Planet evolt.org

Stephane Deschamps: W3C Validators in Jeopardy

Stéphane — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:14:10 +0000

It's come to pass that the funding necessary to maintain and grow validation services at the W3C has become overwhelming to the W3C's operational budget. As such, the validators are in jeopardy.

But there are ways to help, and this post is a call to action to do just that.

Relaying Molly on the information. I did not imagine there was such a risk that Validators, which have been serious parts of the web's ecosystem, could be in danger.

Mantruc: Flickr: A Photo Sharing Website (Overview)

mantruc — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:03:45 +0000

Flickr: A Photo Sharing Website An overview by Javier Velasco-Martin Introduction This blog post is based on a presentation I prepared this last semester for a course called Technologies of Friendship directed by Fred Stutzman at UNC-Chapel Hill. This post is a transcript of my notes with some minor editing, it is not a completely polished article, I [...]

Stephane Deschamps: Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : 20 signs you don't want that web design project

Stéphane — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:22:03 +0000

Ha ha. Jeffrey Zeldman issues a list of 20 signs that should tell you you'll regret having accepted a project. So true. So very true.

Garrett Coakley: Flickr and neighbourhood

garrett — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:45:46 +0000

Have you ever wondered what Flickr does with all that geolocation data it gathers from our pictures (apart from pinning them to a map and working out the ratio of kittens to sunsets in a given area)? Well one of the things it does is is generate shapefiles of regional neighbourhoods to better work out where your picture was taken.

Now Tom Taylor has built a tool which allows you to visualise the boundaries of these neighbourhoods and see how Flickr views your part of the world.

Cool stuff.

Stephane Deschamps: Stop using poor performance CSS expressions - Use JavaScript instead

Stéphane — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:55:49 +0000

One time or another, we get handled a case where there's no way to accomplish a certain layout optimally for Internet Explorer 6 without JavaScript. And you know what? That's just fine, shit happens.

But first, make sure it degrades properly without JavaScript. Second, implement it with JavaScript code instead of CSS expressions, for best performance and reliability.

Duly noted (via Bruno on webdevfr).

Mantruc: (Just like) Starting over

mantruc — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:09:46 +0000

Well, it’s been almost four months since I’ve moved to Chapel Hill and I’ve been completely silent here. I guess I could now say that I’m pretty much settled here, especially after finally getting our car (Barack), key component of anyone’s life in a US non-metropoli. I’m having a great time at the School of [...]

William (neuro): Weekly neuro Twitterings on 2008-11-17

neuro — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:00:16 +0000

<ul class="aktt_tweet_digest"> <li>Public Service Announcement: the downtime feature of Nagios is only useful when PEOPLE FUCKING USE IT. That is all. <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1001868952">#</a></li> <li>Video game soundtracks ftw: consumed this evening, Jet Set Radio Future and Metal Gears Solid 1 and 2 <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1002987524">#</a></li> <li>listening to Jeff Buckley&#8217;s &#8220;Grace&#8221; for the first time in ages, he would have been 42 next Monday <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1005336052">#</a></li> <li>Crap, it&#8217;s Sunday, isn&#8217;t it. <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1007863527">#</a></li> </ul> </content>

Stephane Deschamps: Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls

Stéphane — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:19:14 +0000

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

(emphasis mine)

I was deeeply moved this morning, hearing part of his Chicago speech he gave last night:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

Congratulations, USA!

William (neuro): Obama’s Class Act

neuro — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:00:05 +0000

I woke up this morning to find <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05elect.html">Barack Obama has been elected to become the next President of the United States</a>. And what has struck me the most was the way the supporters reacted when the name of the opponent was mentioned by each candidate in their speeches. McCain addressed his supporters in his concession speech, saying he had called Obama to congratulate him. At the mention of Obama&#8217;s name, boos and hisses erupted from the crowd. At least twice in 30 seconds, he had to put his hands up to the crowd to basically shut them up. Meanwhile, at Obama&#8217;s speech, he said the same thing, and was met with a ripple of polite applause from the crowd. He went on to praise McCain&#8217;s efforts, and still the crowd did nothing but applaud. Obama, your supporters, the record number of people who turned out to vote for you, they&#8217;re a class act. Just don&#8217;t let them &mdash; and the rest of us in the world &mdash; down, because we so want to love America again. </content>

Garrett Coakley: How true

garrett — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:03:30 +0000

Jessica nails it yet again. If you don't already subscribe to the Indexed RSS feed, then you really should.

William (neuro): Woss All the Fuss About?

