Blogipity

Feeling a little overexposed

2012-02-13T23:40:59Z

Taken at Great Falls, VA a couple years ago.

Canon EOS-1D X announced

2011-10-24T06:57:46Z

Canon recently announced the 1d X the latest incarnation of their top of the line 1 series. Reading over its specifications makes me reflect on how far digital cameras have come since I picked up my first, a Canon A20, just about 10 years ago. Granted, much of the jump came during the three years between getting the A20 and picking up a Canon 10D. I remember thinking that the 10D was all the camera that I'd ever need. Ingorance is bliss. The 10D could still produce a great iamge today.. if I ever managed to take it out of my closet. And I won't even tell you how long it's been since I've loaded up my old Contax 139 with a roll of film.

Ghostery shows who is tracking you the most

2011-08-31T23:28:00Z

The people behind Ghostery have put together a list of the 100 most common tracking elements that their plugin picks up.

It's not only interesting to see all of the means of tracking out there at the moment, it's also interesting to see who occupies the top two spots. I know that they say that that they are trustworthy, but some aren't so sure, while others can't be bothered.

Wikipedia giving me Fitts's

2011-08-02T00:22:26Z

Ever since Wikipedia redesigned a year or so ago, I've had issues with their top navigation. Some people might think that it looks nicer or "opens up the page," but I can't say that I'm a fan.

Exhibit A:

As you can see, the top links (Article, Discussion, Read, Edit, etc.) don't have a clearly defined top boundary. This makes it impossible for the user to clearly perceive each link's dimensions. While this isn't a classic example of Fitts's Law, since Fitts's only concerns itself with the size and distance of the target, having an target with a fuzzy, uncertain size certainly creates a similar problem. A target's size is no better than its perceived size.

Chrome's further attacks on its chrome

2011-07-29T00:29:33Z

Chrome's original minimalism of having a default look lacking bookmark and menu toolbars has been mimicked by all of the major browser now. Not to be outdone, Chrome now looks to reduce the browser's non-content area even further by removing the address bar with its new compact view. If you have a recent Chromium or Chrome Dev release you can enable the new view of the about:flags screen.

What's next? Auto-hiding the remaining bit's of Chrome's chrome? I'm all for minimalism, but there might be a point where having some permanent interface elements might be useful. For one, it would appear as if the removal of the address bar would make phishing easier, since there is no way quickly check or monitor the domain of the sire you're currently visiting.

Who are these yahoos?

2011-07-12T20:20:46Z

I was setting up a new site in Yahoo's Site Explorer today and noticed the following:

If you have added the META tag, please keep the tag in your site's home page.

I'm not sure how many people have noticed that the meta element here is a bit of a standards contradiction. Given the trailing slash, we can see that this complies with the XHTML standard regarding empty elements. However, the uppercase element name is in violation of the XHTML recommendation. Perhaps I'm being too anal, but I'd sort of expect web-based company's webmaster tools to generate valid markup.

FBI recklessly trashes a data center

2011-06-24T04:38:21Z

The FBI seems to have a few tools working for them. I know that many people might not be surprised by this, I would like to think that the agency generally employs competent people. However, it seems as if they just created a giant mess by creating a ton of collateral damage by confiscating a large number of machines, which created problems for a number of notable sites (instapaper, pinboard).

Apparently, the FBI mistakenly thought that "one enclosure is = to one server." Well now, isn't that just a hoot.

Is Dropbox trying to be as secure as Wordpress?

2011-06-24T01:11:16Z

Ok, my Wordpress bashing might be a little knee-jerk, but they did just have to force-reset all wordpress.org users' passwords this week.

Anyway, it appears that Dropbox is becoming the latest service that I'd be hesitant to use for even casual purposes after they just hosed their own authentication system for four hours earlier this week. This might even be worse than the Wordpress stumble, since they can't even blame a malicious, outside entity. Dropbox's latest problems, combined with their questionable deduplication practices that have raised security and privacy concerns, make me glad that I've never signed up for an account. And don't get me started on their attempt to bully an open source project with a DMCA Takedown notice.

Home Run Tracker

2011-06-23T04:36:10Z

How far did it really go? You can find out at ESPN Home Run Tracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement.

IE still let's you know if you suck

2011-06-08T01:52:59Z

With version 8 Internet Explorer shipped with a built-in list of sites to be displayed in a non-standards, Compatibility View mode. This Compatibility View List identified sites that were "most likely to be displayed better in Compatibility View." While the all of the hubbub about whether or not Microsoft's implementation sucked any less than the previously common Doctype Switching technique for switching browsers' rendering modes was interesting reading, just reviewing the Compatibility View list was almost as equally entertaining.

Anyway, IE 9 has continued to implement Compatibility View, and this time the list of non-compatible sites is now web-accessible. happy reading. Oh, if your site is erroneously on the list just email iepo@microsoft.com to get it removed.

Are photocopiers evil?

2010-04-30T23:32:50Z

CBS News recently aired a story Copy Machines, a Security Risk?, which reveals that a large number of photocopiers are resold and that they contain hard disks that have sucked in and stored images of the copies made by its former owner.

It's actually a pretty scary story for anyone that has copied anything that they might not want the world to know about. I wonder how many people recently have copied this year's tax return? Or perhaps your tax preparer made a copy on a machine that has been resold? Just think about all of things that might be stored on copiers at your local Kinkos.

Steve Gibson, author of the venerable hard disk scanning and recovery application SpinRite, discusses this revelation along with other security-related news in a recent episode of Security Now.

While much of this risk, sadly, is outside of our control, this might be a good time to download Eraser or Darik's Boot And Nuke.

Underscore misunderstanding

2009-12-04T03:06:05Z

There have been quite a few debates over the years regarding the use of underscore, hyphens, WikiStyle naming, and other schemes for the naming of files and directories. I've never been a fan of using underscores.

Sometimes a simple screen capture says it best:

A new beginning

2009-11-11T01:00:55Z

This is, depending on how you'd count such things, my third or fourth weblog. I've decided for several reasons to ditch wordpress. After looking over a few other options, I've decided to come back to movabletype. It's licensing has become much friendlier over the past couple years, and I always did prefer to have my weblogs baked vs fried.

Hopefully, there'll be some content here soon with more to communicate than my love of 18% gray.