September 26, 2003

MacStumbler

MacStumbler is a program that looks for wireless access points, and gives you a lot of info about them. You can also use it in combination with a GPS device, to take the coordinates of wireless access points and map them out. This will go great with a 12” Powerbook. I’ll be able to easily find some wireless internet access everywhere I go! :)

Evil Advertisements

This is some of the most evil advertising I’ve seen in a while. I went to Gamespot to check up on all things gaming, and it brought up this ad. I’m a Gamespot Complete member, which means I shouldn’t see any ads at all, but sometimes the cookie expires and I have to log back in. But I didn’t even realize this was an ad at first, since it looks exactly like the front page of Gamespot, except it’s actually just a big image, and the entire thing is an ad. I clicked on the login field so I could login and get rid of the ads, only to be taken to some page on EA.com, because the whole damn screen was an advertisement.

This almost seems more evil than having pop-ups. I mean that is just downright deceiving you to click on an ad. Gaming sites always seem to have the absolute worst ads… IGN.com has ads plastered on absolutely everything as well.

I just got sued by the RIAA…

I just bought a couple of Mac shirts from MacShirt last night. I got the “Mac Geek” one, and the “It’s a Mac thing. (You wouldn’t understand)” one. There is another hilarious one on there that says “I just got sued by the RIAA, and all I have left is this lousy t-shirt”. Ahahahahaha. That’s hilarious. I would have bought it, but that would have been too much money. I might get it later.

*Thanks to Jonathan, whom my wife met in the grocery store because he was wearing a mac shirt, for recommending this site to buy from.

Even more CSS news

The CSS news is coming fast and furious these days…

Layout-O-Matic is a tool for making layout templates in CSS. You just enter the type of layout (2 column, 3 column, fluid, etc), the size, some padding measurements, and press submit and the site generates all the necessary code for you. Pretty great!

StyleMaster 3 is out for Windows and MacOSX, and is looking quite good. I will probably use it when I get a Mac, since Topstyle is not available on the Mac yet.

There is a List-O-Matic Dreamweaver Extension available now which lets you easily create CSS based menus right in Dreamweaver with only a few clicks. Nice!

Thanks to Zeldman for the links.

GameBoy Advance Wireless Adapter

Wired reports that Motorola is making a wireless adapter for the GameBoy Advance that will allow people to play multiplayer games wirelessly, within a 30 foot range of each other. Basically it’ll be like using one of the GameBoy Advance link cables, but without the cable I imagine. The upcoming Nokia N-Gage and Sony PSP will also have wireless multiplayer capabilities, so it’s cool to see Nintendo isn’t going to be falling behind. Now I just have to find some friends that actually have a GameBoy Advance, so I’ll have someone to play with! :)

September 25, 2003

Macromedia Central

Macromedia Central is a new software/service/Flash application from Macromedia that is currently in Public Beta. It’s basically like Sherlock or Watson on the Mac. You use one centralized application and one standard interface to access a wide range of information from many different web sites. Central only has two sections right now, the Weather and a movie finder, but there are supposed to be quite a few more when it launches later this fall. The big difference between Central and say, Watson, is that Central is just made out of Flash (and perhaps some other technologies as well, I don’t know all of the technical details). Anyway you just click on a button on the Macromedia site and it downloads and installs itself right in your browser with Flash.

Once you launch the program, you can enter your zip code, and receive the current weather info for our area, as well as a forecast. You can set alerts so that Central will automatically let you know when it is about to rain, or snow, etc.

For the movie finder, you can browse movies by theatre, search for a movie, sort by ranking on RottenTomatoes, etc. You can see still shots from scenes in the movie, click links to go to the official site of the movie, watch a trailer, add a movie to your favorites, etc.

Overall I think it is pretty cool, and could really be useful when they get some more services ready for it. Hopefully it will be free, but I don’t really understand exactly what they are planning to do with it. Sometimes it just seems like they are using it as an example of what Flash can do, others they act like it is going to be some new product.

Update, someone from Macromedia has already found my post and answered my question… Central will be free for end users, and will be a platform of sorts for developers to use to sell their own specific applications. Central has built-in transaction capabilities. Sounds pretty cool to me!