neuro — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:00:09 +0000

Is it just me, or has this furore over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross prank calling Andrew Sachs&#8217; answerphone on a radio show been blown out of all proportion? Both men involved have apologised to Sachs, and that should be the end of it. Instead, they are now suspended from their BBC broadcasts, and Sachs&#8217; granddaughter <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/29/russell-brand-jonathan-ross1">wants them fired</a> (yet she waited until today to <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1867800.ece">express that to The Sun</a>, after all this publicity has kicked off). However, this situation is entirely the making of the press &mdash; most notably the Daily Mail. Look at the figures. The original broadcast was on Russell Brand&#8217;s late night Saturday show on BBC Radio 2, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f0lg8">on the 18th of October</a>. Brand apologised on his show the following Saturday, the 25th. On Sunday the 26th, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/27/russell-brand-daily-mail-fawlty-towers">BBC said it had received 67 complaints</a>. After the press coverage on Monday morning, that number <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/27/jonathan-ross-russell-brand">reached 1,500</a>. By Tuesday, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080839/Ross-Brands-jobs-threat-10-000-complain-prank-Ofcom-launch-formal-inquiry.html">it was 18,000</a>. How many of these 18,000 people heard the original broadcast in its original context, over a week ago? How many heard it first on YouTube (in <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U7IHJ66wj9g">two</a> <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uAxPkcnlyNM">parts</a>)? How many didn&#8217;t actually hear it at all, but consider Brand and Ross to be the worst of the &#8216;elite&#8217; and &#8216;overpaid&#8217; celebs at the BBC? Only 67 actually considered it worthy of complaint at the time, and I&#8217;m <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/29/russell-brand-jonathan-ross">not the only one to have noticed this</a>. And what of the granddaughter, Georgina Baillie? The Daily Mail has been horrified by all this, horrified enough to publish <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081414/Georgina-Baillie-Brand-Ross-sacked-way-treated-grandfather.html">large photos of Baillie in burlesque outfits</a> (plus a photo of her at 10 months old, to redress the balance, or something) which can&#8217;t be doing her career as a self-labelled &#8220;satanic slut&#8221; any harm. And just a click away, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081388/PIERS-MORGAN-Brand-just-sex-obsessed-ex-junkie--Its-Ross-BBC-sack-today.html">Piers Morgan calls Brand &#8220;sex-obsessed&#8221;</a>. In the Daily Mail. Take a look <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/">their website&#8217;s front page</a>. Look at the right-hand column, and scroll down. It reads like a cross between Heat and tmz.com, it&#8217;s the worst kind of paparazzi-driven celeb trash. Still, I guess with the US presidential election looming, and a massive global financial crisis still ongoing, we need something else to fill our headlines. How stupid, as a society, do we have to get before we unnaturally evolve into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy">idiocracy</a>? UPDATE 2008-10-29 18:25 UTC: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7698417.stm">Brand has resigned</a> from his BBC show, Gia Milinovich is <a href="http://www.giagia.co.uk/2008/10/29/save-jonathan-ross/">asking for your comments of support to pass back to Jonathan Ross</a>. Hello, <a href="http://cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/29/bbc.stars.row.radio/index.html">CNN.com readers</a>. UPDATE 2008-10-30 09:19 UTC: BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7699054.stm">now reporting 27,000 complaints</a>. How is it possible to accept complaints about something that has (a) received such a high level of media attention, thus skewing public opinion, and (b) happened nearly two weeks ago? </content>

William (neuro): Strange iTunes Censorship

neuro — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:00:06 +0000

I was flicking through the iTunes Store this morning and noticed something odd &#8230; some words in reviews and track titles had asterisks in them as though they were swear words (e.g. &#8216;b*ll*cks&#8217;). But they didn&#8217;t appear to be swear words. iTunes uses <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/">allmusic</a> for the bulk of their album and single reviews, so luckily it&#8217;s possible to go back and &#8216;decode&#8217; some of these words. They include: &#8220;porno&#8221;, &#8220;teen&#8221;, &#8220;cream&#8221;, &#8220;sexy&#8221;, &#8220;hot&#8221;. Strangely, variants like &#8220;sex&#8221;, &#8220;creamy&#8221;, &#8220;teenage&#8221; aren&#8217;t being censored. This seems to be a blanket effect on iTunes &mdash; Katy Perry&#8217;s current single &#8220;Hot &#8216;n&#8217; Cold&#8221; is listed on the UK iTunes Store main page under &#8216;Top Songs&#8217; as &#8220;H*t &#8216;n&#8217; Cold&#8217;. This seems to me to be really odd behaviour. They&#8217;ve done the same thing to some common swear words, but to censor &#8220;cream&#8221;? And it&#8217;s inconsistent to boot. Look at the review for Tenacious D&#8217;s eponymous album. The tracks &#8220;Fuck Her Gently&#8221; and &#8220;Cock Pushups&#8221; are censored with asterisks, but the title &#8220;Sex Supreme&#8221; in the review is not. The Roots&#8217; track &#8220;Pussy Galore&#8221; has its title censored, but not the name of the band Pussy Galore. And it&#8217;s not even like people at Apple <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ieDloHZrBSY">don&#8217;t swear</a>. </content>

Stephane Deschamps: Warning sounded on web's future

Stéphane — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:29:59 +0000

"Has [the Web] been designed for the executive and the teenager in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If you are in a rural community do you need a different kind of web with different kinds of facilities?"

Sir Tim Berners-Lee asks very valuable questions, as always. I've just heard a Project Manager who mistook accessibility for the taking into account of narrowband, and wants a guesstimate as to when narrowband becomes negligible because he's all for RIAs everywhere.

Most people don't have quality broadband, most people don't have an iPod 3G in their pocket. Wake up, people. It is sad that we should still be forced to tell people that it is so.

And (you know me) accessibility is a broad subject, that can't be narrowed down to narrowband. Heh.

If there's one thing we're still way away from, it's shared real-world awareness. Evangelising is going to last for a long, long time.

