Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Secret

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:27:31 -0500

The Boy whispered a secret in my ear.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“Not even mom.”

“Ok”

“You can tell the dogs, because they’re brainless.”

What? Come on, that’s totally legible and enforceable.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:07:55 -0500

What?

Come on, that’s totally legible and enforceable.

Checks and Balances

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:06:53 -0500

Me: My Drobo is acting up. I think one of the drives may be dead.

Erica: Why don’t you buy a bunch of 2TB drives?

Me: Because I want to stay married.

Words With Friends - Etiquette and Protocol Guide, Draft 1

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:05:00 -0500

janetisserlis asked:

do people get annoyed if you specifically invite them to play wwf if they don’t know you?

Do ANY people anywhere ever get annoyed about this? Probably.

Do I know of any? No.

Would I point at them with a thumb on one hand and make a jerking-off motion with the other if they ever expressed being upset about something like that? Yes.

IS there an etiquette guide to wwf?

No. So I’m writing one. Because as MLK Jr. said “If not us, who; if not now; when?” and I think it’s clear he was talking about socially acceptable practices for an iPhone game.

So here’s my guide:

Words With Friends - So You Want To Start a Game With Someone

1) If you want to start a game with someone but you don’t know their WWF name, ask them their WWF name.

At that point they will either:

a) Tell you their WWF name

b) Not tell you their WWF name

c) Confess that they have a Flip Phone or some other non-iPhone/iPod touch device and therefore can’t play WWF.

2) Once you know their WWF name, start a game with them.

At that point they will either

a) Play

b) Decline

c) Not reply at all

d) Remind you that they still don’t have an iPhone/iPod touch and ask you to stop sending them requests to play a game that they don’t have. At this point I suggest that you start taking digital pictures of your Words With Friends board and email the pictures to them and ask what they would play if they did have a grown-up phone.

Words With Friends - “Help! Someone I don’t know wants to play a game with me! What do I do?!?!?”

The important thing here is not to panic. They are not asking you for for buttesecks, it’s a game.

1) If you have a Flip Phone or other non-iPhone/iPod touch device: try to politely decline, preferably without tears at what a shambles your life has become.

2) If you have an iPhone or iPod touch device and want to play a game, accept it.

3) If you have an iPhone or iPod touch device and don’t want to play a game, don’t accept it.

“Holy crap, I started a game with X and s/he is totally kicking my ass! What do I do?”

DO: Keep playing. You never know when you might score 116 points on one play.

DON’T: Suddenly stop playing and ignore the game. Your opponent can only have 20 games going at once. If you decide to just ignore yours because you don’t feel like playing, they have to wait several weeks for the game to kick you out.

IF YOU MUST: you can always resign the game if it is your turn and you really don’t want to continue.

“I tried to start a game with someone and they declined. Why do they hate me?!”

First of all, they probably don’t hate you.

They might just need a break (I did this about a week ago when I realized WWF was taking up just a little too much time.)

They might have too many games going and can’t start any more.

They might have hit the wrong button (I’ve done that).

There are lots of other people around. Post your WWF name on Twitter or on your Tumblr post and invite others to start a game with you.

“Someone tried to start a game with me, and I don’t want to seem like a jerk by declining it, but I don’t want to accept it either. Should I just ignore it like those Facebook requests from my idiot classmates from high-school?

No. If someone has a “pending” game with you, that means they can’t play with someone else. You’re taking one of their spots, which is douchiér than declining.

Just decline it, and if you feel the need to provide some explanation why, send them an Instant Message through the (declined) game telling them that you are planning to sell your iPhone to buy cat food. Or just stop worrying so much that someone is going to get mad at you for something trivial and instead realize that if they do get upset over this, you probably weren’t destined to be lifelong friends anyway.

TIPS: What do the eyes mean? What do the little numbers mean?

When you are looking at a list of games and see a pair of eyes on a particular game, that means that your opponent also has that game open and is looking at the board.

(Update: some have suggested that they might be playing WWF but might not be looking at your particular game. Or they might just be waiting for you to get undressed. Waiting… and waiting… and waiting…)

If you see a little number in a circle next to their name, it may mean that they have sent you an Instant Message through the game. Tap on the game and then tap on “Chat” at the top right to view their message. Tap “Board” to return to the game.

Conclusion

Well, I hope that was helpful.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

Was it good for you?

One of the consequences to living in rural America is something...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:04:52 -0500

One of the consequences to living in rural America is something called “Satellite Internet.” You may have seen their commercials offering “high-speed internet anywhere.”

One of the consequences of having satellite internet is “metering” meaning that there is a specific amount of data that I am allowed to download every month. This is true of all satellite Internet companies, although some offer a “free” period every day (i.e. 2 a.m. - 4 a.m.). My provider, Wildblue, does not.