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that this seems especiallly cool to me since it is all in Flash. I’m normally not a fan of most Flash sites out there, but this seems like something that Flash is really useful for, and something it can do better than HTML. I hope to see more Flash applications in the future.

Either way, by the time it comes out officially I will probably already have Mac, and will be enjoying Watson, and won’t have to worry about this at all.

Synapse Media Player

Minse told me about this MP3 player software called Synapse. It uses the Windows Media Player codecs, but puts on a new, smarter front end. It has smart playlists sort of like iTunes, and will sort by artist automatically. It also automatically recognizes new songs when you rip them or download them, and they are automatically put into the playlist, like iTunes (only if you download them to a certain directory that is being watched). The Brain is also included, which learns what songs you like, and when you turn it on it will play your favorites automatically. There is also a console that understands english commands. You can type things like “Play 311” and it will find all the 311 songs in its library and start playing them. You can then say “Play Weezer after this song finishes” and when that song is done it will find all the Weezer songs and start playing them. You can tell it to do just about anything, and it will understand it and do it. It makes it much easier to play the songs you want this way. It’s much easier to type “Play MxPx”, than to open up your My Music folder, find MxPx, select all the songs you want, click play, wait for Windows Media Player to open, etc. Or have to maintain complex playlists by hand.

One thing I would like to see in the future however is a hotkey that will bring up just the console in a small window, allowing you to type commands. Kind of like in Launchbar on the Mac, which lets you press Command+Space, then a few letters to launch programs, etc. You could press Control+Space on a Windows computer with this program installed, then enter a command like “Play my 10 favorite songs” without having to click on the program and find the console, and type it in, etc.

But it should be good enough to satisfy me until I get a Mac and iTunes. :)

OneWord: Favorite

Here is a list of some of my favorite things:

• Game: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Drink: Was Mountain Dew, but since it is made out of poison, I try to just drink juice. I like apple juice.
• Food: I like pigs in a blanket a lot. With Big Franks of course, not real hot dogs. My wife also makes some good gravy to put on them.
• Car: Saab 9x. Yes I know it’s only a concept car, but it’s just so great. Super simple, and the interior is great too.
• Band: I like a lot of bands, but my all time favorite is probably the Smashing Pumpkins. Or Weezer.
• TV Show: Futurama, Simpsons, Family Guy, Six Feet Under, CSI… but that’s more than one, isn’t it?

Anyway. This is beginning to look like one of those email chain letters, and I think I went over my 60 second time limit about 3 minutes ago.

Microsoft enters Anti-Virus business. Hahaha

Microsoft bought some Romanian anti-virus company and plan on releasing their own anti-virus program and bundling it with the next version of Windows. That is just hilarious and terrible on so many levels. Now they’ll be making money from their own mistakes and errors. Plus it’s just another monthly “service” for them to force the poor Windows user into paying, if they want to get any work done on their computer. Now they can either fix the huge, gaping holes in their software, or just force everyone to pay a monthly service fee to be allowed to download the latest virus updates to keep stuff off of their machine. I’m guessing they will like the latter idea…

I really don’t understand how anyone can think Macs are too expensive anymore. You don’t have to buy anti-virus software on them, don’t have to pay a montly service fee to keep them running, don’t have to go days or weeks without your computer when you get a virus every couple of weeks, don’t have to waste time patching them 3 times a week, and on and on.

I often wonder if when I actually do get a Mac, I’ll be able to just let crap like this from Microsoft just slide by without getting so pissed off about it. Maybe I’ll just be able to sit back and smile, laughing to myself at all the silly Windows users out there, knowing that I don’t have to deal with any of that anymore. I hope so.

September 24, 2003

CSS List-O-Matic

Here’s another nice CSS resource: The List-O-Matic It allows you to easily specify the names of buttons in your navbar, then it generates a CSS file for you that formats an unordered HTML list into one of several different styles of CSS navbars. You can then take that CSS and customize it with your own colors, etc, to match your site.

There’s also a gallery of sorts of CSS navbars at Listamatic

And the CSS tutorials at Listutorials will teach you how to make your own fancy CSS navbars, without the help of the List-O-Matic.

