Author: Peter

RSS and Flash

Another RSS Bigot joins the fold. Get with the program, people, and recognize how valuable an RSS feed is for your site!

Jenny Levine, Exactly!

Count me in as an RSS (and other feed formats) Bigot.

On the same topic, and further to yesterday’s post, how many Flash websites–for musicians in particular–boast RSS or iCalendar feeds? None that I’ve seen; they can’t even be scraped. Conversely, many non-Flash websites do have them; see Emm Gryner’s Journal, Newsfront, Website Updates, and Tour Dates for some good examples.

Finally, and off-topic, I wanted to call this post RSS Bigotry or something similar, but I’m not interested in the Google traffic the word bigot in the title will generate. Anti-keywords, anyone?

News Flash

Flash sucks.

Well, that’s not entirely true: it’s the uses of Flash that suck. Flash websites suck. Flash ads suck. Flash used for the sake of using Flash sucks.

Even website designers recognize this: when’s the last time you saw one of those bloated Flash introductions without a skip button prominently displayed right next to it? (Extra points off for irony: the put-the-skip-button-inside-the-Flash-intro pattern.)

(A lot of the above goes for Java applets used in similar situations, but at least it’s useful on the server side too.)

When doesn’t Flash suck? It’s probably indicative of how bad things are that only one site comes to mind: Homestar Runner, home of Strong Bad’s e-mail.

This rant brought to you by a guy who’s seen one too many pointless Flash sites today. And the letter Z… that’s zed, not zee, and is a topic for another day.

Serendipity: Tim Bray’s post on a similar topic, published at 10:42pm local time but which I didn’t see in my aggregator until just now. Although he does use the phrase Flash sucks, the gist of the article is this: given the choice of a Flash UI or an HTML one, users …ended up going for the HTML version every time.

LIR

By now most everyone’s heard of the FIR technique for replacing plain text with images using CSS. Stuart Langridge has come up with a (better?) solution that doesn’t require extra tags, which I presume from the URL is to be referred to as LIR. It doesn’t seem to have garnered much attention to date, so I’m going to do my small part to make it better-known. I’m in the midst of my Sirens website redesign and didn’t relish the thought of having to go back to add <span/>s everywhere, so Stuart’s idea appeared at just the right time.

Weblog lifespans

Jenny, aka The Shifted Librarian, wonders …does the 13-month anniversary of a blog mark the hurdle for achieving long-term blogging? This one will be a year old on August 9, coincidentally also my parents’ wedding anniversary. (Yes, entry #1 was posted in April 2002, but I’ve only been going in earnest since the latter date.)

I’m going to have to read through the 250+ entries sometime soon to see how many I actually remember. Hey, someone’s got to do it sometime, and it might as well be me.

Will Petroglyphs make the leap to a long-term weblog? It’s hard to say… I’ve only made 6 entries in July (counting this one, which was written in July even if it’s finally posted in August… silly Sympatico DSL service has been up and down since 9:30 this evening). Then again, I did buy a shiny new domain and virtual server space so I’d have someplace to host it more permanently. As they say in the world of technology, one should never start a demo–or in this case, finish a retrospective entry–with any statement more predictive than Watch this!

Janes Addiction

Heh heh, that title will mess up a search engine or two….

In the last five days I’ve experienced and enjoyed the music of Lenni Jabour and The Third Floor, Claire Jenkins, Sirens, Penny Lang, Bob Snider, Darlene, Tanglefoot, Cartwheels and Kristin Sweetland, plus one or two more whose names I’ve forgotten. I bought five CDs from those individuals and groups–none on RIAA member labels, thankyewverymuch–and would have picked up twenty more if I hadn’t stopped myself.

If I were to go into detail about each performance I’d be typing here for a month, so I’ll just give short blurbs:

Lenni Jabour and The Third Floor
Incredible, fantastic, charming, brilliant… need I say more?
Claire Jenkins
Claire opened for Lenni at the Rivoli, and made a huge impression on those gathered. She must come to the Ugly Mug Café, soon and often.
Sirens
Sirens were the reason I went to the Home County Folk Festival, professionally and personally. I saw them perform in five separate workshops (with others from the list above) and on the main stage, and couldn’t have had a better time.
Darlene
Darlene was my biggest discovery of the festival. She’s eclectic, and funny, and principled, and nutty… and she’s convinced me, at least, that Marilyn Monroe should have married Henry Miller! The CD is also the longest single-artist non-compilation disc I’ve ever bought–it runs 72 minutes.
Kristin Sweetland
Kristin is a free spirit, a neo-flower-child. I can see how it’s hard to visit Planet Kristin for more than a short period at a time–I had to turn off her CD on the trip to Toronto to see Lenni–but I think I’ll stop by once in a while. Update: I’m not sure what my problem was with Kristin’s CD Root, Heart & Crown, because I’ve gone back to it and found it quite enjoyable… in fact, I’d go so far as to compare some of the music with Loreena McKennitt‘s. Often first impressions are accurate, but in this case I’m pleased to say mine was wrong–sorry Kristin!
Bob Snider
Bob Snider’s been a favourite for several years, but this is only the second time I’ve seen him in person. I actually know most of his songs through tribute versions. He’s a cross between Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie–great songwriters with unique voices and presentation–but he’s also got a skewed outlook on life that’s unmatched in my experience.
Tanglefoot, Penny Lang and Cartwheels
It’s odd to group these three together, because they’re so different, but I don’t have anything to say about any of them that you can’t hear in their music.

One last geeky note to make: Claire Jenkins’ website is one of the nicest official artist sites I’ve seen–and it’s just a single page laid out with CSS. (It doesn’t validate, but I can live with that because it’s not full of Flash animations and popups. I’m sure Justin Morrison could fix it up in a jiffy.)

SCTV is on the air!

If you can see this, you’ll have discovered (but probably not noticed) that the URL has changed. I finally broke down and paid for the peterjanes.ca domain. What’s more, I went all out and bought hosting space… no more personal-PC-as-webserver for me (though I’m still running Linux as my desktop and have no plans to change). Most of the content from the old site is here–the important stuff, anyway, like my fan site for Lenni Jabour and The Third Floor–and anything that isn’t probably won’t be unless it’s actually requested (ha! like anyone ever looked at my old site). There may be some broken links that I haven’t caught up to yet, so if you find one please leave a comment below and I’ll deal with it.

RSS folks, you’ll want to update to the new feed ASAP. (Geek RSS folks, note that an Atom feed is coming soon!)

I almost forgot to mention: Lenni and friends will be performing at the Rivoli on Tuesday, July 22, with select material from the upcoming musical Songs From The Third Floor. Huzzah!

Unpleasant

I’ve just experienced the most unpleasant exchange of e-mail I’ve ever had. The details are of no interest to anyone other than myself and the other party, and I’d say nothing about them or that person even if they were. It shall suffice to say that I was physically shaking with anger by the end of my last message; anyone who’s had any dealings with me knows it takes a lot to make me lose my cool. I can only remember being upset to that extent twice, or perhaps three times, in my 31 years, and it’s not an experience I relish.

I’m proud, at least, that I was able to keep my response professional and polite while conveying the depth of my displeasure in no uncertain terms.