Blog Title: FiZzy Goodness

resources: a growing lack thereof

Think about all the things you see less of today than in days past.

• rain forests
• polar caps
• oil reserves
• drive-in movie theaters


• …available .com addresses.

practicality: takeout food

Sometimes, I swear I love takeout food more for what I don't eat than what I do. Seriously, I haven't actually bought napkins for my apartment in 3½ years or more. It's something that I never thought about consciously before, but it's strangely convenient how some places give you nothing but a burger in a paper bag and others assume you need 7.34 x 10¹² napkins, 4 fork/knife sets, and at least a fucking lifetime supply of salt packets to eat a calzone. It's funny how that even influences my decisions when I don't cook. If I'm running late some night or really just don't want to cook, I have to consider my choices:

• "Am I low on napkins?"
  • Yes -> Dominoes
  • No -> continue
• Am I low on plastic utensils?
  • Yes -> Some place with salads
  • No -> continue
• food preference?

breakfast oppression

At the office I work for, I've begun to notice a certain imbalance in the breakroom during the morning. It never bothered me at first, but now that I've settled in as a regular here, there's something that just won't stop nagging at me- there's more of their kind than any other. When I think back on it, it's been this way for a long time. Have I really been so oblivious to this cultural dominance for so long?

Man…oatmeal is fucking racist.

I mean, seriously, think about the basic variety pack you get these days:

• Original
• Maple & Brown Sugar
• Apples and Cinnamon
• Cinnamon RaisinCinnamon Roll

ch-ch-changes

I've never had the experience to call myself a fanboy in the truest sense of the word. I blame myself, mostly. I could never amass the resources to get one, and there was always a vice to be sated on the other side of the fence. But I finally broke the pattern, I crossed over, I bought a macbook.

I became a douche.

And I have to tell you, until you buy a laptop, you will never know just how many people have learned to keep their wi-fi networks password protected. Because honestly, I'm not paying Starbucks for a drink and internet access exclusive of each each other. As long as there are more than enough surrounding cafés offering free access to compete with the caffeinated monolith, I figured I'd try this out on my first night breaking it in. So there I was, in a café, typing on a macbook and drinking something that ended in 'uccino'. I thought to myself "Good god, all I need are some pointy white shoes and I'd be allowed to live in San Francisco."

But in all seriousness, I am quite happy my macbook. It's my first laptop and my first mac, so It's still taking me a bit to get used to not using a mouse more often than not (but two-touch scrolling r0x0rz my s0x0rz), but there's enough features that I've come to love using that the only time I use my desktop PC anymore is for games. Don't get me wrong, that behemoth still gets more than its fair share of mileage, but I'm surprised how much more useful the macbook is than I assumed it would be. It just doesn't bother me like I thought it would that I use a small, portable computer as my primary storage for photos, music, programs, etc.

Now, if I could only figure out my office's wi-fi password so I could post this while I'm waiting for the database to finish updating…

p.s. After working on a linux desktop for more than a month now, I've learned that default font support is complete and utter shit. Just look up this list the next time you're browsing on a fresh install.

p.p.s. I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of quicksilver's basics. How did I live without this? If you know of anything I must know, please share.

braid

I just downloaded Braid from XBLA this weekend and I have to say, I could barely stop playing until I came to work Monday morning. Of course, here come all the obvious praises:

• the graphics are gorgeous
• the puzzles are mind-bending and amazing
• the very concept is simply brilliant
• I'm still missing several puzzle pieces and haven't even started on those stars, but I love the game still.
  

a creative burst

Poking fun: twitter

Ever since I picked up on this lovely little concept of annoying the shit out of people by refusing to accept The Internet™ as the serious business we know it to be, I've found no end to the entertainment derived. Trust me, twitter addicts get all bent out of shape when you start talking about their latest twaat.

Dishing out DISCIPLINE!

If you haven't heard of this quirky little game here, you may as well leave now.

So I'm starting to get my shadow priest in WoW up to a point of PvE respectability. I've finally ditched all my antiquated blues for the sweet, sweet nectar of "3p1c g33r" and nobody in my raid party runs out of mana as long as I have any go-juice left in me. However, there is one thing that continues to frustrate me to no end about being a shadow priest: Interrupts.

