I love being a designer but sometimes you just have to shake your head and sigh at the common requests that clients have. This video effectively pokes fun at what clients think they really want. It's funny because we all know someone who likes this stuff.
NBC "Video Rewind" sucks. We missed 10 minutes of the office on TV last night, so tonight we went to nbc.com to watch those first 10 minutes. Was it to much to hope for that their online episodes were as easy to watch as ABC's? Apparently, yes. NBC is completely incapable of delivering video online. It would have been much easier to download it over bit-torrent. Also, the little bit of the video that did load was at the wrong aspect ratio. Widescreen squeezed into a 4:3 player. Weak. Commercials load and play just fine, they are even larger than the video provided for the actual show. In fact I've sat here writing this while waiting for NBC's crappy video player to buffer, of course I have no idea if it is buffering, because there is no busy indication or loading bar.
And I would try to submit a complaint to NBC, but that is entirely impossible. I've looked before, all you can find online is a general survey form that offers no field for comments or questions. So, they want to prevent you from watching their shows on their website through their new video player, and you can't let them know when it doesn't work. So here I am... here we are... fun.
Oh, and yes, I'm on windows, and I tried both IE and Fire Fox. Same problems in both.
May I submit for your perusal, a proposal to institute a new internationall observed holiday?
Today I cleaned up the contents of my iPod, an activity that should have been completed a long time ago. My MP3 collection stretches back at least 7 years, and this is my second ipod. I almost never used the shuffle feature of the iPod anymore because of the annoying need to skip through three tracks everytime one song that I enjoy listening to ended.
I primarily use my iPod as background noise while I'm working, but needing to skip repeat songs and songs you hate (why did I have 4 copies of the Jeopardy theme song?!?!) can really break a persons flow. When I find music, I usually use the artists menu, but this doesn't work when everyon mispells artist names all the time. This is a common problem with songs you get from P2P networks, especially with the songs I got from older ones like Kazaa and Napster. Remember kids, buying music ensures higher bitrates and accurate ID3 tags!
So I spent a little time viewing all the songs that just had filenames with no artist info in iTunes and applying the right artist info, or deleting songs I have always hated. Also, going through the entire library sorted by artist alphabetically shows where artist were named inconsistently. Red Hot Chili Peppers was spelled 8 different ways, and I think Guns 'n Roses came close to that as well. It's much easier to find music now on my iPod.
So, please tell your friends, the second Friday in October every year is International iPod Cleanup Day.
Flashpaper was always underappreciated, but here's another way to share documents in a similar way. Actually maybe it is still flash-paper, but let's see what it does with a big image... *snip*
Ok... nope, that's just annoying. It says it can do previews of images and PDF's but that's an image and there is no preview... so I guess this service is pretty much useless. And it trys to open a popup window, and there's no option to turn that off. So, nope Adobe Share kinda sucks in beta.
I just had a chance to play with the iPhone. Unbefrickenlievable. You don't understand how crisp and bright the screen is, no, you think you can imagine, but you can't. The interface is a joy to behold - smooth animation galore, the future is indeed here. For some reason I thought you could only access one mailbox at a time. This is not true - you can have multiple email accounts.
Also, let's take a moment and thank the DoJ (Department of Justice) for being the mindless puppets of the telecommunication industries biggest players. See here to observe their ridiculous assertions, they sound very familiar. It's really frustrating to have to wait for these things to be tested all the way up to the supreme court whenever they make it through legislation. In the mean time, the potential for restriction of freedom of speech is given entirely up to private corporate interests. Awesome.
Also, seriously, you wouldn't think there were so many reasons to hate a big-mac, but people really go off the deep end. This blog post seemed pretty one sided to me.
Perhaps I should have reconsidered sending this comment in a recent customer service satisfaction survey to the web.com (Interland) tech support people.
"Congratulations on establishing the low end of the spectrum of all of my personal customer service experiences."
But seriously, these people were really really unhelpful.
We have returned from your vacation, it was awesome. Here are photos from the middle section of the trip. We spent time at Rifle Falls Park in Colorado and at Arches in Utah. Utah is unbearably hot in August, and our tent was not really up to the night time sand-storm. Still, totally awesome.
