:Archive Of August 2001:
Tuesday, August 28, 2001 - 11:03 PM -
Hey cool. I've learned a new error code. NO ROM BASIC, SYSTEM HALTED in big blocky letters exactly like a C64. Today is just special.
It wasn't either of the failures noted on the net. Finally traced it to a cable. But what an eighties flashback that was.
- 3:02 PM -
The Apocalypse plays Horsie: First ie6 gets released, and now Vincent O'Keeffe actually posts something? My heart can't take more today. (Hiya, Vincent. Good to see life signs.)
A thread has begun to deal with the back end of the horse over here.
- 12:39 PM -
A more direct method of downloading ie6.
- 9:45 AM -
Department of Joy and Bliss: IE6 is out and they didn't fix it. Jeffrey comments, and he's probably the best to watch for further developments.
Since you can't run multiple IE's, I have to get a third machine before I can be of any help.
The irony is one of the big reasons I put the effort into things like the Box Lesson is I want to get back to where you don't have to have a browser farm to test your work. I want to get back to a "write once, run everywhere" web. I want people who aren't professional web developers to be able to make their own cool pages.
I'm really angry about this.
- 8:57 AM -
If you can read this, it's all fixed. My site's host is down. I have no webpage, no mail. The host's homepage is also down, and a major blogger who works there is down. Ouch. There'll be some consternation among the admins right now. But ftp is up, just running slow. The part I don't get is I can reach the site that shares this account with me. Must be trouble with the server that handles addresses.
Sunday, August 26, 2001 - 3:04 PM -
That's not a feature, that's a bug. Charles noticed my text jumps with a mouseover in the ie6 beta. I wish MS would stop pushing that thing as a "Public Preview" till it's ready. Meanwhile, has anyone figured out a way to run multiple ie's on the same machine? I should probably look into what they're doing here.
Friday, August 24, 2001 - 11:05 PM -
Damn. That's just the socks on the cat. Photomontage from Timo Arnall's loaded webspace. I really like this one.
Thursday, August 23, 2001 - 5:35 PM -
Dunno why, but I keep forgetting to check in on Digital Web. Right now they have Building An Online Community by Matt Haughey.
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 5:35 PM -
Boing Boing points to this gallery of Tokyo DisneySea's Mysterious Island. Looks rather like Riven, but full of tourists. Bunch more photos if you follow the links on the last page.
- 2:53 PM -
Other projects from the man behind the wooden mirror.
- 12:52 PM -
Golly. There's all sorts of nice things linked in hoopla's log and on the site. Two of the links: sidewalk petroglyphs and watertowers.
- 12:08 PM -
Something for the "Swiss Army Knife" section of your bookmarks. This to That, a quick page of what glue to use for what materials. It's even WAP enabled, so if you're messing about in the garage with only your cel phone...
Tuesday, August 21, 2001 - 12:20 PM -
Handy little chart of CSS2 tests.
- 11:45 AM -
This just rocks. An enormous gallery of ball chairs.
Sunday, August 19, 2001 - 12:49 PM -
Intel's Concept PC gallery. Shallow concepts in overwrought presentations, much like concept cars. Don't ask me why they chose "Ease of Use Initiative" as the subtitle buzzword.
A few years ago a design student did a beautiful non-working concept model. It was a handsome leather binder, with the screen, keyboard, motherboard, cards, etc, as individual plastic sheets that you could replace to upgrade or trim weight or add functionality. Very sharp, nicely thought out details, and eyecatching by the elegance of the ideas.
He won a minor award and got snapped up by a design firm, and I haven't seen it on the net since.
Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 2:28 PM -
Trends in Japan has a short article on an undersea robot that uses a contained diesel. "The engine itself is a completely closed system that needs no intake of air to run and chemically processes exhaust gas inside the robot. On-board devices reinfuse the exhaust with oxygen after removing its carbon dioxide and reuse the gas in the fuel mixture. The seawater is kept clean, as no gas is released." That's curious. Can it be developed for low emission vehicles? Perhaps not for cars at first, but how about large trucks and locomotives?
