Published on February 8, 2010
If you’ve done any web development more ambitious than a few text links, you have already long since run up against the problem of how Microsoft constantly fails to conform to standards. For those of you who haven’t experienced the special joy of making otherwise correctly-coded web designs work in IE, you don’t know what you’re missing.
See, web pages are coded in a special programming language, much like any software (okay, let’s not get bogged down in the semantics of markup languages versus compiled and interpreted code and all that, shall we? It’s not germane to the point, here). The problem is, when you learn this language the people who are in charge of creating and maintaining it tell you that certain program instructions will result in web browsers displaying things in a certain, predictable way.
Except for Internet Explorer.
You can buy into conspiracy theories that Microsoft wants to control the language and so interprets it in their own way, expecting to force everyone else to conform to their version by sheer power of market share. You can jump on the “Microsoft is run by a pack of idiots” bashing bandwagon and assert they’re just too stupid to understand the standards, so are unable to conform. Or you can just throw up your hands, utter blasphemous curses, and try to hack out code that will work in their crippled and ill-constructed browsers while simultaneously working in other, correctly-constructed ones. You could even do all three, and/or make up a few alternative activities for fun while you’re at it. I suggest drinking heavily during such an enterprise.
For everyone who knows the pain of which I speak, here is a fun graphic I ran across today that sums things up all too knowingly:
Graphic created by Alan Foreman of Poisoned Minds.
Published on February 5, 2010
No shit, right? Who doesn’t know someone it’s taken?
It took a friend today, and the hurt’s still raw, and there’s nothing really to do about it but get over it. Eventually.
Jerry was a great guy. The harder you broke his balls the better he liked you for it, and he had a million zany stories that you knew he wasn’t making up. He drank like a sailor–which is appropriate because he was one. I don’t know anyone who was more happily politically incorrect, and you had to love him for it–more so the worse his wisecracks got. I had to make him stop including my work e-mail address on his mailing list, some of the stuff he’d send was definitely not safe for work.
He loved golfing, which is how I got to know him. We were league mates and later, when he and his crony Chris broke away from the league and started a group of their own, I showed up to play with them as often as I could. When I missed half a season because of emergency surgery he was the guy I asked to cover for me. He had his great days, and he had his lousy days, and on the latter there was no one more accomplished at sending a duck hook (he was a lefty) farther right than I could send a slice. I can still see him pounding his chest like a drunk Klingon, and threatening to kick his ball’s ass if it didn’t go into the hole.
He was healthy as hell, too, until the cancer took him down. Trim, fit, he used to relax by swimming laps in his pool. He was retired some years back, but still active and vigorous as anyone half his age. Until the cancer got him.
He went peacefully, with his “lovely” beside him. Just closed his eyes and left. Thank goodness for that.
He “may not have been the best, but there ain’t none better!”
I already miss him.
Published on February 5, 2010
So, from what I hear there’s an explosion of videos on YouTube detailing how to paint yourself blue, and to otherwise try to look like a Na’vi character. I figured that’s lame: on one hand, you ever tried washing all that shit off when you’re done? Don’t even tell me you plan to get between the sheets all blue and sticky. Yuck! Besides, in the era of Photoshop there’s no need to go to all that bother (click to see a larger version):
Spinny'd up in Blue
I just know that on Pandora they’d have good taste in beer–don’t you?
Published on February 3, 2010
I just heard about this today (and checked it out at Snopes), and it’s pretty bizarre. There’s a way to set an “ATM Trap” such that it captures your card, and then the thief does a bit of social engineering to get your PIN, only to recover the card a short time later and withdraw cash. This PDF file shows such a theft as it happens (note this footage is from 2005 and it’s quite likely many ATMs are now made with this in mind, but still forewarned is forearmed):
“ATM Trap” theft in progress (PDF)
So, beware! If you use an ATM that sucks in your card, and it appears to be confiscated, follow the steps in the document.
Published on February 2, 2010
So, Xmas is past but if you had any hard core geeks on your gift list last year I’m betting it was a royal chore finding something “suitable” for them. Tell me, honestly: where do you think that gizmo is now?
