2007.05.22

The price of gas is the price of gas

16.55.10 - Mark

I'm sick and tired of people bitching, moaning, and calling for political action over the price of gas. Yes, Gas prices are approaching $4 a gallon, but honestly what can you do about it? What the hell is the US Government going to do that doesn't take us several steps closer to socialism?

If you need the gas you buy it, if you don't want to buy it live without it. It's basic capitalism, which last I checked was part of the reason our government was dicking around in the middle east. I've been filling up my Honda '91 (which only gets about 24miles to the gallon) about once a month. Instead of driving everywhere I ride share, ride a bike, or even walk. If there was such a thing locally I'd consider using mass transit. Gasoline for your car is not an absolute essential, so stop treating it like it is.

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2007.05.20

Laughtracks suck

00.10.17 - Mark

I'm working my way though Sports Night on DVD due in part to the cancellation of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and I'm getting a harsh reminder of how much laugh tracks suck ass. I think it's more or less a dead practice, but any network executive, or even a producer who doubts the ability of their audience to know a joke when it comes by, probably shouldn't be in showbiz. Also, they should remove the damned things when releasing shows on DVD.

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2007.05.12

Quick?

02.05.14 - Mark

Wiki is Hawaiian for "Quick", and that is supposedly one of the underlying themes in the various Wikimedia projects. I may have bought into that two hours ago, but I've spent the last 90 minutes fighting with Wikimedia services.

It started out with honorable intentions. I've got a copy of the game Polarity, and like all things involving strong magnets it's fun to play. At some point in the past I got to wondering what kind of magnet goes into the Polarity pieces, so I checked the wikipedia article, which is more or less a stub. I filled this tid bit of information away, until yesterday.

I was bored yesterday and decided to set up my $2 macro photo studio (based on this handy design) and shoot some various objects. Because I've had magnets on the brain for a few days, I though it might be fun to shoot some pictures of Polarity pieces leaning on each other, and about the same time that thought occurred, the memory of the wikipedia stub popped up. A quick check confirmed that the article hadn't been expanded, and that it still lacked any images. So I go and shoot my photos, come back a while later, and I set off on the process of adding them to the Hitchhiker's Guid... I mean Wikipedia.

I'm familiar with the mechanics of wikis. I've got a personal mediawiki install, I've played with a couple other wikis, and on occasion have come close to making small changes to the Wikipedia So it should be easy to upload an image right? Wrong. I spent over an hour reading and rereading help documents and wikipedia style articles on how to upload an image, how to format it in the article, blah blah blah, found out I needed to start an account, did (at wikimedia commons, then started to upload the image before getting confused by the media licensing requirements, eventually managed to upload the image (it's here for the curious) quickly realized that despite the fact that they share databases, I needed another account for wikipedia, got that set up, then spent a bit more time looking at formatting guidelines and help files to figure out how to include the image in the article, and finally (after over an hour) managed to edit my image into the article that had an open request for images.

How exactly is that quick? Wikis are supposed to be Web 2.0, so how come the usability is so slow and awkward? All of the information they wanted when I uploaded the image was single line stuff, but they forced me to slow down and rewrite it in their unique syntax. Where's the clean, easy to follow interactive tutorial or brain dead form to fill out. It would have taken me 90 seconds to do the same thing on Flickr and the resulting upload would have almost exactly the same information. It's a bit insane, and more than a bit off putting. I might help the Wiki if I see some simple change that needs to be made, but I don't see myself contributing that much, even if there are some articles I could really help out on.

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2007.03.22

A note to an idiot.

21.44.42 - Mark

To the fucktard on the trail today
you know who you are
with your two kids and your bike
and and your clear cut road rage

I'm sorry you felt that I cut you off
when I passed your bike
but sometimes it happens-
I did try to steer clear

I didn't hear any cruses
nor heard any brakes
but the trail itself
is only a few feet wide

With no injuries or foals
you sought your revenge
you positioned your bike
at the trails official end

You laid in wait
had your kids in tow
all making your strike
look like a regular break

You let me Dad pass
how nice of you
but before I followed
you made your move

I saw it in you eyes
before you moved your bike
what the fuck were you thinking
trying to get me to fly off my bike!

You're lucky I stopped
or I would have sued -
I'd have gone into the creek or maybe some posts
or worse of all t-boned you or you kids.

I would have taken the bird
maybe even a stern word
but inducing a wreak?
What does that solve?

(Writing this was a hell of a lot more relaxing than the usual long winded rant.)

Prose decoded: I'm traveling a decent speed on my bike when I pass another rider and his kids towards the end of a local and popular bike trail. I ride around a parking lot at end of trail to get an extra 1/8mile or so (its rounds out the mileage) by the time I get back to the trail, the guy and his kids are taking a break. My Dad, whose riding a few dozen yards ahead of me passes just fine. I get within 15 feet of this asshat and he starts moving himself and his bike deliberately into my path, almost entirely blocking the trail entrance. My options are: 1) Slam on the brakes and pray I don't T-bone the asshole and his bike, 2) slam on the brakes and try not to run over his kids, 3) veer off to my right and take a 7 foot fall into a very shallow creek or 4) veer off to the left and run into a nasty vehicle barrier. If I hadn't been watching out for the kids, and saw him moving into my path, I'd be typing this with a bad case of road rash and some nasty cuts. I managed to brake and evade, but his "justification" for his insane game of chicken? "How do you like being cut off?" It almost would have been worth it to.

