rantoblogcious

Cheers Blogger, it's been swell

2006-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

OK, it kinda had to happen. I'm moving to a professional blogging service now. My own. Driven by Wordpress and it's not really a blog even. It's a... well pff, let's call it a BlogZine then. A blend of professional magazine and a blog. By professional magazine I mean magazines from the 90s when editors still cared about what they do. Think game magazines. Where they really sat down hours and did play the game, no matter how bad it was. Since my main scope of work is in the visual effects "industry" and I have a geeky sense of curiosity, that could actually work out by a long shot. Quite happy with the early stages of the design so far. The blog part in BlogZine is that I don't care if a company gives me freebies or not, I write what I think about the product. I don't intend to hold back as readers of this blog have whitnessed in the past. :) I may cut down on the swearing though ;) Cheers guys and thanks for staying this far. Maybe some of you will come over to the new venture. It's called Behind the Frame. Take care, Frank

Good Software in bad Company

2006-05-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ok guys I got this really awesome de-graining software from Visual Infinity. Thing is, what I got is a demo and that renders funny rainbow lines into the image. Since I don't develop for the Rainbow Bride or Care Bears series, so that's a problem. I purchased a license from Visual Infinity and got the unhappy meal. What's in it? Nothing but paiiiiin! My Mc Nuthin was an email receipt from Visual Infinity and that was it. Never got the download link, never got the password. Never got a reply on the 20 e-mails I sent them, No reply on the 40+ pages worth of faxes I sent them. In fact I had to send the faxes to their phone number, which alternates between busy and fax mode as their fax number is not registered with a carrier.

Here's the contact page for Visual infinity, please help if you can do so

Visual Infinity Thanks, Frank

Noush Skaugen on Sirius Channel 102 this Tuesday, April 18th!

2006-04-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

Check out Tuesday's show on 6:30pm EST / 3:30pm PST Sirius Satellite Radio channel 102, Sirius Stars!

Grab the banner and slap it on your page!

Microsoft Employees BEWARE!

2006-04-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Microsoft Employees,

I'm glad to inform you that if you choose to disclose yourself as a Microsoft employee in the next few weeks I'll punch you straight in the face without warning.

Click the link to see why and who to thank.

Beauty and Despair

2006-03-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

Wow. I just watched the trailer to United 93. Brought up all those feelings again. Feelings of helplessness, despair, fear, hate and loss. Was it because the trailer was so well cut, the images so real or that an event like this just can't be forgotten?

I wish I could just turn away and say: Oh well... it was just a movie. - I wish.

Seeking to get these images out of my head I found the movie with probably the most beautiful images in at least the lat 5 years. It's called The Promise and you really should watch it in 1080p. If the story doesn't get through to you, the images will.

peace out...

Stealing is the new making

2006-02-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

With utter disgust I've read on Doug Bowman's feed that an ad agency stole the design of his site. It's so easy to track who was first with the wayback machine so I don't understand why people still do this. People not but for ad agencies stealing ideas and concepts is business as usual.

The offender: High 5 Advertising created: Jan 22, 2005
The original: Stopdesign created: Jun 06, 2004

I wish this was just one agency faking talent, but everyone working in an agency has probably heard from their art-directors:

Take this design make it [color], add [client name]'s logo and create a slide for our pitch at noon.

Who questions art-directors? Right! THEY have titles, that's important.

Apple! What the fuck?

2006-01-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

Can somebody tell me what your web dept. smokes? Any lefties?

What's up with the HTML that iWeb generates? When I eat Mexican I shit better code than that!

Ever heard of paragraphs or headings? What's up with the gazillion of SPAN tags? Arrrgh this maddens everyone that will use this app. Or other people will make fun of their content v.s. code.

You know the old adage: When the markup doesn't make sense, chances are the content doesn't either.

This means if you don't know what parts of your writing are paragraphs or headings, you should take a course in thinking!

Apple! I'm really disappointed of your product. It's immature and produces output that people using it can't stand behind, they'll be ridiculed in public and are in good company with the morons using FrontPage. At least the great interface will soothe their wounds a little. But the damage has been done and will be on the web archives forever.

Metallic Gum Glitter type of thing?

2005-12-28T05:51:00.000-08:00

I'm looking for a screen-printing service that lets me do 3+1 color prints. I want to do a few special edition shirts that have a glitter/metallic effect on top of them.

Any ideas? I won't deal with cumbersome companies, just upload a PDF and get an online preview is enough. The ones with the cumbersome workflows make you pay for their intellectual shortcomings anyway and I don't plan on funding morons.

Please help this Woman out

2005-12-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

She has the RIAA Gestapo on her ass for something she has no clue that it even exists.

Her kid's friend pirated music via Kazaa on her computer. IMHO the parent(s) of the other kid would be responsible for not teaching the id about piracy.

If you think about it, the kid should be punished directly, circumventing the parents. Let it be service hours and lots of preaching about what copyright really is.

There are a lot of artists that can't afford the lawsuits that the big 4 are pulling off (which is basically marketing on the back of others). So if you pirate their music, you're ruining their livelihood. In the age of podcasting, chances are that people will go after you, outside of the court if you pirate their fav artists music. But I digress...

Right now that Woman needs help to fight off the wrongful prosecution of the RIAA.

PDF + Flash vs. Accessible Design?

2005-12-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

Now that Adobe acquired Macromedia that heinous Freehand app might be off market but what they're doing with Flash is just scary.

While Flash is a great tool for interactive displays, mini games and to embed audio and video into a web-site, using it to solely build a website is a strict no-no.

If you want to lock out people with a disability and do some content euthanasia that's never a great marketing scheme. Guess what, blind people buy skin-care products too! But what Adobe has done here with parts of their web-site is beyond embarrassing for any web designer. What can be a valid reason to display text in a Flash where HTML would have been better? Search engines can't find it and the major screen-readers won't see them for their users.

With the emerging of poorly designed websites like adobe.com it's getting incredibly hard for makers of screen reader software. They now are brutally forced into breaking flash content apart and guessing the text that's flattened to paths due to idiotic font licenses issued by elderly morons or trying to get down through the layers that cover the text that is embedded into the .swf file. Guess what, even giants like JAWS need to make money on their software, if you make their job impossible, you will loose sales. Not because they may abandon your format or focus on another business but because YOU where too stupid to produce an accessible document.

Recap:

Flatten type to paths in a PDF = You're an idiot.
Flatten type to paths in a Flash movie = You're an ignorant idiot.
Using a flattened PDF in a Flash movie = Braindead.

Leaving text as text would break some font licenses made by some ignorant numb-nuts. I think they deserve a kick in the very same. Would you believe that in 2005 there were licenses that would not allow a font to be rendered at a height of 200 pixels? The name of that foundry is Hoefler and Frere-Jones. Great designers, but ignorant morons. You also can't embed the fonts in a PDF or a Flash.

