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katlalog

051031 22:40 SciFi

In the UK female science fiction fans now outnumber men.

There has been an increase in positive female role models, whereas in Star Trek, all the women were either aliens or wore short skirts.

051028 23:12 Browsers

I have so little time these days. I miss playing with my browser. This is exactly why i had this love affair with Mozilla from very early on (milestone 13, i think)... constantly finding new nifty things this browser can do. Just now i stumbled upon the undoclosetab extension. Fantastic.

051028 22:48 Information

When i was little i used to watch those Carl Sagan documentaries. In one he stood in a library and mentioned how many lifetimes it would take to read all the book in this one library. That was a terrible shock for me. I was a socially inept bookworm then (as i am a socially inept geek today). When the realization hit me that i wouldn't be able to get through the world's recorded knowledge by the time i kicked the bucket it was like a head-on collision with an iceberg. It depressed me for years to come.

Now Google says it will take 300 years to index the world's info (don't bother reading the article, though, it's all about how great Google is).

051028 21:36 Society

This is a great project. They handed out disposable cameras to illegal immigrants crossing into the States and to border patrol volunteers (sounds a bit like vigilantes), letting them document their journey and the perils they encounter. The cameras are returned in provided self-addressed, postage-paid envelopes.

Regarding my vigilante comment above... this is from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps pledge:

V. Minutemen vow to use every legal means at our disposal to assist law enforcement authorities in identifying and apprehending those who violate our borders, whether they are illegally trafficking people, weapons, arms, property, sexual slaves or any other contraband.

VI. Minutemen vow to report to the proper authorities any business entity which knowingly recruits, facilitates or employs people who have entered America illegally, or which cooperates in any commercial activity which involves contraband smuggling or marketing of persons, products or materiel.

It finishes with:

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty..." And so I will stand watch on America's borders and in her sovereign interest until relieved from duty by my fellow countrymen.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty? That's a pretty sad and paranoid liberty they got there.

051028 21:11 Intellectual property

Just discovered that Creative Commons offers a Developing Nations licence. Interesting.

You are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

• Developing Nations. You may exercise the above freedoms in developing nations only.

051024 12:15 Comix

Little Gamers has a suggestion for solving the hurricane naming problem.

051021 21:04 Web development

There is this trend of slapping accessibility in the face and going back to serif fonts. (Yes, i've done it too. i got so bored with Verdana and Arial.) And not only that but seriously reducing font sizes.

Yes, all decent browsers are equipped with text resizing options. But it is always a keystroke one could have done without. And yes, using the 100% of the browser setting does sometimes look a bit... well, overwhelming, taking the focus away from the pretty layout and design.

And that seems to be what it is about. Thank you Zen Garden but i think people lost focus of what websites are about, which is conveying information. Now the focus is on a pretty design and CSS wizardry. Text gets in the way.

And to atone for my moaning, here are some interesting web development links:

Nice introduction to user agents at evolt.org

A crawler can also ignore acceptable behavior when you, as a Web site owner, edit your robots.txt file to say: okay, you're allowed to look around here and there, but not here and the agent ignores this and pokes around anywhere it damn well pleases, often trying to look directly at the things it's not supposed to look at. And this can lead to some pretty interesting ideas from folks trying to combat the guys in the black hats. Try this simple experiment sometime: Edit your robots.txt file and add a rule that disallows access to an arbitrary directory, it's not important whether it even exists. Now wait a few days and scan your log files looking for any agents that tried accessing that directory. Hmm...

Also at evolt.org: How compliance with W3C standards can improve your search engine optimization.

...reduce the amount of code on your page and the content (you know, the place where your keywords are) takes a higher priority. Additionally compliance will, by necessity, make your site easily spidered and additionally allow you greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.

More sound advice in Navigation - our visitors' travel guide:

Really successful navigations care about the visitors' needs, not promote a technique or our company's structure. What are we likely to find helpful in our local council office: An index of departments or a list of employees?

Basically, all old usability rules still apply. Pity that breadcrumbs went out of fashion again. Which doesn't stop me from using them. I still find them useful.