Luckily, only a few classes have them, but never the less, why must these spells completely fucking disable a shadow priest in every meaningful way? Who cares if a mage gets a shield to the head in the middle of Pyroblast? Return the favor with an Ice Lance! Did your shaman's Chain Lightning get snuffed by Counterspell? Send an Earth Shock at the offending mage. But does my shadow priest have any luck? No, I get to have all my useful spells disabled and jack off in a corner for 10 seconds- that isn't nearly long enough! As long as I'm being effectively removed from combat, at least give me enough time to get something else accomplished.

Seriously, they need to give the discipline line more offensive spells. Or at least let me don a nun's habit and run around smacking the hell out of people with a ruler! If that ability doesn't fit into "discipline", I don't know what does.

Network overload

There's no question about it among the internetly-inclined: online social networks have overloaded our attention and time. When we're not checking our various networks for new messages, we're updating profiles and clearing our inbox of "New message from..." notifications. But there's another kind of internet overload that skulks about this rather precarious information territory: abject wastes of space. I'd hope you, dear reader, can imagine and possibly share my utter fucking dismay upon stubbing my brain on coffeenatic.

I'll concede, I drink coffee and unlike 78.214%+ of the people in any given American work environment, I actually enjoy it. However, no beverage - regardless of its tastiness (or other peculiar qualities) - truly merits a social website for the explicit exultation thereof.

Of course, everyone still wants to make a dime in the web business and I can't fault them for that much. But wouldn't this be better served in a larger network encompassing food as a whole? As it is, what kind of growth potential does something like this have? What confounds me more than anything is the section for coffee recipes. I have a few that I can think of :

- Brew
- Pour
- Drink

If you want to get really tricky…

- Brew
- Pour
- Add sugar
- Stir (this step is very important)
- Drink

How much more complex does it get? I think most of the days of smaller sites like this getting bought by GoogleMicrosoftetc. is drawing to a close considering Yahoo is still in talks to be bought. There's a place for niche networks, but there's a point where building pointless blips on the radar needs to stop, it's too ridiculous to handle anymore.

Then again, I could be wrong and I usually am. Who am I to argue with a Starbucks on every corner?

Yahoo gets social!

Again.

But do any of us care? I'm not talking about the 'Oh, this looks kinda neat' care where you play with the site/features for a day or so. I mean, has anybody actually given even half a flying fuck (warning: it's not as easy as it sounds) in the past decade about anything Yahoo has branded with their own particular mark of internet shame?

Yet again, Yahoo wants to integrate your life into their portal. Trust me, I meant to say it that way and you will be assimilated into Yahoo Life!

I hate to be mean bu—wait, fuck that- I'm mean all the time and I like it! Unabashed cruelty aside, it seems like Yahoo knows how to pick the startups to buy. However every time a new site is created by them, an angel looses its wings.
…and gets sucked into a jet intake.
…and eventually falls in many pieces (or glitter) into a volcano.
…and ends up destroying the lives of the indigenous peoples of Wherever as ambivalent, ever-consuming lava or volcanic ash.

So the next time a molten stream of igneous slag shuffles off your mortal coil, thank Yahoo 360, Bill Pay, Auctions, Photos, Podcasts, etc. as well as their next pet project doomed to failure. Personally, I think they need to keep someone on their payroll for nothing other than the explicit purpose of monitoring everyone's thoughts and promptly execute anyone who intends to create (yet another) Yahoo social site/feature.

Now don't get me wrong, there have been some good things to come from Yahoo. I think their maps are great if you don't mind the load time (no, I'm not referring to dial-up lag), and Pipes has some wonderful uses, etc. but a lot of their social-web effort boil down to one of two thing (maybe both): they suck, or nobody cares. I've been hoping that Google's personalized page Gmail app would give me an actual preview of my mail, so I think Yahoo's got a great idea with Life/Inbox2.0/DeadInAnotherYearOrSo, but I just don't see this making as much difference for them as a relevant web service provider. They could possibly coax other web services to provide such integration, which would be fantastic, but I really don't think this makes Yahoo any more relevant than they already aren't in terms of social-web; just buy another Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. for that.

