Today, Microsoft pushed IE8 via Windows Update.
This gives me a lot of hope. As a webdeveloper, it means I’ll be cursing at Microsoft and Trident developers a whole lot less and spending less time working on hacks and more time working on features.
Granted, IE8 is not perfect, but it is a great iteration over IE7, and especially over IE6.
If you use Internet Explorer and can’t wait for Windows Update to kick in, go on and get it yourself.
As you should know by now, I’m from Timisoara.
So are Melting Carousel.
I’ve been going to their shows since they got started, and I try to not miss a single concert now.
Their music is a sort of rock that I can kinda dance to. That says a lot, but I don’t think I’d do any good trying to put their music into words. If you trust me music-wise, you’d want to try them out.
You can listen to a couple of songs on Melting Carousel’s myspace page, or you can get Amerie, Several Other Universes and Being John Malkovich right from me for free. Naturally, I have written permission in the form of knowing the band. Actually, Iovan and I go way back, but it’s not like we hold hands or anything.
So enjoy Melting Carousel and remember they sound great live.
What the hell?
I just got off the wire — the Skype wire — with this chick, Michele.
She (or he) is one of those spammers that harass you when you’re online and available. Because she had a somewhat normal username, I decided to see if she was someone looking for me or just looking to… whatever those people are after.
I quickly realized she was a fraud so I promptly hit the ‘Block’ button and saw about my stuff.
I get another notification from Skype. It’s Michele, again. I thought I clicked the wrong button, read the wrong lines, and confirmed the wrong action. Silly me, but to me it seemed as though I had just blocked michele and confirmed that. Still, she was being really cute, and I do have blue balls, so I decided to let her know I was going to block her.
I promptly hit the ‘Block’ button and saw about my stuff.
I get another notification from Skype. It’s Michele, again.
At this point, something was smelling fishy. I thought this was a bug, but I had blocked people before this way and it worked. There’d been no update in the meantime. And she really wanted to chat. This must mean that I seem less like an asshole online, right? (Note to self: have all your first dates online from now on.)
I’m no scientist, but I did wonder what would happen if I blocked her again. So I selected Conversation > Block as that brings up a slightly different dialog. Blocked her, ‘removed [her] from my contact list’ (as if) and checked the ‘Report abuse from this person’ checkbox. I was feeling slightly better about myself, thinking I found a way to circumvent the bug.
Not a minute goes by. I get another notification from Skype. Michele’s really talkative, really, but I was back in the mother of all bad moods.
It’s sad that the makers of ebay and paypal would allow such a thing to happen. It’s a basic feature of anything social. And Skype is pretty social, or microsocial at least. Also, I could not find a link to a report-a-bug dialog from their menu. I could easily share Skype with a friend or buy some credit, but not help the developers by submitting a bug report. Did I mention I was — well, am — in bad mood?
In the end, I kindly asked Michele to stop, and she did.
Wonder if she’s pretty.
Yes, I am a grammar nazi.
That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy great content because of some “there” and “their” and “they’re,” so I’m more of a wannabe grammar nazi.
The biggest problem I have with typos or verbal mistakes is when they affect the very content — or, much worse, the meaning – they present. This usually happens when there’s a large density of mistakes. A typo is simply a typo, it happens when you’re in a rush.
One mistake, like “shes” instead of “she’s,” I can live with, and I automatically correct that error while processing the information. Forty errors in a blog post is too much. My mind’s just as busy correcting them as it is gulping up the data, never mind emotion.
A very large number of errors also makes me question the quality of the content. This is the part where things get bad. I can usually read easy stuff — blogs, magazines, newspapers — with my own voice. If I know the author well enough, though, I can read it with their voice. But if I don’t know the author, and I can’t read it with my own voice, because there’s no way in hell I can make that many mistakes or such epic errors, I really cannot enjoy the read. I just can’t make a connection between the authors and myself through what they produce.
This ‘feature’ of mine manifests itself in real life as well, in spoken conversations. The more I like a person, the higher the chances I’ll go into wannabe grammar nazi™ mode with them. Even if I don’t really like a person, there are some mistakes I will not live with. This makes me sound like a cocky geeky douchebag from time to time, and occasionally hurts some people’s ears, but ‘much better you than I’.
I still think I can enjoy a good read even if it has some mistakes in it and that I’m not that detail-oriented to miss the point.
For you to get a better idea of how this works for me, here’s a blog I love reading: Scott Adams’ Blog. On his very first post, he stated that he will make a lot of spelling mistakes, and he does make some. However, the frequency of those mistakes is actually rather low, and the content itself is pure awesome. Also, his mistakes are mostly misspellings caused by laziness, which I can totally relate to. I have to look up how to spell Ghandi myself, and I don’t always want to. I don’t really see these mistakes as a sign of poor mental capacity, I rather see them as a strong focus on the subject at hand — the big picture.
Pure grammar nazis make me giggle.
This is for the two guys that tried to mug me a few days ago.