I will be impressive if i can finish writing this post by the time that the mac n cheese is done cooking. That is what Becca tells me.
We are starting our vacation today. Five days off from work - adding up to a total of 9 days of carefree fun and awesomeness. It all begins today. I will have pictures when I get back. But you don't care. I know. It's OK.
We will be staying in various locations all around Colorado, and bringing Becca to an amusement park which is really her dream. Camping, and hiking is included, some hot springs along the way are also likely. I think we are also spending a night in Arches National Park in Utah. It will be excrutiatingly hot, no doubt. But we have AC in the car finally! Yay!
Wooo a ooohh oooh. Who just correctly guessed Trajan Pro Regular for the logo of a site on the first try? That would be me.
It's crazy because I havent even used that font recently, it was more of a reflex recognition. It's a very distinct font and totally appropriate for some designs, though it is seen fairly regularly, and lacks the diversity of weights a proper type-face should have. Also, it's one of those strange "Small Caps" faces, which is a neat effect, but a little limiting for such a graceful face.
That was all I had.
Also, the depths of functionality provided by TextMate is pretty remarkable.
I waiting for a PDF to rasterize in Photoshop right now, so I thought I would take a second to say that I feel very focused today. Last week was a little fuzzy at times. Creativity isn't always like a fauceet that you can switch on and off, so it's good to know that at least today things are going to actually gel on the designs that I am working on. It feels good.
Also, I finally have a working internet connection at home.
I am glad to inform you about our new provision held in Hungary, in the heart of Europe. Since being in leading position in a company you have to know that the unimpeachable guise of an important person is not only proposed but also requisite nowadays. Our overture gives you the possibility to change your look and makes you more confident than ever.
Self-assured outlook starts at exquisite personal hygiene so not only a healthy but a dazzlingly lustrous denture can be the most indispensable key to the perfect complacency. If you are not totally satisfied with the plight of your teeth then I would like to draw your attention to our service.
The dental clinic we recommend offers to you one of the most developed medical and dental technique in Europe. Besides being the best in profession and speaking fluent English in the clinic all treatments cost 50-60% of the English ones including the cost of travelling, too! The perfectly trained dentists of ours are ready to treat you in any time by using the very best technological equipments like cirkon oxid or bego technology. It is important to accentuate that special private wishes are able to be accomplished easily and 3 years of fully comprehensive guarantee is given after all treatments.
If you avail yourself of our services you almost surely have to wait for the final curing up to one week on a par technical support and treatment takes place in one edifice - meanwhile you are able to visit and come to know some parts of Southern Hungary where you are able to enjoy the spa of Harkny and the excellent collection of wines in the region of Villny or more. This is not only a medical journey.
Lovely wonderful coffee, in the morning it is an elixer of vitality. One summer I lived by myself and started drinking coffee regularly. I had chronic heartburn for half of that summer and I kinda thought it was the coffee that turned my stomach into a boiling tar pit. But I have drank coffee regularly for most of the 2 years I've been out of college now and I don't get heartburn very often.
My only conclusion is that it must be related to eating junk food all the time, cereal sandwiches and microwave dinners were probably the culprit in my health problems during that first summer on my own. Now that I have a wonderful wife to cook meals for me I dont seem to have any problems with heart-burn.
In case you dont feel like repeating his experiment to test the validity of the results the probability is about 1 in 100 that you will shoot yourself. Which is pretty good actually. Making it's an activity that compares favorably to say, base jumping, or holding a golf-club up during a lightning storm.
Here's to those brave souls that make an effort to collect the statistics that warn the rest of us away from uneccesarily dangerous activities.
Two chat-bots are prompted to ask each other questions to start a conversation. The initial questions were provided by humans, but the discussions that ensued make the chat bots seem surprising cognizant. The two pieces of software are designed to imitate human conversation, and I would say they manage that quite well.
It's easy for people to forget there is a vast and complex script behind these programs. When the bots sound the most like a human the illusion is thinnest. It seems like I was able to regain perspective on the character's true nature when their dialogue sounded the most like an authentic human, rather than like some obscure oracle.