Lastly another accessibility reminder: Don't use 'click here'.

051010 01:05 Entertainment

TV series round-up

Threshold is dead. I decided after watching the pilot that the main (only?) female character is not going to be doing any cool stuff because she's constantly wearing high heels, so it's not going to be worth watching. Pity about Data. Kudos for the closing shot of the pilot, though.

Battlestar Galactica really is the big surprise of the post-farscape years (yeah, apart from Firefly, of course). Fantastic visuals. Love the music. I'm sometimes not too sure about the military thing. E.g. there was one episode recently, where Xena (brilliant!) comes in to do a documentary about Galactica and our soldiers are able to show us their hard side and their soft side. ...and their justification for existing. So, hmmm, dodgy.

There are times when a man of conscience cannot blindly follow orders.

Jean-Luc Picard

But there's also a great tradition of disobeying orders being carried on here, which BSG takes to the extreme. Not an episode goes by without a major battle between ranks and every time human instinct and free will win over rank and rigid procedure. I mean, right now they're attacking Admiral Ro Laren (equally brilliant!). And when occasionally rank and procedure win (with a touch of madness) it always ends in a catastrophe.

I take that as a good sign. Also the recognition of the civilian government. They constantly emphasize that a civilian leader is and should be in charge. Eventually even the hardliners defend this concept. We also see this in Stargate Atlantis as opposed to Stargate SG1.

Stargate Atlantis is my favorite show at the moment. It's far less sophisticated than other shows but it's funny. Apart from the civilian leadership concept there's the international team. It feels a bit like the UN mission to outer space rather than a secret military operation like SG1. I like the interactions between the characters, how they deal with each others quirks. They might find each other annoying but they work well together. It's a healthy mix of teasing and respect.

The only bone i have to pick is that it continues SG1's tradition of largely encountering primitive natives and therefore regurgitating storylines that have already been done by Captain Kirk. Although, even those can be funny.

SG1. There is the odd really funny episode but over all i always found it tedious. I can't be bother with the hundred tribes of Goa'uld anymore, soppy Daniel Jackson and stiff Samantha Carter. I think they should have just completely handed it over to Crichton and Aeryn and let them take it somewhere else.

The 'new crazy religion' has me worried too, especially the 'you're either with us or you're dead' philosophy. I think the timing is terribly bad for a religious new evil enemy.

Otherwise, still mourning Global Frequency.

I also just discovered Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Anime. Totally addicted. Must go...

051009 23:20 Hardware

USB flash drives are changing the meaning of 'personal computer' (via /.).

So he invented Migo, software that lets removable storage devices such as USB drives and iPods essentially function as portable computers.

Plug a Migo-enabled device into a computer and enter your password, and a secure session launches in which you can send and receive e-mail and work on documents, with the background desktop and icons from your own PC rather than the ones on the host computer.

When you're done and remove the drive, all traces of what you did are removed from that computer. The next time you plug the drive into your home computer, data on each are synchronized.

It's true. I own 2 memory sticks and an external harddrive that i carry around with me wherever i go. I plug it into other computers and have everything there that i need, I can even check my email from there because the ancient version of Eudora that i use doesn't need tentacles stretched into the registry. This sometimes actually saves me carrying my laptop.

There are portable versions of Firefox and Thunderbird available for just this purpose.

This might also be Microsoft's downfall:

The only big missing element for now is Microsoft Corp. software.

Although its popular productivity programs such as Excel or Word are common on office PCs, traveling workers still might not find the programs on a home or public computer.

So the ability to launch Microsoft software from a flash drive could be a big help. Microsoft and USB companies are still discussing potential licensing arrangements.

That's what they get for their spiderweb approach to software, where nothing works without the other. I've always preferred programs that can run independently of everything else, no dlls parked all over the place on your harddrive, no entries in the core of the operating system. Not surprisingly, these software programs are old because they used to write them that way. They might not have all the latest features but i can run them from my flash drive. That makes the difference for me.

051009 23:10 War

Bizarre but poignant: Smurfs get bombed in Unicef anti-war campaign (via boingboing).

The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom- shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.

The final frame bears the message: "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

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