I’ve just installed Mac OSX on my machine at work and it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to get my teeth into it. It’s very slick indeed, but I just can’t make myself like the dock at all. What’s confusing me is that it contains open applications and documents [like the bar in Windows] as well as containing aliases to applications. I find it confusing that there is little distinction between the two, except the small arrow beneath that indicates the application is open. The first thing I did when I set up my machine was to remove the aliases from the dock and put them on the desktop where I’m used to them [effectively making the dock merely into an open application switcher]. OK, so maybe I’m not giving it a chance, but I see this as a gradual way of making the transition to this new OS.
J. David Eisenberg’s dilemma in this weeks issue of A List Apart is very similar to my experience while teaching the basics of HTML to a group of students. In this transitional period we are going through in the history of Mark-Up, do you teach the ‘old way’ [using depreciated tags like etc], or the new way [XHTML, CSS] etc. It’s a tricky decision.
A new still from A.I.. ::. NYPOST.COM Business: No expense spared with outrageous promotion of ‘AI’ – By Joseph Gallivan ::. Super-Toys Last All Summer Long – by Brian Aldiss
Is it something particular about males that makes us unable to open toothpaste tubes without the aid of a pair of scissors or other pointed object? The reason I write this is because I read this and realised that I had the exact same experience as this guy; I was trying to open the damn thing for about 5 minutes until my girlfriend quietly pointed out that there was a device on the top of cap for breaking the seal of the tube cleanly and efficiently. The time I could have saved if only I had this valuable piece of knowledge stored in my brain!
BBC News | SCI/TECH | E-paper moves a step nearer
Without a doubt, this is my all time favourite album and it has just been re-issued on CD… buy it. [amazon.com].
Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Rude Britannia – “This isn’t entertainment, it’s an international incident”. [via Stu]
A Tale of the AI Trail – a detailed overview of the A.I. puzzle which is currently causing a stir in the run-up to the film’s release [much like the Blair Witch phenomenon].
Apparently, it is St. George’s day today, but I had to watch the news this morning before I knew that… such is my ignorance about such things and I suspect the same goes for a large percentage of the English population. I mean what are the traditional things to do on St. George’s day? Hunt down fiery dragons and slay them? Most people don’t know… and to be honest, I don’t either. Unlike the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, the English don’t really share a sense of national identity or a feeling of heritage, simply because we are such a multi-cultural nation. To me, this is a good thing… OK, it is good to have a sense of history and value heritage, but I think the coalescing of different cultures and religions is much more of an event to be celebrated.
An interesting discussion on interactivity at alt.sense.
Flash animation, Jackie Chan style – takes a while to load, but it’s worth it [never thought I’d catch myself writing that].
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Bees can think say scientists
So, ‘The Weakest Link’ is now a big hit in the States. It’s difficult to comprehend that what started as a crappy no-budget BBC day-time quiz show can have such success not only in UK, but in America as well. This can only be bad news for terrestrial television viewers here in the UK; the BBC will further inflict us with dire quiz shows in the hope that they will follow in the footsteps of ‘The Weakest Link’. Indeed, we’ve already seen the consequences in an equally rubbish show called ‘Dog Eat Dog’. Then there’s Anne Robinsons annoying catchphrase [I’m not even going to bother repeating it here] which can only infect our culture as horrendously as the ‘wazzup’ phrase. Is it any wonder that I hardly watch television any more?
Good to see Pyra/Blogger is back on the road to recovery via a lucrative deal with Trellix. Proof that the values of free, easy-to-use, personal content generation tools are far too important for the health of the web to lose.
A new iMac with a wide screen lcd monitor is rumoured to be on its way. I can’t believe it will still only have a G3 processor though.
Spent most of the easter break sheltering from the wintery weather that usually pervades the Northeast of England in the middle of April. The highlight of the weekend was watching Autechre play on Saturday. Hunched behind a couple Powerbook G3s and a mass of wires and noise making machines, they play music that’s difficult to describe. It’s also very difficult to dance to, which I felt slightly confused the usual clubbing crowd there… one of the reasons I like their stuff so much. ::. I walk past this vicious public convenience everyday on my way to work… it’s obviously not very happy in its job of serving the needs of desperate shoppers.
A green blip is appearing at regular intervals on my seti@home client. Does that mean I’ve found extra terrestrial intelligence?
Who wants to be a novemtrigintillionaire?
The Sentient Property Crime Bureau – one of the strange A.I. related sites that has appeared and is spreading round the web like a meme gone mad.
I’ve known about Ebay for quite a while, but I’d never thought about actually buying something from it… until the other day. My first online auction purchase was an original Triumph Dolomite Hayne’s Manual… exciting huh? Actually no… it’s probably very dull, but that’s the beauty of Ebay; you can easily find specific things which are of absolutely no use to 99% of the population. It’s like an online version of Tynemouth Market (a weekly sale of junk, antiques, bric-a-brac in a small coastal town in the Northeast of England) which is why I like it so much.
Damn… got work coming out of my ears at the moment which means I have to work over the Easter holiday to get it done. Definitely going to see Autechre live on Saturday night though, which should be mighty fine. ::: This years entries for the 5k Competition are up – I’m sure there’ll be a few gems in there somewhere.