Practicality {next sequential number}

With all the recent hullabaloo about Facebook, I fail my comprehension check for discerning why that site is such a big deal to begin with. I've found Mr. Zuckerberg's creation marginally less useful than a high school reunion. In my experience, it's mostly a tool to see who isn't dead yet.

"Hey Whatsyername!"
"Yo…person."
"So…"
"Yeah."

OMFG FACEBOOK PWNS UR SOUL!!!

I swear, I think the only reason I keep O'Reilly Radar in my RSS reader is for the occasional humor value. I was going through my backlog of crap and found this little gem on Facebook vs. Scoble and immediately grabbed "my mighty spear and tinfoil helmet!"

Because, of course, everything on the internet is true, you should know the following about Facebook since last week:

ad(non)sense

I tried installing adsense ads on my blag quite some time ago and grew quickly despondent upon the epiphany that nobody reads my incoherent crap. But all that aside, I've noticed something that would perturb me to a (greater) degree were it not for my lack of readers: either adsense is phenomenally fucking stupid or I'm just insane.

Believe me, I've considered the latter at great length, but I begin to question big G's seemingly less-than-infinite wisdom when an ad targeted for my site is

Mom Blogs
Share Your Stories and Read Blogs From Mothers Just Like You.

automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.

Hot rant on rant action

…I'm certain that somewhere in the world, Comedy Central is showing ads for such sordid videos along with the rest of the post-11pm commercial filth, but I digress…

In such a bleak, cutthroat and corrupt world of internet software development, it's comforting to know that we still have champions- avatars of all that is good; those will stand against the tides of evil for everything just and righteous; warriors who will "pay to rent a boxing ring and beat your fucking ass legally."

Apparently, the Rails development community has coaxed one Zed Shaw to make bold statements like these in his tirade against the industry as is currently exists and festers. Not to say that I can blame him, but I'm still not entirely sure what he'll accomplish by Bruce-Lee'icising a group of programmers. Then again, I can't say that it wouldn't make me feel better were I in his particularly angsty brand of shoes (I'm guessing Sketchers).

Zed buddy, I really want to empathize with you and to some degree, I actually do. However, this isn't unique to Rails or even Ruby. This is every tech buzzword that has ever lain with the bilious collective vagina that is marketing long enough to leave its corrosive seed. In the days before rails (*gasp!* "you mean those stories were true?") Flash was still god and there was no end to the clients that would demand that you make their entire site one big flash app while working at sub-McDonalds wages.

Never the less, this was an entertaining read, and I suggest every developer spend a minute or two on the section about ThoughtWorks if you haven't already met these fucks (metaphorically speaking). As a relatively junior programmer myself, I've run into no lack of companies that are more than willing to coerce me into working 80+ hours a week because "We need to give the client what they paid for." and still expect me to go drinking with The Team (who, by the way, always has some god-awful corporate branding and trademarked mascot) only to head back to the mildly pleasant hell of an office for another 7 or so hours. Then I'll drive home for an hour nap to do it again on something new that should have been done a week ago by the last guy smart enough to abandon a sinking ship. If the client paid to have it done by {date}, then why the fuck am I being brought in as a contractor to do 90% of it when it's due tomorrow?

While I'm not disputing the technical merits of Mr. Shaw's dignified oration, I'm really not sure what makes this problem endemic to Ruby or Rails by themselves. The language and framework are over-hyped to be sure, but throw shitty marketing/HR directors (think Uwe Bowl here) in an economy fucked hard enough to be considered a kind of symbolic snuff-porn and you'll end with disaster regardless of the technology in question. I'm not saying that lets everyone off the hook, but I'm just advocating the devil for a minute.

Alphas

Happy New Year!

