Thu, July 28

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, and Spam—5:29 PM

Today at 4:48pm, we at onebee received our very first instance of legitimate comment spam. Occasionally, someone will drop by and submit an erudite, thoughtful opinion like "asdf asdfdw" but up to now we haven't had any online sales pitches generated by robots.

Ironically enough, the comment was posted on my review of the movie Robots. I'm certainly curious why. I can't imagine it's the best page in terms of PageRank, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the product being shilled. (I'm loath to mention the product, because I don't want to add a single hit to their Google index.)

Hopefully, this isolated incident doesn't mean comment spam is going to become a recurring problem. As delightful as it is to run the site on my own homegrown back-end, it removes options like MT-Blacklist or other plugins as possible comment spam evasion strategies. Which means I would have to come up with code to combat it, because the current approach – I login and delete the comment, usually within less than an hour – is only good for very occasional uses. And a more automatic solution will be a pain to devise.

On the plus side, I suppose it means onebee has attained a certain status if the spammers are hip to us.

2 comments with related links

Wed, July 27

Related Photo Flicker, Ajax—3:33 PM

With the photos and galleries working, it's time to focus on some of the more complex features that have been held up by their dependence on the photos and galleries.

One of these is a "pseudo-gallery," which will treat the photos that are related to a given item as an ad hoc gallery for viewing purposes. So, in addition to the photo section in the "related items" column (for an example, see my Shark Tale screed), you'll also have the opportunity to view that group of photos "as a gallery" – in a layout already designed specifically for displaying groups of photos. It's one of the most brilliant ideas of the re-bee, and I'm proud to say it works beautifully.

So, yesterday and today I got that working, along with a very slightly redesigned flicker for the photo section in the related column. The new version adopts the "slide" design from the gallery view, which will become the dominant metaphor for displaying clickable image previews at onebee. And, as of today, it's powered by Ajax – which means you'll be able to flip through the related photos without reloading the page. A quicker and more seamless experience, to be sure.

Implementing the Ajax solution is always a challenge, but it gets easier as I gain experience. I still work vigilantly to avoid deploying Ajax unless there's a good reason (same for any whiz-bang technology, for that matter). There must be a tangible benefit over the flat approach. It must not detract from the ordinary operation of the rest of the page. (E.g., breaking the "back" button, denying a permalink, or myriad other shortcomings.) And, absolutely paramount, it must degrade gracefully and seamlessly. In the case of the related photo flicker, if your browser won't execute the Ajax solution, it automatically falls back to the page-reload approach that onebee currently uses.

Degrading gracefully is absolutely essential. There are certain web browsers that are just too old to code for, but – within reason – you must try to provide the best possible experience for all users. In the case of the related photo flicker (or RPF, for short), I coded the old-school, page-reload version first and then decided to add the Ajax flair. It happened by accident for me, but I think this makes a good model for developers. Creating the default version first ensures that it's rock-solid and performs beautifully – as if it were the only version. Then, you slip in the newfangled widgets, and things get even better for the people with modern browsers. This way, the default isn't some hasty, half-assed kludge; it's a fully functional approach. That's a nice gift for your viewers – and it just might inform the design of the whiz-bang version, making both better in the process.

0 comments with related links

Tue, July 26

Happy Little Trees

Where else can you get a detailed rant on game show strategy, a heartened defense of Richard Dawson's showmanship, and an exploration of the world view of Bob Ross? I'm going out on a limb and calling this my best post since my last one. (Read more.)

0 comments with related links

Rejected Company Names—11:57 AM

Specifics are hush-hush for the time being, but I was recently asked to help brainstorm some possible names for an entrepreneurial venture. The process is ongoing, but here are some of the names that didn't make the first cut.

Popkint
Noople
Brinko
Esganoo
Antoop
Mansa
InTown
Tenby
Pipstruct
Mandito
Bigwic

And, of course: Chumturd and Chimptoe.

4 comments with related links

Mon, July 25

Chilling. Chilling.—9:20 PM

Just finished watching tonight's Daily Show with guest Senator Rick Santorum. (At the desk for two segments; there was almost no comedy at all!) Obviously, a team of image consultants have been hammering on this guy for the last six months, even in his sleep.

