No matter what the trendingstatistics tell, people do use alternative browsers. If something totally doesn’t work, these users are going to complain about it and rightfully so.
test all of these
Technical (javascript) lesson learned: do not use setTimeout() for making an external script call such as document.write(); If the result happens to contain an iframe tag, all your caller pages will be overwritten. Only seems to affect Opera and to some degree IE. Safari, Chrome and Firefox are immune (and as it happens, the three browsers I originally tested against).
A contemporary story brought to you by Twitter… who arguably, would have never risen to its present great heights in popularity, and thereby valuation, if not for the labors of its creative users… and now, we shall see their true colors…
“…Twitter investor Fred Wilson speculated that Twitter would edge out third-party developers whose add-ons for the microblogging service merely filled feature holes that the company ought to have built itself. Then Twitter, which previously hadn’t developed its own mobile apps, bought Tweetie, a popular Twitter service for the iPhone, and released its own BlackBerry app.”
With apparent lack of long term reputation strategy, their latest purchase is not well timed as ”…these announcements came right before Twitter’s big developer conference, Chirp, which opens in San Francisco tomorrow.”
And the lesson to gleamed from Twitter’s totally tubular tale is… ”The real reason to build a platform is to boost your company’s valuation. An open application programming interface lets third-party developers donate their labor and ideas to the cause of enriching your investors. And through their creativity, investors get inspired about the potential to make money.”
The moral of the story is: be the foundation (platform), not the pretty structure that sits above it. Because if you’re a company building off of some other company’s platform, being bought out is the only way to achieve a big pay day. Good luck with that.
Hironobu Sakaguchi has “publicly” (on twitter) apparently refuted (twisists?) seriously or not, that his latest creation The Last Story (worth a visit just to listen to the short intro music loops – gorgeous) is not another Final Fantasy. Obviously, I’m not the first to make the observation of their similarities. I greatly anticipate further proof.
As a fan of Windows 7, and of new hardware technology in general, I took the train to SSD-land some two months ago. Presented here is some of what I learned whilst accomplishing the migration. The specifics apply to Windows 7 based PCs, but the concepts could be adapted for other OSs.
Do you need to read all this? You may need to completely reinstall Windows to take full advantage of the SSD. For instance, if you installed Windows 7 using any SATA mode (as set in your PC’s BIOS) other than AHCI, you will probably need to reinstall, though this workaround may work for you.
Not migrating to an Intel SSD? Rumor has it this SATA mode (AHCI) is not necessarily required. OCZ drives may function normally under IDE mode.
Regardless, I recommend that you read on, SSD adopting reader, for tips and insight in the great migration to a speedier computing experience.
Since I’ve been thinking I ought to write about my work more often, and inspired by the strangeness of this incident, here goes.
Visual of the Culprit
I’d been trying to debug how a few ?s came to be in an ad banner tag submission. I’d dug into change logs and other points where we log transactions to no avail. Since we’d never seen anything like it before, I’d basically decided I’d spent enough time on it and was about to resort to a “it was caused by network ghosts” type explanation. I figured the ?s came from some erroneous network transmission.
On our system, there was nothing strange in the tag field whatsoever. On the adserver though, there appeared some question marks, looking like this:
Then, though when I don’t really know, it hit me. I should view that offending code in a more verbose setting, don x-ray specs if you will – my first choice was VI. Lo & behold, the offending characters appeared before my eyes.
While I may not always like it, Sarah’s got it right. What feels natural to her isn’t to me. She rarely sits on the couch; her relaxing is more full body – laying on her side, extending her legs as straight as space permits. That space is often shared by me, who over time, ends up sitting in a slumped and soggy way usually with her legs across my lap.
I guess I’d gotten use to feeling a little stiff after a long sitting session. But now that we’ve started Chiropractic care, we’re thinking more about our habits. Our Doc has alluded that couches are bad and “what are you going to do about it?” It’s a bit of a sticky issue because we aren’t about to give up the time we spend together on the big purple couch.
Not Actually Our Couch but Close
We, like so many people around the world, watch TV. Whether new shows new movies or reruns of either, we typically spend a few hours each day together on that cushy living room center piece. Hell, I consider us less users than some of our couple-friends whose entire relationships are built upon watching the boob-toob together.
The Great:
– The graphics both sprites and surroundings.
– Touch control in shops.
– The music & sound effects are fantastyc
– Nostalgic.
The “Bad”:
– The touch D-pad looks very tedious for controlling around the world. I’m annoyed just not being able to see the entire screen. I’d definitely miss the tactile feedback, as well.
– Also, it is painfully clear that battles are just as tedious as ever. A double-tap on ‘attack’ to attack a random enemy instead of explicitly tapping a guy would’ve helped a great deal.
Don’t own this platform, and not going to pick it up anytime soon. Oh well. Fun to think about for me and fun to play for many others. Nice to know this generation gets a sweet taste of the RPG classics. Just you kids wait until they re-release “US” Final Fantasy III (or VI for those in-the-know). It’ll blow your Chucks off!
From neighborhood signs (and webpages) that read “Keep Petaluma Eggcentric” and the anti “Big-Box” sentiment it implies, Petalumans, on the whole, have fought to keep the town quaint. Downtown shops are independent and run by locals (though there are a few chain-coffee shops). Tourists flock to and gawk at our muddy river whilst tasting local Sonoma or Napa county wines.
A town that was once the hub of Telecom Valley, continues to primarily favor antique stores and boutique shops. Alone, it struggles to maintain its economy out of the red. Even with the project potentially helping to bring additional tax revenue to the city, fear of losing these little businesses is one reason why many citizens have vigorously fought against it. In their minds, the onslaught of the Big-box commercialization from coming to town would further cripple Petaluma’s spirit.
Kenilworth Field, Target(ed)
This prized lot of land, some 400K square feet of prime real estate in the geographic center of town, was the former site of Kenilworth junior high school. It was purchased in 2004 by Regency, a Florida development company for $22 million. This capital went immediately to the school district which began construction of the new junior high at a different location. Shortly thereafter, Target signed on to be the headliner of the new shopping center, to be named East Washington Place (EWP). In the years since, squabbling over uncertainties and misinformation have created an atmosphere that has driven the town’s governing body (Mayor and City Council) to postpone project decisions again and again.
Alright, this isn’t really about a train, at least not the one that transports people and things from here to there. This “train” is more like a train-station; as in, one that stores and transports people to and from itself. The faster the station can process each person, or transaction, the quicker trains can come and go.
Until the past couple years, in a computer system, this station/storage-engine has been the slowest element. The SSD (Solid State Drive) is a new generation of hard drive that is really fast. Speed that is leaps and bounds above the current mainstream technology. It just can’t be stated enough, SSDs positively bring an entirely new level of performance to the slowest component in a modern computer. In order of magnitude, lets go back to that train metaphor:
The Traditional Hard Disk Drive
Speed of a new SSD
One primary source of speedup is the demise of the last truly mechanical internal computer component – not counting fans. These mechanical hard drives are literally a spinning disk with a small arm that reads from them. The very nature of this interaction has physical limitations that electrons moving across silcon chips do not. This fact alone gives these SSD drives speed potential far beyond their mechanical ancestors.
This marks the first moment I wished I possessed a device capable of hosting this platform. That which I call iPlatform is the underlying system that the iPod/iPhone/iPad runs. It is intimately interfaced with Apple’s various stores.
The 8-bit remakes never looked so slick. I’d definitely take to (re)playing these games in this medium over the more clunky Nintendo DS. Granted, I have been there and done that…
