Author: grid

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Joel on software has lost all my respect.

I have really enjoyed, or at least learned from Joel Spolsky (from Joel on Software) in the past. But his latest article has me wondering if he isn’t a M$ weenie (and a dickhead).

I don’t link to stuff that I don’t like, so I’m intentionally leaving the inspiration for this post unlinked. The name of the article was “Martian Headsets”, I’m sure you can find it if you want. If someone hadn’t sent this out at work today, it wouldn’t even necessitate a response, but they did, and I now feel the need to comment on how much I do not appreciate his bullshit rant.

I guess the thing that most pisses me off is that he’s actually trying to incite the very flame war that he “predicts” in his article. His main strategy seems to be making us all out to be at one end of two extremes. There are two kinds of web developer (or perhaps browser developer): “Idealists” and “Pragmatists”. He’s implying that pro-standard means anti-backward compatibility. He’s also implying that pro-pragmatism means anti-standards. Neither of these are even remotely true.

Anyway, the article is written with a very subtle sympathy for microsoft. The bulk of the article consists of a long-winded and misleading analogy involving martian mp3 players. (M$ is supposed to be the developer of these mp3 players, which are supposed to represent IE8.) Initially they make the players, and also the headphones. (In the analogy, the headphones are webpages.) So you can see right away how stupid his analogy is… if we “buy” this analogy, then at some point, M$ was somehow the sole browser developer, and they also developed all the webpages. He just keeps piling more and more shit onto this analogy, trying to sell us on this idea that the more webpage developers and browser makers there are, the harder it is for M$ to write a decent product. Oh, poor microsoft!

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ReadComics.org

Jason and I have had many “schemes” over the years. Many of them have involved comic books, and this is the third iteration of ReadComics.org. But this one may be the first one to actually succeed. Why do I think so? One reason: It’s easy. We’re basically just going to blog about comics. Can’t get much easier than that. We’re going to write reviews, both off the cuff mini blog-form reviews, and also (later) more thorough and thought-out “review” type reviews. For right now, we’re just trying to get some momentum going. We’d like to have everyone we know posting their thoughts and opinions about comics on readcomics.org. Hey, that means you!

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F1 Website Challenge

A few months ago, Chris linked me to Sierra Bravo’s F1 Overnight Website Challenge. It’s somewhere between a grownup lock-in, a charity event, and work. The premise is that you (as a developer) sign up to help out a bunch of non-profits spruce up their websites in 24 hours. I thought it sounded like fun, and signed up. I also conned a bunch of my co-workers into doing it too, so we’ve got a team that’s worked together before, and should be able to actually pull something together in the alloted timeframe.

Chris isn’t local anymore, so he won’t be there (too bad, really), but there are a surprising number of other people I’ve worked with who are also doing the event. I’m looking forward to seeing (and competing against) approximately eighty other web developers all at once.

I’ll have my camera with me, and definitely intend to do some flickr uploading while I’m there. (Or if the network is bad, after it’s over.)

Wish me luck!

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Marketa Inglova at this year’s Oscars

I just spent the last twenty minutes googling for a good image of Marketa Inglova’s dress at the oscars (for florence). I didn’t really come up with anything, but in the process we watched her and Glen Hansard performing their Oscar winning song, Falling Slowly, both at the oscars, and then, randomly, in a much earlier performance. Then we watched their acceptance speech, which was cut off after Hansard spoke by the infamous music of cutting-people-off, and before Inglova could get a single word in edgewise. But then… later, she was brought back out onto the stage to speak her piece! I really have no idea whether that has ever happened before, but it seems unprecedented to me.

Anyway, the point is that, after all that, her speech was quite moving. Here is an excerpt:

“No matter how far out your dreams are it’s possible and, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope. And hope, at the end of the day, connects us all, no matter how different we are.” -Marketa Inglova

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Stop Animation in Video Games and movies

Florence, Mike, Jason and I went to see Be Kind, Rewind last Sunday, (the new one Directed by Michel Gondry). I love Gondry’s style so much, but this one fell pretty flat for me. Maybe my expectations were inflated because I have loved his other movies so much, but it didn’t really live up to something. I liked The Science of Sleep better, and I remember feeling pretty similarly disappointed when that one came out.

Anyway, this morning a co-worker sent out a link to the Game Over Project‘s Human Space Invaders, which of course I think is brilliant. They also made a version of stop animation human tetris, (not to mention Pong and Pole Position).

Bonus link to a blog post that outlines a pretty sweet tetris variant the author thought up. (lazyweb!!!)

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My Fabulist Love

I have recently re-discovered the magical site that is fabulist.org. For some reason, all the mp3s they post are gold. Or anyway, about 80% of them I like… which, believe it or not, is a fucking HUGE amount for me. And even the stuff I don’t really like (Johny Cash covers Rainbow Connection?) I can _appreciate_ why someone else might like it. I’ve been listening to a playlist I downloaded over there for about a week now, and am totally in love with Laura Marling, Lisa Hannigan, Vampire Weekend and Noah & The Whale.

UPDATE: I now HATE the fabulist.org for introducing me to music that is neigh impossible to obtain!!! Laura Marling’s CD has only just been released in the UK… Import rates are not terrible from amazon.co.uk, but Noah & the Whale have not even released an album yet!!! Vampire Weekend is readily available, and I haven’t yet looked into Lisa Hannigan. I have listened to all the Noah and the Whale songs on myspace, and they are fucking awesome. I’m retiring from the internet to play Mass Effect now. *cries*

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disturbing iphone correlation

I have to do more testing to be sure, but I think I’ve noticed a disturbing correlation between days when I listen to music on my iPhone on the way to work, and days when my iPhone decides to randomly show “No Service” and disconnect itself from AT&T.

I don’t really use my phone as an iPod all that often, and this issue hasn’t shown itself all that often either.

Notably:

  • A power-cycle has (so far) always fixed the issue.
  • I usually just unplug my headphones when I get into work, having verified once or twice that this “turns off” music playback.

Anyone else noticed this?