
The Multitasking Myth
With regards to productivity and time management, the use of the term “multitasking” is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
Multitasking is a trap, a siren song to the overworked. You can’t write multiple proposals at once, you can’t work on multiple webapps at once and you can’t give your attention to multiple clients at once. Chances are if you think you’re multitasking you’re either breaking up and prioritizing your tasks well (which is good, but not “multitasking”) or you aren’t giving any task your full attention.
Multitasking is a misleading term that has turned into a professional talking point and – in my opinion – it needs to be purged from our productivity vocabularies.
The $2,000,000 Website
Clearly I need to raise my rates.
On Hulu blocking Boxee
The display of an ad on Hulu can be broken down to three features:
- Video – the presentation of a “sponsored by” clip at the beginning of the video, and perhaps a few commercials.
- Banner – the presentation of a matching banner on the video page.
- Interactive – the ability to click-through the ads to a link provided by the advertiser.
When watching Hulu videos with Boxee, #1 remains intact but #2 and #3 are thrown out the window. You can argue the importance of these items if you want but the fact is the advertisers are paying for these features and when you watch a video with Boxee the advertisers aren’t getting what they paid for. That’s all it takes for them to make a call to legal to have the plug pulled.