Happy Holidays!

MediaTemple GFYS, will ya!

2005-12-21T00:35:00.000-08:00

Media Temple totally sucks monkey balls!

Guess what? Those fuckers left me down again. The whole site just down. 3rd time in one month!

I pay just a little below $20 each month to get insulting idiots as tech support and a totally inferior server framework.

A fine quote from Full Metal Jacket that involves eyeballs comes to mind.

Now I understand why customers are leaving by the busload. MT used to be a good choice, now it's a cage of fools, not more.

The End Of All Things

2005-12-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

Sit down with me here, my friends reflect on things that were, things that may come and those we lost on the way to get there.

Friendships that faded, business relations that will not last. All we see now will change, whole industries will fall prey to the few that learn to glide with the times.

Here, at the end of all things we meet to watch and live the changes breathing new life into friends long gone bringing new hope to the world.

If the above doesn't make any sense to you, here's the English version:

In 2006 everything will change for me and my business as for a lot of other people in different fields of business. Existing relationships will change, even long standing business relationships will need to go in order to do what is most dear to my heart.

I won't go into detail here, but once it's official I'll post it here, probably as my last post to blogger.

Right now I just want to thank everyone subscribed to this feed for your support and comments during the past year. Why almost all of you insisted on taking the 3 extra clicks and e-mail me instead putting your comments here will probably remain shrouded in myth.

Phone Deathwish?

2005-12-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, here's my plan, a bit of an experiment. I'm selling my phone and canceling my landline contracts.

So the total cost a year for my business account are €599.88. So what I'll do is replacing it with an additional SkypeIn account, a decent headset and maybe a DSL upgrade.

So I pay like 20 bucks a year + the skypeOut fees that are minimal, even on a global level.

Attention Node Managers!

2005-11-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

With plain audio, enhanced and video podcasts it is impossible for the consumer / user to tell what is what. For my node I use the category attribute to describe the content. Unfortunately the OPML Editor places an unnerving / in from of every part that I add, so all I get is a /Audio. While that might be acceptable with deep taxonomies, here it's disturbing.

So here's my rightClickMenu script for that.

In Tools > edit right-click menu Create an item, double-click that and paste the following code in the window that opens.


local (myCat);
op.attributes.getOne ("category", "Audio")
op.attributes.setOne ("category", "Audio")

When you click Run you'll get an error. Not to worry, that's perfectly normal as we want to apply this to an outline not trigger a dialogue.

Save it and close the windows, now you can access it via the contextual menu on Mac and Windows.

Here are the categories that I use

Audio
Audio Enhanced
Video

Feedback more than welcome

MediaTemple strikes again

2005-11-22T01:21:00.000-08:00

Update: Weird, that only lasted 1h today, glad it's over and I can receive mail again. If i don't answer your mail within a day chances are it got burned by the outage.

And once again they fucked up.

Wonder what lame excuse they have this time...

Funny or scary that a free service like Blogger is actually more reliable than a $20 USD / month service at MediaTemple. Wager anyone? I bet that they give me the same shit that they always give me:

We have looked into the issue that you have reported and unfortunately could not find any problems with your service. Furthermore, using a series of diagnostic checks we were not able to reproduce any of the problems that you reported. We have been monitoring your services and all features are operational.

This basically means: Shut the fuck up, will ya... we don't give a shit what you want... our site works, that's important. You're just a customer, what's the point in serving you?

thanks another happy MediaTemple customer.

frankjonen.com OPML'd

2005-11-16T23:22:00.000-08:00

For all those of you that are on the bleeding edge of technology or even just early adopters. Here's the full website, every article, every link, everything available in OPML format!

So if you subscribe to the top outline, you'll see how everything is linked together, how the content flows and extras such as links in separate sub-taxonomies. Each page also has its own OPML file, so you can start drilling from there.

So why all the hassle? Just finger-practice? Punk'd?

I believe it is a great addition in terms of accessibility as it provides another perspective on the content, way beyond the XHTML + CSS way of dealing with markup. Not a replacement for our trio XHTML + CSS + RSS but rather a 4th one that interacts with the XHTML + RSS part of it since the OPML can parse RSS feeds and display them right inside the outline structure.

When coding HTML correctly you already have a hierarchic representation of your content as (x)HTML is very feature-rich as we learned in the past. SO where's the point in doing it in OPML? Think content! The ability to expand and collapse whole context structures is just amazing when you want to skim down content to find something quickly.

Database Search vs. OPML

There's no searching of OPML content yet, you have to do it by hand, this way you remember stuff that you pass on the way and know where to find it faster next time. But there's an even greater thing up here... Subscriptions! Just like you subscribe to RSS feeds already, you can subscribe to ideas now and watch as they form. In the RSS paradigm we have finite items that correspond to articles. With OPML every object is marked with a date and pops-up and expands its children whenever one idea is updated.

Think of a world directory that everybody links to and gets linked back, this creates one file of not too large size (since it just stores links) that contains every aspect of the world in an open fashion. It takes the idea of the web to the next step. Too bad that OMNI Group doesn't want to participate, shoot them an e-mail and grill them some more, might help them to see the light.

I do know that from an XML perspective the OPML format is questionable, but as with everything in tech, there will be a version 2.

Welcome to the Internet Microsoft!

2005-11-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Microsoft!

This looks exciting, probably the first time I say that about an MS product.

Stop banning Safari! Works nice with Firefox. I only need Excel, where's my Beta Account?

MediaTemple = Worst hosting company in the WORLD!

2005-11-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

As some of you have spotted already my site it totally broken. I'm basically loosing money by the minute because MediaTemple decided to finger with the PHP parser. Now 95% of my php scripts are broken.

Currently I'm looking at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to hold them liable for willingly damaging my content and some references on class action law-suits as they're actively damaging my business.

So after it was great in the beginning and sometimes their service is good, most of the time I have problems with them. Issues like loosing e-mails, not getting e-mails, waiting 4 hours for an e-mail that actually was generated on the server or simply that the server doesn't respond at all and the site wasn't reachable for hours.

But what's the most annoying is their staff! Arrogance is all that pops into my mind right now. Every time I report a bug, they blame it on me, if that doesn't work they try to put me off as a moron. Way to go MT! When I'm talking with closer colleagues and friends about MediaTemple we merely refer to them as the Hosting Mob, Bandwidth Bandits or a Seinfeld reminiscence that I won't publish here.

This is definitely NOT the company that I'm building our network on.

MediaTemple grew to big, too fast.

Birds on a Hippo's Ass

2005-11-01T15:50:00.000-08:00

Ok who was that genius?

Isn't it humble-some and gracious to associate a product with birds sitting on the ass of a large animal that strolls in muddy/watery areas and wiggles its tail while having a landslide?

Way to go Adobe!