Stephane Deschamps: Be Kind to the Color Blind

Stéphane — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:31:32 +0000

Hi, my name is Chris Campbell and I have a color vision deficiency. Like roughly 7-10% of all males, my deuteranomaly makes it difficult to differentiate between some colors, like red and green. Color deficiency, or color blindness as it's commonly referred to, doesn't mean that I or people with similar conditions cannot see certain colors. They're not invisible and I don't see in black and white (a condition that is actually very, very rare). I can still use crayons effectively, find meaning in beautiful sunsets and even enjoy clear blue skies. What it does mean is that certain colors in the visual spectrum look a lot like one another and so I have a hard time sometimes telling the difference between certain colors and even shades.

Title says it all: Chris Campbell gives very good examples and ways to deal with colour blindness.

Stephane Deschamps: Are you an artist?

Stéphane — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:41:37 +0000

"Are you an artist?" He looked at me, straight in the face.

"No," I said. I was surprised at how fast that answer came out.

But when I took the chalk in my hand and started drawing a vine, I realised with a mild surprise that my lines are confident, I have a notion of filling in space only as much as is necessary. I'm not an artist, but I have a close relationship with my pens and pencils.

I'm only five years late in reading stuff chez Steph. Better late than never though. I thought I'd share it with you.

Stephane Deschamps: Self loathing for Sumo

Stéphane — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:21:07 +0000

I was contacted a while back by the people who make Sumo chairs asking if I wanted an Omni . All I had to do in return was blog about it.

Jeremy Keith reports on the Sumo Omni. How come us French bloggers aren't targeted by this kind of marketing arrangements?

Hey Sumo people: my living room is large enough for me to try one and blog about it afterwards. Hint, hint.

Garrett Coakley: Real Life Tron

garrett — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:43:01 +0000

One day, when Marco and I were playing against two computer opponents, we forced one of the AI cycles to trap itself between its own walls and the bottom game border. Sensing an impending crash, it fired a missile, just like it always did whenever it was trapped. But this time was different – instead of firing at another trail, it fired at the game border, which looked like any other light cycle trail as far as the computer was concerned. The missile impacted with the border, leaving a cycle-sized hole, and the computer promptly took the exit and left the main playing field. Puzzled, we watched as the cycle drove through the scoring display at the bottom of the screen. It easily avoided the score digits and then drove off the screen altogether.

Shortly after, the system crashed.

Our minds reeled as we tried to understand what we had just seen. The computer had found a way to get out of the game. When a cycle left the game screen, it escaped into computer memory – just like in the movie.

Daniel Wellman reminisces about the day his program went awol and life started imitating art.

Stephane Deschamps: Adobe MAX 2008 Europe: Accessibility, anyone?

Stéphane — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:55:25 +0000

Adobe Max 2008 Europe: 132 sessions, not one on accessibility. Come on guys... really?

Stephane Deschamps: This jetsetting life

Stéphane — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:50:43 +0000

[S]ometimes I actually just sit at home and work, make bread, and cook while I wait for Eva to come home. Those are the good weeks.

I can relate to what Chaals says about always travelling for work. Now that we've got two kids, my travelling schedule has eased up a lot, and I'm grateful to my boss for that. I've loved travelling a lot, but yeah, home is a very nice travel destination. My favourite.

William (neuro): Lunch Club

neuro — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:00:09 +0000

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wooshoofoo/2885446294/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2885446294_d4f75b33e9.jpg" alt="Lunch Club" /></a></div> The first rule of Lunch Club is you do not talk about Lunch Club The second rule of Lunch Club is you do not talk about Lunch Club Third rule: If someone says &#8220;nachos!&#8221;, orders a garlic bread, or eats with their fingers, the lunch is over Fourth rule: Only one plate to a person Fifth rule: One course at a time Sixth rule: No napkins, no salad forks Seventh rule: Lunches will go on as long as they have to And the eighth and final rule: If this your first day at Lunch Club, you have to munch </content>

Garrett Coakley: Yaarrrr

garrett — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:06:44 +0000

Well, it would seem churlish not to, given the day.

Garrett Coakley: On being accomplished

garrett — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:44:13 +0000

One thing I definitely want to say is that, from the start, we've surrounded ourselves with people who believe in us. Even when we've had no money, the same people have been behind us and worked on our behalf over the years. It's not about being lucky with record companies – it's about the people who've stuck with us through thick and thin. So this is a celebration for about three dozen people, and we're going to throw ourselves into their arms and have a massive party. And I have to say, on a final note, we're all very, very accomplished drinkers.

- Guy Garvey from Elbow on winning the 2008 Mercury Music Prize

William (neuro): Who Wants Tea?