Here is the chart of what you can expect to get:

Dashboard users: click images below to make them bigger.

Here is the chart of what you can expect to pay:

(Information current as of 2010-03-08. See for yourself. I plugged in 01776 as a zip code to get pricing.)

However, tucked away in the Fair Access Policy (PDF) is an explanation that you are really only getting 80% of that bandwidth. If you exceed that, you get throttled down to a much slower speed. This happened to me once, and it took forever to get back up to my previous speed levels.

In order to keep an eye on those totals, they provide a meter which shows how much you have used. This meter can be found at https://myusage.wildblue.net/UsageGUI/.

Unfortunately, as the image above demonstrates, the chart is not accessible in Mobile Safari (meaning iPhones and iPod touch access).

I get the same error in Safari 4.0.4:

and in Google Chrome (beta as of 2010-03-08):

What’s happening here? Well, there are two answers

1) Technical, Web Standards Nerd Explanation: The page (or at least part of it) is being sent as XHTML, but it’s nowhere near XHTHML. See the source code yourself. There isn’t even a or even a !

2) Normal Person Explanation: Someone at Wildblue did something dumb and unnecessary, and in doing so, made a mistake which is so basic and obviously wrong that it should be considered akin to driving a Ford Pinto on the Autobahn. With the emergency brake on. While blindfolded. Safari is doing the technically correct thing here and saying “Well you told me you were going to do X but you aren’t doing X. Here’s where I think your mistake started…”

Why didn’t anyone who works at Wildblue spot the error? Well, would you be surprised to learn that this is how the same page appears in IE/6?

And in IE/8:

“You’re rendering XHTML as HTML?! How could you, Internet Explorer?! How could you?”

I have to admit that I was really shocked to see that Firefox 3.6 does the same thing:

as does Opera 10:

Reached for comment, Firefox and Opera 10 tearily cried and pointed at IE, shouting, “I learned it from watching you!”

The worst part is that I’m not even sure who is right and who is wrong.

I ran “curl -v https://myusage.wildblue.net/UsageGUI/” and the page is being sent as “Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8” so I’m not sure why Safari is rendering it as XHTML except that there are URLs which have .xhtml in them. So is Safari sniffing here, or is there something else going on? I’m not sure.

One thing is for sure: I can’t see any reason why this was ever put into XHTML other than some web designer thought it was “the next best thing” and wanted to include it even though s/he had absolutely no idea how to make a proper XHTML page (or even an HTML page! This is just a web page fragment.)

Safari wouldn’t have gotten confused if the web page hadn’t confused it.

But mostly I don’t care who is wrong.

I want Safari (and Chrome) to do what everyone else does: show me the page. Some time ago Opera used to offer the option to re-parse the page as HTML if XHTML broke. I argued in favor of that feature.

Why? Because at the end of the day I don’t give a damn that the page has errors. I want to be able to check it and get on with my life. I reported this error to Wildblue and their tech replied that they don’t support mobile phones.

Yeah, brilliant.

I replied and told them it also doesn’t work on the desktop version of Safari either, and tried to get them to at least forward the message to their web people, but to no avail.

I’m quite sure they’re all using Internet Explorer, but even if they were using Firefox they’d never see the error. Heck, the only browsers that show the error are Google Chrome (“Beta!”) and Safari, which is still easily dismissed as “a Mac browser” despite the fact that it is on Windows, the iPhone, and WebKit will soon be on every mobile device except Windows Phone Mobile 7 or whatever it is called.

And so it goes.

I finally realized who Amanda reminds me of: “Lindsay...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:04:52 -0500

I finally realized who Amanda reminds me of:

“Lindsay Monroe” from CSI:NY, played by Anna Belknap.

Fortunately, the first 3 pages of Google Images don’t have any nude pictures of her. That might have gotten awkward.

toldorknown: No. No I did not. That’s not something...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:33:18 -0500

toldorknown:

No.

No I did not.

That’s not something you should just suggest to someone.

Especially when someone was obviously just looking for descendants of Englebert Humperdink.

Who is not to be confused with Prince Humperdinck.

It says so right there on his Wikipedia page.

Well, in my defense, my knowledge of the rap/hip-hop scene is...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:16:57 -0500

Well, in my defense, my knowledge of the rap/hip-hop scene is fairly limited.

Specifically, the only one of these people I’ve ever heard of is Kanye — and only because of Katrina and the VMAs (wasn’t that a band?).

Unless the “Drake” referred hereunto is Sir Francis Drake who circumnavigated the world, a feat I still recall mainly because of the mnemonic from my 5th grade social studies teacher “Drake’s cakes are sold around the world.”

