Capistrano Beach, California – Spring Break 2010
Category: Robert’s Blog
Down Istanbul
This is my new favorite song of the moment! Download it here. Get the whole album here at Twilightzone’s Blog, where, at the moment, there is a great series of rare 45’s being posted under the moniker Trashcan Records. Fantastic stuff!
Update: Drop.io is dead, as is my link to the song. Sorry. Here’s a YouTube version:
Troll 2: Yes, It’s THAT Bad
Dummy Image Bookmarklet
This afternoon I came up with a handy little bookmarklet (or favlet) that uses the site dummyimage.com to create a place holder graphic. Simply drag the following link to the button bar of your browser:
Dummy ImageHere’s the code:
<a href="javascript:var q=window.prompt('Dimensions XxY (for example 640x480)');if(q){void(window.open('http://dummyimage.com/'+q))}else{void(0);};">Dummy Image</a>When you click the bookmark it will prompt you to input image dimensions. Use the format, WIDTHxHEIGHT (for example 640×480) and a new window should open up with a downloadable GIF with those exact dimensions.
Copyright and YouTube
I just noticed today that a video I had posted in YouTube was just blocked in the U.S. because of some music I used in the background. Specifically, they blocked my PC Transporter video that I used to demo some hardware I was selling on eBay. The video is pretty mundane, but I used a Señor Coconut track in the background along with various beeps and noises from the Apple ][gs. Come on, who is going to download the song with all sorts of disk drive noises on top of it? WMG thinks people will do this, so now only people outside the U.S. can view the video. But, get this, if you can view the video in your region, it gives you direct links to download the song on iTunes or Amazon! That is a brilliant business move, but apparently using user created videos as a promo tool in the U.S. is beyond the pea brains at WMG. So, for my sake, please steal Señor Coconut’s record off the Internet (search for it on Google, you’ll find it for download from Rapidshare or similar site) and don’t buy the record if you live in the U.S.A.! I will find a way around YouTube’s blocker soon and repost the video here as soon as I can.
Video Games Are Derivative? No!! Okay, yes.
Ya know, I love me them video games. I would go so far as to argue that video games are, well… can be, art. However, I have to admit that even the best video games are a bit lacking in the originality department. Take, for example, this screen shot from Yahoo showing three upcoming games:
Stubble-faced muscle men abound in the video game world.
Canada
I just got back from a short little weekend excursion to visit my cousins up in Windsor, Canada. Windsor can be described as Detroit’s Gary, Indiana… if Gary had weird money and lots of Tim Horton’s donut shops (or do they say shoppes in Canada? Or doughnuts for that matter?). One area where Windsor has Gary (and Chicago) whipped, is great Lebanese food (El Mayor). On the other hand, the whole “Beer Store” thing is really, dare I say, stupid and backwards. We got to witness a little bit of the Canadian healthcare system when we met our cousins at the E.R. while they had their son treated for his fevery sickness. The free thing is great and all, but they definitely had a much longer time waiting than you would see in most U.S. emergency rooms. They did manage to treat the fever and all was well by the end of the weekend. Other notable events: full monty vehicle search at the border coming home, vandalized key-drop at the Enterprise car-rental return and a guy with tourettes at the Swiss Chalet who would be an awesome back-up vocalist for Naked Raygun!
The Ultimate In-Box Notification Noise
I have discovered the best sound to use for a new mail notification in your e-mail client. It’s the object pick-up noise form Atari’s Adventure for the 2600. I’ve attached the WAV file to this post so that you to can feel like you are grabbing the goblet next time you get a v!@gr@ ©ialis spam in your in-box!
Adobe Contribute Is No Longer My Friend
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Adobe. Some of their products are great—Photoshop is a verb these days for good reason—but, they have also released some of the most disappointing software I have ever used. Encore, their DVD authoring program, will crash anytime you try to do anything with even a moderate degree of complexity. Dreamweaver will give you cryptic JavaScript errors out of the blue, when you are not actively editing anything. Heck, everyone knows Acrobat is a bloated resource hog.
Back in the early 00s, Macromedia Contribute was a great idea. Give web developers a cheap (Contribute 1 & 2 sold for around $60-$80 bucks) WYSIWYG web editor to give to their clients who may not be comfortable with the destructive power of Dreamweaver. Sure, it didn’t quite render CSS right, but nothing really did at the time. Contribute just worked and filled a niche.
Fast forward to 2010. Macromedia is no more. Adobe has been trying to integrate all of their products into interoperable “creative suites” of programs. In theory this seems good. I like being able to dump files from one application to another without any hassles. Unfortunately, this makes the world of Adobe a bit like Melrose Place, where you don’t know who’s sleeping with who and Acrobat has given half the cast an embarrasing, throbbing rash.
These days, my clients who are using Contribute to edit sites I created for them are plagued with cryptic errors and equally cryptic workarounds. For example, one of my sites will not allow users to center text of all things. Another site gives you errors when you try to type in a repeating region. Other users have connection issues all the time. On top of all this pain, Adobe now charges something like $190 bucks for a single license. Sorry, Contribute. But friends we can be no more.
2009 Best of the Year
It’s the end of another year and I think it would be a good time for me to recap my personal best of lists for 2009. In case you haven’t noticed, much of this site is devoted to keeping track of all the media I digest. I review and rate just about every movie, game or book I finish. I also keep track of the music I listen to, but I don’t really buy much music anymore, so that section doesn’t really give a good overview of the new music I have heard lately. So, anyhow, here it is. The Pages of Fun Best of 2009!
Best Book
- Flying Colours by C. S. Forester – I’d ran out of Aubry/Maturin Napoleonic era novels so I guess Hornblower had to suffice for this year. This series has its highs and lows, and never quite matches O’Brian, but this book in particular was very good.
- Honorable Mention: Twisty Little Passages – An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort – This one is probably a bit too nerdy for the average reader, but I really enjoyed this academic analysis of text adventures.
Best Movies
- The Dark Knight – Really? This is the best film I saw this year?!
- Sukiaki Western Django – At least this one had some indie cred to it.
I guess it was a pretty lame film year for me. I have a pretty big back list of films yet-to-see, so hopefully 2010 will fare better.
Best Video Games
- Braid was my highest ranked game this year. A wonderfully inventive platform game.
- I also have a couple of honorable mentions in this category as well: Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge were both incredible games.
All of these games were bought using Valve’s Steam download service, and all were very cheap! PC rules!