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August 22, 2011 at 8:42pm
3 notes (∞)
We are having a problem with Mr. Computer again. It has totally spaced out. An hour ago it routed all the whipples in New York across the same intersection. Loss of life was heavy. And instead of responding to the disaster with fire and police rescue teams it dispatched a circus troop of clowns.

—

Dick, Philip K., “The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree” in Dick, Philip K., We Can Remember It for You Wholesale: Volume Five of the Collected Stories (London: Millennium, 2000), p. 309.
August 17, 2011 at 9:07pm
Reblogged from valhallaisland
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Jim Whimpey: A month into Lion and I can say that my anticipation was well-founded, I love auto correct in Lion. Adium doesn’t yet support it and it’s hugely frustrating, I don’t know how I lived without it. I’m the exact opposite. Of all Lion’s “innovative” features, autocorrect is one of the most aggravating. It’s intrusive, overzealous, at times erratic, and more often than not it auto“corrects” incorrectly.1 On iOS, where the keys you’re pressing are 5 mm wide, it makes perfect sense — it compensates for the imprecision of hitting at such targets with digits that are much wider; on a real keyboard, it’s less necessary, and it encourages laziness and sloppy typing. Thankfully, it’s easily turned off.2 By far the worst sin, though, and the one that exposes just how poorly thought-out the backporting was, is the fact that it’s only partially controllable using the keyboard. A suggested autocorrection can be cancelled by hitting ⎋, but once the autocorrection has been made, you have to use your mouse to reverse it. When you’re touching a screen, this is fine, but when you’re using a keyboard, this isn’t an acceptable option. In this, it joins Microsoft Office’s autocorrect feature, which has been aggravating people since its introduction, and is just as overzealous. ↩ And if you know your ⌥ modifier combinations, you can also turn off the “hold for alternatives” option. ↩

Jim Whimpey:

A month into Lion and I can say that my anticipation was well-founded, I love auto correct in Lion. Adium doesn’t yet support it and it’s hugely frustrating, I don’t know how I lived without it.

I’m the exact opposite. Of all Lion’s “innovative” features, autocorrect is one of the most aggravating. It’s intrusive, overzealous, at times erratic, and more often than not it auto“corrects” incorrectly.1 On iOS, where the keys you’re pressing are 5 mm wide, it makes perfect sense — it compensates for the imprecision of hitting at such targets with digits that are much wider; on a real keyboard, it’s less necessary, and it encourages laziness and sloppy typing. Thankfully, it’s easily turned off.2

By far the worst sin, though, and the one that exposes just how poorly thought-out the backporting was, is the fact that it’s only partially controllable using the keyboard. A suggested autocorrection can be cancelled by hitting ⎋, but once the autocorrection has been made, you have to use your mouse to reverse it. When you’re touching a screen, this is fine, but when you’re using a keyboard, this isn’t an acceptable option.

  1. In this, it joins Microsoft Office’s autocorrect feature, which has been aggravating people since its introduction, and is just as overzealous. ↩

  2. And if you know your ⌥ modifier combinations, you can also turn off the “hold for alternatives” option. ↩

June 14, 2011 at 7:18pm
12 notes (∞)
My response to the suggestion that I try iA Writer for Mac.

My response to the suggestion that I try iA Writer for Mac.

June 8, 2011 at 7:54pm
0 notes (∞)

Fappy McFappins

Scene: The kitchen, whilst making tea.
Me: Fappy McFappins would be an awesome name for a kid.
Don: Or Dave.
Me: Sweetheart, I know what we’re going to call our next kitten! Fapper!
Emily: After his uncle Don.
Don: >shocked<
June 6, 2011 at 10:51pm
Reblogged from 9-bits
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Keep Your Hands Off My Fucking Browser

David Kaneda:

What’s New in Lion’s Safari →

A few interesting items from a development point of view:1

  1. Not only does the browser go full screen, but there will be a JavaScript API for doing so
  2. The mention caching audio/video in an HTML5 application cache — does this just mean the cache is larger than before?
  3. “New process architecture” and Sandboxing — ie. WebKit 2
  4. CSS3 auto-hyphenation
  5. WOFF support

Numbers two through four are good.

Number one?

Fucking terrible. I already hate the idea of fullscreen windows, but when I get to choose not to use them, it’s fine. Fullscreen windows that obnoxious webdevs can control? That has to be one of the worst ideas I have come across in a long time.

  1. Kaneda’s original list was unordered bullets; I numbered the items. ↩

May 29, 2011 at 3:55pm
7 notes (∞)
Wonderful.

Wonderful.

May 15, 2011 at 11:34am
Reblogged from nostrich
78 notes (∞)
That just about covers it.

That just about covers it.

(Source: nostrich)

May 2, 2011 at 7:51pm
0 notes (∞)

About This Redesign…

It’s no secret that I’m almost impossible to please. The majority of my posts are eviscerating others when they don’t adhere to what I consider to be an acceptable standard. That’s just What I Do™.

With that in mind, it would take someone incredibly stupid, or incredibly confident, to voluntarily accept my ludicrously specific design brief and take on the project of redesigning this site.

In spite of my best efforts to put him off,1 someone did take on the project, and his name is David Krauser.

And he didn’t just take on the project: he nailed it. He was a consummate professional throughout the whole process,2 and didn’t once tell me an idea was stupid or bad; instead, he implemented them from my the crappy mock-ups I knocked together in MS Paint, and he made them work.

Any Shoop-powered idiot can work to a client’s specifications and demands, however demented or tasteless, but it takes a really, really good designer to work to instructions whilst simultaneously making them work.

David Krause is one such designer: fantastic at what he does, not afraid to take risks, and unbelievably easy to work with. All of that, and the job he did on my site, is why I can’t recommend him highly enough.

  1. To quote directly from my opening email:

    [T]he brief would be as follows:

    • The colour scheme should be the same, or very similar to, the existing one;
    • The lime colour is non-negotiable (the fact it’s my favourite colour ably demonstrates how little taste I have);
    • It has to be completely Flash-free;
    • It has to be fast;
    • Ideally, it would be useable by those with poorer vision;
    • Plenty of whitespace;
    • Definitely not “Web 2.0ish”.

    ↩

  2. He was even graceful in the face of increasingly arbitrary demands; when I asked for the design to use “as few images as possible … and minimal/no JavaScript”, he just went ahead and did it. ↩

May 1, 2011 at 12:38pm
1 notes (∞)

Limitless Confusion

After an exam, which went quite well:
Me: You should see _Limitless_. It’s about a drug that makes you super-smart. Apparently, there are people in real life who take drugs to make them smarter. They’re called nootropics or something.
Sarah: Why didn’t you tell us about this *before* the exam?
Me: It’s got the guy from _The Hangover_ in it.
Sarah: Alan?
Me: I don’t know. The guy from _The Hangover_.
Sarah: Alan? The guy with the baby?
Me: No. The guy from _The Hangover_! The good-looking one.
Sarah: Bradley Cooper?
Me: The good-looking one.
Sarah: Bradley Cooper!
Me: Is he the good-looking one?
Sarah: Yes. I really want to see that film.
April 21, 2011 at 5:00pm
0 notes (∞)

…and now I’m overhearing a pair of women on the bus, talking about their respective community service terms and disclosures where “it came back saying I done attempted murder but it was reduced to advanced (sic) assault”. All whilst their children run around the bus shrieking.

Today is not a good day.

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