neuro — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:00:07 +0000

Garrett Coakley: Whale watching

garrett — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:58:59 +0000

Been quiet round here recently hasn't it…

William (neuro): Cabs are Awesome, Unless They’re Not

neuro — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:00:22 +0000

<a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1247">Jono&#8217;s post</a> about taxi cabs and close calls with death reminded me of how little hassle I&#8217;ve usually had with cab drivers. I usually chat away to cabbies, and tip pretty generously on most occasions, but one guy in San Francisco took the biscuit, and didn&#8217;t get tipped. Or chatted to, as I was giving him directions. I had to go 8 blocks from Clay to Green carrying a load of crap in plastic bags, so thought &#8220;fuck it, cab&#8221;. There was one across from the hotel. &#8220;Battery and Green&#8221;, I&#8217;d asked. &#8220;Do you know how to get there?&#8221; he replied? I thought he was implying it wasn&#8217;t that far, or did I know where I was going? Nah, he was asking because he didn&#8217;t bloody know where it was. Then, when I gently discussed how cabbies in the UK have to do The Knowledge before they&#8217;re let loose on the streets, he told me that that was &#8220;not true, they can just go out and drive like here&#8221;. Hey, don&#8217;t mind me, I only bloody live there. I ended up having to guide this guy to the destination as, by his own admission, he&#8217;d only been working for two days, including that one. Then there was the private cab driver who, on taking me from Chelmsford town centre to Stansted Airport on a Friday afternoon, seemed to be dominating the conversation. He was basically chatting me up. He even broke my cardinal rule, which is when taking a cab for work travel, expense the bare fare, but pay with a tip. That way, the tip comes out of my own pocket. But nooooo, this guy threw an extra fiver on the receipt. &#8220;There you go, mate, something back for yourself&#8221;. Brrrrrr. I took a meal off my expenses that week to counter it. </content>

William (neuro): Will It Ever End?

neuro — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:00:07 +0000

So, I finally finished Grand Theft Auto IV, nearly 4 months after buying it. Well, I thought I had. When the final credits had finished rolling by, I got some achievements for being awesome enough to finish the game &#8230; and then I was back in Liberty City. Not at the start again, but where I was when I finished. Then the phone goes: it&#8217;s Niko&#8217;s cousin, checking he&#8217;s OK. What the hell, the game hasn&#8217;t stopped yet. I checked the stats page: apparently after doing all the missions, I&#8217;ve only finished 67% of the game. It&#8217;s not finished yet. Augh. </content>

William (neuro): IMAX Disappointment

neuro — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:00:13 +0000

So two things i&#8217;ve been looking forward to for a long time are going to see <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0468569/">The Dark Knight</a> and finally getting to see a movie at the <a href="http://www.glasgowsciencecentre.org/imax.aspx">IMAX cinema out at the Glasgow Science Centre</a>. It&#8217;s a crying shame that the actual experience of going to watch the movie didn&#8217;t match up to the movie itself at any level. <div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro/676713/" title="IMAX® at Glasgow Science Centre by neuro, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/676713_7e5f7a1a9e.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="IMAX® at Glasgow Science Centre" /></a></div> So the movie itself is just frickin&#8217; awesome. All kinds of awesome. Every performance is note perfect, and makes me itch for more. I don&#8217;t want to go too much into the movie, as I tried to stay clear of any pre-release hype to keep the movie fresh for me when I saw it, and I don&#8217;t want to spoil the experience for anyone who hasn&#8217;t seen it yet. However, if you&#8217;ve seen it, you hopefully know what I&#8217;m talking about. No, the reason I&#8217;m blogging about going to see the Dark Knight in IMAX is sadly rationale for yet another &#8220;neuro is ranting&#8221; post. The actual experience of the IMAX segments of The Dark Knight were truly stunning, expanding the more traditional widescreen segments vertically up- and downwards to absolutely fill the field of vision. However, the non-IMAX segments of the movie had terrible black level definition, as though someone had turned the brightness way up on your television. That&#8217;s my only real complaint about the movie presentation itself, as the IMAX segments were amazing (I&#8217;ll keep reiterating that to make the point that there&#8217;s nothing wrong with the IMAX process itself), and the sound system was leg-shakingly loud. Well, except when the ushers used it as a PA system. Just before the start of the movie, after seeing some postage-stamp sized ads, and a 5 minute fluff piece on Christopher Nolan and crew espousing how awesome IMAX is to shoot with, one of the ushers gave us the lowdown on where the exits where (I&#8217;ve just gotten back from a couple of weeks travelling; the last thing I want to hear is someone on a PA telling me where the exits are &#8230; are there lifejackets in this cinema too?) and to &#8220;keep your feet on the ground, get ready for The Dark Knight: the IMAX Experience&#8221;. Just get on with it! I should point out that my agitation at this point was that it was around 11pm by now. We&#8217;d gotten to the Glasgow Science Centre at about 9pm to get our tickets and avoid a massive queue &mdash; indeed, we were amongst the first into the cinema itself &mdash; but then we were made to queue until around 10:45pm for a 10:15pm showing. It was nearly half one in the morning by the time we got outside. So the movie starts. I&#8217;m sat in my rather uncomfortable seat, drinking my bottle of Coke which had gotten lukewarm between my buying it and actually getting sat down. Our little movie going group had already eaten most of our movie munchies. And we still had two and a half hours to go. This was not going well. And so the movie finished. Not five seconds after the end credits have appeared, the lights went up (well I say &#8220;lights&#8221;, it was a massive spot up in the rafters somewhere) and another usher grabbed the mike to tell us to take our rubbish with us, and to use the exits at the back of the theatre. Meanwhile, the credits have gotten to Michael Caine&#8217;s name. I don&#8217;t mind the lights coming up after say 10-15 seconds of end credits; most movie-goers are on their feet by that point anyway, but to actually interrupt the movie by blabbering on a PA is massively disrespectful to not only the feature, but the process too. I now have an indelible impression that going to see a movie or feature in IMAX will be marred by dreadful pre-entry procedures, awful seating, poor herding of patrons, and shoddy treatment by the staff to whatever&#8217;s being shown; sadly I shall never return to the Glasgow IMAX cinema. For every moment I was enjoying the movie, there was another wishing I was back at home, in my comfy chair watching something in HD on Sky or on my Mac mini, and that surely is a damning indictment of any &#8220;experience&#8221;. </content>

