2002 – Page 11 – Petroglyphs

Credit where it’s due

She likes chicken pot pie, just like me.

Andrew Niccol, S1m0ne

I’d estimate that only about ten people in this city have heard that line and understand why it’s one of the funniest in the entire movie. In fact, my guess is that over 99% of the people who have seen the movie wouldn’t recognize it… because it shows up after the credits have rolled. This is why directors can get away with the vanity a film by credit–not only don’t people acknowledge the fact that there are talented people other than actors and a director involved in a movie, they actively ignore it by walking out.

Also note that the source of the quote above is the writer of the film, not the character or actor (even though Pruitt Taylor Vince nails the line as Max Sayer).

The Bank Job, part 3

One week after I sent my original query, I’ve gotten no response at all from two of the three banks in question, and no response from the unsigned message I wound up sending to Bank of Montreal. Nice work, guys.

I’m going to try again, unsigned to all three this time, and at Mike’s urging, add President’s Choice Financial, even though they are run by the same bank that made me start looking for alternatives.

Trading Spaces updates

Those clever folks at TLC have a good thing going with Trading Spaces. They’ve even got updates on what the homeowners have done to their rooms since.

Perhaps even more interesting, and something a clever programmer at TLC is going to think of in a year or two, is going back to visit the couples. An hour representing two days is a pretty short time to judge, but based on that I’ve got to say that there have been some seriously dysfunctional relationships featured on that show. There have been more than a few very functional friendships too (nudge nudge).

This concludes today’s foray into the persona of a nosy Parker.

Linkrolling

I’ve been trying to come up with a term for the current fad of linking each word in a phrase to something different. The best I’ve been able to come up with is linkrolling. It’s similar to blogrolling, defined as a list of links… [that] are usually connected in some way and located usually on the same page as the weblog, in a column on the side . Linkrolling, then, is blogrolling in the small: providing a list of links in a compact inline form.

[Update, later: okay, so I’m just coining a new meaning for the term. Note that most of the sites listed currently use linkrolling interchangeably, and often redundantly, with blogrolling. I stand by my definition, and have discovered a new term in the process: thanklink.]

Markup validation indicators

The Mozilla usability list published by self-proclaimed usability weenie Matthew Thomas (aka mpt) has been a hot topic recently.

Not to be contrary–particularly against Ian, Asa and Blake–but I think I’m with mpt on this one, though not exactly for his reasons. Mozilla is a developer tool, and so should have features for developers. According to the 1.0 release notes, Mozilla-the-platform is targeted at the developer community, and it’s up to third parties (like, say, Netscape) to take the codebase and customize it for a consumer audience. (I do debate classifying several of mpt’s items as usability issues–from an application perspective they’re clearly features, but from a future-of-the-web perspective they’re usability.)

I’d love to use a browser that makes the validation status of a page user-visible, because I want to use it to develop my pages. I don’t care about anyone else’s. The indicator doesn’t need to list the errors–the W3C validator and other tools will do a better job, as Asa argues–but it indicates that there’s a problem, which is what an indicator is supposed to do. It should do the same for any content type Mozilla can display. Arguing against having it in Mozilla because end users won’t like it doesn’t fly–end users don’t care about the DOM Inspector or Venkman (the JavaScript debugger) either, but there they are. (I rarely use them myself, but that’s because I don’t write a lot of JS… yet.) At times, for similar reasons, I’m even on the side of those who argue that there shouldn’t be a quirks (i.e. compatibility) mode in Mozilla (or IE)–providing such a feature without an indicator just makes it harder to show page authors, software makers et al. that they’re creating bad code.

(I’ve been looking for an article by mpt where he explains that he knows he’s been a real jerk lately, but have had no luck–I’m caught in the Google gap. Should have blogged it a couple of days ago when I read it. The point was that I tend to agree with what he’s said but not the way in which he’s said it.)

Finally, lest it seem I’m a complete mpt apologist, I don’t like his weblog design–I find it’s hard to read and generally not aesthetically pleasing. (I’m going to echo his own criticism of Internet Explorer: to me, his blog looks like a refugee freom Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I’d almost go so far as to bemoan its usability. Almost.

Well erm, ooh, y’know, yes

Ooh bloody hell, yes. That was weird. It was really intense. She must be a strange girl. I mean, well it was nice and, she’s good but, well erm, y’know, it was kind of strange, I mean really weird.

Damon Albarn on Emm Gryner’s lounge version of Song 2

Shared neuroses

I have gotten into the habit of not reading lyric liner notes in CDs/albums/whatever because it drives me nuts if they aren’t singing exactly what’s written….

From recent e-mail

I’ve been watching Monk recently, and realized I identify with him slightly more than I find comfortable. But this evening I received e-mail containing the text quoted above, and it’s made me feel somewhat comforted that, although I suffer from a similar affliction, so do others.

And I do recognize that writing this post is neurotic in itself. Isn’t that ironic? (No!)

C’mere little alien buddy

My SETI@Home clients haven’t discovered any statistics of note since August 2001. Previous to that I was getting personal-best spikes, gaussians, and pulses once every couple of months on average. I know they’ve been recycling work units for some time, but I’d expect to get similar results–the analysis hasn’t changed, because the client has been the same version (3.03) since December 2000.

I’m not complaining, just curious.

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

The Bank Job, part 2

Today is a national holiday–meaning no banks are open–but I received a personal followup message from Bank of Montreal. Unfortunately it was informing me that the inquiry we have received from you was blank. I’m not sure exactly what that means–mail doesn’t just go blank–but I resent my original message with their tracking number attached. I suspect their mail server erroneously tossed the entire message because of its suspicious attachment: my S/MIME signature.

Still no response from the virtual banks.

[Updated late afternoon: Got another similar response from BMO. I’ve replied once more, this time sans signature… if it doesn’t work this time, BMO’s off the list.]

Turn me on

You want to turn on the room and not the devices.

Peter Lucas, Maya Designs Inc. [via CNN]

Maya and CMU are working on a truly universal remote control. It will control not only your TV and stereo, but your lights, heat, home security system, lawn sprinklers, dog door, etc.

I’d just like to say, “Finally!” I’ve looked a bit at home automation solutions recently and been mostly unimpressed. Things don’t seem to have progressed much since the days when I was learning about programming and technology on my family’s Commodore 64, except that the new company that had these cool remote light switches is now one of the most hated on the web because of their evil ubiquitous pop-up ads. (Thank heaven for Mozilla.) That’s a period of (eep!) twenty years, for those of you keeping track.

To be honest, though, I’d settle for a plain old universal media remote that can actually replace the six I have now (including three that claim some level of universality). I’ll wait for the rest.