The CSS Matrix Has You

If you haven’t yet taken the plunge into at least trying to learn CSS, this article is a pretty good place to start. I didn’t get to read the whole thing because the server started timing out, but when it comes back up I’ll finish it. It’s a good intro to CSS and why you should use it, with a little of the Matrix thrown in for good measure.

Nintendo Gamecube now $99.00

Nintendo has lowered the price of the Gamecube to $99.00 today. This is almost half the price of the PS2 or the Xbox, and the same price as the GameBoy Advance. In other words, it’s damn cheap. You can get a ‘Cube and a couple of games for the same price as one of the other systems.

If you don’t already have one, I highly recommend picking one up. It’s by far my favorite console, and has a ton of awesome games.

Some of my favorites:

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
One of the first “Adult oriented” games on a Nintendo system in quite a while, this is one of my favorite games ever. The gameplay is great, with an interesting “sanity meter” to gauge your character’s sanity in the game. When your sanity meter is empty, you experience a number of different hallucinations that can affect the game. Sometimes you’ll hear voices whispering in the background, or everything will be upside down, etc. Some of them are very subtle, and you don’t even notice them for a while. But I remember getting freaked out a couple of times from the effects, because it makes you think things are happening in the game that aren’t really happening. It’s quite interesting. The story is also quite good. Good enough that my wife, who has absolutely no interest in video games, sat beside me through the entire game, just watching me play. That’s a pretty good indication of a good game. The only bad thing about the game is that it is kind of short. I played through it in a weekend, probably 12 - 14 hours. If you think you can put that much time into it, it may be a better idea to rent it.

Pikmin
Yeah, so this one isn’t as adult oriented as Eternal Darkness, but contrary to popular belief, playing fun cartoonish games made by Nintendo will not make your penis smaller! I promise. Anyway, this game was spawned by the gaming genius Shigeru Miyamato, who also created Mario, Zelda, and basically every great Nintendo game ever.

The game starts out with a little alien spaceship man crashing onto a planet. He recovers from his crash landing, and begins exploring his surroudings, only to find these little creatures called Pikmin. He uses his whistle to control the Pikmin, and have them do things for him like collect resources, tear down walls, and most importantly, find and recover all of the pieces to his spaceship. That’s the basics to the game, gathering Pikmin, and having the Pikmin gather parts to your ship so you can return home. There are of course quite a lot of other things involved in the game, like fighting various enemies around the levels, and some interesting boss battles. You can tell the Pikmin to attack by using your whistle, or by picking them up and throwing them onto your enemies. Many of the boss battles involve throwing as many Pikmin onto the boss as possible, until he dies. Boss battles are always sad however, because inevitably some of your little Pikmin will die, and that is a sad, sad, day indeed. They are so cute and helpful you really do feel like you need to protect them.

There is even a real flower that was created for (or maybe named after) the Pikmin. It’s called the Pikmin flower, and it is actually the real name of a certain kind of flower.

This game is definitely worth buying, as it is pretty long and a ton of fun to play. Plus it is a Gamecube classic title now, which means it only costs $19.99.

Super Monkey Ball
This is probably one of my favorite multi-player games ever. I bought it a week or so after the Gamecube launched, not really knowing what it was. But I was definitely not disappointed. The game is basically a puzzle/maze type game. You pick one of four monkeys to play, and they are then put inside of a bit plastic ball, like one of those balls that hamsters roll around in. You are then dropped onto a level, and by using analog stick, you tilt the level, which causes the monkeyball to roll. The object of the game is to get your monkey through a goal at the other end of the level in the fastest time possible. It starts off pretty easy, but after a while it can get very nerveracking, trying to get through the levels before the time runs out.

The single player game is great, but the real multi-player fun comes with the Mini-games, which you unlock by completing levels in the main game. There are six mini-games:

Monkey bowling is a bowling game, where you set the aim, placement, and rotation of the monkeyball, and try to knock down bowling pins at the end of the lane.

Monkey golf is a putt-putt style game where you putt your monkey ball into a hole at the end of a course, while trying to negotiate hazards, barriers, etc.

Monkey race is a relatively straightforward racing game, where you race through several tracks to try and finish first. There are powerups and weapons along the way, ala Mario Kart, which allow you to slow down your opponents by knocking them off the track or slipping a banana peel in front of them.

