Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat

Speaking of Flash…

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Long ago, as a follow-up to my giant hit “Duck!” I undertook a much more elaborate project. Once more, Jose provided some of the key images (William Shatner, mainly), and I did the rest.

I never finished. I got close, and I put a lot of time into it (lip-syncing is time-consuming, to say the least), but it’s not quite there yet. There are flat spots. I haven’t got the easter eggs in yet. No credits, and no preloading. It looks like the audio has been shifted a frame. Still, there’s a lot to like about it, too. It’s Shatner, after all, at his psychedelic best.

I’d finish the thing, but I don’t even own a version of Flash that will run on my current hardware, and Flash is expensive. Hard to justify shelling out that kind of cash just to put the final touches on this monster. Still… It would be cool.

Note that this animation is interactive — don’t take your hand off that mouse just yet! Your final score will be displayed at the end. Also, there are a couple of things that happen differently each time, and a lot of things going on you won’t notice the first time through. Not as many as I planned, but the project is stalled.

If someone who has Flash would be interested in helping me get across the finish line, let me know!


Notes: It may look like it’s running, but you need to right-click the animation and select ‘Play” to make it go. (Controls are obviously something that didn’t get put in before the project stalled.) I optimized this animation for slightly larger display; if I could figure out why there’s no full-screen option when you right-click I’d fix that, too.

Enjoy!

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I don’t want to see yours, either.

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So, from what I hear, Facebook is introducing a feature called ‘timeline’, which displays your Internet activities pretty much in real time. Other people can see what (participating) Web sites you visit, as you visit them.

I don’t know all the details, but this seems to me like a terrible idea. I will not be participating, and please don’t take it personally when I reject your invitation to follow your aimless drifting through cyberspace. Tedious at best and embarrassing at worst, this is a level of personal intimacy with the general world that I will not be embracing. Call me an old fuddy-duddy.

Thanks!

The Illusion of Helping

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Recently I vowed to cut off my considerable hair for charity. Thanks tons to the people who have stepped up to help. You guys are awesome! We made 5% of the goal in the first day. Hooray!…? Now we’re at 6% (the widget in the sidebar is bad at math) and it looks like my hair will reach the ground before the target is reached.

Marketing is a big factor, of course, and I have some observations about that below. First I’d like to share some thoughts about the culture of Facebook as it relates to fundraising. In a nutshell, Facebook has created a culture that allows people to feel like they’ve helped out when in fact they’ve done pretty much nothing. I don’t really think this is bad (pretty much nothing is better than nothing), but it exposes a way that Facebook could change the economics of fundraising for the better.

When I set up Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, I went through a site that makes fundraising easier, and that site allows you to automatically pimp out your fundraiser on Facebook. Naturally I used this option.

I don’t have a huge circle on Facebook, but right away people responded. They ‘liked’ the post. They passed on the link. Strangers liked it. With two exceptions (who would have donated anyway), the post-likers and link-passers didn’t donate, yet I’m sure those folks felt like they had helped. “I won’t donate, but if I pass this on, maybe someone else will.”

Of course, calling attention to a cause you think is worthy is a good thing to do. Certainly better than nothing. Alas, in the Facebook universe, it’s only a tiny bit better than nothing. Almost not measurably better than nothing. About a dollar less in value than donating a buck.

I don’t think it’s cheapness that creates these not-so-helpful helpers. If it were as easy to donate a buck as it is to ‘like’ a post, I bet 5% of the likers would make that gesture. As it stands, you have to click a link and fill out a form. If you’re planning on making a large donation, the hassle is pretty insignificant, but it’s a lot to go through when your beneficiary is only going to get a small amount.

If it was as easy to make a small donation as it is to like a post, and there was a “54 people have tossed in a buck” message, with a list of the buck-tossers, fundraising might be fundamentally altered.

In the meantime, when you pass on a link to a cause you believe in, how about starting with “I tossed in five bucks! How ’bout you?” If it’s worth passing on, it’s worth taking a little of your own time to back it up.

I have now promoted my fundraiser in three different ways (the fourth will launch Monday), and I’ve learned a few things.

  1. The most effective marketing method by far has been direct email. Spam makes a little more sense to me now.
  2. Facebook and this blog are terrible marketing tools.
  3. Some folks I thought would have a strong opinion about my aging-hippie look (pro or con) haven’t weighed in. Perhaps I misjudged the Q Score of my Fabio-crushing man-mane.