William (neuro): Defective in the Head

neuro — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:00:11 +0000

As someone said on IRC this morning: &#8220;the FSF appear to have come up with <a href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/apple-challenge">the perfect plan for how to look like a bunch of annoying, smart-arse tossers</a>&#8220;. Has the <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> gone nuts? Update 13:30: I don&#8217;t seem to be alone on this: <a href="http://popey.com/Demented_by_Design">popey</a>, <a href="http://mgdm.net/weblog/defective-defective-by-design">mgdm</a>, <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2294">ZDNet</a>, <a href="http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/26/1827208">Slashdot</a>. I&#8217;ve been saying for a while that the more zealous methods used by proponents of Free software have been somewhat over-the-top, and do more to detract from the FOSS public image than to build upon it in a constructive way. Now they&#8217;ve taken a sip from the poisoned Kool-Aid. The FSF, via it&#8217;s Defective by Design campaign, is advocating that people block-book sessions at an <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/">Apple Store</a>&#8217;s <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/">Genius Bar</a>, a sort of drop-in and bookable repair and support centre. &#8220;Having lots of slots booked will get Apple&#8217;s attention and ensure that the Geniuses have done their homework&#8221;, says the &#8216;Apple Challenge&#8217; page, posted by FSF employee <a href="http://mat.tl/">Matt Lee</a>. The rationale apparently is that Apple is now the enemy, since Vista is doing more damage to itself than anyone else can from outside Microsoft, and the first target are the Apple Store&#8217;s Genius Bars. Update 13:35: Just noticed this on IRC &#8230; <tt>[13:33]&lt;mgdm&gt; popey: you mean mattl actually uses a Mac? [13:33] &lt;popey&gt; he does [13:33] &lt;mgdm&gt; IRONY OVERLOAD *head asplodes*</tt> My employer purchased both AppleCare and ProCare for my MBP, which has come in extremely handy when the &#8216;O&#8217; key snapped off (keyboard replaced overnight), my battery failed to hold a charge (replaced immediately upon attending pre-booked Genius Bar session) and my motherboard GPU failed (motherboard replaced in 90 minutes). Now imagine any of the following scenarios: you&#8217;re unsure how to use your newly purchased Macbook; you&#8217;re trying to connect a camera to your Mac to transfer photos to iPhoto and print them to send to relatives in a frame; your machine has failed in some way and urgently needs repaired, as you use it for your business. You try to book a session at the Genius Bar to resolve any of these issues, and &#8230; it&#8217;s fully booked. For days. Wow, they must be busy. Well, no, it&#8217;s actually a bunch of uber-asshole Free software zealots thinking they&#8217;re &#8220;special&#8221;, attempting to monopolise a consumer resource in an attempt to &#8220;educate&#8221; or &#8220;catch out&#8221; Apple Store employees, some of whom may have used Macs for years, others may have had a crash course in Apple products so that they know as much as they can about the stuff they sell, but little else. Why harass these people? It&#8217;s like having a constant stream of people going up to the counter at McDonald&#8217;s and espousing the benefits of a low-carb, high-fibre diet to the person who can do the least about it. Genius Bar employees may know all about FOSS, but critically it&#8217;s not their job to promote it. It&#8217;s not a &#8220;product&#8221; to be &#8220;sold&#8221;, but a philosophy to be shared. A plea to the FSF: stop harassing Apple staff, and stop alienating the very people you&#8217;re trying to &#8220;save&#8221;. There are better, more ethical, more agreeable methods to promote FOSS. What you&#8217;re doing is none of those things. In the meantime, you&#8217;ve virtually guaranteed I will never promote, condone, contribute or donate to any FSF body, project or campaign. I&#8217;ve had a &#8220;Warning, DRM&#8221; defectivebydesign.org sticker on my Macbook Pro for a while now, mainly for comedic value. It&#8217;s gone now. I no longer want to be seen to be promoting these idiots in any way. As much as I love the thought of Free and Open Source Software being used everywhere and anywhere, this is just not the way to be going about it. <div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro/2710328838/" title="Ripped Up DRM Sticker by neuro, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/2710328838_9889a76fb4.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Ripped Up DRM Sticker" /></a></div> </content>

Garrett Coakley: Space Shuttle launch as seen from the air

garrett — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:31:02 +0000

It's all been a bit space based round here recently, but this video is too good not to share, a Shuttle launch caught on video from an Air Canada flight.

Hat tip: 37 Signals

Garrett Coakley: What we look like from out there

garrett — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:52:04 +0000

Sometimes you see things that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

The Deep Impact spacecraft, with it's original mission complete and now undertaking science under the EPOXI moniker, turned it's cameras back towards the Earth from 50 million kilometers away and over the course of several hours caught The Moon transiting The Earth!

Phil Plait sums it up beautifully:

While there is science galore in these animations, I think their real impact is the visceral one from simply seeing them. As Carl Sagan once said: everyone you have ever met, every human who has lived and died, lived out their lives on that blue ball. And yet here we are, in the 21st century, plains apes allowed to evolve and satiate their curiosity, now with the ability to lob metal proxies into deep space, look back, and see ourselves.

Science. I love this stuff.