Boy, she really knew how to get the fat kid to remember historical trivia.

I wonder if explorers have ever discovered anything drier than a Yodel.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I should have eaten lunch.

“…fall down go boom.” This will never not be funny...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:06:43 -0500

“…fall down go boom.”

This will never not be funny to me.

I’d like to thank the Academy for recognizing the effort I...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:02:54 -0500

I’d like to thank the Academy for recognizing the effort I have made over the course of my career, but of course I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t able to work with some of the best and the brightest out there. Thank you. You made me better than I am. Most of all thanks to Jason for his amazing work as director of photographer, editor, and post-production.

image via gorillasushi

Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:01:58 -0500

Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love:

nickdouglas:

This article convinced me to turn off all the filters on my AdBlock and only block sites with actually intrusive ads, one-by-one, curating a blacklist rather than a whitelist.

Plus I’m adding Fox News just to fuck the bastards over.

The only ad-blocking I use is ClickToFlash, not only because Flash is the most annoying thing ever, but because it’s often a huge security hole waiting to happen.

I’ll consider whitelisting Ars as soon as they stop imposing artificial page breaks on articles which are not long enough to need them (i.e. This one does but this one doesn’t.)

I just listened to Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s SXSW talk HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! and was struck, again, by much of it, but this seems particularly appropriate.

‘I think I’m developing a form of dyslexia. Every time I see “next page”, I think it says “stop reading and close this tab”.’ And the worst part is, if you talk to work at real, real sites — like real newspapers, real magazines; not shitbag sites; like, good sites — they know, they have the stats, they know that almost everybody stops reading an article when they get to the first ‘click here to go to the next page’. They know that they do it. And they do it anyway, because they get, like, a half of a penny for everybody who does click.

— John Gruber (emphasis mine).

(Aside: Jordan Cole made a transcript of the talk which is really quite good.)

Ars did a good job at explaining why ad blockers can be bad for sites you love, but they’re still not very interested in providing a top notch reading experience.

I’ll read through 26 “pages” of John Siracusa going into intricate details of the latest version of Mac OS X.

I won’t click through to the 2nd page of Seven steps to netbook marital bliss with Windows 7 unless it’s to do something like provide a handy summary such as, “Hey, you know what those steps are?”

Install the best available drivers
Install any power management tools supplied by the vendor
Turn off Aero and other graphical hotness
Install Chrome, and auto-hide the taskbar
Turn off startup processes and services
Consider hardware upgrades (increase RAM, swap out hard drive for an SSD)
Remove unnecessary cruft, if any

If you’d like more information on steps 1-3, they are on page 1.

If you’d like more information on steps 4-7, they are on page 2.

If you think this Ars article was a) pretty damn obvious and barely worth one page view, nevermind two… feel free to skip both entirely.

In Tweetie for Mac’s preference panel, there is a...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:20:55 -0500

In Tweetie for Mac’s preference panel, there is a checkbox:

[ ] Show ads

when you try to un-check that box, the above dialog box appears.

I’m reinstalling stuff on my iMac, which means re-entering all of my registration codes, etc, and I obviously haven’t done Tweetie yet, but it strikes me as a very nice, not-too-in-your-face way of letting your users know that there’s a “register” option available.

Original “teaser” trailer for the first Spider-man...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:01:08 -0500

Original “teaser” trailer for the first Spider-man movie.

I wonder how many people saw this or remember it.

In mid-July, 2001, the initial trailer for the Spider-man movie was released. It wasn’t obvious what it was at first, however, because all it showed was a bank robbery which ended which the thieves getting into a helicopter. Just when it looked like they had gotten away with it, the helicopter stops, and then is pulled backwards.

An overhead shot reveals that a web was pulling them back, the first indicator for the über-nerdy that this was, in fact, the Spider-man trailer.

Then we a closeup on the cockpit of the helicopter:

A slight camera pull-back shows the rest of the helicopter

and finally a fast-pull out reveals that the helicopter is stuck in a spider-web… between the twin towers:

The original “impact” of this was supposed to make it clear to everyone that this was a Spider-man movie trailer, and moments later we will catch our first on-screen glance at him.

Of course the impact it has now is different.

The movie was not scheduled to be released until the summer of 2002. According to Wikipedia, the bank-robbery scene was not intended to be a part of the movie and was shot merely for use in the trailer. (There was also a movie poster which showed the towers which was “recalled” after 9/11.)

Given that I’m a huge nerd, it probably won’t surprise you to know that in July 2001 I saved a copy of the trailer to my hard drive so I could watch it whenever I wanted to. In the years since I occasionally “stumble” across it on my computer and almost always find that I have to watch it again. I know it’s on YouTube, but I can’t quite bring myself to delete it.