(A)Head of the Asylum

2005-10-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Holey Chow! Long time no post here. It's not totally abandoned but time got the best of me.

It's just that I'm working on a podcast network that will give NBC, CBS, ABC and Time Warner something to think about. Let's hope I can get the record labels to sing with the choir, but first we have to teach them what the internet is and what it is for... man these cats are slow!!! Just try to find the fucking contact page on these sites, what a shoddy concept of not having e-mail addresses or web forms to protect your staff from spam. There's this CSS thing y'know?!

Aaany-ways... All is well, but terribly busy it's not that I have a cast of thousands to peruse as minions. Just a few friends that work as tirelessly as myself to get this running, get the VC cash and hire the people we need, rent the office and studio space, license the software, get the hardware and show the big guys how it's done with a fraction of their costs and higher revenues.

Oh boy... I tell you the next year is gonna be exciting, even more than this year was.

If you want to join the horde shoot me an e-mail by clicking the image underneath the About Me part of this page.

Mwahahahah sorry MS but...

2005-09-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

M Softies you truly are hilarious!

Guys, check out the link to a horrible rip-off of Apple's Spotlight search on a Microsoft research blog.

Worst user experience = ITMS Germany

2005-09-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

iTunes Germany sucks so bad it swallows! If a product kills my library and messes up my whole collection of purchased music AND then the only way to get all the songs back to the purchased music list is to buy them again they should at least let me download MY music again for free!

iTunes 5 kills your music

2005-09-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

I just lost all my podcast subscriptions and miss 200 songs that i purchased from Apple. DO NOT UPGRADE!

US Government preventing Help for Victims

2005-09-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

The scoop

This is as sick as it is sad.

Every American should go to Bush's Ranch and take a dump right then an there so he knows how the victims feel.

Anyone else demanding impeachment? Fuck you very much Mr. Bush!

Could it be faster?

2005-09-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

Just a thing that starts popping up in European news stations. Would help and organization of the relief efforts work better if the victims were all white people?

Could we please stop judging people by their tan?! Damn, zoom back and get a view from space will ya?! Sheesh!

People help People. (period)

More Worries on the Radar?

2005-09-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

ok after watching Katrina reaping havoc on the radar without really knowing what the color scheme means I'm now worried again by looking at the recent images from the Tennessee area. Besides having a billowed or burst-like shape as opposed to a twisting shape they bear striking resemblance to Hurricane Katrina.

~~Any ideas how to read these?~~

UPDATE: The dbZ rating is the decibel value of the reflected radar power as to get these doppler images they shoot radar signals straight in the air the Z is for the axis as in X Y Z. You can match it loosely to the Homeland Security (or Directive 3) color chart system in its meanings.

The darker the red the more dangerous it is to roam there, if it is pink shit hit the fan!

Donate via iTunes

2005-09-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

For all of you that would donate to help the Hurricane victims if it would be easier, here's how with no hoops to jump.

Help Hurricane Katrina victims!

2005-09-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Now it is up to us, those who still have homes and lives to help those in need.

Just how many lives will need to be spent till we learn that burning forests and wasting oil to create fuel isn't the way to go. We are Earth 1.0, there's no version 2 where we can just go when this planet is finally unlivable. Hurricanes every single day, ice rains and black sky are in for us if fuel cells and alternative energy sources are further ignored and our countries' leaders are still part of the fuel mafia.

Think about that when you put down your money to help. We all carry a little piece of the guilt.

M to the G For President!

2005-08-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be awwwwwsome to have a president that can actually think with his brain? Or even more so create explosive devices with a tampon and a toe-nail clipper?

Vote here, vote often! Well ok depends whose friend manufactures the voting machines this time... oh well.

Computer Wisdom

2005-08-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from a forum site, more on the main link

Are Computers Male or Female?

From a Male Point of View

Result: Female

No one but their creator understands their internal logic
The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else
Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval
As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay cheque on accessories for it.

From a Female Point of view

Result: Male

In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on
They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves
They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem
As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

Bob Moog's body left us

2005-08-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

Like other fellow bloggers I'll use the same headline since I don't want to think about his spirit leaving us.

For decades Bob's instruments were more than just synths, sounds were tangible, warm and powerful. He understood it like no other to give a product that just consists of transistors and wires life.

Bob is survived by his wife, Ileana, his five children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa, Renee Moog, and Miranda Richmond; and the mother of his children, Shirleigh Moog. He will be missed by his fans, customers and basically anyone with an interest in electronic instruments.

If you don't know about his art got to his company's website moogmusic.com and see / hear for yourself.

Another one taken by cancer. Will this ever end?

For those of you that want to go to the memorial celebration, here's the address.

MEMORIAL CELEBRATION: August 24, 12 NOON
The Orange Peel, Social Aid & Pleasure Club
101Biltmore Ave
Asheville, NC
828 225-5851

www.theorangepeel.net

Life, Love and Everything

2005-07-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Just got back from New York today. A most amazing time well spent with friends, clients and partners.

On the business side a few people didn't take appointments too seriously enabling me to take care of other things which yielded in even better results by a long shot. No damn announcements at this time, so to say...

On a private level, New York is brimming with the most beautiful girls and I was fortunate enough to spend some memorable time with the most amazing four of those, selling merch out of their car on the street in front of the gig's location. Something to remember when the Bidds are rich and famous / infamous.

Now that we covered, Life and Everything love remains to be addressed... well let's just say one smile can let the sun shine brighter and the stars sparkle again.

Seasons in the Sun Final Part

2005-07-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

1935 - 2005
Cheers, auntie J. it's been swell.

Three hours ago our beloved aunt moved on to the summer-lands as a result of incurable Leukemia.

Never miss your cancer checkups.

If your boss won't let you because you work in an agency tell them to shove it and take a day or two off. It's not worth pleasing your boss and have your children say goodbye to you on a hospital bed while you look nowhere near your former self.

MediaTemple again

2005-07-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

If you're wondering again why I won't reply to any e-mail, MediaTemple crapped up again!

Wonder if I'll live to the day when these cats get it right, probably one more month I'll subtract from the bill.

Use the e-mail address connected to this blogger profile to reach me. Since that's my .mac account and it'll just work.

Thoughts on London's events

2005-07-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

What did just happen in London?

Are some towel-heads blowing up those of a different religion again, or are some African funded henchmen hired to disrupt the G8 summit?. Both would seem fitting to me as the African governments aren't all too fond of the idea that their people could be out of debt. The muslims would be just nuts as usual.

People who do this treason on humankind aren't part of the human race and don't deserve to be protected by any law.

Seasons in the Sun Part 2

2005-06-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

The reason why the last post got a little closer than usual to me was probably that I can directly relate to that in my personal life. A member of our family missed a few cancer checkups and now it is too late and she'll die this week as the doctors said so far.