Garrett Coakley: Power

garrett — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:59:52 +0000

Garrett Coakley: R.I.P. George Carlin

garrett — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:36:06 +0000

Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man… living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

- George Denis Patrick Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008)

Shirley: 30 More Free Blog Icons, Website Icons, Symbol Icons

Shirley Kaiser — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:04:54 +0000

Mantruc: Off to Grad School

mantruc — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:05:26 +0000

This next fall I’m moving back to the US. Starting August I’ll be a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill, I’m going to the School of Information and Library Sciences for the PhD in Information Sciences, and I’ll be working with Gary Marchionini on the subject of Social Media. I expect to be posting in English a [...]

Shirley: 30 Free Website Icons, Blog Icons, Symbol Icons

Shirley Kaiser — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:19:48 +0000

Shirley: 9 Free Adobe Illustrator CS3 Brushes and Symbols

Shirley Kaiser — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:50:28 +0000

Mantruc: Social plugin for WordPress

mantruc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:11:10 +0000

Eduardo Graells, student at Universidad de Chile’s DCC (where I work) is creating a social software plugin for WordPress. Called El Aleph, it will allow us to mark our favorite posts, normalize our friends list and more… I think it’s extremely neat :-) meteorite buy test

Martin: Snow Day

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:37:32 +0000

We've had a fair few snow showers (and howling wind) down here in Co'path, but not enough for the kids to use their sledges (which they got for Christmas 2006 and haven't used yet).

So we headed up into the hills instead, searching for a slope that's close enough to the road, steep enough (but not too steep) and with enough snow to not get stuck in the grass.

Found it (eventually)

Mantruc: Careful with those email invitations!

mantruc — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:14:58 +0000

Hey y’all. It’s been very long since I last posted on my English blog, but this news is just too funny not to share the word: Last Wednesday, a 12 year old girl invited her “closest friends” (60 of them) to a party at her new house in Las Condes (uptown area of Santiago), and she [...]

Martin: Movember - Sponsor Me!

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:02:46 +0000

In common with a bunch of other blokes at the current project, I'm growing a moustache for the month of MOvember, in aid of Prostate Cancer. So do the right thing, and make clicky on the big blue button:

All sponsorships are made directly to The Prostate Cancer Charity which will use the money to fund high quality research into the causes, treatment and impact of prostate cancer and to provide support and information to men and their families.

Martin: The Shipping Forecast... With a Beat

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:40:42 +0000

As you'll notice if you're watching my latest iTunes music buys, I've just bought The Imagined Village — a set of resettings of traditional English tunes, with the likes of Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and Ben Zephaniah helping out folk stalwarts such as Eliza Carthy.

The results are pretty wonderful, not just because of the music (which has been rather unkindly described as Sitar lines and funky beats grafted on, and frankly is where Scots music was ten years ago with Martin Swan's Mouth Music), but firstly because this project takes up the grand old broadsheet ballad tradition of updating or replacing the words to songs to fit whatever the current situation, and secondly because it's exposing contemporary young(ish — le Bragg is about to be 50) musicians to traditional performing practises.

Anyway, it's very much worth a listen; and if you like your free samples before laying down the cash, here are some video tasters:

The Imagined Village Trailer: A look at the artists and music of The Imagined Village.
Hard Times of Old England Retold: The Imagined Village band perform this track live in The Big Room at Real World prior to their first performance at the WOMAD festival.

Wait a Minute, There's More

They've released Cold, Hailey, Rainy Night as a samplepack, downloadable from RealWorldRemixed, so with Garageband or similar, you can produce your own mixes, which is just what I've done:

Martin: OSX Leopard First Impressions

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:50:35 +0000

...first niggles mostly, but never mind.

Keychain

Existing keychain data (ie central password store for pretty much everything from Mail Accounts to Web Sites) appears to have been dumped, so I had to remember the passwords for everything.

Time Machine and Airport

Up until Monday this week, the Time Machine page promised that you could back up to a drive attached to an Airport base station. Well it happens that I have one of those, and I bought it with just this use case in mind.

But on the production release, it doesn't work — the functionality's been removed. You can connect an external drive to the machine you're backing up, or any other Leopard-running machine on the LAN with File Sharing enabled. Maybe it just missed the QA cut and it'll be back for future point releases, but it's not there now.

Iomega UltraMax

This was the drive I bought for Time Machine purposes. Ideally this would be in RAID 1 mode, so you've two mirrored drives automagically backing each other up. If one fails, you can replace it, rebuild the array and no data loss. Some online reviews claim that the drive can't do that under OSX, but that's daft as it's a hardware device. This isn't true, but what is hard is working out how to switch it to RAID 1 — certainly the supplied docs don't tell you. The trick is you need to first press and hold the Rebuild button on the front panel for 10 seconds or so. This will obviously (re)build the array, and it will then pop up in Disk Utility at half the JBOD size. You can then format and you're good to go.

Martin: Global Footwear Armistice

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:55:24 +0000

It would seem that the War On Global Footwear is over. The last two Thursdays have seen me going through LHR Terminal 1 without having to remove my shoes.

Presumably Al-Quaeda sent BAA a note, saying

Righteous Al-Quaeda Brethren in Jihadi Alliance under The Most Holy One to Western Materialistic Fascists, Greeting.

We promise no longer to attack your Western aggressor aviation industry by means of the bombs hidden in Shoes, honest we do. Therefore please call off the security shoe-removing behaviour which is causing us all to spend too long in Airports.

Yours in Faith
Osama

Update 26 Oct

War on Footwear back on, sadly. Presumably Al Queda were just on half term.

