Ultranormal

Category: development

  • The Ethics Of Blogging

    I don’t talk about a lot of things on this site. I’m sure that if I did talk about some of this stuff, I would be a much more popular blogger. I self-censor constantly. I’ve only ever written something unpleasant about someone at work once where that person might be able to recognize themselves (and if they don’t, I’m sure the people that know him would).

    So, here’s a list of the things I probably won’t ever ever talk about on this site:

    • Embarrassing or mean things about my family members and friends. I’m fair game. They’re not. I offend them enough in person to do it for the world to see.

    • Embarrassing or mean things about co-workers. First, I don’t want to get fired. Second, I offend them enough in person.

    • Stupid thing my company does. Again, I would like to keep my job.

    That leaves a whole rich palette of things to talk about untouched. It leaves me opinions about stuff (which I’ve been sharing freely the last couple days), cool stuff, stuff I did, cute family stories, geek stuff and… oh yeah, stuff pretty much covers it. Now, the people who talk about the stuff listed above are brave. Maybe not thinking it all the way through, but brave nonetheless. People have been fired, broken up over, lost friends, etc over things said in blogs. Now, if I lose a friend for an opinion, I can live with that. If you don’t like what I think, and can’t handle the thought that I might have different opinions from you, then you’re probably not my friend to begin with. I’m doing my level best not to rag on people or embarrass anyone other than myself. If I’ve failed, I’m sorry. Really I am.

  • Mmmm, Portable

    Do you use multiple computers? Are they all running different OS’es? Do you use different text editors on each one? Does that piss you off? You’re in luck, my friend!! Go download jEdit today. It’s a full-functioned text editor written in Java and delivered as an executable jar file. So, any platform that can run Java can run jEdit. Problem of the text editor collection – SOLVED!! It also has an impressive array of plug-ins which are awesome. Go get the latest stable build and check it out. You’ll love it.

  • No More Whining

    I’m feeling better today. No more whining today. I’m playing with using Tcl around Movable Type and it’s a lot of fun. I wrote a little template that spits all the categories and entries into a tcl array, where things can then be sorted, goofed with, etc. Since everything is in MySQL, I could just go right to the db, but I can never get the MySQL driver to build right on my Linux box. I know I’m kind of wasting my time because I’ll never ever find a hosting company that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg to run AOLserver, but it’s a nice diversion.

    For example, I don’t like how Movable Type’s MTEntryNext and MTEntryPrevious work. I usually only want to go back and forth within a category, not through the whole site. You also can’t re-sort by field or ascend/descend like you can with MTEntries (which means your next/prev are out of order if you sort any other way than the default). I’ve already posted it to the Request a New Feature board (although I think it’s a minor minor bug).

    I’ve done all kinds of stuff today. I wrote documents, finished up a project, put off starting a new one, ate a salad, drank a gallon of water and wrote up my goals for the first quarter:

    • I will write more code than documents this quarter.

    • I will mourn Steve Case’s resignation quietly and keep my grief to myself. I will no longer start sobbing in meetings and crying out, “Oh, STEVE!!!! WHY DID YOU LEAVE US?!!”

    • I will stop laughing when I hear the word “functionality”.

    • In the interest of cost savings, I will institute a toilet paper rationing program. I will personally set an example by using no more than four sheets per visit to the little boys’ room.

    • I will stop putting rude comments in my code.

    • No more easter eggs (I swear, there haven’t been ANY in anything y’all might have seen).

    • Instead of wasting company time walking all the way to the bathroom, I will install one in my office.

    • I will stop referring to my co-workers as Squeaky McSoggypants

  • Oh, Steve

    Steve Case to resign from AOL Time Warner

  • The Switch Is On

    The switch went well today. I got a lot done and by the end of the day, I was using Apple+Left instead of Home to get to the beginning of a line and having a wonderful time. I see now I do need to go get BBEdit 7. BBEdit Lite is good, but it’s not everything I need it to be. I need macros, dangit!

    Why am I making the switch, you may ask? I hate Microsoft is the easy answer. They’re predatory and unethical. They’ve pirated the greatest innovations of the last twenty years and made them barely usable crap. Through an unmatched marketing machine, they’ve foisted utter garbage on the world, and now the whole world uses it. Ok, that’s a little strong. But, underneath it all, you know it’s true.

    Apple has their problems, like overpriced hardware, a sometimes lax update schedule (which hasn’t really been true with OS X, but was pretty bad with OS 9 and before), and some weird positions on things, like not admitting that some of us need more than one mouse button and some of us who do are left handed and WANT TO SWITCH THE DAMN BUTTONS AROUND. But, overall, my Mac is more innovative, offers me more and is just more fun than my Windows machine. I know all the games come out for Windows, but I have a PS2 now, and haven’t played a game on my Windows machine in months.

    I’ll still use my Windows box for testing and maybe to play UT on, but I’m a Mac (and Linux) guy now.