Not only did he sound intelligent and reasonable, he sounded more reasonable than Jon Stewart. Don't get me wrong, I won't take his side that the government should make a special case for families headed by one man and one woman because they're more valuable to society than same-sex couples – though I suspect at least one reader will. But after tonight's interview, I could agree to disagree with Rick Santorum on the issue. I never thought that would happen.

He's wrong about the relative merits of gay vs. straight couples, and he's very wrong about the "culture war" (and of course that refrain still drives me up the wall). But Santorum made sense, rolled with the punches, got his point across clearly, and came off as a friendly, respectful – even open-minded – guy. He was poised and affable, even through Stewart's typical barrage of snide interjections. He weathered much better than Bernard Goldberg did a couple of weeks ago. I'm absolutely astonished.

15 comments with related links

Thu, July 21

Making speedy deliveries day by day—12:08 PM

All right, kiddies! Say you have an object that represents a photo gallery image and you want to make sure that it displays at the proper size. (If it's a slide, it should be no more than 90 pixels along its longest side, or no more than 68px along its shortest – whichever is smaller; otherwise, it just needs to be 500px or narrower, regardless of the height.) How would you come up with the proper width and height attributes? Eh, hotshot?!

Well, here's how I did it:

switch($this->type){
case "slide":
$maxwidth = ($this->isVertical())? 68: 90;
$maxheight = ($this->isVertical())? 90: 68;
break;
default:
$maxwidth = 500;
$maxheight = $this->height;
break;
}
if($this->width > $maxwidth){
$widthratio = $maxwidth/$this->width;
}
if($this->height > $maxheight){
$heightratio = $maxheight/$this->height;
}
if($widthratio && $heightratio){
if($widthratio > $heightratio){
unset($widthratio);
} else {
unset($heightratio);
}
}
if($widthratio){
$height = number_format($this->height * $widthratio);
$width = $maxwidth;
} else if($heightratio){
$width = number_format($this->width * $heightratio);
$height = $maxheight;
} else {
$width = $this->width;
$height = $this->height;
}

Can you beat that shit? Woo!

Not that this is the most spectacularly impressive part of this week's work, which has resulted in photos and galleries working on the front end. (Yay!) But it looks nice and geeky, which is exactly the point. This is a process laden with geeky minutiae. And there's a light at the end of the tunnel, people.

Photos! Galleries! Working! Weeeeeee!

(In related news, I have discovered that I'm physically incapable of watching The Amazing Race without my McRace peeps. I don't know what I'm going to do. I've never known myself to be so desperate for an audience for my wisecracks. Maybe I should make a podcast of my sarcastic commentary...)

0 comments with related links

Tue, July 19

Karl Rove doesn't need a job that bad—9:54 PM

This week's "Newsweek" has a big picture of Turd Blossom on the cover. I haven't read the article – I'm an American goddammit! I've got to watch Average Joe: The Joes Fight Back! – but I did look at the pictures.

This is what I was afraid of. The fringe nutjobs take to the streets with their chants and this becomes a fringe issue. Mainstream America sees just another frenzied smear campaign, cooked up by hippie malcontents with their conspiracy theory blogs and their Ralph Nader bongs.

(Sure, some of those people look pretty normal. Regular folks like me who get the MoveOn.org newsletter on their office computers instead of at a vegan Internet café. But look at the guy in the bandana. You just know all the old records and spelling trophies in his parents' basement are pushed out of the way this month so he can put the finishing touches on his papier mâché puppet of Karl Rove sodomizing Judith Miller.)

The thing is, people: if Rove gets fired, nothing changes. Why should Rove care? Nothing will stop Bush from calling him for advice anytime. (Well, nothing except Bush would probably pick up the See-N-Say the first couple times – but he'll get the hang of it.) Rove won't be fired, but if he were, he'd probably go work for a high-profile Rightie think tank (instead of turning the White House into one) – no matter what, he'll continue to run Washington.