Any ideas how to deal with this? Call her to say goodbye? That does sound strange to me. We haven't had much contact in the last 2 months because I was too busy with work to drive over to the hospital and always missed to do the most simple thing, phoning over. I tried though not but she had lots of therapy going on. Well at least they seemed to try everything to get that damn Leukemia out of her.

Now that it is nearly too late we're trying to call the family together from all over Europe and can't even locate some of them which truly sucks.

Work is also lagging, so if my client gets pissy again I'll have to raise a finger and tell them to shove it, I got other shit to do now.

Seasons in the Sun

2005-06-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

That's what you get when you dig too deep in the rabbit hole.

Don't listen to this when you're already down for it is the most devastating podcast I ever listened to. If that one doesn't leave you in tears, you're already dead.

Subscribe to The Girl on Tech Podcast for more.

ppp... podcast!

2005-06-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Thank You Apple!

No really I mean it.

Despite my lack of time this week I had to update! And really they got it right. I'm just amazed how slick the integration is. As a pro user I'd wish for some deeper features, but one step at a time. This is podcasting v1.0

Not much to say here, go try it. If you have a podcast and don't have a show ID (visual) yet, drop a line here and I'll do you one.

Rock on, Go wild!

more workbits

2005-06-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

If you're curious about the site I was ranting in …Concerning Workbits click the link in the title.

As the site is now nearing its completion I managed to sneak in a few nice features like cute little conference calendars for workshop sessions that I had to hide from Internet Explorer on Windows later on.

My take on the IE people is, that they're pretty much asking for it. If you want to open a file that has been created in 2005 using an open standard format with an application that only supports its own variation of a very old format of a predecessor of this standard, you can consider yourself lucky if you get any information at all. Now project that on the web.

I mean, if the maker of that application were blowing money up my keister I'd probably be more interested in making a custom version of the site that works in THEIR software so that THEY can view it and THEIR heathen minions can work with it too.

But let's face it: The average user of the web uses Internet Explorer for 2 reasons, it comes with the OS and it has the work Internet in it. Most people are simply afraid to install a new software on their systems which is understandable if you have ever worked on a Windows machine and I know what I'm talking about, I was a windows user for long years and had to get through these ordeals or what they call it often enough. It's gotten little better, still far away from the simplicity of dragging an icon to a folder and starting to use the app.

So when you read the reports about the Firefox browser it is getting clear that mostly students of IT schools and technically interested people use this browser. Maybe that's a reason too why all the major adult entertainment companies are now hiring web developers that know web standards by heart. No really the smart people, the people in the know are all using Firefox or Opera now, to be able to see all the web has to offer and to browse more securely being less troubled by spyware. So is it safe to say then that only the people brimming with stupidity are using Internet Explorer these days? Mostly yes, but also those who have moron bosses that force it onto their workers.

Conclusion: If you don't care about the privacy of your personal information and only want to be able to access content created till early 1999, Internet Explorer is the perfect application for you. If you do care about what happens on your system, use a browser that is built on open standards and follows common sense instead of monetary interest. There's more to the web than Internet Explorer can show you.

Checkout Browse Happy for more information.

Short Media Temple Outage Today

2005-06-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Had another unscheduled off time just a few minutes ago and couldn't receive or send e-mails for 30 minutes, not sure if I lost anything yet.

With the current situation, the only good thing I can say about my hosting company Media Temple would be, hmm that they take care of things that crap up. Guess it is because they fix their totally fucked up update that left php coders out in the rain since a simple php app for generating an e-mail from a form used to take 5 seconds to pop up in my inbox. Now that I changed the e-mail address in that script BECAUSE the mail processing slowed down so damn low (hey 2 hours is just not acceptable) their service guy chose to be a smart-ass and gave me this crap: See, so you DID change something in your script. Oh boy was I 5 seconds away of shouting in his face.

Next thing he's like: All out customers are extremely happy with the update and you're the only on that complained. YEEES Sure thing they don't bitch, if they can't e-mail you. C'mon that's horeshit MT and you know it!

Whoa! What a disgusting little bugger!

2005-06-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

Where can I get one?

I haven't seen anything close to that that gave me the creeps. Actually I happen to like spiders that are larger than my flat-spread hand. Somehow the small ones give me the creeps, I mean you would notice a bird spider hiding in my head or pants, but a small spider in my pants? They don't call them Nut Huggers for nothing! Eww

Make sure to check out the video link at the bottom of the linked site. What a little bastard.

Hosting, Privacy Optional?

2005-06-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

Today I had the major crap up that you can imagine with my hosting company MediaTemple. You wouldn't believe this shit. The account settings for ALL my e-mail aliases were different. So I lost ALL e-mails within a timeframe that I have yet to figure out. Lost gone, can you say /dev/null?

Really I don't trust them anymore since they messed with my data again. Then you wait ages till some support queen decides that you will be served. I can't even call them to get an answer, you get a phony... we call you answer. Which in Europe is a polite way to tell someone to stick it.

Micro Piracy, Yes I've been ripped off!

2005-06-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

What have we here? Some person liked my fur desktops so much that he wanted them on his mobile phone, but instead of just asking if he could use them for anything other than the license states (which you automatically agree to by downloading the files) he figured that he could just ripp them off.

And if you look at them in my goodies section you can probably tell that they take some time to make. So should I take this person to court for license violation and copyright theft?

I don't think so. He showed some minor respect and added my name to it, but now it looks like I did it. Damn it, I'd never publish anything that's remotely close to the JPEG shown on his site. So his good intentions actually damages my reputation if people associate this with my person.

Conclusion: If you rip-off other people's art on the web be clear about it, since you will be found out and then only get into trouble.

A Krauted Memorial Day

2005-05-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

WTF? You're not an American, what does it mean to you man.

Well as a native German and EU citizen it actually means a lot to me. Each memorial day we reflect on those who gave their blood so we can be free.

Watch the video here and pause a moment to think about those policemen and women, the firefighters, the national guard and the soldiers, all of our man and women in uniform that put their lives in so we can be safe each and every day.

No Church / State separation in the US?

2005-05-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

Now this should give anyone the creeps that cares about democracy.

I just read this on my daily dose of Wonkette: Pagan Prohibited. Somehow they're not too into religions that pre-date their fancy christian thingy by centuries. Well they tried to kill all pagans once (the christians, not the US by itself). So apparently a war and violence religion like Christianity or the Muslim system is accepted while peace preserving and expressive non-violence religions like Wicca are banned? Get real!

Wait, this reminds me of something. One god to rule them all. One god to find them, Ten rules to ring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Seems like we're really getting close to this scenario.

Some Eyeliners for you?

2005-05-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

Just learned about this really cool band from Micheal Butler's Rock and Roll Geek show today.

With no further ado, here is the link and let me say, being fostered by the legendary Joan Jett sure has benefits. The Eyeliners fine and pure rock! Beware the site, they use Flash to play their music right when the page is loading. I really hate that, the site could also use something here and there, but nevertheless their music rawks!