”…M-theory looks at events before the Big Bang, proposing that the Universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments that can, for all intents, be ignored.” Eh?. BBC News | SCI/TECH | Before the Big Bang
Standards Complaint [sic] :: As you’ve probably gathered, I’ve got myself into a right pickle with the CSS redesign. For the last few days, I’ve had a fresh new design on display which used a very simple but flawed CSS layout. To cut a long story short, I decided to ditch it and revert to what I was working on before… converting the existing design into a 3-column CSS layout. If you’re running IE5/Win (which -unfortunately – is most of you), what you are seeing now is a standards compliant page running from a standards compliant stylesheet. Unfortunately, IE5/Win doesn’t like it very much because this browser doesn’t implement CSS as well as other browsers such as Netscape 6, and Opera etc [if you check this page on one of these other browsers, you’ll see that it renders correctly]. To be honest, I wish I never bothered. But never to shy away from a challenge, I’m going to stick with it and hopefully things will be back to normal very soon. I’ve learnt the hard way that designing a CSS driven page without having a Windows machine nearby to test it on is a very silly idea indeed.
There’s a new A.I. trailer up at countingdown.com [you’ll need a bucket handy for this one].
Ar yu tired ov having to spel words corectli? Dont bother, vizit freespeling.com (with one el). Actually, I’m not sure about this… it’s like David Icke all over again.
Excellent colour photography at simonladefoged.com. Very Egglestonesque.
Here is a picture my great grandfather took of himself alongside his treasured motorbike circa 1901. Note the use of the scenic backdrop to give a sense of depth and it’s unfortunate mis-alignment in the composition. This may seem like a silly mistake to make until you consider that the picture was taken by himself with a camera with no clear and easy-to-use viewfinder to compose the picture. Quirks like this provide further evidence about the context in which the image was taken and give extra dimension to the picture; such is the power of the photographic image and its role in telling us about our history. Read more here [written a few years ago for a proposal for my degree show].
2001: A Lego Odyssey [1.8MB download].
Hyakugojyuuichu!!!!!!!… here we go again.
We know they exist but they are unseen. Other planets are out there; causing a detectable gravitational wobble in their parent star. At the time of writing, there are are 63 known exoplanets orbiting distant suns. The planets that we can detect [earth-like planets are undetectable with current technology] are huge spheres of swirling gases thousands of times the size of earth and orbiting their suns at various distances and speeds. Magnificent new worlds, poisonous atmospheres, giant mountains and troughs, our only evidence a series of numbers, our only visualisation a line on a graph. One particular planet orbits its star in the ‘habitable zone’ – the same distance at which we orbit our sun. It is unsuitable to support life itself because of its size and atmosphere, but there is a chance of it being orbited by an earth-like moon which is capable of supporting life. This discovery alone is surely an indicator of increased chances of discovering intelligent life in the universe; we cannot possibly be alone in this universe of billions of stars and planets. As an aside, I can’t help thinking that if more people were interested in this stuff and less interested in who shot Phil Mitchell, the world would be a better place. The sheer amount of equations and graphs for the hardcore astrophysicists only doesn’t help in our [the layman’s] understanding of it all, but we should try our best to visualise it and at least apply some rational thought to it. More exoplanet stuff: exoplanets.org, extrasolar planets encyclopedia and planet detection.
As you can see… I’ve made a few changes [once more]. It’s totally untested and might look crap on a PC, but nevermind. Those using IE5/Mac will see the png in action [the graphic format which no-one seems to take advantage of] and I’ve moved the date information to the title attribute thingy of each permalink. I’ll explain more about the re-design and why I did it later.
The fact that – to my knowledge – there are no screen grab shortcuts on Mac OSX is very annoying. I use shift-apple-3 all the time when I’m doing stuff. I know it’s a minor exclusion, but I think we are seeing the death of the Mac as a design tool.
IE5/Win users, please bear with me while I iron out the flaws. I’ve ignored the golden rule… never upload your site before it is tested. I should learn to be more patient.
I had planned a bit of a spring clean / re-design round here over the weekend (again), but the weather was far too good to be sitting indoors. So we had a tour up the Northumberland coastline and visited Alnmouth, Alnwick and Craster [home of the oak smoked kipper]
Readers, I need your help. I’m doing some research to see what’s out there in terms of websites for pubs, clubs and restaurants that are innovative (maybe using flash, dhtml) and/or use live streaming video. Please email me if you have happened across any URLs that are worthwhile. Thanks to Catherine for the one response so far: The Spy Bar – exactly the sort of site I’m looking for.
While the Big Brother contestants had their 14 minutes of pseudo-fame imprisoned in a cardboard house and watched by millions for the sake of ‘entertainment’; while pop-trash nobodies Hear’say hit fame on the back of music industry puppeteers with dollar signs in their eyes; while the hollywood stars came out on their yearly jaunt across red carpet to give themselves a pat on the back at the Oscars; and while countless other people have become rich and famous for doing very little, Jim Shekhdar was getting attacked by sharks and battered by waves as he rowed [alone] across the expanse of the pacific ocean… he didn’t even have a tin opener. Driven not by fame and money, but by determination to do the near impossible, Jim battled the odds to “become the first person to row across the Pacific unassisted”. Surely this is an achivement to be celebrated. If I was currently wearing a hat, I would most definitely take it off to him.
