:Archive Of June 2001:
Friday, June 29, 2001 - 10:41 PM -
Thank you k10k. Ambient Machines
Tuesday, June 26, 2001 - 10:03 PM -
Vincent speaks true: the man who can write like a jackknifed trailer of burning marshmallows is back.
Sunday, June 24, 2001 - 11:13 PM -
Skip intro. Mike Chambers and Phillip Torrone do a great job explaining Flash as an application development tool in this Real Audio interview for KUAC FM, Alaska.
Saturday, June 23, 2001 - 9:26 PM -
Shiro Kuramata. Start here, then follow with here. ...The latter is an experimental site. Give yourself a few minutes to forgive its rough edges and hopefully you, like I, will be lost in something wonderful. (But turn your speakers off. Trust me on that.)
- 3:22 PM -
Need something a little different to listen to? How about Handcuffed To A Fence In Mississippi, by Jim White, ex Vogue model, NYC cabbie, pro-surfer, and Pentecostal minister.
Friday, June 22, 2001 - 6:43 PM -
"Mr Sear said he saw no reason why credit card details had to be stored by companies once a payment has been processed."
Bingo.
From this BBC report on the Consumers' Association compromising up to 2,700 credit cards with their web site.
But the key is why do companies keep your credit card details? That information isn't supposed to be of any use to them after the transaction. Yet resources are made available to store this info as an asset, so clearly it's being used somehow. That's what should be under investigation. Follow that through and you'll end up with either criminal charges or new legislation. It won't be an answer that'll give you warm fuzzies.
Thursday, June 21, 2001 - 3:55 PM -
Two things that give me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach:
The water in my building has turned brown as tea. I noticed this after thinking my coffee tastes funny.
My computer locked up while downloading some mail. And it's not there on reboot. My apologies to whoever that was.
Wednesday, June 20, 2001 - 11:15 PM -
Hey! Tomalak's Realm is not closed. After everyone and the proverbial dog-that-no-one-knows-is-on-the-net blogged its demise, shouldn't just a few of us note the pleasure of Mr.Lee's continued company? ...I wonder, did everyone else just stop dropping in after the first announcement, as I did, not wanting to see the final day? Glad I checked back.
- 1:24 AM -
Oh my. That's just wonderful. Have your speakers on.
Tuesday, June 19, 2001 - 6:26 AM -
"What's a Keitai for?" Part 1, Part 2. From NooperLabs, an i-mode development and testing service.
I like their angle. Elsewhere there's talk about how it's hard to get clients understand and pay for the research and testing that should go into developing a web site. This cuts through that. Don't call it a site, call it an app, and cast yourself as an app tester.
It's something that's been bothering me: web developers discussing that it's hard to communicate to the client all that they're doing for them. Web development is about communicating a message, right? Maybe we're not very good at it then.
Monday, June 18, 2001 - 12:05 PM -
Now that's a timeline.
Sunday, June 17, 2001 - 10:37 PM -
<Sigh.> Still dreaming about that wacom tablet screen. Take that and make it the display of your laptop. Hinge it so it can be used 'normally' plus flipped around so it's on top when closed. Now you've got a drawing tablet about the thickness of an artist's sketchpad. Except it's intelligent paper; this sketchpad runs photoshop and flash. ...If Apple was half the company they started out to be, they'd make this. And give it a big television ad campaign: "Finally. We made a computer for the rest of you who like to draw."
One step closer to Kay's 1968 Dynabook.
Friday, June 15, 2001 - 2:08 PM -
This is the sort of thing that's hard to do a Google search for because it lacks distinct terms, and because it predates the internet. But it is computer related and it's the sort of info that somebody who'd know about it would likely be online, and would very possibly have commented on it.
When I was small (yes, a long time ago. shush.) there was a voice synthesizer in the Ontario Science Centre. That mass of wires could only do one word, but you could mess with the timing and the pitch over an extreme range. Which I did with a child's abandon and so have a permanent audio memory. One word reverberating in psychotic variation.
The word, in the fine tradition of late night technicians, was coffee.
Wednesday, June 13, 2001 - 1:45 PM -
Jeffrey says this, and Codebitch says this. Which leaves me to explain my "Yeah, wot she said."
I was linking specifically to CB's second part of that column, the Don't Freeze Me Out. I think that's important and I'll explain my view when I get the moment to lay it out in considered detail.
As for the discussion of when is a pixel a pixel, I don't know. These people are a hell of a lot smarter than me. CB is correct about the spec's definition of a pixel. That may be important to keep in mind as we move to high density displays and (eventually) Sony wall screens. Only Opera can say if this is what they're doing with the mac version, or if it's a bug. An official statement would be helpful, but they're just one browser company, so that case is really just a detail that brings up something that may become a real issue.
All that said ... I do think the Opera font in mac is a bug. If they were using the relative pixel then all the rest of the px measurements would have been proportionally scaled, and they're not. If you declare a box 400px wide it comes out 400px, not downscaled like they did with the text.
It may not be an issue at all then, because in high res displays you'd correctly proportion everything. But the Don't Freeze Me Out business comes up elsewhere and I'll get into that later.
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 - 1:45 PM -
Another wonderful editorial cartoon from Hoogerbrugge.
Sunday, June 10, 2001 - 4:23 PM -
Oh geez, I am now consumed with product lust. I didn't know these existed yet. All they have to do is make it cordless. Finally we're stepping away from the 1984 CRT and mouse.
Wednesday, June 6, 2001 - 10:47 PM -
Yeah. Wot she said.
CodeBitch rightfully lays it down. Read it. Digest it. Quite whining for the 1990s. It's 2001 and nothing is going to wait for you.
Monday, June 4, 2001 - 9:17 PM -
In my country the parliament is getting down to business and fast tracking some legislation. It's their pay hike, of course. The prime minister gets a 42% raise. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, I live in a democracy. Yes, we're dumb as rocks.
Sunday, June 3, 2001 - 12:05 PM -
Hilarious! Got limp CSS? Let Google's translation magic help you out.
I particularly like the romantic approach. And I quote,
1. To take a good chair, a good table, a beautiful sight, a coffee or a tea, chocolate (very well against the stress).
2. Look at right in the eyes your Web page and start to identify the various parts.
3. If you have a printer and print the page.
4. Start to pass to the abstraction, and look at where you can identify squares, small squares everywhere.
5. Define these squares using <div></div> (Here are what I obtained in 5 minutes for Tara).
6. Finally start to write your style sheet.
Saturday, June 2, 2001 - 11:41 PM -
Stay Awake comes up sixth in a Google search for "stupid things". You know, I admit a kind of satisfaction in that.
Friday, June 1, 2001 - 9:52 PM -
Oh he's so good! Jeffrey sums it up neatly. This is where I'll be sending people to start learning CSS.
Owen Briggs ©2000, 2006