Trends also mentions something remarkably like Douglas Adam's Electronic Monk.
Friday, August 17, 2001 - 5:56 PM -
"Then, when I consider what Japanese culture is like, the answer is that it all is subculture. Therefore, art is unnecessary." Takashi Murakami, interviewed by Mako Wakasa. (via gmtPlus9)
- 1:53 PM -
Yum. Alfred's Camera Page. Attractive, clean, informative, detailed. Cruising the web, it often seems there's precious little between the slick commercial sites (or slick sites by professional web developers) and the worst of GeoCities.
And each camera even has a link to its shutter sound. Nice touch. (If you're a camera junkie, that sound speaks volumes, trust me.)
Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 1:08 AM -
Nasa's Helios movie gallery. Some nice footage. For scale, that wing is 8' wide.
Oddly, there's no mention anywhere on the site about the current flight, not even the "Today at Nasa" page. Hope they work on that. It'd be great if they'd add a webcam -- the view from 100,000' has to be spectacular.
Sunday, August 12, 2001 - 1:07 PM -
Arcade machine junkyard. Before you click the link on the bottom of that page be warned: big browser jamming sound file. And the pages are meant to be served in an even more over-the-top frameset. Ick. But loads of images.
- 12:17 PM -
Taking a few trees with you. That other design medium, bookbinding.
- 11:00 AM -
The last webcam shot. Bye-bye Trojan Room coffee machine. Retired with honour for £3,350 on ebay. Golly.
Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 12:55 PM -
Sigh. Prada.com is still "opening soon". It's been a year now? I only care because I seem to recall the website is being handled along with the new stores and business model by Rem Koolhaas. Which, as far as I know, is the first time he is taking his fascinating architectural approach to the web. I've been rather keen to view the result.
To which the naysayers can reply, "Well, that's the result." Oh shush.
Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 1:21 PM -
Case for case, Victor understands completely what I like. When he opens his sexy cel phone boutique I'm going to have to drop by. Damn. Wow.
Oh, and Rory has a headache.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001 - 1:29 PM -
Fun fluff from Applefritter Hacks. I've always liked electronic hardware that looks like electronic hardware.
Monday, August 6, 2001 - 6:44 PM -
Nice flash movie. And yes, this is what banking in Canada is like. (via Boing Boing)
- 1:41 PM -
Here's what it's based on. Tiny, sweet, and incredibly well made.
- 12:48 AM -
Shoot! That's why year after year every time someone promotes the "networked home" they trot out the really bizarre example that your fridge will be able to phone your car to tell you to pick up more milk -- of course nobody would really care about such a thing, but food corporations sure would. They'd love to have a database of what's in your fridge and when.
That detail would be hidden in the software EULA. Nobody reads the EULA for their OS; they're certainly not going to read the one for their fridge.
Don't know why it took me so long to add that up. The Wired Fridge thing had been puzzling me for years. (Note to self: Upgrade paranoia. Try caffeine patches or something.)
- 12:01 AM -
Er, um. You read it and form your own opinion. Curl.
I'm uneasy about this sort of thing. And I blame the browser companies for getting us here.
Maybe it's not the start of a future of proprietary formats for information. Maybe. It's going to take some reading to sort that out.
Thursday, August 2, 2001 - 2:45 PM -
Boy gets camera. Boy photographs cars. Forty years later, boy scans and posts.
This is what I love about the web. Independent content. That site's design will never be linked by k10k, and the photo quality will never attract a book publisher, but it doesn't matter because the web is about self-publishing.
And these are great shots. I can hear the cars and smell the sun-heated pavement and grass. There's plenty of superb photographs of restored cars raced at crowded vintage events elsewhere, but they don't trigger the memories. These do, and thanks to Tam McPartland and the web they're not sitting in an attic or hidden in an archive, they're just a Google link away for anyone on the planet. 8mm movies too.
Owen Briggs ©2000, 2006