My friends, I’m here to make your next foray into geek giftdom an experience you can actually look forward to! It’s obvious that you, unschooled in the ways of geekdom, don’t read the right web comics, so I’m presenting the User Friendly flowchart that will make you a geek’s hero (click image for a larger version):
Now that you are suitably grateful to have this onerous task lifted from your shoulders, feel free to visit the font of geek wisdom at its source:
User Friendly, The Comic
Published on February 2, 2010
He helps expose the dark underbelly of what really goes on at some “club testing” events. Tell him Spinny sent you.
The Golf Digest Hot List is a Joke (And We’re Not Laughing) at Addicted2Golf
Published on January 28, 2010
First off, don’t get me wrong: I love my new Alienware laptop. It rocks in so many ways I haven’t found them all yet. Still, some things are just too damned fancy in my godlike opinion.
For instance?
Instead of clicky-button controls for things like volume control, CD ejection, media control (what? your laptop doesn’t have play, fast forward and rewind buttons?) and all that other stuff, mine has touch-sensitive capacitance controls. It’s the same idea as the ubiquitous touch pads, taken to another level of fancy-it-up-because-we-can. Well, today mine suddenly stopped working. About the same time, the tap-to-click function on the touch pad also went south–though at the time I didn’t realize the two events were related.
I got on the phone with Dell tech support (well, I’d been told my model Alienware machine had to go through Dell for such things, though in the end that turned out to be a load), and here’s a side rant: I had to run the gauntlet of no fewer than three obsequious functionaries, each one of whom asked me for the same damned information. Why don’t these people type in this stuff and pass it along to the next obstacle on the course?
Anyway, once I finally got to the Alienware guy with the tech-related flow chart to read from instead of the administrivia one, we went through a ritual of remove battery, unplug, hold down the power button, and so on. Reverse, rinse, and Glory Be: that fixed the problem.
Which was?
It seems this laptop, over time, can build up a “residual charge” in the frame. That translates to screw-with-capacitance in how-can-this-annoy-me parlance. By discharging everything, the balance was restored to The Force and all was again well.
So, tell me again why we can’t just have buttons?
Published on January 22, 2010
I can’t be the only person who gets annoyed by Microsoft’s insistence on re-booting my machine without asking first. Who the hell do they think they are? I gave permission to install updates autonomously, but why does that include a re-boot? The proper procedure is to install the updates, then provide notice that a re-boot is now needed, and LET ME DECIDE WHEN TO DO IT.
Sometimes I leave my machine in the state I want to find it in come morning, and I’m getting sick and tired of waking up to browser crash notices and windows I’ve left linked for convenience being gone.
Guess I need to revoke some au-tho-ri-teh.
Published on January 15, 2010
Why don’t, instead of working feverishly on competing standards, these web geek gurus get together and come up with a single one that offers the best of both? Can anyone say ego issues?
The graphics display features in HTML 5 are attractive to a graphics geek like moi, but I have to pause: will HTML 5 become such a pile of bloatware that it rivals a Microsoft product? Sure, it’d be nice to be able to post up animations that don’t require proprietary software and plug-ins (I’m talking to you, Flash people), but what part of such displays belong in the realm of content that shouldn’t be in the main standard? I’m not sure, but vastly expanding the markup language seems to me a one-way street leading to aforementioned bloat.
This doesn’t even address the usual bitch about having to worry about what’s becoming two very different markup languages. So web designers need to keep current in both, or does this become a Light Side/Dark Side decision? I personally favor XHTML, mainly because I’m also a coding geek in other languages and I like the alignment with the XML standard. Seems cleaner to me. See “bloat” again, above.
Know what I really think? I believe if there’s a clear winner between the two standards down the road it will be the one the porn industry embraces. Worked before.
Published on January 14, 2010
Like many people in this country whose mindset isn’t somewhere to the right of Adolph Hitler (Godwin alert!), when FAUX Noise comes to my attention I greet it with a mixture of exasperation and sadness (for the dupes who believe their shtick). Words usually don’t fail me, but I’ve never really had the inspiration to summarize the plague that they are in any coherent form.
Well, my good friend John (who also happens to be a virtuoso guitarist and arranger) put the muse (perfectly IMNSDHO) to words this morning:
“Fox gets good ratings telling ultra right wing people what they want to hear, keeping them angry, afraid and divisive.”
Bravo, John; bravo.
Posts