My greatest concern is that we are playing into their hands on this one (again!). (And by "we" I mean the misguided souls operating on our behalf – personally, I'm content to hate Bush quietly while watching Average Joe.) Remember Die Hard with a Vengeance? There's a bomb threat at an unnamed New York public school, so policemen are dispatched to every school in the city, leaving Wall Street abandoned, and Jeremy Irons walks off with all the gold in Manhattan while wearing a tank top?? O'Franken and the Lefty bloggers and the protesters are manic about this – meanwhile Rove is taking advantage of the distraction and getting to work on real secret evil. Secret evil we can't even imagine.

The only indication that the White House is actually worried about this leak/cover-up/scandal is that they seem to be trying to distract us from it, rather than just leaving us to bang our heads against the wall. Did Scott McClellan miss a memo? Why is he obfuscating and contradicting himself and looking scared? Why is the John Roberts announcement being timed to distract us? Why is Bush subtly changing his language from "involved" to "committed a crime"? Has Rove finally adjusted strategies – assuming that if he doesn't throw up a smokescreen, the left will realize it's a non-issue and start wondering about the secret evil? If so, methinks he's giving us way too much credit.

1 comment with related links

Mon, July 18

Portland pics—10:37 PM

Uploaded select photos from recent Portland trip to flickr, just for the heck of it (my first real use of flickr). Let's try out this "flickr badge" offering together, shall we?

Portland Trip [flickr]

0 comments

TiVo and advertising—10:11 AM

TiVo has a new offering for advertisers wary of viewers fast-forwarding past their commercials: it will display an icon while the commercial zips by, allowing users to click to watch a commercial or learn more about a product.

Many TV shows, particularly on NBC/Universal stations, already have TiVo icons that flash during their ads, allowing subscribers one-click access to record the advertised program. It's a spectacular solution: advertisers feel like they have a better chance against the fast-forward button, viewers experience no greater interruption than before, and viewers can click to get more information. Some of them will; I sometimes do.

From the AP article discussing this new method:

But encouraging TiVo customers to download ads could be a tough sell, analysts have predicted. People subscribe to TiVo's service, which allows customers to make video recordings of their favorite TV shows, precisely to avoid commercials.

First of all, fuck analysts. Analysts said Apple would be broke by now. Analysts called Enron a "strong buy." Analysts eat babies. (And they're one step away from TV pundits, the scourge of the universe.) Secondly, I take issue with the characterization that people subscribe to TiVo "precisely to avoid commercials." It's a plus, for sure. But the reasons to subscribe to TiVo (or any DVR/PVR service – but don't count that as an endorsement) are time-shifting, automated recording, and vastly superior storage space vs. a VHS tape. And the reasons to subscribe to TiVo (tm) are WishLists, Season Passes, and a beautiful, user-friendly interface that's as wonderful as honey, almost as wonderful as sex – let's say, as wonderful as sex in honey.

Anyway, good for TiVo, and good for advertisers. (And, hell, good for subscribers!) Wouldn't it be nice if other monoliths of the ancient, decaying content/distribution model were so willing to adapt to the opportunities and challenges brought on by new technology? (Ahem, RIAA... MPAA...) My stock's up +0.15 today already. Bring it on!

1 comment with related links

Fri, July 15

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are a force to be reckoned with. Roald Dahl's story of an eccentric candy baron reckoned with them, and lost. (Read more.)

11 comments with related links and photos

Mastering the photo tool—11:37 AM

Recently, I've tackled a few of the items that will be new or drastically different in the new onebee (like the link pages), but the looming obstacle was still the administrative back-end for photos. There were many small changes and a few big ones, and every time I thought about it, I'd just freeze up in terror.

This trepidation was really stymying progress, so yesterday I put myself on a deadline to get the page up and working by the end of the day. With seconds to spare, I managed to pull it off! One major change is that now I can upload all the versions of an image at once, and modify the text fields in the same action. Also, the previews are smaller (and designed to look like the previews in the new photo galleries, which will make them easier to work with and change – and also keep them at a constant size, so all the click targets on this page will stay in the same places.