Monkey billiards is a billiards game that uses the monkeyballs as the cue balls. There isn’t much more to say than that, except that the physics are pretty good, and it’s actually a pretty good little pool game.

Monkey fight is a boxing on wheels type game, where you roll around an arena with a huge boxing glove attached to your monkeyball. The object is to punch your opponents out of the ring, which scores you points. The one with the highest points wins. This one can get pretty frantic, and is a blast to play with four people.

Monkey target is by far my favorite mini-game. Basically it involves launching your monkeyball off of a huge ramp, then opening your ball so that it functions like a hang-glider. Then you fly out over the ocean, and try to land on targets that are floating on the water. Different zones are worth different amounts of points, and there are 3 different levels that the game cycles through. My friend Kevin and I have spent dozens of hours playing this one mini-game, not to mention the rest of the games. It would have been worth $50 for monkey target alone.

This is the perfect game to have if you have more than one controller and friends that like to play. Even if they don’t normally like video games, the controls are extremely easy to learn, usually involving only the analog stick and the A button, allowing anyone to jump in and play. This is one of the only games my wife will play, aside from the SNES Super Mario Brothers. :)

Super Monkey Ball 2
Obviously this is the sequel to SMB, and is basically the same as far as gameplay goes. It adds another 150 levels to the main game, as well as remakes of the original six mini-games, plus 6 more.

The new games are:

Monkey boat where you paddle your monkeyball down a river by alternately mashing the two top shoulder buttons on the Gamecube controller. This game is a lof fun, but has to be played in short bursts because it is absolutely murder on your hands. We’re talking instant carpal tunnel, here. Pain aside, it’s still a pretty fun game until your hands fall off.

Monkey target is a game where you shoot various objects, kind of like Virtua Cop. I haven’t unlocked this one, so I don’t exactly know how it plays.

Monkey baseball is a very simple baseball game, maybe a little too simple. I haven’t played this one very much.

Monkey tennis is a simple tennis game, which can be fun, but is a little too simple as well.

There is also Monkey soccer, which I haven’t played yet either. But as you can guess, it’s a simple soccer game.

If you liked the first Super Monkey Ball, you can’t go wrong with the sequel.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Say what you will about this games silly title, this is an absolute gaming masterpiece. I can easily recommend buying a Gamecube just to play this game, it is so good.

It’s hard to describe why this game is so good. But basically it’s just perfect. The graphics are vibrant, bright, and extremely well animated. The sound is perfect, from the music to the sound effects and the little musical fanfare that is played every time you hit an enemy with your sword. The story is involved and interesting, making you want to keep playing just to see what happens next. The control setup is flawless, allowing you to perform normally complex maneuvers with ease. The puzzles in the game are challenging, but are always common sense. If you can’t figure something out, you will always receive a subtle hint to point you in the right direction, without being overly obvious and spoiling the challenge.

Whenever I finish this game I will write up a good long review about it. But suffice it to say for now that if you are at all interested in games, you have to have this game. Trust me.

Other games that I hear are good, but haven’t had a chance to play yet:

Animal Crossing
Soul Calibur II
Simpsons: Hit & Run
Mario Golf
Ikaruga
F-Zero

Not to mention all the great new games coming out soon like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, 1080 Avalanche Snowboarding, several more Zelda games, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snake, Metroid Prime 2, Pikmin 2, a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, more Mario games, and much more!

This is a great console overall and I highly recommend you pick one up.

Automatic Labs

Dan Benjamin of Hivelogic has launched a new site for his design/development company: automatic labs. It’s super clean, beautiful, functional, simple and standards compliant. Definitely one of my favorite sites in a while. Looks like he has a new CMS system called Turbine as well. He doesn’t say how much it costs though, you have to contact him for more details. Which makes me think it is expensive, whether it is or not. But he just left a note on Hivelogic saying that his upcoming free CMS/blog tool is not Turbine, and I guess it will be called Grendel and still be free or cheap.

