Posts from January, 2009

feet fetish

I love it when people put their foot in their mouth.

It’s a nice experience. You have to feel better about yourself. What’s exceptionally nice is the short time right after they realize what they did. The feeling of insecurity in their eyes makes me weep of joy. Obviously, I can’t do that out loud.
Another thing you learn in these situations is how people’s definition of what coarse and vulgar is differs from person to person. One person’s balls can be another person’s breakfast. Conversely, one persons balls can be represented in many, many ways.

It gets all the much better when stuff like this happens around your family. The look your parents can give you when you mess up is priceless and always transports you to your childhood. And we all know what happened then.

Today, my girlfriend put her foot in her mouth when we were having lunch with my parents. The look they gave her was priceless. So priceless I couldn’t look at them, I just knew. It gets worse, as I know they used to ~~hate~~ not like an ex-girlfriend of mine because they thought she was vulgar. So things are bound to be interesting the next time I talk to my folks.

But it was still funny.

Posted on the 31st of January, 2009 | 6 Exquisite Comments

n00b versus hax0r

Some weeks ago, Twitter was hacked.

Some prick thought he was cool and launched a dictionary attack on Twitter’s login page. He managed to brute force his way into the admin account. Prick!

I’m not calling him a prick because he hacked a site or because he broke hacker ethics. I’m calling him a prick because he had access to all twitter accounts, chose to tweet in Obama’s name, could write anything he wanted, and all he could come up with was: ‘get your free gas coupon’
You pimple-faced, sixteen-year-old, stupid prick!

Now, I just read a nice article whose title read: DDoS attack boots Kyrgyzstan from net. Here’s the article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/kyrgyzstan_knocked_offline/

In short, some Russians were bored and decided to take!a!whole!country!off!the!internet!
You hear that, prick?

Posted on the 29th of January, 2009 | Comments Off

Affirmative action

As you might know, the EU will be forcing Microsoft to unbundle MSIE from Windows distributions.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/13/1524233

This news brought great joy to the web development community. Finally, the market share will change. Lazy people will have to get off their asses and download a browser of their choosing, and chances are they’ll choose something different from MSIE. Even if they do choose to use Internet Explorer, it’s their choice. It’s no longer forced down their throats. Not that they’d put up much of a fight. Lazy people are bad that way.

Back to the point. Well, not just yet. You might wonder how will people access the internet to get a browser if they don’t have a browser? I don’t care!
Linux users have dealt with this problem already. It’s called software packaging. You get your software — free software, mind you — from repositories. Alternatively, you can download them via the command line using the old built-in wget.
So Windows users will have to either do that, or something like that, or maybe get cd’s with FireFox or Opera or whatever. Maybe the ISP`s could do it for them. Maybe we can go to a friend’s house who already has a browser because they have linux or an older version of Windows. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And people are addicted to and dependent on the internet nowadays, so there’s both a need and a will. We’ll find a way.

Luckily, the EU has given this issue some thought and they came up with this great solution: bundle FireFox with Windows. They must have been high!

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F26%2F1459205

I should rejoyce at hearing this news, but it’s hard.
It’s not that it’s FireFox. It’s the idea. You’re forcing them to unbundle a piece of software, then forcing them to bundle another one? Where’s the point? Seriously. The silver lining is that there’s a chance that both browsers will be installed. This seems somewhat better, but only just. At least this way people have some sort of a choice.

As a web developer, I’ll be very glad about this in the morning. As a half-human being, I’m disgusted.

Posted on the 27th of January, 2009 | 1 Arrogant Comment

1 thing I hate about the internet right now

I like numbers. I work with numbers mostly every day. Sometimes it’s math, sometimes it’s just figuring why elements of a webpage don’t align nicely. I don’t believe in 13 or in 7 or in any other lucky or unlucky number, though. I keep my relationship with numbers purely professional.

There’s this thing that’s happening on the web. If you’re an internet user, yes that was a joke, you are bound to have come across some articles that are titled <Insert Number> things to know about <Insert Buzzword>. If you haven’t, well, you’re lucky.
At first, I didn’t care much. The title made sense and it informed us, the users, that said article was merely a list of either pieces of info or links. Most articles titles were 10 things to know about Vista or 5 draw-backs of using XMLHttpRequest. They were usually good articles and presented the info in an easy-to-fathom manner.

That was three years ago. It’s gotten old. And boring, and somewhat irritating. What’s more irritating is the fact that people are not even trying anymore. What used to be 50 jQuery Plugins now is … 14 jQuery Plugins or 129 Cool wallpapers — what the hell?

9 things to know about Ubuntu? Seriously, try harder. It seems that we, the obedient flock of web readers have been trained to think those articles that start with numbers are well-written and are just right for us. I am overreacting, naturally. It’s alost an obession, so I’m pretty biased. But the thing is, once you see it, you start seeing it everywhere. More than you should.

Just look at Digg’s top stories every now and then, and you’ll see what I mean.

Posted on the 24th of January, 2009 | Comments Off

on Windows 7, habits

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a linux-purist.

That does not mean I’m a Windows freak, or anything of that sort. I just use the environment I see fit for the task at hand.
When I code from home, I mostly use Komodo under ubuntu. When I’m at work, I still use Komodo, but I need to use Windows — work policy. Obviously, if I need to code in Java, I use Eclipse and if I need to code in C/C++ I’ll use good ol’ notepad2. When I’m on Windows, I IM from Digsby, it’s a great application and I’m an alpha tester, so I get to see the cool features even if they’re never pushed to the public. When I’m under Linux, I use Pidgin, because it’s a great piece of software. When I need to chat from my mobile, I use fring, because it simply blew my mind.