New Music in my box

2005-05-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

I guess that I'll reserve the top-right corner for stunning looks now. But really that Joss Stone has something, not just visually but her voice, wow. Would you believe from that sound she isn't even of legal age yet? And does it matter?

For the other totally awesome new addition to iTunes that I've been ranting about, Sarah McLachlan's iTunes Originals Album there's no official banner in my preferred banner size yet but I really want to share this with you as I think it is totally awesome, not suitable for work as it will suck you in when you listen to it as a whole and the songs are so dreamlike, gosh she's great. I found that some of the back-stories to Sarah's songs make them even more depressing. Aren't the most painful feelings the most lasting?

Nikka Costa ad broken

2005-05-24T18:37:00.001-07:00

Yes I know the Nikka Costa as only links to the iTunes storefront. Apple informed me that this is perfectly normal and that I should not use this link as it links to an outdated action they recently had.

I'll leave it on till I'll get the new one that links to a totally awesome iTunes Originals album that only seems to be available in the US. freaking bummer!

Geek or Techie?

2005-05-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

Today I got an interesting question that I'd like to share.

Let's just put the inquiring party as Q for now as I can't say much about it yet. It happened on iChat.

Q: Would you describe yourself rather as a techie or a geek?
FJ: What's the difference?
Q: A techie being a person that has a fetish for new technologies and is always after the latest gadgets…
FJ: Thought that was a gadgeteer.
Q: Let me finish?
FJ: Could be, go on.
Q: A techie being someone who is in love or obsessed with technology and a geek being someone that knows how to operate it.
FJ: Your're fast, are you copying these lines from another application?
Q: …
FJ: Well actually I like to know what I'm doing with an application or a device that I'm operating, since that is why I bought this thing for. To use it. You don't buy a pencil to look at it.
Q: True. So you're a geek then?
FJ: In my conscious hours.
Q: Err ok, so that's a yes then?
FJ: I think so. Yes, you could say I'm a geek then. Since that term is loosing its negative cling that it had for many years I think I can live with being called a geek.

I'll cut this here before it gets too boring and I give away too much fortunate enough they can't sue me since I didn't sign anything yet. Guess I'll need to sign off the final article if or when it goes online or to print since I have no idea what they'll do with it. Pin it on the blackboard of the ladies room, who knows.

Introducing... The Ads!

2005-05-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

You might have already noticed the little changes that I made to the layout. Ads! What the heck does he need ads for? Well every now and then I like to put on some links to songs that I really like and share the love. The iTunes Music Store lets me do just that. Pick what I like and get nice looking banners along with it as well as a small percentage of the sale if you buy the song that I link to. Pretty cool isn't it?

And it really is stuff that I like, no one messes with my editorial integrity here. I say what I think and you comment on it (if you'd just get used to comment on the blog instead of writing me e-mails about it) no "here are 10 bucks say J-Lo is awesome" nah she won't fit in here (hehe). By the way, one of the banners was not provided by iTunes, can you tell which one?

So let's get right down to the first 3 recommendations that I have this week and i hope I can have some every week, but honestly it's just based on what I listen to right now every time.

Right away I should be fair and say that I don't totally dig the the music of Nikka Costa currently, but I found that image quite captivating. Great photography I must say. But the Morcheeba album is quite nice, especially the first song Wonders Never Cease with an intro that sorta feels like a warm summer rain and that sliky voice of their new singer, ah gosh that gave me goose-bumps the first time I heard it. And yes do we need to mention the Lascivious Biddies? My favorite band of the moment. I had a little badge on for the last wee before I did the big banner here.

Oh hey! Amanda Monaco from the Biddies also published a book recently at National Guitar Workshop's which you should check out if you're into learning how to become a divine jazz guitarist. Congrats Amanda!

On the Edge of Reason...

2005-05-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

You might have kinda guessed that i live in Europe by my last post and yes I'm still happy for Greece even though it was not my favorite contest entry which would have been the Swiss or the Russian entry if not the norwegian entry from Wig Wam which was some hard rock thing that's not like metal but somewhat like an updated version of KISS.

Anyway... now on to something completely different

I just read the newspaper today and was shocked to see how the German government treats people that they should care most about. The unemployed. I've been unemployed myself when the agency I worked for decided that they don't need a design department and moved on to just selling weighted addresses.

What Germany did is treating not only the unemployed like shit, but also taking their lives from them in certain ways. They have this thing called Hartz 4, their cardinal rule of inquisition to wipe the place clean from uneasy beings. It allows to swipe folks that live on the doll out of their homes and bring them together in concentration camps (yes I know what term I'm using here, read on) or low life flats if you're lucky, even take your animals from you and kill them legitimately.

Hopefully I'll be able to leave this country for good before they declare war on Poland.

Dobre Vechir Kyiv!

2005-05-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

I must say I was quite impressed with the Kyiv Eurovision song contest 2005 show (period).

They re-invented their whole broadcast system to be able to put out this massive act. As it seems the whole gig was done in HD. Which is the cheaper way to do TV if you think about it. It only gets expensive when you need to change an old broadcast system to a new one, it's not just an upgrade, it's a different technology. And the Ukrainians mastered it!

I made some snaps of the show and post it to this item later on. Edit: snaps are posted below.

As I'm writing this the show is still running and I have my fingers crossed for Russia and Switzerland. The German entry was quite disappointing since I have seen Gracia doing better.

So it's final… Congratulations Greece!

Biddy Tunes!

2005-05-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Finally our friends the Lascivious Biddies are in iTunes!

Congrats Amanda, Lee Ann, Deidre and Saskia!

So what are you waiting for head on to iTunes and get the album!

...concerning workbits

2005-05-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

Some of you probably know that I spent the better part of my last 10 years to do website designs every now and then before really getting to like it like 2 years ago, hence the title of this blog. Making the transition from a print designer to a screen oriented, particularly interface specialized designer was reasonably easy for me since I studied interfaces before I had my first own computer an Atari 800 XL.

Now that I learned how to apply everything I learned during all those years about usability to designing websites, by using web standards and accessibility guidelines to the max, it seems that when you work for a client all that goes out the window.

Especially in cases where every Joe, Jack and Harry's say has more value than that of one that does this for a living. You get stuff like, let's not do THIS because I've been told it looks funny. I'd totally be fine with a "let's not do this, because it doesn't work under this and that aspects" but what can you expect from a chap that's not even capable of doing a standards compliant site. Exactly.

I might sound a bit pissed today in every sense of the word and yes I admit it, I am. But that was a project that was pretty dear to me when I started out doing it, now not so much. Not because of this one Super Joe occurrence, there has been a lot of lack-luster shit going on, like setting up a custom application for them that they ended up ignoring and all that stuff. I won't name names here since I still like those people on a personal level, but business wise it's just a pain and I'm not sure if I want my name associated with the end product of this. But let's wait see what happens, maybe I can even post a link to that site from here when it is done.