OneWord: Acrobat

I actually used to take gymnastics when I was around 10 years old. From Charles Harding Gymnastics in Nashville, TN. I was never very good. Too tall probably. It’s hard to make a long body flip and spin. I still have my t-shirt with Charles Harding Gymnastics on it though. My wife wears it for pajamas sometimes. It’s a very comfortable shirt now, after 11 years of use. And to think, she wanted me to throw it away before she actually tried wearing it…

OneWord

September 23, 2003

OneWord: Used

Used CDs are the only thing I will buy these days. Even then I just rip them to MP3s and sell them again on Amazon. However when I get a Mac I plan on buying my favorite albums from the iTunes Music Store, since they are priced at a more reasonable $9.99 for most albums. Plus once you download the album you can burn it to as many CD’s as you want, or put it on an iPod, or just keep it on your computer.

OneWord

7.5’ Computer Monitors

Wow. This is a really, really big monitor. Up to 96” wide, with a resolution of 6400 x 1200. Wow. Oh, and it only costs $17,500!

I’ve never heard of this company before, but apparently they are a very high-end PC manufacturer. And holy crap are their computers ever expensive. The next time someone tells me Apple’s machines are too expensive, I will be happy to send them to this site. Their cheapest desktop machine is $3,000, with the most expensive default configuration being nearly $8,000. However after customizing a system with all of the options maxed out it came out to $32,000 without a monitor.

It’s also quite interesting that this company completely rips off the Apple site. It’s basically an exact copy, only with their own bulky beast computers in place of the sleek and elegant Macs. Funny how even the biggest and most innovative PC manufacturers still copy everything Apple does, while simultaneously putting them down for not being fast enough or not running Windows or whatever bullshit excuse they have come up with at the moment.

They do seem like awfully nice machines, the only problem being that they still run Windows. I guess if you really like windows or something though, they would be pretty nice to have.

Heat, Electricity, Clutches

Not long after my Fires, floods, robberies, and falling trees post, I have to make this post. Why can’t anything just go “right” for once?

Last week our air conditioner in the house stopped working. We had the guy come out and look at it ($70 just to come look at it!!), and he discovered that there was a freon leak in the heating unit thing outside the house. So we had to pay $250 to fix that. I don’t know if $250 is a reasonable price to weld a pipe and recharge the unit with freon, but I have a feeling it isn’t. Reliable Heating and Air seems quite overpriced if you ask me. I won’t use them again.

About the same time my car battery decides to die, so I have to jump start it for a few days until I can go buy another battery. Auto Zone installed it for free, so I give them two thumbs up. They also have a pretty cool thing on their web site where you enter info about your car and then you can see what parts you need for it, and order them online so you can pick them up at a local store.

We also still have a water leak at our house. Our water bill was $150 last month instead of the normal $20. It’s between the meter and the house, so we’ll have to dig up the whole freakin’ water line and replace it to stop the leak. And the guy I was referred to that is supposed to be able to do that apparently doesn’t need any business, because I’ve been calling him since last week and he rarely calls back, and when he does he says he’ll call again tomorrow to get directions, but never does.

We also still have electrical problems at the house… The outlets in the bathrooms don’t work and some of the other ones are acting crazy. Will have to pay an electrician to fix that eventually I guess.

Sears won’t replace the dryer that we lost in the fire, but they took it away for us for free. How nice. So we do our laundry at my wife’s boss’ house now.

Then today my wife’s Jeep decided to stop shifting (it’s a stickshift) so I assume her clutch has gone out. Great. We haven’t gotten it fixed yet, so I can’t report on how much money I got ripped off for yet. But I’m sure it will be hundreds or thousands of dollars, so I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

Sigh…

September 22, 2003

Freaking Great® Flash Site

I don’t say any Flash site is any good very often, but I love this one: Evolution Bureau. It’s fast, super clean, and oh-so-minimal. I love the way it resizes smoothly while it’s loading, and especially the sounds. A nice ocean sound on the front page, and little clicks and other fun noises as the site resizes or changes pages. If I ever make a Flash site, I hope it is like this one.