I'm dismayed that there are still up to four sizes for any one image (although very few images will need a jumbo version). However, each size has a specific and necessary use, and I just couldn't see giving them up. Most images will just have two sizes: slide (the preview in the galleries) and display (the main photo on the photo page). If I choose to display an image within an entry (like above), it will use the "slide" size by default. But, in some cases I think it will be necessary to have a separate size to show more detail (like above).

I briefly considered using PHP's image tools to resize one uploaded image into the necessary elements, but I just can't make myself comfortable with that solution. I'd rather have control over the resizing (Photoshop does a much better job of shrinking without losing quality) and in many cases, I crop as well as shrink (like above). I think uploading four versions is an improvement over the current number (five), especially since the default for most images will be two (currently, four). It's not perfect, but it's the best solution available.

0 comments with related links and photos

(Sigh.)—10:51 AM

Does anybody else miss the Olsen twins? God, I know I do.

0 comments

Veronica Mars DVD: October—12:05 AM

I mentioned I'd keep you apprised on this: according to Amazon, the complete first season of Veronica Mars will be released on DVD on October 11. Yet again, an opportunity to acquaint new fans with the series before the season premiere is missed. (Assuming the second season debuts by late September, which most shows do.)

Anyway, when it does come out, you're all welcome to come over and have a viewing party.

8 comments with related links

Thu, July 14

Podcasting pods podward

Apple's capitalizing on the podcasting trend – which makes good sense because the name of their best selling product is right there in the trend! (Read more.)

2 comments with related links

Mixing Greatest Hits—11:20 AM

My new car features a CD changer (my first). It's great to have more options at my fingertips, but I think it causes me to leave the same CDs in a lot longer than I would otherwise. I'm still searching for that perfect mix of CDs that span a few genres and feature enough surprises that nothing is ever boring.

At first, I thought I should pack it full of mix CDs, for the ultimate in variety. However, that has proved somewhat unsuccessful, because a) left in the changer too long, even a six-disc bundle of surprises becomes routine, and b) a lot of my mixes are time sensitive – I listen to those songs heavily for a few weeks, but then most don't "have legs" so I end up hitting "skip" during half of them.

My new idea which is working very nicely so far: mix CDs by artist. (I'm not saying it's the perfect solution – it's early yet.) A fair amount of CDs I own are "best of" compilations, so I have augmented those by burning "best of" CDs for artists whose discography I own more or less in toto. I burned a (controversial) Billy Joel disc years ago, so I threw that in the car along with my Tina Turner, Tom Jones, and Bobby Darin greatest hits discs. Then, I burned a Lyle Lovett and an Alanis Morissette, as well as a new Jimmy Buffett disc because my older version left off some crucial songs. It's a completely different process than assembling a regular mix CD, and in many ways just as difficult. I was forced to realize that I wasn't as familiar with Alanis's work as I thought, and it was heartbreaking cutting certain songs from Lyle's disc. (I consoled myself by remembering that I can still listen to them anytime, on other CDs.) I knew better than to try to condense my TMBG favorites into an 80-minute disc.

It's very interesting work, sorting through an artist's entire repertoire, considering my reactions to each song (and how they've changed over time) and trying to fit them into a collection (and a sequence) that accurately represents my view of the artists as a whole. Hopefully, listening to these on changer-shuffle will yield variety with some continuity. And, since there's more than six highlight discs, I'll be able to swap the rotation and stay fresh.

1 comment

Wed, July 13

Piracy paranoia—2:24 PM

Tomorrow night, Arksie and I are off to a preview screening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at our alma mater, including Q&A with screenwriter/alumnus John August. Today, this via e-mail from the Alumni unit:

We have been informed by Warner Brothers that due to piracy concerns they will be checking for any recording devices (including cell-phones with camera capability) before the screening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Thursday evening at 7 p.m. at Norris Theatre/Sinatra Hall. Please do not bring these items with you or they will be confiscated and returned to you after the screening. We apologize for this inconvenience.

I hope Valenti himself is in attendance, to piledrive any offending cell phones into glistening, silicon pulp. That'd be worth the price of admission right there.

6 comments with related links

And the lying liars who tell them—10:21 AM

I ran across this quote last night, during some reading about statistics, global warming, and the politicization of science. Although I lived next door to his birthplace for two years, I never realized how much I'd like Adlai Stevenson.

