In an effort to inspire myself to write here more, I am doing a bit of a code refresh. I have simplified the style considerably and thrown away a lot of odds and ends. No more bookmarks. No more sidebar. Practically no navigation at all. I even ditched the polar bear. As I start using the site again, I may reintroduce some of these things. If you see anything missing, drop me a comment.
When I left Delicious a year ago, I had two simple reasons. First, Delicious was painfully stupidly slow. Second, Delicious had obviously been abandoned by its developers, since it remained stagnant for the previous year despite all the problems. So I moved over to Ma.gnolia which was bright, speedy and engaged with their community. I liked Ma.gnolia, I really did. It had some slick innovative features, like topical user groups. But its tag management was always weak and I’ve got a ton of tags to manage.
Recently Delicious underwent a significant redesign, so I gave them another shot. The UI and visual design have finally been improved. More importantly, Delicious runs quickly again. This improvement made a huge difference in my re-introduction. Importing my bookmarks ran quickly and smoothly. So far, I am pleased. I will write again after I have used it for a while.
To celebrate, I created this lovely tag cloud. Those of you who know me know I think tag clouds are useless. I was wrong: they make great art! Click the image to see the tool I made it with.
Okay, new rule! If I select the same preference customization when an application starts ten consecutive times, that application must remember and execute that customization permanently. If not, I get ten dollars from the manufacturer for every subsequent failure. It should remember it on the first try. But ten! Ten is insulting. I think this is a fair rule. You ignore my wishes ten times, you give me ten bucks. It’s more than fair, and it should be part of the ULA. I’m looking at you, Microsoft. Continue reading »
I apparently missed this news back in December. I have been re-watching seasons 1-3 of Battlestar Galactica in anticipation of the fourth and final season. I went to iTunes to sign up for the season pass of downloads… and it’s gone. Apparently NBC wanted $4.99 per episode and Apple said no. In fact, Apple said more than no, cutting NBC off prior to the start of the Fall season rather than waiting for the contract to end in December. Charging $4.99 per episode works out to $100 per season of BSG. Who would pay that? That’s criminal! The six-disc DVD is $45 and the HD-DVD is $100. NBC thinks we will pay inflated HD prices for regular low-fi content? Seriously? Continue reading »
Yesterday, while at the local California Tortilla, we spied a Maybach parked illegally in front of our local Starbucks. For those who have never heard of the Mayback, they are seriously rare and seriously expensive. It is a huge Mercedes-built luxury sedan for the uber-rich (background: the Maybach was Daimler’s response to BMW purchasing Rolls-Royce). While we ate, we watched out the window to see if the owner would appear, thinking it must be a Marriott (they’re local), a basketball player or a movie-star we would recognize. We never did figure out who owned it, but while we were watching a second Maybach drove by. Yes, there were TWO Maybachs. Unbelievable! It’s like the Queen of England and the Pope decided to meet in Potomac for a spot of tea.
What is particularly funny is that the second one, which I couldn’t get a picture of, was hideous. It was British racing green with cream side panels. And it was just awful looking. I searched Google images to try to find a picture of one with this color scheme but it was tough to find one. Apparently Maybachs are custom-built for each owner, so that color scheme was carefully selected by someone. Money does not buy taste, apparently.