Dear Music Industry

Jason Zada has written a great rant directed at the music industry. He encourages everyone that reads it and everyone he knows to stop buying plastic CD’s. To instead rip their entire music collection to MP3’s, sell all of their existing CD’s and never buy another one. He’s not really promoting stealing music, just boycotting overpriced CD sales until the music industry adapts to new technology. Buy from the iTunes Music Store or even BuyMusic.com if you don’t have a Mac. It has become quite obvious that people are still willing to pay for music, as seen by the fact that the iTMS has sold over 10,000,000 songs in only a few months, with only a fraction (Mac OSX Users) of a fraction (Mac users in general) of the total computer market even able to purchase the songs. So it’s really the music industries own fault for dragging their heels and trying to bankrupt all of their potential customers because they don’t want to buy music the same way anymore.

But anyway, I just wanted to send out my own “fuck you” to the record industry, and send a link over to the nice rant that Jason wrote.

September 18, 2003

Fractal Screensaver

Fracture is a fractal screensaver for Mac OSX. It seems to have a ton of options for tweaking the fractals, and produces some pretty awesome looking stuff, judging by these screenshots. It uses anti-aliasing to produce pretty high quality images, unlike the Windows fractal screensavers I have seen in the past that look like crap. You can configure the colors and algorithms it uses, and even save a picture of the fractal to disk.

Update I tried this at a friend’s house this weekend and wasn’t very impressed… It appears that it just shows screen shots of fractal designs that have already been drawn. I thought it would show them being drawn and stuff, so it isn’t as impressive as I thought it would be.

September 17, 2003

Taking Macs out of Schools

There is a pretty funny article on the St. Petersburg Times web site called Schools will give kids new Windows on the world that comments on a school superindendant’s decision to remove Macs from the classrooms. I’m surprised such a sarcastic article was published in a mainstream newspaper, but it is funny nonetheless, not to mention true.

September 16, 2003

New Powerbooks

Apple has announced new Powerbooks today. All models are upgraded, but the 15” has changed the most.

The 15” now has:

• Up to 1.25ghz G4
• Optional Lighted Keyboard
• 80 gigabyte hard drive
• Up to 2 gigs of RAM
• Built-in Airport Extreme Wireless
• Built-in Bluetooth
• Radeon Mobility 9600 Graphics card (64mb)
• Gigabit ethernet
• Firewire 400 & 800
• Superdrive

The top of the line model is $2599.00, which includes 512megs of RAM, the backlit keyboard, etc. There is another model that is only $1999.00 that has a 1ghz processor, no lighted keyboard, 256 megs of RAM, etc.

I must say I am very impressed with this machine. Oh yeah, it’s also been updated to the aluminum casing now, which should fix some of the old problems with the screens bending and being too fragile.

I was looking at the 12” before (which has been updated to 1ghz) but now I may have to try to talk the boss into spending a little more and going for the top of the line 15”. That is just a sweet machine.

The only problem is that it comes with a 4200RPM hard drive which seems pretty slow. Though for $125 you can upgrade it to 5400RPM, which is what most laptops have.

Apple also announced new Bluetooth powered wireless keyboard and mouse for $79 each. I don’t think I’ll be buying either one of these though. I’m going to have to buy a two button mouse when I get a Mac anyway. Holding control and clicking to right-click is just annoying.

September 14, 2003

Web Surfing License

Wired is running an article that explores the possibility of requiring people to be licensed to use computers on the internet. The reasoning is that people have to be licensed to operate cars, certain machinery, etc., so why not be licensed to use a computer? When you have your computer connected to the public internet, you can affect other people’s computers by letting your own be infected with viruses, etc. Just like you can damage other people’s cars on the open road. By being certified and having to pass basic computer literacy tests before you’d be allowed to connect to the internet, the article hopes that the spread of viruses, spam, and adware would decrease because there would be smarter, more educated people on the internet.

Hm. Riiiiiiiiight… Like your mom is going to go down to the “Department of Internet Licensing” or whatever and take a course and 2 hour exam just to check her email. And an accountant is going to take the time to do that just to use Excel and Quickbooks. Never gonna happen.

Not to mention 1 in 7 computers users can’t even turn the computer on.