Yours spitefully... the web dumbass

Adobe grabs Macromedia

2005-04-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

Zonkers!

So what will this mean for designers?

I can see as much goon in there as I can see bad in this. The good point, application interaction. It should work now as we need it. The bad part, Adobe now has all control over the market. No competition anymore, they rule the publication market. Adobe now has become a power that Quark cannot withstand. Even that I really despise Quark Xpress, now I pity them since that had a lot of interesting ideas with their publishing systems.

But there are a lot of good guys in the Adobe Ark, I know some of them personally, so I don't see it as the end of the world or something like that, more like a beginning of better, easier times for all of us. Especially for web standards, only one company that needs to be taught and they like to listen (even if they act much later).

Studio 1 - Silence please

2005-04-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

Another site where I don't have a choice but to watch a flash animation that supposedly shall suck me in and make me buy the product. But somehow as opposed to Adobe's complete failure which repeatedly crashed all of my browsers, even Firefox (a flash problem) apparently Apple hired the right guys to get the job done. The Flash moves slick and painless, the CPU usage is less than reasonable.

So about the studio suite now. I'm glad that every bunch of apps that belong together are now delivered as a suite, so I can crack my bank account big-time each time. To be fair, the cost is usually a huge chunk less than what you pay for if you'd buy all of the apps separately

$1299 for about $5000 of value if you compare it to other professional products on the market, like the discreet tools for example. And I can now safely compare Final Cut Pro to discreet's Fire with the work that went into Final Cut Pro. And correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no comparable application in the professional editing field that matches Final Cut's features, ease-of-use and pricing. You usually end up paying a lot more if you want all that editing power than you would when getting FCP and a neat G5.

Soundtrack Pro
Aww yeah! I've so been waiting for this. The previous version of soundtrack was a bit icky at places, but served me well for basic audio editing, cutting stuff together, enhancing the audio track of some footage and doing a podcast (died after the first show - maybe I'll pick up that scheme again). But the new Soundtrack Pro (is everything Pro now? Call me Frank Pro then!) seems to allow be to to my foley with it too, yay!

Motion 2
This one gave me an intellectual boner! There's really not much to say about Motion 2, the best just got better, is a bit shitty to say, but that's how it feels. 32Bit (per color channel) real-time editing and being able to control your actions via a midi instrument made me quiver in sheer pleasure (well, yes I like it) so it's going to be interesting how VJs will use that ability.

DVD Studio Pro 4
The shiznit of DVD creation. Not even Sony's Vegas came close yet. What will they do now? The new HD features are just stunning and to be fair again I should say that creating HD content requires a teeny weenie bit more CPU power, like a dual G5 with about 4 quarter-pounders of RAM should be nice. Along with the mandatory Dolby certified encoder you now can use all your Macs that sit around idle to encode your behemoth HD-DVD! Another slick feature is the ability to use GPRM partitioning and some hell of scripting to make your menu react to everything a user could possibly do with a different type of action, text string or whatever your brain can come up with.

New Blog started

2005-04-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Hello kittens of the ocelot!

So there's one of my new playthings. During my research for my own podcast and the podcasting network that go live later this year I came across some very interesting gear that sure is interesting for more podcasters out there. Microphones, mixers, break-out boxes, field recorders, multi trackers - you have no idea what all that means? You might have soon.

Wake Up, Redmond!

2005-04-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

Ah well, here's to the big surprise. Microsoft missed the bus again, just like they did with the Internet. Well, this time it might just be too early for them to get up and they might wind-up get some flakes and caffeine before running of to support open standards. Err OK Miicroosoaft and standards, yep I know, they just don't get it.

So what happened this time? If you're into video, broadcast or webcast stuff you may already know that there's a group called ISMA, the Internet Streaming Media Alliance. And big M? They don't!

The ISMA was founded to make sure we're all on the same page with video and audio broadcasting in the future and today. So for Microsoft employees I'll slow down my writing speed now a little. Tell your bosses to get sane and join in this time, instead of fucking up with a proprietary format that no ass on the planet can play, at least not the people it is intended for, the content creators! What happened last time MS tried out the video swing? Yes I mean their pitiful attempt of an HD video codec that actually works and has good image quality that got rejected by almost every industry professional around.

Yes, now you have a chance to catch up with the times.

Adobe doesn't quite get it.

2005-04-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's got something to do with their tight partnerships with Microsoft in certain areas, but the MS attitude is definitely tinting over to Adobe. The way of 'not getting it'.

So what's up now? A few hours ago all was peace and yum with Adobe and now this?

Well if you make a point in selling software that is supposed to make it easy for designers to do the right thing and use web standards, isn't it embarrassingly stupid to screw up on these things in your own website?

Why does a website for the North American market need a region checking javascript that doesn't even work correctly? Instead, if you use a web browser to access the site it's bound to crash. I don't know if that's the poor understanding of JavaScript or the even worse understanding of Flash movies, but anyway I'm definitely not going back to adobe.com!

Welcome to the Web, Adobe!

2005-04-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

Today Adobe put out their latest version of the Creative Suite, version 2 and it seems like they are starting to get it.

GoLive CS now sports some interesting features with predefined CSS block objects, yes I know not each and every element should be described as a block object, but I think this is just naming names here, they need to call it something. Web professional may cringe over the thought that they use Opera again for their CSS rendering, but hey, if you got the money, why not burn it and use one of the less favorable rendering engines? Good take I must say, if it works on ol' Opera, it's gonna work on every browser (Internet Explorer is not considered a browser anymore, rather as a way to share your sensitive corporate data with the masses). Don't get me wrong here, I'm all positive about that, I just have to get my hands on the update, and if anyone from Adobe is reading this, I just need an upgrade license from my previous CS Pro!

Photoshop CS 2, Some nice stuff that I've been doing with workarounds for quite some time are now a snap, perspective cloning stamp and all sorts of nifty little features that my lure some more matte painters to Adobe's products (and what else is out there for us? Eclipse? No thanks!). They updated their fancy file browser to look more sane and added a nifty way that lets you browse your image libraries and lets you buy stock images right from the desktop, called Adobe Bridge. Now if I only would remember where I've seen that before?! And how long had professionals demanded for that... seems to be coming now. And it also lets you get going across Adobe Applications with your profiles, hopefully that'll work better than the last version of CS.

It's definitely going to be interesting how Adobe Bridge will compare to my iPhoto / XHTML solution that I use to index my texture library with about 20.000+ images, I'll keep you on the bleeding edge about that.

Somehow Adobe needs stupid little flash flicks on each product page that I can't even choose NOT to play, they take ages to load and slow the whole process down here, I'm not liking this at all. So I'll call it a day and tell you more later!