The next leg of the campaign will be called “Match this, Tim!” The new Apple CEO has announced a pretty generous charity matching program, and I’ll be twisting arms around the office. I don’t think Tim’s going to be able to match my flowing tresses, however.

But seriously, tresses aside, if you haven’t already, pitch in to make a young chemo patient’s life a little less awful. It’s worth doing, and it’s not an illusion.

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

The hair is going to someone who needs it more than I do. Please join me in supporting Locks of Love.

Fairly often I turn to you, the Muddled Horde™ for favors. Usually it’s a request to take a few seconds and vote for a photo I took, or some other frivolity.

Welp, this is the big one. This is the call for help that could change someone’s life. This is your moment to give a smile to someone who has nothing to look forward to but shitty days on and on. You can be a shining star.

There are kids out there taking drugs so toxic the kids almost die. They do this hoping to live. The idea is that the drugs will kill the cancer in the children before the children themselves succumb. You can’t do chemo half-assed. It’s not fun.

No matter how well the therapy goes, hair is a victim. The shiny dome becomes a beacon that something is wrong. It’s impossible to feel normal. You may as well walk around with a klaxon shouting “Cancer! Cancer!” Some days, it would be nice to just blend in.

I have a lot of hair, and there’s someone out there who needs it more than I do. I’m asking everyone around me who has half a heart to step up as well, and support Locks of Love. When the total donations reach $2500, my hair goes. Hopefully that will be before my hair reaches my knees.

Times are hard, I know. You gotta take care of the ones close to you first. That’s only right and proper. But maybe you could make a little gesture, a few bucks to say, “right on, Rambler, I’m with you.” Or maybe, like me, you find that you live in a really expensive place that seems to suck your paycheck into a black hole. In that case, what’s another fifty bucks? Nothing, really.

Apple colleagues: Our favorite fruit-flavored gadget company is matching all charitable donations by employees, up to $10,000 per employee(!). Happily, Locks of Love qualifies. Wherever you work, check to see if there’s a charity matching program. They’re actually pretty common, if your employer doesn’t suck.

No more thinking! Click the link! Let’s give these kids something to smile about.

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At Last, the Recognition I’ve Sought all these Years

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Tonight I was named Top Rambler of the Day by not once, but twice! Wow!

Yep, Top Rambler. Second to none. There are many who aspire to these heights, but out of the millions of blogs out there that do little more than ramble, none compares to this one. Bow down before me, those who would ramble, and learn from the master! I AM TRoD!

For some reason my spam software blocked both notifications of my major awards (from two different places), hiding them from the eyes of the general public — along with a comment that said, “Why’s presently there this kind of fine publish!”

Why’s indeed?

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Damn Lies and Statistics

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I read recently that WordPress “powers” more than 14% of the top 1,000,000 Web sites. (“Powers” in quotes because actually it’s electricity that powers them — lots of electricity.)

This site is also a WordPress site, and I started to wonder: Am I in the top million? A million, is, after all, a very big number, and this site does get regular traffic.

Which all begs the question, how the hell do you define “top Web site” and how does anyone know what they are? Presumably “top” sites are the ones that get the most visits, but even “visit” is tricky to pin down, and once you have a working definition there’s still the question of how the heck you measure it. Throw in game sites where a visit can last for hours — does that count for more than someone dropping in to see if there’s a new episode up in their favorite blog?

How about traffic from robots? When a robot tries to spam this site, does that count? How would the counting mechanism differentiate that from a legitimate visit?

For that matter, what’s a “site”? Does wordpress.org count as a single site, or is each blog hosted there counted individually? Is the difference whether the owner bothered to register their own domain?

All that aside, the slightly-depressing truth is that this is probably not one of the top million sites, no matter how you figure it, even counting spam-bot visits. Yep, there are probably more than one friggin’ million Web sites more popular than this one. Most of those sites will have a specific purpose — sites for businesses both local and international, political and news sites, comics, and so on (and of course porn).

I have a hard enough time sticking to a single topic in a given episode that the idea of staying on a subject for the whole damn blog is ridiculous. But I digress.

Most content? I’d probably be in the top million in that category. There’s a lot of stuff here. Oldest still-active sites? I might even crack the million line with that measure. How many sites have been continuously active since 2003? That’s like, a century in Internet time.

So I probably get the top-million most persistent award, if nothing else. Maybe I should make that a tagline for the site when I un-Flash the banner: “One of the million most persistent Web sites in the world!”

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Really, Hollywood?

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I’m catching the start of the American Football season, a game between two very good teams that I find myself interested in despite myself. Often on Thursdays I go to a bar to have a beer or two and watch sports and crank out a blog episode or three.