  • Grandma and Linux

    An Interview With a Grandmother is an interesting look at Linux for the Home User. I don’t see it as a win for Linux, per se, because HomeBase is such a specialized product that wouldn’t work for us geeks anymore than Solaris would work for my grandmother. I think it’s more a rousing recommendation of Linux as a platform for Consumer Electonics and specialized computer needs. It’s open and easy to customize. You can do whatever you want with it and make it your own. That EOne decided to use Linux to build their system on is a testament to Linux’s portability and customizability.

    I think Linux has a way to go on the desktop market, more from a momentum perspective than a lack of features or usability. People don’t switch. They’re not motivated to use something that’s better. They’re happy to use what they know, and unfortunately they know Windows.

    For example, I’ve been working switching my work computers. I have a P3 and my Quicksilver G4 and I want to switch to OS X permanently instead of using OS X and home with the Powerbook and my XP machine at work. But, I have all these workflow habits I’m finding hard to break. Today is the first day of my attempted total OS X experience, and it’s hard going. It’s not that using OS X is hard. It’s not. It’s getting used to writing code and doing my daily thing using different keystrokes, with things in different places, etc. Doubly odd is that when I go back to XP, I notice how cluttered and clunky it feels compared to OS X.

    Ok, this has turned into a ramble and I’m going to stop now.

  • Home From Safari

    I surfed with Safari last night and I have to say I’m not impressed. On my TiBook (500mhz w/ 512mb), it took 5 seconds to launch. Mozilla takes 9 to bring up the first browser window, and I get more. Chimera only took 4, and provides most of the features of Mozilla. I’m not going to switch, because there’s nothing really new there. Steve touted the snapback button, and the improved bookmarks, which I don’t think are really all that great to begin with.

    It’s not that it’s not good software. It does render pages quickly. It is nice to look at. But, it could be so much more. I’m not really happy having to worry about another browser, even though its rendering problems seem minor.

  • Keynote Ramblings

    I picked up the MacWorld Keynote by Mr. Jobs in the middle while he was showing off iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. What just came to me while watching this is that Apple isn’t gunning for the workplace anymore. They’ve ceded that to Microsoft. They’ve created an amazing Lifestyle Suite of software. The collection of iApps is robust, and with the new features, I think the Mac’s killer app. We geeks can talk about the BSD underpinnings of OS X, the cool things we can do with things like Fink and the Apache webserver built in.

    Yeah, and I just saw the part where he dropped the name on us: iLife. Yeah… Ummm… I called it?

    Anyway, I’m pretty excited about the bundle and the new features in all three. PLUS, the predictions were wrong. You’ll be able to download iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie for free or go buy the bundle. Sweet.

    Ummm, why did they go and build their own browser? Hopefully, it’s based on Gecko so we don’t have to worry about yet another browser’s quirks. It’s pretty funny how familiar the Safari toolbar is to the Windows AOL Client’s. I’m honestly not seeing anything too hot about Safari so far. The benchmarks looked good, but the features don’t look compelling enough to make enough people switch to make supporting it worthwhile. Also, Steve, please stop touting the Google integration. Big deal. There are Google bars for pretty much every browser out there that offer the same features. Hopefully, it won’t be another HotJava (Sun’s unbelievable horrible browser packaged with Solaris).

    If you don’t own a Mac… consider it. I’m making the switch as we speak (it’s harder at work than at home, where the switch is already pretty much complete), and I’ve been extremely impressed.

  • Need Fonts?

    Oh boy, my friend Jon linked to BlamBot – WOW. They have some of the coolest free fonts I’ve ever seen: clean, well done titling fonts. Sweet, sweet stuff.

  • Completely Baseless Predictions for Blogging in 2003

    Here are my completely baseless blogging/internet-related predictions for 2003:

    • This year will sound the death knell for the Meme. All the cheap content creators (weekly impersonal questionaires and personality tests) will go out of style and people will be forced to actually post stuff that won’t be seen in a million other places.

    • This year will see another giant explosion in the sheer number of people who blog. With the big ISP’s like AOL and MSN soon to be offering blogging platforms, there will be an exponential growth in daily content to read and/or ignore.

    • As all these new folks come into the blogosphere (jeez, I hate that word), we’ll see a mass departure of the second and third generation bloggers who have now been blogging for a year or two now will either get bored or they’ll find they have nothing else to say.

    • With all this new content, people will stop visiting sites directly. They’ll still go to the photoblogs, and design sites, but for text-only blogs, people will begin using an aggregator (like NetNewsWire). This will stymie the folks who want to start making money from their blogs as they’ll need to take into account the fact that people get to their content from another application.

    • Major sites will start incorporating blogs as either an incentive for signing up, or as a way to build their brand (think Salon, only crappy – “Get Your Coke Blog Now!”). Oh, please spare us.

    • Several high-profile bloggers will “sell out” and go corporate either through corporate sponsorship or incorporation into a larger site (like Slate or Salon), giving false hope to all of us marginally talented/interesting bloggers that someday we’ll hit it big through our blogs.