Unicoding Big time!

2005-03-29T19:29:00.000-08:00

Holey Moley! After plugging one of the nicest bands around in my last mini-article today drops in a biggie.

In my pursuit to make a great Unicode helper application for web content creators I'm getting a little bit of a waste brain with all those numbers. When you click the title link, you can see for yourself (awful lot of Y.O.U. in that blurb, ain't it?!) what I'm talking about.

Anyway it's even sorta fun to do it. Making software that will actually help people to do the right thing, which is also why I'm not going to write some gadgetry that just sucks the Unicode documentation in, but rather update it by hand and sort it in a way that helped me before (I'm using a similar app tom manage my character references since a few months now). Something like the QWERTY and the DVORAK keyboard system did for keys, sorting them according to their most frequent use (or in case of the QWERTY in a way that wouldn't jam the punches of the typewriter.

I thing the frightening thing about that is, that I can now actually read (and understand) those cryptic bits of character addresses and translate them to plain english - Look at them, you'll freak out!

When this baby is published, I'll need mental therapy!

And the Biddy Is...

2005-03-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

In the last weeks while I've been ranting madly about the Lascivious Biddies some of you foiks out there asked me if I got a crush on them or what's up with it already.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there's no romantic ramblings going on here, just a great band that I learned about on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code and if you care to click on the article link you'll discover that the biddies have their own Podcast and aren't as distant to their fans as other famous and pseudo famous bands are. They're like, hmm… hands-on with their audience and behave more like real people than like posh-ass superstars.

But hey, there's something in for everyone and I'm not shy about admitting that, yes I do have my favorite biddy as depicted below. Ms. Amanda Monaco if you please ;)

It's all about the Guitar Players, right?

Time For The Little Black One

2005-03-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

I'm just dabblin with a new design, well merely some UI tweaking of my official website, which is always a small adventure, you never know where this is gonna go.

The site seems to draw me in towards the next really big change as I feel the urge of working with stronger, bolder colors to emerge even more than before. I'm liking it. A little more, ok a LOT more contrast and a new material for my orange mini bar, or was it menu bar?!

For my dear Firefox users, yes there IS a background texture in the current version, you just can't see it properly because Firefox has problems reaming the gamma information stored in the PNG files (I had a look, it IS stored in the files). It works fine in Safari and all other WebKit powered browsers. - For my Windows Internet Explorer users, yes there IS a website behind all the clutter that you see there, you're seeing this because your browser is shit, basically just shit, or two shits since XHTML and CSS are misinterpreted, screwing up with PNG files makes it three shits. YOUR BROWSER STINKS! Get over it you whining weasels and stop bitching about how nobody likes your favorite Redmond company, just get informed and use something that's not 10 years old!

peace out

Licensing and Piracy

2005-03-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

So here's me, a designer with a few self made tools to make my life easier. Now that I'm 2 days away from my first software release for one of these tools (in a swanky new outfit) I must say that I'm thinking about canceling the whole thing.

It looks like the pirates have scored another victory. The time it would take to secure my $10 application would make it a $49 application just to learn basic cryptography and write another application around it that locks it down until your name, serial number and e-mail address are entered and a new serial number is calculated that would append to the existing one to unlock it for use. I don't think that it is worth the effort and think about releasing it at all.

The other possible alternative is to load stuff that you don't see from my web server to track your name and location which isn't so bad and I'm just thinking to go for that and publish the names and personal contact information of the software pirates on static HTML documents that can easily be cached by Google and the Internet Archive of the Library of Congress, marking one as a thief till the end of all things.

Yes I think that's the way to do it and if you bought the software legally there's nothing to fear, but if you need to steal the software and are not willing to pay the remedy (all possible sales minus the actual sales from product launch to tracking of the pirate) then you will find yourself on the web, marked as a thief and reported to your local newspaper and police.

A Ban on Gum Daggers?

2005-03-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

They certainly have something going on over in Ol'Abama! I actually have links to prove my rants here but you probably won't believe it anyway, I didn't believe it either.

Illegal use of Sexual Devices

Like what? Weapons of Mass Pleasure? So what is so bad about having someone use their battery power for some serious relaxation? Here's to the facts: Alabama recently passed a law that makes it illegal to buy what the call sexual devices, like dildos, fake vaginas, blow-up dolls, you name it. Do they have a right to cut that deep into the personal life of their citizens? I think someone needs to have read of something that starts with We, the People… and smarten up. I mean what would you like to have more of, guys that romp the rubbermaid in the closet or more guys on the streets that molest your kids?

Return of the Mixed Salad

Yep, it looks like the good old days of broom, pie and cucumber are back again, at least in Alabama if they keep it up (no pun intended).

License to Grind

Maybe they just opt for a license that allows you to buy sexual aid machinery of some kind, by prescription (or subscription) for people with disabilities that otherwise can't have sex at all. Otherwise they get a problem with the No Child Left Behind Act or maybe that was the intention, since we're talking about Alabama here.

The links of pleasure: Wired article | Usa Today | Outside the Beltway

It isn't really surprising to hear such stories from a state where the majority of the population is related a wee bit to close to get married. Till something changes… if you live at the Belt, prepare to belt it unless there's a law against "immoral use of bodily functions" -- peace out.

Media Break

2005-03-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

I think it is best to have this entry as a sort of media break, especially with tomorrow's story in mind. I really don't want to have a topic like this back-to-back with Jef's passing.

Farewell Jef

2005-02-28T06:02:00.000-08:00

On February 26th, 2005 the world lost one of the greatest minds in computer science of our time. A passionate teacher, writer, model airplane enthusiast, but most of all a friendly spirit.

Jef Rasin invented the Click and Drag mechanism that we all take for granted now, I mean can you really image moving your data in any other way nowadays?

Jef is the best example that I can think of right now for the original Apple Manifesto for your really could not ignore this guy. His theories often sounded pretty radical, but when you saw them applied, it all came and fit together naturally.

I know he'll always be with us, in everything we use in our digital lifestyle. To me Jef always was like a virtual mentor when it came to really difficult design questions for interfaces, in his book or his website was always some hint that helped me to get the knack and deliver a fine product in the end.

Mr Raskin, I sure learned a lot from you and your work, wherever you are, thank you for the spirit.

The Documentary about Jef Raskin

Morony Alert!

2005-02-25T04:32:00.001-08:00

How nice of Google to give use users a Google bar, one more search engine bar in my browser, one more pop-up blocker, one more news reader, how arse-ome!

What on Earth were you THINKING?

While the stuff mentioned above is quite superfluous but won't hurt anyone, here's the real treat… or threat?