However the article also mentions some universities requiring students to sit through a 45 minute lecture before they are given access to the school network and internet access. I think this is a much better idea. Don’t force people to be licensed, but at least require students to take a basic literacy course in creating secure passwords, etc. Older people are not going to go back and take a course on computer basics, but if it’s a required part of a college course, then the students wouldn’t have a choice. I know most colleges have basic computer literacy classes right now, but from what I’ve heard they basically just tell you how to use MS Office. Which is utterly useless. I mean sure, most people will need to learn how to use a word processing program at some point in their careers, but I would think it would be much more valuable for them to actually learn a little about how computers work, so that they could figure things out for themselves in the future rather than just memorizing steps out of a book on how to make a newsletter.

Or if they wanted to skip the training and lectures on how to keep your computer secure, they could just buy a Mac. :)

September 11, 2003

Natural Color Selection

I just had to post something other than a girl picture to keep my blog nerdy enough for my tastes…

Found this article on YayHooray about how to use natural color palettes as the basis for your designs and interfaces. It’s a really helpful article, and the samples they show that have used a natural color palette are quite good. It really makes the site look more warm and friendly, compared to the cold “corporate blue” of most big-name sites. It also shows a very interesting way to choose your palette, by choosing a few shades from a photograph, rather than choosing colors at random in Photoshop or by using a color program like ColorSchemer. Most colors in nature are automatically complimentary and look great together, (God is the master artist after all, I suppose) so it’s a really good technique to use to find interesting color combinations.

A couple of other color picking ideas/resources:

QuickColor
This YayHooray Thread
Colorwhore
Colormatch
Pretty much any of these books
Lots more color picker links here with reviews as well

September 10, 2003

More Windows Critical Security Flaws

Only a couple of weeks after the last two major worms/viruses caused damage to millions of computers, Microsoft has issued a trio of “critical” security warnings today. Yes, 3 more critical security flaws which could allow a virus or worm to execute any code on your computer that it feels like. Yet more hours spent patching Windows to keep some teenage programmer from destroying your machine. These flaws affect basically every version of Windows ever, so if you are reading this and there is a Start button on your computer, it would be wise to run Windows Update or visit this site to download the patch. Either that or you’ll end up paying some “IT Consultant” $50 an hour a couple of weeks from now to fix your machine after you open the wrong email.

That or buy a Mac which is of course completely unaffected by any of these worms or viruses.

I really hope my boss gets some money together soon to buy me that 12 inch Powerbook!

September 05, 2003

After Life

I’m normally not a big fan of Flash, but this is a really well put together Flash image gallery. It’s extremely well done, and has a really great atmosphere. Plus the Flash is very subtle, not in your face with flashing lights and rotating objects. Be sure to move your mouse around on the pictures, some of them are interactive. And start with spring, progressing to winter. The music and everything go from happy spring sounds, to more atmospheric and “cold” sounds in Winter. And if you really want to “experience” it, hit F11 to put (most) browsers into full screen mode.

After Life

September 03, 2003

Web site speed analyzer

Zeldman linked to a pretty slick web site speed analyzer thingy over at websiteoptimization.com.

It seems to work quite well, but it’s also pretty damn strict! Yahoo.com failed two of the tests, and got a “caution” diagnosis on 4 others (out of 6 areas). Google passed with flying colors, and supposedly loads in 3 seconds on 56k, whereas Yahoo loads in 15.

I ran this site through, And it got a few things right, but quite a few warnings. Mainly because of too many pictures, resulting from all those buttons on the left over there. I guess it takes about 30 seconds for 56kers to view. Sorry about that! Hopefully since the layout is CSS you can see the actual content and start reading before all the pictures load.

However a new site I am currently working on that uses total CSS got a “congratulations” rating on every criteria except the size of my CSS file. I think he should allow for a little more room in the CSS though. They can get a little big when you are setting rules for your entire site in one document, plus they are cached, so you will only have to load the HTML on subsequent pages.

Anyway the site is a companion the book which looks like a pretty informative read. I might pick it up to see what his tips and tricks are for reducing file size.

Blaster Boy a Typical Teen?

Wired has an article titled “Blaster Suspect a Typical Teen?” saying that a friend of the kid that was arrested for releasing a variant of the MSBlaster worm is “just a kid” who is likely innocent.

