Maps
I'm going for short and sweet today.
Type "map" into Google. The Google Maps site only comes out fifth on the result list. Surely they could skew that kind of thing. However, I am pleased that the tube map comes out higher. It is certainly one of the most iconographic designs in existence. Then again, give it 50 years and people will probably be saying the same of Google's logo.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Inbox Management
I receive and send an outrageous amount of emails every day from my work address. At this point it may be worth pointing out that my hotmail address is currently totally unmanageable as well. All the emails full of useful information are lost in amongst the hundreds of emails from friends, which amount to a kind of online discussion board that exists to coordinate various important social gatherings (teh quiz), to send forth the latest humourous interweb finding (tronguy), and more generally to preserve our mutual sanity in moments of work dullness. And as another aside to this blog maybe we should have an achingbrain.net comment board for those of us who are blocked from using web-based mail / blog sites at work. The membership would of course be terribly exclusive.
So back to my inbox and its 1112 emails, all of which I have never bothered to put into folders. I had this theory that I would delete the useless ones, and then use the Outlook "Find" function to track down the useful emails when required. Sadly my inbox is now so crowded that the "Find" function is about as speedy as a snail.
So today, I have declared "Inbox management day" (please feel free to join in my celebrations). Today I am going to create folders and file my emails; I am going to blog about it before I begin.
For some time now I have considered the unsorted and unregimented inbox as the last bastion of my insubordination. I'll explain, in my current job I am working in an industry I never expected to, my job is to organise another's life, and frankly at times it blows. The random emails floating about in inbox space reminded me of someone who didn't want to file for life, free and easy, floating in the wind (apologies for the metaphor overload)... As much as I would like to keep it this way, technology has scuppered my attempts, and hindered my propagation of the scruffiest inbox in the world.
So today, it's time to accept my fate, clip my wings, and prepare myself for a life of filing. Am I sad? Well, a bit. But I suppose this is a prequel to a much longer blog I have stored up about the problems of being a member of the undefined generation (aka Generation Y). I hope my boss doesn't know about this site.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Serenity
I finally watched Serenity last night (sorry Cat). Bleh.
Before I launch into my rant, I want to make it clear that I loved the TV show. Loved. It was great, and until Battlestar Galactica started, I viewed it as the saving grace of Sci-Fi, particularly after the damage done to the genre by Enterprise. It was Joss Whedon at the height of his powers (alright, maybe not as good as Numfar doing The Dance Of Shame), witty, cynical and incisive.
So what happened?
Katherine recently introduced me to a wonderful term - Jumped the shark. It is a reference to a scene in Happy Days where the Fonz jumps over a shark on a pair of water skis, and is generally the point in a series where you realise that it's got pretty crap, usually because something fundamental has altered which changes the dynamic (like Buffy graduating), or the story becomes so slow moving that it practically grinds to halt (I'm looking at you, Lost). With Serenity, Firefly jumped the shark.
Two 'main' characters with suspiciously little screen time prior to that point are killed off - Wash has about two lines (both comedic) and then dies (a bit unessarily if you ask me). Book is no longer a member of the crew, but shows up just long enough to say 'Ooh, I'm old and wise, but have a dark past that I'm only going to hint at', much like in the TV series, but then also dies, so we'll never know. Malcom then orders the crew to tie the dead bodies of Book and his family to the front of their ship. 'But they're our friends!', says Kayleigh, voicing the collective conciousness of the watchers of the original TV show. Talk about burning your bridges, it's like Whedon is really sick of Firefly by this point.
Talking of Kayleigh - her and the good Doctor hardly get a look in, apart from a brief exchange at the end where they promise to have a shag at some vague point in the future. Nice resolution of that sub-plot. Such romance. Really touching.