Does Google violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

Oh great, how come? Their nice little gadget called AutoLink which will add stuff to YOUR websites, to any website. Sounds familiar? Yes, the crackpots at Microsoft had the same idea in 2001 with the MS Smart Tags, but the Internet fired back, what will happen to Google? Will users ban Google from indexing their servers? Will lawyers get rich and famous for the Google Crackdown that brought the biggest search engine down in a license lawsuit based upon an unlicensed content modification of gazillions of websites?

…the future?

Wild guesses, for sure, but it certainly will be the end of Google as we know it, it lost its virtue. People are already sharpening their knives to fight back or at least try to undo Google's modifications.

More on this at Zeldman's

But by all means TELL Google what they are doing wrong! Apparently they don't realize that these things along with automatic linking of ISBN numbers to the appropriate items at amazon.com will expose companies like Tower Records and Barnes & Noble to huge losses. Or how would you like an automatic map to your house from your whois.net entry that shows up when someone checks on your domain name?

What was the name of that Movie again? Ah yes, 1984! Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a company that tries to make the most out of their knowledge, but let me just insert a quote from Spiderman here to get my point across:

With great power comes great responsibility.

ATypI 2005 Logo ASCII Style!

2005-02-22T17:24:00.000-08:00

This time it's all glyphs!

As a little update to my previous post about the Matrix-esque version of the ATypI logo, I decided to post a text only version of it now.

Yes indeed, it's all glyphs! not a single image in this one, just like the old days of BBS. Shit do I feel old now that I remember the pre web era when you dialed in to someone's computer to see some wicked ASCII art and discuss the daily news and other often quite naughty things. Aw, those were the days, I'm getting senti-mental now.

Update Mash-Up

2005-02-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

Some Updates for Firefox worth checking out

The first one I got for you is quite neat for those of you that want to get started with their podcasting gig and don't want to fiddle with different engines that publish it on the web in an RSS Feed.

Link: Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info: RSS Editor

Another one that's worth mentioning is called BlogThis, it's an extension that lets you create a Blogger entry by CTRL + Clicking on anything on a website and select BlogThis from the contextual menu.

Link: Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info: BlogThis

One extension that I'm using now like crazy for my web research stuff is called QuickNote. It is a quite strightforward way to auto-generate Stickies-like notes that are organized in tabs. The cool thing about it: You select some text on a website and CTRL + Click to get the contextual menu and select Send to QuickNote and it generates a sticky note with the selected text and the URL where the text snipped came from, slick!

Link: Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info: QuickNote

That's gonna be it for now, hope you liked today's mash-up and found some of the stuff useful.

Fancy Matrix-Esque ATypI 2005 logo

2005-02-20T21:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I had a shitty weekend and wanted to do something different for a change, something really different.

If you are into typography, you will quite dig the result and if you into the Matrix trilogy you'll dig it even more.

What I did was taking the ATypi logo that they use for their 2005 conference in Helsinki and run it through a Perl script (beta) that mimics the shape of the logo by replacing it with Kanji and Latin glyphs to make it a little more Matrix-like.

The original logo was done by Underware and you should check out their website, they might not be too aware of web standards, but the definitely nail it when it comes to type design!

Wicked Cool iPhoto Gallery Thing!

2005-02-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

Some while ago I found this pretty slick accessoire that lets you get custom HTML from your iPhoto output instead of that rather horrible thing that iPhoto spits out by default.

Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign was pissed-off by this too but went another way that is more centric to his blogging environment, which is Movable Type and might be the shiznit for you as well. Douglas describes his findings on his site stopdesign.com.

If you are like me and just have some little php that helps you around or don't use any engine at all to stuff your website together, my finding will be pretty helpful to you as well as it is for me. Hint: click on the posting title to get there

What I did so far on this is basically just a very slim XHTML framework that just has placeholders for the meta-data of each image, like the iPhoto comment that I wrote or my iPhoto ratings, pretty simple stuff. To avoid lengthy passages of text I went for the <title="comment..."> way that will give you the comment when moving the mouse over the image thumbnail. The large image that it links to, has it a box of text underneath it, since my comments tend to be of a lengthy nature. I just need to find a way to inset just a portion of the comment in to the <title> tag, otherwise it will look pretty awkward, image having a Post-It like thing hanging from your mouse pointer, yuck I don't fuckin' work at the Microsoft user interface team.

The design of this baby is of-course all done in CSS 2.1 and the XHTML I'm using is 1.1 and only used to mark-up the content. Tables are for 3 things only here, tabular data, food, lovemaking. You wouldn't design a book or a brochure with MS Excel, would you? Thanks, but some so called web-designers think that way, so I thought I should mention it. Since the sites of those people are also not valid XHTML in most cases, let's just call 'em the invalids here, ha!

When I'm done with the whole thing, I'll make sure to post a link to the galleries here for you to check them out. The next few weeks are gonna be pretty busy, got lots of cool stuff and hard work to do, so the galleries have to wait, since I was mostly using the RAW format of my SIGMA SG9 which is supported by… NO ONE it'll take me some time to get all the gazillions of images over to iPhoto, I'll use batch processing though, ah well, just watch this space and stay tuned to the rantoblogcious feed.

Enchantment at the Gates

2005-02-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

No Bill here, this installation is actually interesting.

I have to admit being a teeny tiny bit disappointed when I saw the first pictures of the latest Christo and Jeanne-Claude installment in New York City's Central Park. The main reason for this little disappointment were the wonderful drawings that Christo published last year. Drawings that were so vibrant in color and so lively that I couldn't wait to see the real thing.

The press coverage here in Europe was rather poor on the whole thing, so when I saw some gray-ish images of washed out linen, it was an awkward feeling. Browsing over to Christo and Jeanne-Claude's site I could see some better pictures, like this one and somehow this magical moment comes across, the moment that I felt when seeing Christo's sketches and drawings in 2004.

My name is Frank and I do believe this is art!

Writing an e-Book

2005-02-17T03:51:00.000-08:00

Just started on my first self-published e-Book about web standards and how to use it to stop wasting money.

It is targeted towards designers and decision makers along the way. And yes, I promise to piss-off designers that are too full of themselves and see their values as the only ones valid. Quite funny to use the word valid here, though.

So far I'm done with the outline and can safely say that it is going to change while I'm writing the thing together… as usual. Well, OK… I CAN say that it is bound to have some historical notes to it, how the web started and so on, since these notes will make it totally clear how to make a great website. Oh yes, and it won't be too technical.

First Blogged, First Served?

2005-02-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

Stardate whatever, captain's log: … Remember these lines?

The first bloggers apparently were Starfleet officers that had to blog as a part of their job description: Explore space, discover new civilizations and don't forget to blog about it every night. Today this behavior might even get you fired! Blogging about your work I mean, don't even think about exploring space!

Anyway… welcome to my blog. My very first posting here, so please don't mind if it is totally incoherent. I'm using Apple's Mail app btw to post this blog entry, isn't that just cool from Google, to let us blog by e-mail? I certainly think so!