Worlds Colliding Violently

Worlds Colliding Violently

Programming, Drumming, Cooking, Cars, Mozilla, and the Trials & Tribulations of a Geek from New Jersey.

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Public Access

When I was a kid growing up in South Jersey, I remember finding a public access TV station that would play some of the most bizarre material in the world. One that has stayed with me to this day was a parody of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”, entitled “Teddy Bears’ Rallies”. In fact, I still remember every word and the incredibly weird marching stuffed animals that went along with it. Amazingly, Google turns up nothing on this, so it must have disappeared completely into the ether.

So to try to prevent the loss of this amusing silliness, I’m going to retype the words here, from memory, circa 1992.

If you go into the woods today,
you’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go into the woods today,
you will not believe your eyes.

For everywhere you’ll see Teddy Bears
all drawn up into orderly squares
‘Cause that’s the way the Teddy Bears have their rallies.

We learn unquestioning discipline,
and how to use M16s.
Our sergeants drill us until we are
robotic killing machines.

Amongst the brooks where nobody looks,
We burn the piles of forbidden books!
‘Cause that’s the way we Teddy Bears have our rallies!

Then it broke into a different tune altogether but still Teddy Bear themed, and I cannot recall the name of the original song it was parodying. But the gist of it was that the teddies were climbing into your bedroom in your sleep and slicing your throat open.

It was all wondrously disturbing and I’d love to meet whoever came up with all of it!

Vancouver Clowning

Dear in-attendance fans of US athletes at the Vancouver games,

Please, for the love of the gods, stop painting your chests and put your shirts back on.

I’m sorry, but this is just embarrassing. I’ve watched 3 different events so far where US competitors had a small group of guys cheering them on with body paint, standing there shirtless. In case no one told you, this is the Olympics, not a Green Bay Packer’s game. We look like a bunch of goddamned rubes. You would think that we could find a way to cheer for our athletes without looking like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel.

Oh, and Shannon Bahrke…you’re 29, and you have bright pink Manic Panic hair. What, did you just make your first trip to Hot Topic? Also, your wild gesticulating during the national anthem at the medal presentation was downright insulting. You’re representing the entire country, act like an adult for 30 seconds!

Sincerely,
A Curmudgeonly Philadelphian

The iPad is Confusing

I might be pulling a Rob Malda here, but…

No USB, no camera, no IR or RF, no multi-tasking, stuck on AT&T. Lame.

In all seriousness, I am at a loss with this product release. It’s not even a larger iPhone, because as we all know, an iPhone has a camera and a GSM chip. The iPad, on the other hand, is just a large iPod Touch.

Firstly, Apple blatantly ripped off Delicious Library with their iBook software. Conveniently, Delicious Library’s iPhone app was rejected from the iTunes store recently…

The unit itself is lousy for an ebook reader, it’s not an e-ink screen, and costs twice as much as a Kindle. The lack of a USB port means you can’t easily hook up normal peripherals, forcing you to buy custom 30-pin dock connector compatible devices, like a camera connection kit. Why couldn’t they just include a USB port?

Any rumors of home automation were obviously false, which is a shame given the potential this could have had. Imagine wall-mounting an iPad into a slick holder, and having it be a digital picture frame. Then, touch it and it’s a jukebox-style controller for your stereo, or your thermostat. Take it down and it can control your entire entertainment center with custom per-device controls. An on-screen wheel for volume, scrubbing controls for playback on your TV…it had such potential. It could have revolutionized every gadget-center living room.

Instead we’re stuck with this odd combination of various devices. It can’t play arbitrary video formats, so you’d have to transcode everything. It doesn’t play flash, so while that’s fine for YouTube, there goes Hulu, The Daily Show, the BBC iPlayer, etc. And while HTML 5 supports native video, Mobile Safari’s implementation leaves much to be desired, not to mention none of the popular streaming sites use it yet. Obviously this is yet another attempt to generate revenue by iTunes store purchases. Pretty lousy for those of us who like to keep their movies in their original format without transcoding.

The most perplexing thing about it is that there’s an available keyboard dock that lets you mount the screen vertically while typing on a keyboard in front of it. You know, like a $#@*$&% laptop! I mean, if that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. If Apple’s device was so revolutionary, why would you need a hardware keyboard sitting in front of it in a configuration that’s been around for 20 years?

The consensus seems to be that most of us were expecting an Apple tablet form of a MacBook. Instead, we got a tablet iPod Touch, and no one is really sure what to make of it. To me, this feels like Apple swung and missed, big time. We’ll see in 60 days when it’s finally in the hands of users.

One of these things is not like the other…

Well, okay, two of these things.

Windows 7 Taskbar & 4 Browsers

Once I upgraded to Windows 7 I noticed that the taskbar grouping varies wildly depending on the browser you’re using. Firefox 3.5.x, Chrome 3.0.x, Safari 4.0.x and IE 8.0.x all have differing levels of support for the Win7 taskbar.

In the screenshot above, all 4 of those browsers have 1 window with 2 tabs open, yet IE and Safari show grouping whereas Firefox and Chrome do not. What’s going on?

For a limited number of available preview items (dependent on screen resolution), IE & Safari will show you an Aero-Peek view of all available windows and tabs. If you have 2 windows open and 3 tabs on each, it will show you 6 items. Chrome & Firefox on the other hand will show you 2, the number of windows you have open.

It looks as though FF & Chrome aren’t far behind though, as this will be in Firefox 3.6 (already in the nightlies and RCs) and a future version of Chrome (the bug for this is already fixed).

Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. As someone who currently has open 15 tabs in Firefox, I don’t know if I really want all of my tabs listed in Aero-Peek. There is discussion of this on the chromium bug tracker too.

Ninkendo:

Am I the only one who *hates* having multiple tabs show up in the mouseover preview? I separate my windows into tabs for a reason: my tabs within a window are from one session (or category), and I like to be able to drill down by picking the right window first, and then the right tab within a window. With the mouseover preview all I see are a giant sea of tabs, and I have to spend a lot of thought thinking “ok, which tab is the one I wanted?” As a result, there’s actually *no* way in the windows 7 taskbar to find the IE8 window you want. You have to know even more specific information to get the right window: you have to know the tab too.

RCDailey:

What happens if you have 2 chrome windows open, each with a set of tabs? I guess it
doesn’t care? I suppose from the preview you can’t tell what window the tabs belong to.

Machee:

Honestly, I usually only have one Chrome window open, so I hadn’t considered the sea
of tabs that could come from having multiple open. That just means this feature
needs a few options:

1. Always show all tabs from all windows. (Like IE)
2. Always show only the current tab from each window. (Current functionality.)
3. Only show tabs when there is only one window open.

Once the new release of FF goes official, I’ll see how I like this. I have a feeling though that it’s going to annoy the crap out of me.

Seriously, Outlook?

Or, how not to write an error message, courtesy of Microsoft (entry #3,948,502). Also notice the 1000+ px wide message box! Click on the thumbnail below for the full error.

Uhhhhh...

Uhhhhh...

Objective C Methods

By far and away, the weirdest thing about Objective C is that the method names have prepositions in them.

Really let that sink in.

I am at a loss to come up with another language which shares that particular naming convention.

Ooops.

Why using the right type of chart (in this case, a bar chart) is so important.

Shouldn't Be a Pie Chart

What about the pescatarians?

Support Groups

Metanoia

Dollar Sign Hat, and Dollar Sign Hat Hat

Dolla Dolla Bill

Explain This

If anyone can explain what this guy was talking about, I’ll give you $100 (or €5, whatever is worth more at the time).

Um, What?

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