Oh, also LHR now have a War on Loading Your Own Tray.

Perhaps I'm just missing it — perhaps it's not a War on Terror, but a War on Catching Your Flight...

Mantruc: 3rd IA Seminar in Chile with a cramped room.

mantruc — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:51:37 +0000

Yesterday we celebrated the Third AIChile Information Architecture Seminar in the auditorium of Biblioteca de Santiago, in Santiago de Chile. We had five presentations with a nice variety of topics, although some of them were a bit weak, unsubstantial. Nevertherelss, it is greatly exciting to see how the community I’ve been working on is strongly growing, [...]

Martin: Going Off Air - updated

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:19:54 +0000

Just a quickie: easyweb — site and all mail accounts — will be off the air from late in the day on Monday 17th September until a week or so into October.

This is because it all runs on a server at home, and we're moving house, with some time in a caravan in between.

We'll be back up once we have ADSL in the new place.

Update

Back, obviously. Took a bit longer than expected — no thanks to BT and their useless Moving House process that doesn't work if you have an inter-regnum between houses.

New ADSL providers are WebTapestry, who are fab, affordable, and approachable. We're getting 8 Meg despite being in a tiny village miles from anywhere. But it's in Scotland, so it has a BB-enabled exchange, which we're ~50m from. But the move has done something odd to the site's ability to fetch RSS feeds. I suspect it's DNS related as very little else has changed, but I'm still in problem analysis mode.

Martin: Fighting Global Footwear

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:13:37 +0000

No, I'm sorry, I've spent too long fuming about this, so have to rant somewhat. Please excuse me...

Once again last night, coming home through LHR I was confronted by the sheer stupidity and theatrics of the security regime. In the last 6 months, LHR's security policy has moved from Occasionally, you will have your shoes checked to Randomly, you will need to put your shoes through the scanner to everyone will always have to have their shoes scanned.

Being a bolshie person who doesn't give in to implied orders, but waits to be explicitly told to do stuff, and even then challenges them, I enquired why this might be so. And the astounding answer was along the lines of:

Mumble, mumble, terrorism, mumble, mumble, current security climate, mumble, mumble, Shoebomber, mumble mumble.

Or, to put it another way, the best excuse they could come up with was a failed attempt nearly 6 years ago which hasn't been repeated since and has never happened under a British airport security regime, leaving two possible interpretations:

They're extremely slow on the uptake
It's all about being seen to be tough, without having any real impact on risk

The paranoid civil libertarian would naturally pick on the second explanation, as preparing the travelling public for any number of future restrictions (hell, why don't we all fly naked. And ban all fluids from aircraft). However, I prefer the third option of Random order from on high, which seemed like a good idea at the time but is so pointless even the staff can't work out (aka the Cockup theory). Well, it's better than the plain stupid the time taken to take off shoes lets them scan all the other things you now have to split out into separate trays theory.

I wouldn't even mind so much if the 'higher up' source was HMG, as then at least there'll have been some oversight from an intelligence source (what am I thinking?), or perhaps it's a BAA-wide policy. But no, it only applies to LHR.

How do I know? Because at EDI, another BAA establishment, they don't have a War on Footwear. Oh no. At EDI, they have a War on Belts. Yes, you have to take off your belt and put it through the scanner, while you walk through the metal detector (which I might add doesn't detect mobile phones as I discovered by accident on Monday), holding up your trews. Fair enough if it's a whacking great big thing with studs, clan crests and the like on it. But where can I hide a bomb in a modest thing with the smallest of buckles strictly needed to hold the thing together?

Or maybe they're just all scared in case I'm trying to smuggle on Holy Water... And don't get me started on that hoax.

Mantruc: Lights off on Saturday evening for Climate Crisis

mantruc — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:43:50 +0000

Santiago, Chile woke up covered in snow, for the first time in years, maybe first time ever. Yes we are in the peak of winter but it the occasional time it snows, it never sticks. This morning was different. On Saturday 11th, the people who still have some sanity in this world will shut their lights [...]

Martin: Housemoving

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:18:53 +0000

We're on the move next month - having finally sold the current house, we'll be renting a rather nice 4 bedroom house in Cockburnspath, (pronounced Co'path incidentally) which is a few miles along the coast from Dunbar.

While we're there, we'll be looking for a plot to build a house, of which presumably much more later.

Move-in date is set for 21st29th September and we'll be in a caravan for 2 weeks between houses, so I guess we'll be having a joint housewarming/birthday party.

Mantruc: Manifesto on Usability and Accessiblility for Govt. Web in Mexico

mantruc — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:16:50 +0000

I’m just back from an International Seminar on Accessibility and Usability for the Web in Monterrey Mexico, organized by the University of Monterrey and the Government of the State of Nuevo Leon. The seminar was great and I got to hang out with my pals Lou and Paulo, and meeting some great people as well. But [...]

Mantruc: Felling the love

mantruc — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:56:37 +0000

I’ve been receiving lots of contacts into my Facebook account from people who I admire, even some from mentors who make me amazed by the fact that they can even remember me. I’ve been reading and lecturing about Social Media recently. These details make me all warm and fuzzy. Thanks guys!