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

– Adlai Stevenson, in a speech during 1952 Presidential campaign

1 comment with related links

Tue, July 12

Worst. New set. Ever.—12:00 PM

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart returned from its hiatus last night and unveiled its new studio with fully redesigned set. And it was awful.

I'm on board with the idea of updating the surroundings now and then, to keep a show from feeling stale. And I'm sensitive to the unique pressures on the set designer for The Daily Show – part news, part chat, the show has to have an anchorman desk as well as a talk show couch. (Or, at least it did until last night.) But this set is an abomination. Previously, the show was able to strike that delicate balance between mocking a news show set and being a news show set. Now it looks like something that would've come out of MTV News circa 1998. Too many Vari-lites and gobos (what is this, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire??) and way too many moving graphics. Jon is surrounded by three giant screens with dancing words and graphics (they start the show reading "Th," "Da", and "Sh") and this continues throughout the remote interview segment, during which Stewart is placed alongside correspondent Rob Corddry in a graphic layout that has its own moving elements. (Though the planet Earth rotating the wrong way is still pretty funny.)

The new desk is featureless and bland, and Jon is up on a podium, which was true before but seems more pronounced now that the rest of the stage is black and empty. The over-the-shoulder graphics looked better when they were superimposed – on the new screen behind him, they're fuzzier and harder to read. (Although this does allow Stewart to play around with the picture, which he immediately did on the first night – indicating one likely reason for the change.)

The Daily Show won't ever not be awesome, but let's hope that over time, their new set will become a little less un-awesome.

5 comments with related links

Thu, July 7

"A Sound of Thunder" - free reads!—2:27 PM

Andy mentioned today that Warner Brothers is releasing a movie based on Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder". I haven't read the story, but most of us are familiar with its general theme because The Simpsons spoofed it in the "Time and Punishment" segment of their 1994 Halloween episode, "Treehouse of Horror V". Homer goes back in time with a magic toaster, and returns to see that seemingly minor changes in the distant past have created various drastic effects in his present.

The trailer seems interesting although the film necessarily departs from Bradbury's story. (Andy also noted that the film has more writers than can fit in one billing block, which is generally a red flag.) Regardless, the idea of the story is a fascinating analysis of the paradoxes of time travel – a subject always near and dear to my heart.

As luck would have it, Wikipedia links to a copy of the story online. Since I'll be traveling this weekend, I thought it might make dandy plane reading. It simply wouldn't do to just print out the web page version (this is me, after all), so I laid it out with proper type and margins in InDesign, then crafted it into a booklet that I could carry with me. It turned out pretty nicely, so I decided to share it with you in case you want to read it.

I have no idea why the full text of this story is freely available online. As far as I can tell, it's still protected by copyright. However, if Dr. Snavely can do it, I assume I can as well. We'll try it at least until some crazy lawyers tell me to take it down.

UPDATE 11/22/2016, 9pm: On that note, apparently the folks minding the works after Ray's passing have a hard limit of 11.5 years, and then they bring the hammer down! My web host was contacted with a DMCA complaint, and they are extremely good people, so I removed the files immediately in order to spare them any trouble (or risk them kicking me out–I love it here!). My apologies to anyone seeking the text of the short story, and to all you tireless eighth grade teachers doing your best to keep things interesting in an underfunded school system... to the library with you! (I know, right? So gggggggaaaayyyy.)

A Sound of Thunder [61k PDF]

If you want the booklet like I made, try this one instead. (Print the first five pages on the back of the last five, fold, and staple.)

A Sound of Thunder (booklet) [61k PDF]

By the way, if anyone has any tips on how to get InDesign to output a booklet like this, please do pass them along. The method I've always used is to get a page count, dummy up a mock booklet, and work out which pages should be printed on the back of which by hand. Then I just rearrange them in InDesign and print. I'm sure there's an easier way – I just don't do this often enough to know what it is.