Innocent? Uhm, no. You don’t “accidentally” download a virus and modify the code, re-releasing it onto the internet. Sure he may not have had malicious intentions, hoping to cause millions and millions of dollars worth of damages to computers worldwide, but he still did it, no matter the reason. He probably just finished reading a virus writing tutorial on some hacking web site, and thought he’d try his hand at modifying the latest and greatest worm currently floating around. Which would probably explain why he has been caught, and the original virus writer has not (yet).

Like many young computer geeks, I was interested in the hacking sub-culture for a year or two when I was like 13. It’s easy to get into when you are young. It gives you the feeling of being a “rebel” just by look at hacking web sites, without actually having to go out of your house to do anything “dangerous” like spray grafitti on a wall or vandalize your school. Instead you can sit in your own house at your own desk with your own computer, run a little program to deface web sites or send email viruses, and still have your mom cook dinner for you. In hacker-culture, your popularity is not based on how cool you look or how good you are at sports or who you hang out with. It’s usually the coolness of your nickname, and the accompanying graphic that you use at the bottom of all your posts on hacker messageboards. It’s a great way for nerds to feel cool I guess.

I never did anything malicious at all when I was into it. Mostly just reading and looking around at different messageboards, enjoying the “culture” more than actually doing anything. But it seems to be even easier to get into today, with many programs out there to launch email attacks, Denial of Service attacks on web sites, etc at the push of a button.

Today I am not amused with all these viruses floating around. My home computer got hit with both of the worms that went around recently, and my wife’s email account is still getting slammed with hundreds of messages a day from the virus. My dad’s computer was down for 4 days, making it impossible for him to do business for that period of time. I spent an entire morning updating all our computers at work to prevent them from being affected, when I should have been using the computer to work and make money instead of keeping viruses out. When I was at Best Buy the other day I saw a 70 year old woman spending $50 to buy Norton Antivirus, probably because she saw something on the news about worms and viruses destroying her computer; or maybe she already had the worm and someone told her to buy Norton to get it off.

That is just unacceptable. I am so damn fed up with Windows and Microsoft products in general that it makes me sick. I cannot understand why people keep buying PC’s, why they keep upgrading Office every year, why they go back to Dell again and again. I’m writing this on a PC, because that’s what we have at work. Why? Because that’s just what my boss thought he needed. He probably heard from some PC nerd that Macs are for kids or that they can’t run Office or something. I am working very hard to change that however, and use every possible chance to explain to him why the Mac is better. I think me spending half a day patching up security holes last week will help my cause considerably. In fact I have worked it out with him to get a 12” Powerbook for me to use. If it works with all of our printers and everything, we’ll eventually sell all the PC’s and get Macs. So thank goodness for that.

Here’s an interesting article from Mac Observer, which states that out of over 71,000 viruses listed in the Network Associates database, zero affect Mac OSX. Yes, zero. There are 500 or so that affect Mac OS9, but all but 30 of those are flaws in Microsoft Word, allowing macro viruses to execute. So even on the old MacOS, 95% of the viruses on the system were Microsoft’s fault. Plus the other 70,500 viruses in the database that affect Windows.

Anyway, this post has touched on too many topics already. I didn’t mean to get so carried away, I just wanted to talk about that virus kid getting busted! Oh well.

To sum up, John Gruber expresses my feelings more clearly and eloquently than I ever could in an articled entitled Good Times. Do yourself a favor, read it. (and the follow-up, Dynomite)

Update Oh look, Microsoft just announced a whole new bundle of critical security flaws, great!

September 01, 2003

Best Buy Checkout = Good

I bought some CD-R’s (50 for $2.99 with rebate, what a deal!) from Best Buy today, as well as a copy of Advance Wars 2 for the GBA. I really like Best Buy’s little card swiper thing. It says “You may swipe your card at any time”. I like this a lot because I can go ahead and swipe my card while the cashier is scanning all the items and getting a total. This way I don’t have to wait for her to finish, then swipe my card and enter my PIN number and all that stuff.

None of the other card swipers I’ve ever used make it clear that you can swipe your card before you have a total. Even if it is possible, I’m afraid to try it because it might mess up my purchase and the cashier would have to start over. And I certainly can’t ask the cashier about it, that would be embarrassing!

So, Best Buy gets 2 thumbs up in the checkout process from me.