I’m at home this week, a change that may merit its own episode, or maybe not. I’ve got the game streaming to my computer in our office, commercials and all. Ain’t technology grand?

I just saw an ad for a movie coming out sometime soon. It looks like a very expensive version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. On closer look, the movie looks like… an expensive version of Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots that you watch rather than play. Much of the allegedly gut-twisting action is watching machines damage each other in a boxing ring. Yippee.

Although they give the movie some name that does not include the words ‘rock’ or ‘sock’, I would be very disappointed if at no time does one robot punch another robot in his shiny metal chin and make its head pop off.

Well, except for the part where I won’t actually see the movie at all.

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A Side Effect of My Road Trip

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Car commercials often show the vehicle in question cruising on high-drama two-lane blacktop, either in the desert, through pine forests, or perhaps on a twisty road along the coast.

When that happens, I don’t see the car. I’m trying to identify the road; there’s a good chance I’ve driven it and I might have a story to about it that I haven’t savored in a while. I saw one such commercial last night and afterwards while thinking that the road looked like a stretch of highway outside of Bakersfield I realized that I couldn’t even remember what color the car was.

It’s kind of like posing a sexy woman next to your product. You’ll get my attention, but I won’t be looking at what you’re asking me to buy.

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Bawk-bawk-baaaaawk!

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Last night I was hanging out at a bar with a buddy of mine, and of course where alcohol is served there is also sports on television. Even when it’s only preseason football (not really sports at all), I’m unable to keep my eyes from wandering to the box with moving pictures. Also, it seems I’m unable to avoid commenting on it.

Last night the Dallas Cowboys were playing… um… someone else. Doesn’t really matter. I did see one play that made me realize something about the team that calls itself “America’s Team”: they are timid, poorly coached, and they are not going to do well this year.

For a little context, lets review why there are preseason games at all. Teams use these four games as super-practices, and to see how their players do in game situations. The final game of the preseason is traditionally played mostly by players on the bubble – based on their performance in that game players are cut from the team while others are retained.

The actual score of the game makes no difference whatsoever. It’s all about how players perform in given situations. As a coach, I think I would actually try to get my players into tough spots to see how they respond. Situations like, say, fourth and goal at the five yard line, with your team behind and the game on the line. Let’s see who can step up.

Or, if you’re the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, you can execute a routine play for a meaningless three points so you lose the game by fewer points. The coach is already practicing tactics designed to make him look less bad in the score sheets after a loss. He’s also telling his people that he’s a wimp and that he has no faith in his team.

It took only one preseason play to show me all I need to know about the Dallas Cowboys. They have a coach who will squander an opportunity to see his guys in a telling situation, just so he doesn’t look as bad in the papers the next day – after a meaningless game. I don’t like their chances this year.

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A Quick Sale

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I was going to spread the word today that fuego is selling an authentic mask used during the production of Aliens vs. Predators back in ought-4. I figured that someone out there might know a movie collector who would be interested in shelling out a pretty hefty price for it.

Well, that’s moot now. The thing went before I could even start pimping it out. The copy fuego wrote for the listing, together with the signed photo of the actor wearing that very mask didn’t hurt I’m sure.

Still, wow.

Thanks!

A Question for the Chemistry Geeks and Auto Buffs Out There

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The plastic covers over my headlights are becoming opaque. Not the best situation. There are products out there that promise to restore that plastic to its virtually-invisible former self, but as far as I can tell all those products simply polish the surface of the plastic. It seems to me the damage is cause by ultraviolet radiation and likely goes more than skin deep.

Still, I’d like to believe the commercials that say they can restore my headlight covers to their former optic glory. I just don’t want to spend the precious cash dollars to find the claims to be bogus. Is there anyone out there who can either a) explain or b) attest to the worthiness of these products?

Thanks!

Wiener Dog Nationals!

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Saturday, a mere two days from now, the Wiener Dog Nationals will be run at Golden Gate Fields.

In the racing world, only the Kentucky Derby comes close to the majesty of this race.

Wiener dogs! Running! With dignity, of course.

Thanks!

Here’s an Area where I can Improve my Writing

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My buddy over at middlerage tipped me off to this article, about a book my sweetie and I agreed we’d want to read before seeing the movie: Kathryn Stockett’s ‘The Help’ Turned Down 60 Times Before Becoming a Best Seller.

Whatever comes to her now she has earned and then some. Me, I’ve been rejected exactly once this year. That’s not how you succeed as a writer.