It's a day late, but I'm sure that you are quite cognizant that I possess an acute deficiency of 'give a shit'. But that matters not, there is no time to waste- resolutions are being broken as we speak! And if you're so fortunate, you may capture such magical moments on film forever; thus insuring your employment for another year lest unsavory information reach certain parties…

In the whirlwind craze of a new year and fresh starts, gym membership sales skyrocket, burned bridges reconstruct, and you get stabbed with a bic highlighter by the guy that quit smoking. Of course, within a month, the pounds unshed themselves, old rivalries resurface and the guy that started smoking again will find a new reason to stab you- just don't let him borrow your pen.

Somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, I'll keep myself out of the regular hodgepodge of half-assed goals and dreams and just resolve to try a few things. Hasn't anybody thought of that before? I don't have to complete these things all year, just try them. Take this -for example- Blag 365 project: instead of committing to doing this for 365 days come hell or high water, I will attempt it and be willing to give it up after two months if I find that it's really not my style. Instead of this being an epic manifestation of my extraordinary lack of willpower, I'm doing this for a different reason. People make too many resolutions each year to reasonably keep up with; change takes time and you may not even like all the new ways you've attempted to grow, so why tell yourself from the start that your destiny is now shackled to these things you've sworn to do? So instead, I have several things I've resolved to try at varying levels of importance and I'm willing to accept if they don't work out. Even if "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." yesterday shouldn't be unrecognizable.

And what does that make yesterday anyway- contextually speaking?

In league with the devil!

In a bleak future, a half-told prophecy has been left to rot in England. In the wake of science, all phenomena incapable of complete technical classification is written off as childish fairytales. But none has been forgotten among the creatures of myth, of legend and the purest dar— Server connection lost. Please verify that your computer is connected to the internet.

"Oh, fuck pickles."

So while valiant crusaders battle against the sorces of "dar—" in the recently launched beta of Hellgate London, I wait on the phone with my ISP that has more urgent calls than me for more than an hour. Demons from another plane have invaded Earth (London, specifically) and I can't get an internet connection, with which to vanquish them. And this wasn't the usual bout of 15 minutes of 'net'lessness, where I would be saving the world again within the hour. Nay, for more than an hour, Comcast had denied me any kind of service with no answer from tech "support". The only conclusion one can rationally draw from this experience is that Comcast is in league with the devil.

You know what? That's cool. It's totally fine with me, but when you've got the minions from hell desecrating your home and daily break for a spot of Earl Grey, don't expect me to show up and save you with my totally sweet nethermagic and übersweet cyberpunk armor. No, I'll be on the phone with tech-support. So thank you Comcast- thank you for damning us all.

My 22¢: Scoble, Mahalo and co.

So I just finished watching Robert Scoble wax evangelical about Mahalo, Facebook and Techmeme, claiming that they'll "upend Google in 4 years" and had to wonder if he has any creative control in those companies or at least receives regular fellating from any of their founding staff— the proselytization is that ridiculous.

Granted, I will agree that SEO can drive content up the Google result pages where it may not have merit. I will also concede that people are more likely to find socially-driven content worthwhile. After all, you trust your friends, and if their friends liked this, you may like it too, right? But after reading some of the very well-informed retaliations to Scoble on the SEO/tech level, I'm going to refute his claims from a very simple standpoint: that of the ungeeked.

For all of us reading that considering ourselves tech savvy in some way, try to think of everyone you know who doesn't actually know what an intenet browser is. How many people can you think of that don't open Firefox or Internet Explorer, but rather 'load up the internet' or something similar? How long do you think you could get them to use Mahalo instead of Google? I'm guessing less than 4 days.

A lot of tech pundits, developers and self-proclaimed experts keep forgetting that there's a large audience of users out there who have no idea how a page is built or ranked by search engines. Most of these people have one search engine that they're comfortble with and will continue to be until something significantly innovative (and well marketed) diverts their attention elsewhere. And as a closing note to Scoble's idea that Google is going to stagnate in the face of socially driven search results: while I don't think it's impossible- who says they can't buy the next up-and-comer in the field?