Martin: Harry Potter Spoilers

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:36:59 +0000

Seen in #evolt:

* NDBeresford kind of wishes he hadn't read that Harry Potter page
<garrettc> shut up
<garrettc> don't say a word
<garrettc> seriously
<garrettc> i will hurt you
<NDBeresford> It's OK
<garrettc> no matter how funny you think it's going to be, it won't be
<NDBeresford> No, what you mean is it won't be funny for you
<martinb> Snape is Kaiser Zhoze
<NDBeresford> Oh damn you Martin, give it away why don't you
* NDBeresford sighs
<martinb> Dumbledore is a woman
<martinb> Hagrid is dead, really
<martinb> Neville is The One
<martinb> James Potter is part of Harry's Split Personality
<martinb> Butterbeer is made of people (muggles though, so that's OK)
<martinb> Voldemort is Hermione's father
<martinb> and Slytherin House sacrifice Prof McGonagall

Mantruc: Flickr goest Intl!

mantruc — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:53:42 +0000

Yahoo! has just released the multilingual version of Flickr, although I’m not a big fan of translated interfaces, as they end up sounding forced most of the time, these guys did a great job.

Martin: Flash 9 under 64-bit Linux

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:51:03 +0000

If, like me, you've gone out and bought an AMD64-based machine to run Ubuntu (or any other 64-bit distro) on, you'll have discovered that there's no Flash player available. Which is an awful pain when the point of the machine is to be a safe one for the kids to use on the Interwebs, specifically the CBeebies site.

Fortunately, Adobe's John Dowdell pointed out a rather useful wrapper that lets 64-bit Firefox use 32-bit plugins.

Two minutes on Google later, and I'd found a one-click install script for Ubuntu that sorts out nspluginwrapper and installs the Flash9 plugin.

NB it needs to be run for each user, but other than that, is bluddy grate.

JD, my kids thank you.

Martin: Wilburys Travelling Again

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:21:48 +0000

Hey - great news! One of my favourite albums of my teenage years is to be re-released after many years in deletia. The Travelling Wilburys Vol 1 is out on June 11, and is available for pre-order on iTMS now!

Here's a sample: their debut single Handle with Care.

Martin: Anne Moffat: Reductio ad Hitlerum

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:07:30 +0000

Our MP, Anne ~~Picking~~Moffat has historically been a thought-free, nodding dog for whatever hare-brained, knee jerk, reactionary guff the current government has dreamt up.

However, lately she's excelled herself in lack of thought, research, tact and insight when she conflated problems with the recent Scottish Ballot Paper with the principle of PR, and in doing so, compared the new First Minister to Hitler:

Did not proportional representation give Germany Adolf Hitler? To a lesser degree, we have been given the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond). Can that be a good example?
Source

To pick off the obvious problems:

There's the obvious kneejerk against Labour's current bête noir — sour grapes for losing power in Scotland, mixed with the fear resulting from her own constituency being part of that shift.
Then there's the simple fact that proportionality delivers an overall result that is closer to the will of the people. That it tends to upset entrenched parties that benefit from the current system obviously leads to even the more reasonable of her Hon Friends decrying it.
Next, we can note that previous AMS elections had very few spoiled papers. And even this time round, the new STV system had a remarkably low spoilage rate. So bitchy comments about this particular election's validity are either supremely premature and ill-informed, or are directed at another target.
Finally, Ms Moffat has shown herself prone to making logical fallacies. In this case, the Reductio ad Hitlerum, generically expressed as Adolf Hitler (or the Nazi party) supported X; therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad, etc. As X can include building motorways, painting watercolors, owning dogs and vegetarianism, this is clearly a fallacy. In the online world, this is known as the Corollary to Godwin's Law: the citing of Hitler in an argument ends the argument, with the citer being deemed to have automatically lost.

Martin: Nous Partirons En Vacances!

Mon, 21 May 2007 12:27:35 +0000

We're booked with Canvas Holidays, to spend two weeks in Sunny South Brittany.

The interesting thing is that I think this is the same campsite that I went to with Mum and Dad when I was about 13. Although much has changed since then — huge swimming pools with waterslides are now de rigeur.

Now I have to hit the Michel Thomas on the iPod, to refresh my rusty French.

Martin: Dry Bed

Thu, 17 May 2007 06:00:57 +0000

Woohoo! Ruaridh, in Big Boy Pants, woke up in a dry bed this morning! I am so proud!

I waked up in a dry bed mommy come see
I waked in a dry bed daddy I did
I woke up in a dry bed w/ dry feet & a dry head
I am a big boy now

Martin: Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Fri, 11 May 2007 00:48:48 +0000

It's one of the basic tools of any magician — control of the audience's attention. It's said that a good magician knows at all times where the audience is looking, and controls it. Misdirect the audience into looking at your right hand, while your left hand palms the coin. Or, if that fails, use the Glamourous Assistant as the focal point.

Today's lesson in stage magicianship comes from our old friends, the Labour Party. While you're all looking at the left hand waving goodbye (or the Glamourous Assistant), the right hand is busy palming £400m of my money and yours.

That 8% cost slippage (that's £2.4bn so far, or 76% of the original budget for those keeping count) came out in the Gateway Review, a month past the required deadline, and just happened to be published within a few minutes of the Dear Leader's Resignation Speech. Mind you, the only reason it came out at all was because the courts ordered to be published.

Yes, it seems that even in its death throes, the Blair Project cannot resist spinning for all its worth. It's another Good Day to Bury Bad News — an open goal so wide that we should have seen it coming a mile off.

Oh, we did.