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2007.03.09

Unwanted Features

23.33.35 - Mark

The New York Times has gone off and done something annoying, they added pop-ups to their site. Not advertising pop-up, which are an active form of evil, or even their slightly tolerable cousin where you ask them to send a pop-up window with more information by clicking a clearly marked link. No what they've done is added an unwanted feature where if you double click on a word, any word, it brings up a popup window called "The New York Times: Reference Search for" what ever word you double clicked on. Frankly, its damned annoying.

I have a tendency to click around when reading a web page, I double click words, make random selections, ect. A side effect of being a tactile learner. Most pages, its not a problem, but every time I'm at the New York Times I have to concentrate on not clicking anything.

The only notice they give the user is in small print, well after the end of each article:


Tips

To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.


Unfortunately, as far as I can tel there are no "Tips" on how to disable this unwanted feature. Even browsing the help section of the site didn't produce anything helpful.

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2007.02.24

Electric Cars (POTUS Edition)

19.43.50 - Mark

President Bush inspecting an electric vehicle on the White House Lawn After watching Who Killed the Electric Car? the other day, and posting about it, seeing this story about President Bush looking at some plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is too funny. When we have production ready electric vehicles from major automotive manufacturers, Bush is citing it as an example of entrepreneurs rushing in to solve our nation's oil addiction while calling on Congress to fund research into alternative energy sources. I especially like how he avoids the questions about whether or not he'll be getting an electric vehicle for his ranch. Classic Bush.

In the past I might have accepted the fact that he is a "busy" man, and that he may not be aware of the feasibility of commercial, market ready, electric vehicles and associated technologies, however Bush has repeatedly proven that he actively ignores science and technology advisers, especially those who don't come from with glowing recommendations from oil industry executives or prominent religious leaders. This is just a dog and pony show, and that's a true shame.

Story and photo via Treehugger

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2007.02.20

Six steps to a better DVD

20.11.47 - Mark

Having been watching a bunch of movies recently, most of them on DVD, I'm finding myself annoyed by the same few "features" of the DVD's I've been watching.

1) Kill off the cheesy anti-piracy propaganda
First off, I really don't want to be reminded that piracy is illegal, when I've legally acquired the DVD I'm viewing it on. You really have to wonder what the MPAA's logic is in including their anti-piracy videos on legal media. You never see them pirated material, so they're beating honest customers over the head with propaganda.

2) I've been warned, can I watch my film now?
To be fair, the FBI and Interpol copyright warnings are somewhat excusable, in that by forcing everyone to view them for 10 to 20 seconds takes out any reasonable claim of ignorance. However, do you really need to force me to view them every single time I put the DVD in? Either make it something I can skip, or put it somewhere where it doesn't feel like I'm getting browbeaten with it.

3) Intrusive Marketing. Part One
Then there is the various branding and trailers that used to plague VHS tapes. I think its fine if you want to include some in the special features, however sticking in half a dozen trailers - often on top of the various piracy warnings - is pretty damned annoying. More so in a few months (or years) when I come back wanting to watch a movie and am forced to watch trailers for movies where I've long since forgotten and had no interest in to begin with.

4) Intrusive Marketing. Part Two
Don't feel obligated to loudly pronounce who you are before showing me the film either. I honestly don't care is the DVD I'm watching came from United Artists, Fox, Paramount, or the struggling artist down the street. I just want to see the movie

5) More than a movie
There's only one real reason I buy movies, rather than watch them on TV or add them to my Netflix queue, and that's special features. It should be a crime to release a DVD without any special features, and yet they keep doing it. By far the worst offender I've seen has been the DVD release of eXistenZ which is a spiritual brother to Dark City and The Matrix (the first one) in that the movie totally fucks with your mind by questioning how we perceive reality. It's one of the few movies where I have really, really wanted to watch it again with some form of commentary, but for some bizarre reason the DVD has a total lack of special features. (Just for reference, Dark City, The Matrix, and eXistenZ were all released in 1999. Dark City - despite its relative obscurity - and The Matrix both had feature packed DVD releases)

6) More does not mean "anything"
While I really want to see special features on any DVD I pick up, that does not mean I want to see steaming piles of crap. Short documentaries, production sketches, commentary (director's, actor's, or even a critic's or a fan's) all add to a film. However, some things should be left to die. Many deleted and alternate scenes were left on the cutting room floor for a reason, usually good ones. Simply adding them back in to flesh out a special features menu can be a waste of space (and almost always a bad idea if the deleted scenes don't come with commentary), and anyone who so much as proposes putting cast and crew biographies into the special features should have their eyes pried open and forced to moderate flame wars on IMDB

Compared to actually making a movie, putting together a decent DVD release should not be that hard. For the cost of a few beers you can get fans to create audio commentary (look at what podcasting has done already) and a little common sence should make it easy to create clean intuitive DVD interfaces that don't bombard viewers with MPAA/RIAA propaganda and other Hollywood marketing BS, or at least you would think.

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2006.10.09

I Hate Columbus Day

15.28.41 - Mark

While I'm not going to say that Columbus Day is the stupidest holiday to be recognized in the United States. It is unquestionably the stupidest holiday celebrated in the US.

Only an entity as severly messed up as the United States Bureaucracy would take a day off to honor a genocidal tyrant and religious fanatic.

Banks are closed and mail won't be delievered because some european with particularly good marketing set foot on a carribean island - whose population would soon be killed or enslaved.

Of coruse today isn't just Columbus Day, apparently it's also Leif Erikson Day (with it's own Presidential Proclamation)

What a weird world we live in...

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