The Reavers, oh don't get me started on the Reavers. They had such potential. As an embodiment of absolute, relentless evil they are on a par with the Borg (proper, collective Borg from the episode 'Q Who' or the Battle of Wolf 359. Not that First Contact pseudo S&M rubbish (hey, the film was good, but having the 'borg queen' is pretty far removed from their orignal premise. Then getting her trying to shag Data *rolls eyes*)), but far more visceral, more primeval. And then Serenity. I'd always secretly hoped that they would turn the whole flesh eating zombie type thing on it's head and reveal them to be intelligent and highly advanced, despite their feral appearance, but no. Their beginnings were so pedestrian it was painful to watch (10% had the opposite reaction! Oh no! That didn't show up in the lab tests! Hmm. Now I come to think of it, that might explain those mice that started eating the other mice.), and somehow a short video of this revelation manages to turn the suddenly unquestioning assassin (who has previously shown no tendency to be influenced at all and entirely single minded in his purpose to kill River) against the coalition. Oh and Mal just happens to have had that nerve cluster moved. How convenient.
Yawn. Thank god there's not going to be another one. Oh shit.
Popularity: 8% [?]
The Frozen Wave
Will has been rejigging his website:
http://www.thefrozenwave.co.uk
Check it out - there's some really beautiful photography going on (I'd really like this one as a desktop image) - how talented is this man?
Popularity: 7% [?]
Yet another PHP framework
However this one is written by Zend (who are pretty important the PHP sphere - a Redhat to your Linux, an IBM to your Java - not an inventor but a significant contributor), so it's probably worth checking out.
I'm never sure about frameworks. If documentation is limited, it may be quicker to knock your own version up rather than try to understand someone else's code - you also get the added bonus of a deeper understanding of the issues involved which can greatly speed up debugging and make you sound knowledgeable in the pub. There's also usually quite a big overhead in terms of code that's included which won't get used. You also get tied to their way of doing things and as such your app becomes subject to the whim and fancy of their developers. On the other hand, they are often much more thoroughly debugged than your own code (particularly the open source ones due to the amount of feedback they are likely to receive) and probably written by someone a lot better at it than you are.
Some frameworks seem to do more than just add a few short cuts, syntactic sugar and convenience methods though, and these are the ones that really interest me. At the moment I'm eyeing up the rather fabulous looking Prototype for the pet project (which barring a few silly layout issues which will be fixed in the Great Refactoring and Redesign over the summer, now works in Internet Explorer, hurrah! - Ah, how coursework deadlines wonderfully focus the mind on other things), as it actually extends the JavaScript language in a genuinely useful way. For example, it adds a method called getElementsByClassName to the DOM. Why wasn't it there in the first place? Exactly.
It's not all roses and plum pudding though - the word 'extends' nearly brings me out in a cold sweat, as that's exactly the sort of thing Microsoft and Netscape were doing at the end of the last century, and we all know how that ended up. But to get a sense of perspective back, the Prototype library is just a JavaScript document that you add to your page, no more, no less. It's not some sort of browser plugin, extension, hack or other massive change inducing thing. The code is there to see and they take particular pains to get it to function identically on whatever platform.
Hmm..*
* = I can't think of a suitable closing sentence and I've got a compiler to write, so 'hmm' will have to do.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Last.fm
Today, in the office studio, we have mostly been listening to the rather excellent social networking/Internet radio/music recommendation service Last.fm.
It rocketh, pwns all your demographic base and conveniently is available for Windows, OS X, Linux and even BSD.
Those clever chaps have even developed a plugin for your media player that collects data used to recommend songs. Supported media players include not only the usual suspects (iTunes, WinAmp, etc), but even XMMS, RythmnBox, Noatun, SlimServer and the Xbox Media Center.
Crikey.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Meat and cheese
http://www.meatandcheese.co.uk
Bonkers. With free gifts if you order online for pick up.
From the geniuses who brought you the GuffHopper (the GuffHopper website is sadly unsuitable for viewing at places of employment where humor involving body parts that are usually covered up in polite company is frowned upon, but if you can turn your monitor round so no-one else can see it, feel free to have a perv peek).
Popularity: 8% [?]
Pretty, huh?
It's what a drum roll accompanied by a repetitive bass drum beat looks like.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Tit for tat
Yesterday I met a friend of a friend who studies English and Comparative Literature. They said that I looked like the kind of person who was good at his course (must have been the pocket protectors). Consequently, they said, I should be able to fix the problems with their computer without too much trouble.
I said that I have a friend with a degree in English, which is handy as I can call her for help with grammar and spelling.
A little childish perhaps, but fun.
Popularity: 7% [?]