PSA: Youtube comments

It's time for me to address yet another serious issue threatening the world at large right now: youtube- but more to the point, the comments contained therein. I'm not kidding around, reading these could pose a grave risk to your intellect. So for anyone who has yet to suffer such pain, allow me to eloquently summarize the only comments you will ever see on youtube here:

case 1: omg dued tht wuz t3h shit lolz

case 2: omfg wtf dude? this fukin sux get a life

case 3: fuk me plz kthx

case 4: {random pr0n spam}

Am I missing anything?

Unintentionally funny(er)

None of us should be strangers to euphemisms. Yes, that wonderful liguistic device which can be eloquently described as

eu·phe·mism [yoo-fuh-miz-uhm] –noun
1. the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.
2. the expression so substituted: "To pass away" is a euphemism for "to die."

I hope I'm not alone, but sometimes, I find the literal interpretation of common euphemisms are even funnier than the concept they strive to mask. I remember being in 5th grade and hearing the term "flogging the dolphin" in reference to masturbation. Personally, I still think the mental picture of literally flogging a dolphin is absolutely hilarious. Do those fuckers always squeak when you hit them or is that only with an aluminum bat?

Sometimes, I wonder if some euphemisms were coined with recurssive meaning in mind. For example, consider the phrase "junk in the trunk"

junk·in·the·trunk -noun
1. A large, yet shapely and attractive posterior.
2. A gluteus maximus with greater than average fat tissue while maintaining its roundness.

But then consider "junk" by itself

junk -noun
1. A man's genitals.

By this process, "junk in the trunk" now becomes a recurssive euphemism for…

butt·secks -noun, verb
1. butt sex.

So did anybody think about this when they first began using these euphemisms or do I simply think too much? What are your favorite euphemisms?

technorati tags:language

Missing the point: designers vs. Safari

It's discussions like the comments sections for this article that make me believe some designers are too pedantic and contrarian for their own good. With a large chunk of the comments on this oft-misinterpreted article, I'm reading way too many opinions that have little or nothing to do with the issue at hand. The debate that Safari on Windows has brought to light again is whether the Mac or Windows OS method of rendering fonts is correct: true to the typeface vs. readability. However, plenty among the uninformed raise the complaint that the beta-Safari browser for Windows is using a different font rendering engine than that implemented by Windows. Sure, it overrides the Windows-native ClearType rendering, but is this an issue that the browser should be chastised for? No, it's doing (almost) exactly what it's supposed to be doing- which is showing web pages as they're rendered to a lot of mac users.

For a site is that is solely dedicated to providing information, news and resources to web designers all over the world, one would like to assume that its users would appreciate being able to see how their web pages render on Safari without having to buy a mac (for the Windows-using site visitors anyway). What I've found throughout a great deal of the internet though, is an emo horde of "designers" that believe that Safari on Windows shouldn't render fonts, scrollbars, etc. differently than their operating system. However, the biggest advantage of the the new availability of Safari is so Windows designers/developers can see exactly what our Mac site visitors will see. Maybe Safari for Windows should have an option that turns on ClearType instead of its internal font-smoothing for non-testing purposes, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose entirely? In my opinion, you should primarily be using a browser for two main reasons: Either you want to test what a site looks like for a segment of your browsing audience, or you like the way the browser works for casually viewing web pages. If you don't like the way sites looks on it, then why are you using it?

And as far as the complaints of replicating the OS X aesthetic are concerned: this is what Apple is all about. They have a very distinct look and feel to their products, they're known for it and and they try to emulate it as much as possible in everything that leaks out of OS X into a broader market. Call it arrogance, stubbornness, effective branding or anything else you want, but haven't you learned that this is just how Apple likes to work?

technorati tags:safari, windows, apple, design

Science vs. Language

But more to the point- further discrediting string theory.

I love finding hidden gems that belittle scientific theories that have proven themselves to be entirely useless. But perhaps we have misunderestimated the linguistic acuity of string theory's proponents, and they'll make a kwyjibo out of me yet.

Sorry, I can't even type that with a straight face.

technorati tags:science, language

Intermission: Firefox is letting you down.

For years now, Firefox geeks have been aware of the dreaded "memory leak" in the browser, however, there has come to my attention a new bug that all FF lovers should be aware of:

Firefox is lazy.