I don’t say this to make any sort of profound “statement” about anything. I just happened across it again today and wondered if others had seen it.

NOW I HAZ A SAD. Related: T.J. Thyne {who plays Jack Hodgins on...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:11:00 -0500

NOW I HAZ A SAD.

Unrelated: Me to TJ Thyne

Apparently Words With Friends knows my cousin

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:32:56 -0500

Apparently Words With Friends knows my cousin

"As authorities nationwide warn motorists of the dangers of driving while texting, Florida Keys law..."

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:05:21 -0500

“

As authorities nationwide warn motorists of the dangers of driving while texting, Florida Keys law enforcement officers add a new caution: Don’t try to shave your privates, either.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers say a two-vehicle crash Tuesday at Mile Marker 21 on Cudjoe Key was caused by a 37-year-old woman driver who was shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband took the wheel from the passenger seat.

“She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit,” Trooper Gary Dunick said. “If I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have believed it. About 10 years ago I stopped a guy in the exact same spot … who had three or four syringes sticking out of his arm. It was just surreal and I thought, ‘Nothing will ever beat this.’ Well, this takes it.”

”

- (via tbridge)

No. Words.

This will come as a complete surprise

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:53:43 -0500

About a month ago, I set out to find some really good, progressive religious websites.

I setup a bunch of Google News Alerts for various keywords and dumped anything that looked remotely interesting into Google Reader.

I’ve been reading them fairly regularly since.

99% of everything I’ve read? Complete and utter crap.

sigh

Is there a DaringFireball of contemporary Christianity? Is there a 43Folders for people interested in delving into the complexities of religion and politics? Surely I can’t be the only one interested in such a thing. So where is it?

"Policemen have started carrying guns – big, visible, frightening guns – quite widely. And I don’t..."

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:15:56 -0500

“Policemen have started carrying guns – big, visible, frightening guns – quite widely. And I don’t remember us discussing that. Did I miss a meeting? The last conversation I remember was all about the pride we take in our unarmed British force. You know, the ones whose weapons (a truncheon, a whistle, who knows?) are tucked discreetly on to their belts, under their long jackets, beneath those slightly silly hats that make them taller than everyone else, because they are supposed to be reassuring figures, easily identifiable in a crowd, representing more of a help than a threat.

Somehow, they have been reborn as a tooled-up army of Schwarzeneggers. And I don’t think we did discuss it. I think we gradually noticed it happen and we subconsciously thought: “Well, yes, terrorist threat, 9/11, 7/7, WMD, homegrown assassins in our midst, few more armed police about, hope I get to Tesco before the semi-skimmed milk runs out.”

But that’s not a reason. Even if you believe the country is riddled with terrorists waiting to explode, that shouldn’t spell official, widespread guns. When I was a kid, the newspapers fuelled our fear of IRA bombs. The impression was, you could hardly walk down Oxford Street without getting blown up. But I remember, I remember, how proudly people spoke about our unaffected lives. We shopped there anyway. We carried on as normal, assuming we wouldn’t get unlucky.

Not now. We accept, somehow, even though we must understand how vast are the statistics against our being at a bomb scene, that we will queue for three hours at the airport, won’t carry water, won’t carry toothpaste; we will fill in extra forms and hand out extra personal information whenever we hear the words “heightened security”; and we will see armed police on the street. Why? How will that help? Unless we put 20 armed police on every street, they’re never going to be in the right place at the right time – and if the right place at the right time is an underground train carriage where a man unexpectedly blows himself up, a gun wouldn’t stop him anyway. That’s just firing bullets into the stable door after the horse has detonated.

And he stood there, Tony Blair, he stood there, well, he sat there, and he made that little church-and-steeple out of his fingers and he said the Iraq war had “made the world a safer place”. Really? Really? If it’s so much safer, how come we need all these hired gunmen that we didn’t need before?”

- Victoria Coren: He stepped out of the dark with a gun… | The Observer (via crowth) (via brilliantology) (via stuffparty)

Wow. Brilliant writing from Coren. The last paragraph is fantastic.

(via penllawen)

I put a reblog of this in my queue ages ago (Feb 11th, by the date of it) with the intention of writing something intelligent about it.

But all I can think to say about it is still “Yes.”

I’ve been sitting here for 5 minutes trying to figure out...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:15:56 -0500

I’ve been sitting here for 5 minutes trying to figure out if he’s serious.

I mean, it’s not as if the account is idle (cough cough 17,405 posts)

I'm not sure what's funnier…

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:15:52 -0500

That Beth has a Twitter list called People I Sleep With which has one person on it or that the list has two followers.