55 comments with related links

Have unremarkable arcane programming skills, Will travel—12:14 PM

Last night I was a guest at the home of Jeff and Stacey Tidball, paying a house call in the role of Dr. Database. Recently, Jeff moved his eponymous website to a new web host, and the re-installation of MovableType created some filename headaches. Fortunately, the original prescription worked quite well – in less than two hours, we were able to crawl through the old entries in an HTML archive backup, store their (old) MovableType IDs in a database table, then loop through that table and associate (new) MovableType IDs by matching titles and dates against MovableType's database. (And that includes time for backing up old archives, several failed attempts at configuring Cedant's public-key encryption service to grant us SSH access, and the discovery that phpMyAdmin is another on the list of web apps broken by the latest release of Safari.) Then we installed a small, customized .htaccess file, which configures Apache's mod_rewrite to parse incoming old URLs and hand them off to a PHP script which uses them to fetch the appropriate URL from the MovableType database using our aforementioned associative table.

I may never deliver a baby in a subway, but it's fun when the essentially meaningless skills I've managed to acquire come in handy. Thanks to me, the following link works like a charm.

http://www.jefftidball.com/mt-archives/000127.html

0 comments

Wed, July 6

DreamHost infinite hosting—12:16 PM

Back in November, I moved onebee from the servers of WestHost (which previously hosted the site for over 4 years) to the sunny, shiny, California-based DreamHost. DreamHost has lived up to its name in every way – hosting with them is truly a dream. Not only did this move save me tons of money and grant me access to dozens of new and exciting features, it also allowed me to host the 'Porter under the same account, saving Arksie even more money!

Best of all, it signed me up for the singularly delightful DreamHost monthly newsletter, written almost once a month by Josh, a DreamHost honcho (and newlywed). It's worth reading – silly and fun, the exact opposite of any corporate communiqué, and packed with thrilling feature announcements, every month.

And July 2005 is no exception. Not only does DreamHost now offer one-click access to Ruby on Rails – the Ruby web application framework developed by 37signals web hottie David Heinemeier Hansson – they've also added infinite* hosting!

(*infinite in the theoretical sense, at least)

In the short eight months I've been a member, DreamHost has already doubled my bandwidth and disk usage quotas, which is a) fantastic and b) a pretty regular thing for web hosting providers to do, since hardware keeps getting cheaper. But rather than remain on a path to repeated quota upgrades in the future, DreamHost decided to revolutionize the entire process: for as long as you remain a customer, they'll increase your quotas every week. This is pretty impressive!

And because DreamHost is as frickin' awesome as anything, they've even retroactively upgraded their existing customers – I went to bed last night with a 2.4GB disk quota, and woke up with 3.08! Next week, it'll be 3.1! Very impressive! To quote Josh's newsletter, "if that's not something to blog about, I don't know what is!" (Except that I don't blog. Never have.)

This is exactly the sort of thing a hosting provider should be doing. Randomly scheduled doubles in service are great, but it's hardly something the customer can plan on. With this model, everything is out in the open. Of course, 2.4GB is well beyond onebee's current needs (last month we averaged about 0.52, and that includes a lot of duplicate pages for the redesign). But it allows serious room for expansion, which is good because just this weekend I was thinking about that very topic. DreamHost (God love 'em) recently added QuickTime streaming as an account feature at no extra charge. I thought it might be fun to offer movies, to share my computer animation progress as I create clips and shorts over the coming years. The only considerations were: bandwidth and disk usage. And this new plan renders those considerations even more moot. (Also, with the new onebee photography section getting spruced up, there's the potential for sharing more – and larger – photos in the future. Good to have some wiggle room!)

So, switch to DreamHost. Do it now. (Unless you just finished switching to Cedant, in which case I'm terribly sorry I didn't get to you sooner.)

2 comments with related links

Fri, July 1

Waste—6:49 AM

I think we should have a law that any unsolicited bulk mail must be printed on 100% recycled paper. PennySaver, Val-Pak, those "Have You Seen Me?" cards – it's bad enough I'm getting catalogs from Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware, but at least I have shopped at those stores. This other stuff is completely useless; I never read it, I just toss it in the bin. And it comes in by the cartload every week. If companies are going to insist on sending it out, we should do our best to minimize the ecological footprint – plus anything that makes it more expensive might curtail the practice somewhat.

5 comments with related links