Is it possible that Firefox users have been lied to all this time? We've bought into the wonders of an extendable browser with limitless capability and unprecedented browsing speed. However, as the evidence shows, our beloved combustion vulpes is much lazier than we originally thought. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

User: Show me some amazing special effects.
Firefox: Oh sure, I could render wonderful ajaxy things for you…but that just seems like too much work. Nah, I'd rather not get up.

Revolution indeed.

Dept. of The Totally Fucking Obvious: OS Adoption

Normally, I'm a fan of O'Reilly's work, but his most recent musings fail to impress me. Then again, with such recent hits as The Blogger's Code of Conduct, I really shouldn't be surprised.

Apparently, Windows Vista isn't replacing XP as fast as any new version of OS X against its predecessor. No, there isn't any hidden meanings or tricky phrasing to throw you off. This is Tim's astounding revelation, but at least he's got mediocre graphs to tell us what we already knew. I suppose what irks me more than anything is that he simply points out The Totally Fucking Obvious without giving any insight as to why.

There's two reasons Vista isn't taking off the way new versions of OS X do:

1. Microsoft had to set a cutoff date for XP just to get hardware manufacturers to start making drivers for Vista. After all, gaming is one of the larger factors in the Windows vs. OS X debate, and right now, there's barely any hardware with Vista drivers that could make gaming anything better than a teeth-grinding experience for Vista PCs. In fact, the only game I've seen perform better on Vista is World of Warcraft, but that's only with a video card that costs upwards of four hundred dollars.

2. OS X developers don't worry so much about backwards compatibility as Windows developers do; Hence, there's not enough software/features for Vista that can't be run/emulated in XP as is. Besides, the Windows OS itself isn't cheap by any means, so the majority of Windows PC owners will simply wait until they buy another computer to get the new OS. Again, why would they pay $200+ for an OS that has almost no support and next to nothing that they can't already run with the system they have?

technorati tags:vista, osx, gaming

Intermission: gaming on Vista

Experience the functionality and efficiency of Windows Vista. No need to worry about software compatibility, only 4 titles actually work with Vista to begin with. With other operating systems, you have to go through the trouble of checking and updating your hardware drivers, but Vista does away with drivers all together! Microsoft has even created Vista with the your health and the environment in mind- when you've been on your computer too long, Vista will stop and shut down your computer for you to tell you that it's time to give your eyes and your electric bill a break. So give Vista a try and see for yourself what all the rage is about.

RSS and managing your time

For nearly anyone in a tech-related industry, RSS is nothing new. In fact, you may have a favorite reader and a healthy collection of feeds. Some are updated rarely and infrequently, but when there's something new, it's like a visit from an old friend. So you read the entire article in one sitting. Then there's some feeds that update so often in such volume that you turn on your computer in the morning and think "It's 8:46am. Can't you just shut up until noon?"

If you're anything like me, you've probably got too many feeds to deal with at once. However, some news readers are absolutely wonderful for managing your endless flood of 'important' stuff. My favorite is Google Reader for its tagging/folder options on your individual feeds, but my preference isn't the definitive article, so use your own if it works better.

The trick is finding what feeds would flood your screen if left alone for a day or two (or even a few hours) and labeling them as such. For example, I tag feeds like the one for Digg's homepage with "sweep" as well as anything else I find it pertinent to categorize. After finding the frequent visitors, I have a sweep folder that looks something like this:


The beauty is clicking that magical "Mark all as read" button on the top and they're all swept out of my attention span. After all, these are the news feeds that are updated so often that I'm sure there will be an update later when I have time to check through things like that. Plus, with this overhead view of all the news that I don't have to check right now, I can see that headline like "Digg - Guy Tries to Sell Sofa on Craigslist, Ends Up With A Wife" and realize that I at least have to know what that's about before I start/resume my day. The nice thing about this kind of organization is that I also keep a folder called "weekends" for the feeds about local events and entertainment that aren't going to bury me in headlines. With a little organization, you can file your otherwise unruly horde of RSS feeds into categories that you can ignore when you don't have the time or patience to deal with them.