The point is: I’m trying to not get tied to one platform or application. It’s like buying an uber-keyboard. It’s great, at first. You have all those shortcuts, a scroll wheel right on the keyboard, quick application launchers, a layout that makes better sense — and then you go to work and it’s a totally different keyboard and half the time, you’re looking for the on-keyboard scroll wheel. All because you got used to YOUR keyboard. So I changed IDE’s, changed themes, kept the taskbar on the top of the screen, used very different IM clients — all that huey.

In that spirit, I’ve tried out a lot of operating systems. I’ve tried out most public versions of Windows, Debian(not ubuntu), Red Hat, Ubuntu,and even UNIX, though not for long. I’ve found features I’ve loved in all of them and picking a favorite is impossible. I’ve spent most of January 2009 on Windows 7.

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Posted on the 23rd of January, 2009 | Comments Off

Browsers and browser experience

Cross-browser compatible!

That’s one project requirement I know I’ll dread near the deadline.
It’s been years since people started standardizing the web. It’s been great to see how websites have flourished with all that puff that makes them stand out from one another. Really.

As a web developer, I really know what I’m talking about. CSS, for example, is one field where standards really matter. It’s nice to know that browser follow the box model, and that display modes are implemented correctly and render OK in all (major) browsers. Safe for IE, of course.

Ever since I started doing stuff for the web, I’ve had a problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer, MSIE or just IE. Up to version 8, standards are poorly supported, the box model is all screwed up, and I’ll cut this here as this post is not meant to bash IE. If you think I have an unjustified grudge with IE, try to fathom the idea of twenty pixels being interpreted as forty pixels. Yes, that’s how much IE loves web developers.

One thing I’m good at is coding in dynamic languages. My flavor of choice: ECMAScript. Nowadays, you can do the same thing, using the same script in different browsers. Naturally, some browsers tend to think they’re special, and they don’t provide the same API that all the other browser do, and which are specified in the ECMA standard. Of course, IE is the problem child here, causing Javascript developers to come up with unthinkable hacks to make things work in IE. Opera came up with a great solution to this problem: support the standard AND the IE API. This means that pages which are ‘optimized’ for IE, will no longer break in Opera. Add that to the many reasons for which I love Opera.
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Posted on the 21st of January, 2009 | Comments Off

Rock’n'Rolla, SNATCH. more

I always loved Guy Ritchie films.

RocknRolla is his latest right now, and it came out in 2008. I just watched it and, if you like Guy Ritchie films, where people speak proper English, you’ll love it just as much as I do. By proper English I don’t mean just a funny accent and some cute phrases you don’t get to hear everyday.

That brings me to SNATCH. It’s from 2000, but it’s my favorite movie. It had a lot of both proper English, improper English and a bit of Pikey. Some of the dialog is actually pretty hard to follow, especially when the pikeys talk among themselves, but that made me love it even more. I’ve leaned more English slang from that movie than from all my talks with actual Brits. The best part is: I could understand the Brits when they talked fast to me, which came as a shock. It was fun when some English lads realized I got that ability from watching SNATCH. Calling gypsies ‘pikeys’ gave me away.

Of course, when said lads realized I was a fan — of Guy Ritchie — our discussion got to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, another great film I like to recommend to people. The thing about this one is that there’s not much dialog in proper English, but it makes up for that in humor. Plus, you get Madonna on the soundtrack.

Some time ago, I’d recommend three movies to people that were keen on understanding, not learning, the English language. They were Trainspotting, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and SNATCH — in that order. Many people didn’t make it through Trainspotting and very few managed to watch SNATCH in English without subtitles. It’s saddening because the linguistic experience added a lot of value to those movies, and taking that away dampens the effect it has on you.

Back to RocknRolla, though, it’s a great film, not too funny, and some twists you actually can’t see. Or, as I did, you foresee some twists that aren’t there, and you keep waiting for them to occur. They don’t, but isn’t that a twist in itself?

Posted on the 15th of January, 2009 | 1 Smart Comment

The Yes Man Experience

I just got home from seeing Yes Man. It’s a great film starring Jim Carey, among others.

It’s one of those movies you go to watch with your girlfriend, which is exactly what I did. You can look up Yes Man on imdb, this is not exactly what this post is about.

Yes Man is, in my view, about doing what you feel you should and know would eventually make you feel good. It’s pretty much an anti procrastination movie, an idea which I like. Lately, I’ve had some people ask me for advice on their love lives. Back in the day, I used to be really good at that, and would excel at pep talks. I also used to be quite the matchmaker, and would be great at getting people hitched.

Then I realized I was taking out all the fun for people, and started giving advice like: ‘grow some damn balls and figure yourself out!’

You can imagine that did not work out well. Since then, I Have become more relaxed. Both about sexual concerns and life in general. I never did take much of life seriously. I guess that comes with growing up, and I sure am not there, yet. I did, however, get to live through a lot of things in a short period of time, read this, watched that, and in the end, I learned to follow my gut. That way, I know things will work out fine. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on the 13th of January, 2009 | Comments Off