To cut to the chase, I was walking the streets of Barri Gothic in Barcelona, alone, mildly inebriated, at night.
At one point, I took out my cell phone to check the time. It was 02:47.
While I was tucking my P1i back into my front pocket, I noticed the guy next to me was ogling it. Obviously, I got to thinking bad thoughts, but I kept on walking. As I took two more steps, a garbage truck pulled up to my left, isolating me from the other side of the street which, for some reason, was not as empty as the side I, well we were on.
At that point, the dude from my right swiftly moved in front of me and slapped me on the chest, making me stop. Mistake number one, dumbass!
The garbage truck provided perfect cover. A mugging is successful only if you use the element of surprise, meaning acting before the victim realizes what’s going on. I was already alert after I caught you looking at my phone and you used the single opportunity to catch me by surprise and… slapped me on the friggin’ chest? Pathetic piece of shit! What you should’ve done was to hit me in my face, preferably an uppercut to the jaw. That would’ve made me lose my clarity for a while.
Then, the jerk-off from in front of me starts shouting out to the other guy something, in some oriental tongue, which in my mind I translated to: “He has a cool phone, get it! Get it!”
Mistake number two! Get it from where, you dumb fuck? Thankfully, the other dude, which had moved up to my right in the meantime, had some presence of mind and decided he had no other chance but to hit me.
As I turned to him, I noticed his fist making its way through the air, destination: my left eyebrow. The problem was I really had a grip on what was happening and decided to dodge that fist. And that was it. I used the momentum from dodging the fist to turn around and.. run away.
Mistake number three. I’m a fucking tourist, where in the fuck am I going to run to? Still, you didn’t follow me and decided to see about your way on the dark, empty side of the street. And that’s how I kept my dear phone, while you felt a deep sense of criminal incompetence.
Still, Barcelona rocked!
Yesterday was a great Sunday, safe for the part when I had to bury a kitten.
I got there first, obviously, so I had a double espresso and a Coke Light. Ovi and Andreea had been rollerskating earlier, so they got there ready-tired and thirsty. I did not notice how long I had waited for the waiter to ask me what I wanted, but my two friends really did when it was their turn. Especially since Ovi had a bottle of water in his backpack. Did I mention they were really thirsty?
Naturally, one doesn’t drink stuff that’s not from the bar while at said bar, but this was special. They must have waited for some fifteen minutes, and the waiter was not giving any signs that he’d be coming soon. At that point, Ovi took the bottle out of his backpack and had a long drink. That drink was so long, that the waiter got around to coming to our table before Ovi could finish.
Other than having to wait to be waited on, Porto Arte is pretty cool, and they played four Tool tracks while I was there. Quadruple thumbsup!
However, while we stood there, waiting, Ovi jokingly said that he’d take out an hourglass and if the waiter wouldn’t be there by the time the sand was up, he’d take out his bottle of water. That was some way to have a certifiable excuse.
I say this should be made into a rule. Written or not, this would really help the customer, in more ways than one.
Let’s say, every table gets an hourglass and a menu. You get 2 minutes to decide what you want and another ten until a waiter must arrive and take your order. These twelve minutes should be enough for any bar or restaurant. If, by the time the hourglass runs out, no waiter shows up, you get a discount.
Now the way the discount is calculated is based on the time you wait after the ten minutes that came after the two you took to make up your mind about what you’re going to have. If you wait an extra minute, that’s 10% of the ten minutes, so you get a 10% discount on your first order — so make it count.
The fun part about this is that if you have to wait long enough (ten minutes for those that really suck at math), you get a drink on the house. The bad part is that it only applies to the first order, but I think you can live with that.
This way, people like you and me get drinks for free, or the patrons take steps to prevent this kind of money loss and enforce strict policies for their staff.
In the end, what we get is either free, or at least cheaper, drinks or instant service. I call that a good win-win.
And, before I forget, if you’re going to order a shot of Jägermeister at Porto Arte, like Andreea did, brace yourself, because you’re getting two shots. The bad part is you have to pay for both.
In case you were wondering what I do with my spare time, apparently, I take pictures of my belly button.
If you’re curious as to what I do with said pictures, go check Richie’s blog post. There are more belly buttons — all male — for your viewing pleasure.
Any photographed part of your body that I should be aware of? Let me know.
Today, I read in the news that I-dunno-what company is launching a graffiti spray can extension for the Wii. So, it’s not bad enough that the Wii exists in itself, or that people think they’re good with guitars if they can get a 50 point combo in Guitar Hero. Now, every pussy can be a real badass in the virtual world by spray painting manga porn on his TV set, in the privacy of his own home.
Here’s the link, if you’re interested:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/07/video-wiispray-lets-virtual-taggers-spray-without-fear-of-the-m/
This reminded me of a nice read on the twitter breach from a few months ago where the continued pussification of the next generation is blamed for how things are getting better and better for stupid people.
The bad part is: we must seem just as lame for the cool generation that came before us.
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