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Impressions of Lion

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So just to be clear, even though I work for Apple I have no special access to the plans of the hardware and OS guys. If I did have access, I wouldn’t be able to post speculations like these. All this is the same guesswork you can do if you stop and look at your operating system as it evolves.

Last night I installed the latest Mac operating system (‘Lion’) on my work machine. We’ll see how that goes before I put it on anything more important. A couple of things struck me immediately, however, that I think may be indicators of where Apple is heading.

1) No scroll bars. Well, barely. There’s something scrollbar-like that appears when you move stuff around, but there’s a fundamental shift in the UI going on here. In the past you worked the thumb on the scrollbar to move the content in its window. When you worked the scroll wheel on your mouse, you were in your mind moving the scrollbar thumb. Now, in your head you grab the content of the window and move it around – which goes in the opposite direction as the scroller thumb. So the wheel on your mouse works ‘backwards’ in Lion; before you were moving the scroll thumb down, now you’re moving the content down, which moves the thumb up.

Opinion: I’m ok with this overall, but there are times when there is no indication that you can scroll. There are also cases where there’s no indication that the corner of a window can be dragged to resize the window. I’m not comfortable with designs that presuppose you know stuff.

2) Bold prediction: the magic mouse is Apple’s last major mouse. It’s a mouse/touchpad hybrid, bringing people closer to the touchpad replacement. The company that brought the mouse to the consumer will also be the first to take it away. Interestingly, the company that only put one button on its mouse will be hanging its hat on a very complicated set of finger gestures and combinations. They can do a hell of a lot, and they’re intuitive, if you already know them. (I just accidentally discovered the gesture for switching tabs in my browser — only, shit! It’s not switching tabs, it’s like using the back arrow. And there’s a bug! I almost lost this entire episode!)

Opinion: with the iPad and whatnot, multiple-finger user interfaces are here. I should have applied for a patent fifteen-plus years ago when I thought about making touch screen interfaces with actual knobs to turn and stuff like that. If I’d had this blog back then it would have shown up in the Get-Poor-Quick pages. But I didn’t, and now that invention belongs to other people. Because they built it, and I only talked about it.

Thanks!

Dreams of a Lost Age

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The other morning, as my consciousness was dancing a merry reel along the fuzzy line between sleep and wakefulness, I had a dream about cross-country croquet. I remember a few details, like how the croquet mallets slowly morphed from odd, foot-long aztec-looking croquet-ball flingers into fairly typical (if low-quality) backyard mallets. I remember that fuego was playing, along with some of the others I’ve played cross-country beer croquet with over the years.

There was also an older guy, who it turns out was a teacher. He had to leave when a student called for him.

I woke up and chuckled over the dream, then realized something: The ‘older’ guy In my dream was my age. It seems my self-image may be lagging reality.

Not that there aren’t plenty of reminders these days. Some of the signs are subtle. At work, when I wash my hands, I linger with them in the flow of the hot water. That’s probably arthritis heading my way.

When I was younger, life was not without its aches and pains. Back then, pain meant “stop using that part of your body until it stops hurting.” Now, there’s a new category of pain: “get used to it.”

It’s important to be able to distinguish the two. My knee hurts, all the time. It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better. I need to have a doctor look at it, but in the meantime I ice it after I exercise, and if it does bother me particularly I skip the elliptical trainer.

A fun side note: A few years back I learned from a friend, one of my peers who was faster to the “get used to it” type of pain than I, that frozen peas make a good ice pack. So, when it came time for regular applications of cold to my knee, I knew what I needed. I asked my sweetie to pick up a bag of therapeutic peas next time she was out shopping.

She was at the local CVS, a pharmacy/sundries store, and she checked the freezer section for peas. No luck. As long as she was there, she decided to look in the sports/first aid section*, where she found a gel pack made for knees, filled with little frosty pellets. The product name: “Peas”. It works pretty well, and the cold feels great, but I wish it would stay cold just a little bit longer.

In my dreams I’m still a young whippersnapper, but, like most dreams, reality has a different story to tell. Still, there’s a part of me that believes in the dream. All I have to do is lose a little weight, stretch a little more, and my knee won’t hurt and I’ll be able to play all those games I used to play, without worrying about my hamstring blasting out the back of my leg.

In other words, I didn’t stop dreaming when I woke up.

* Many years ago my friends and I marked the transition when visiting the sporting goods store went from gravitating towards the racks of exotic softball bats and fun toys to making a bee-line to the section filled with knee braces and padded clothing. Now “sports” and “first aid” are nearly synonymous.

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