Statistics are amazing. You can spin and bend them to your will (or the will of whoever is sponsoring your research). For instance, did you know that 75% of people constitute three-quarters of the population? It’s true I tell you!
After the guys at Opera announced that version 9.5 (Kestral) will have full CSS 3 selector support I ran a few tests to see how various Windows-based browsers compare:
- Firefox 2.0.0.4
43 selectors, 26 passed, 10 buggy and 7 unsupported (Passed 357 of 578 tests)
- IE 6
43 selectors, 10 passed, 1 buggy and 32 unsupported (Passed 276 of 578 tests)
- IE 7
43 selectors, 13 passed, 4 buggy and 26 unsupported (Passed 330 of 578 tests)
- Opera 9.21
43 selectors, 25 passed, 3 buggy and 15 unsupported (Passed 346 of 578 tests)
- Safari 3.0.1
43 selectors, 25 passed, 9 buggy and 9 unsupported (Passed 346 of 578 tests)
Safari and Opera were both blazingly fast. IE7 was painfully slow.
Notice that IE6 only had a single buggy result! The fact that is achieves this by simply not supporting anything is neither here nor there.
“I’m so smart it’s almost scary. I guess I’m a child progeny.”
– Bill Watterston, Calvin and Hobbes
I’ve been thinking about intelligence a little since seeing a two-year-old Mensa member in the news recently. Being first-born, male and vegetarian have all been linked to high intelligence but the reasoning in all of these studies are particularly spurious.
If you’ll excuse me a little indulgence for a second, I’d like to think that I’m a pretty smart guy. At times my brilliance is second only to my modesty. Aged three, my mum used to find me glued to the Open University Lectures on BBC2 at 6am. I also remember being Mensa tested around the age of 10 and scoring in the 140s. I tested myself the other week and was in the high 130s.
Academically, I learnt enough to pick up a 2:2 at degree level. A friend of my fathers once advised me to “try and know a little about a lot and a lot about a little”. Or at least words to that effect. I’m a bit of a philomath. I love to learn but can have quite a low boredom threshold. As such, I do know a lot of random pieces of trivia (as members of the Pinking Shears pub quiz team will testify) but just retaining facts isn’t a true sign of intelligence.
I had my eyes opened to a broad mix of new experiences and people. I was a strong proponent of the notion of not letting University get in the way of my education and enjoyed myself, a lot – even for a student. More than one person expressed concern with my drinking and with hindsight I’d probably say now that I probably had a bit of a problem.
While I’d love to subscribe to the Buffalo Theory I’m still left with the conclusion that University has made me dumber. At least, I think that’s the cromulant superlative.
The times aren’t the only things changing around here either.
I moved to a new hosting company for my personal site over the weekend. After a lot of deliberating a eventually plumped for WebFaction over DreamHost due to worrying increase in dissatisfied feedback I’d been hearing lately.
I’ll get everything else imported and uploaded when I find time over the coming week once I’ve found my way around and had a nosey at some new toys available.
It may no longer be fashionable to be be British but it was refreshing to see a celebration of probably one of the last bastions of Britishness today – The Falkland islands. My brother was part of the II Para battalion representation in the parade in London today and for the soldiers to be cheered by crowds who are usually expressing exactly the opposite emotions over the current-day situation in Iraq meant a great deal to them.
Political devolution I can understand but the Cornish National Liberation Army attacking restaurants owned by Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver last week was just beyond me. It seems that nobody wants to be called British anymore. From Newcastle, down through Yorkshire to Cornwall and everywhere in between it seems that everyone wants to be thought of as disparate. Is it a need for identity, a backlash against an ever-looming European constitution or are these two sides of the same coin?
I’m not trying to gloss over any of the terrible things that the Empire was responsible for in the past but it seems to me that by shunning this concept that’s exactly what is going on.
I’m a big fan of things that make my life simpler. I could easily spend most of a (if not a complete) day on websites like unclutterer, instructables and, of course, lifehacker.
A little tip of my own is loading my cup and glass to the back of the dishwasher before I leave the office so that they’ll be at the front of the cupboard when I first get to work in the morning.
Got any to share?
Published on
June 14, 2007 in
Rants.
“You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
– Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
There’s been a lot of discussion about online privacy in the media recently. From Google’s privacy policy to Facebook’s terms and conditions, more and more questions are being asked about what happens to the data we submit and policies we blindly agree to. Ask yourself when was the last time you actually read, understood and agreed to the mandatory terms and conditions when signing up for an online service or buying something from a web store?
Now balance this against the smashing of a huge paedophile ring due to the use of personal information. The anonymity that the Internet provides is just one of the great things about it but at the same time is also one of it’s greatest threats to its very existence – at least in its current form.
Maybe that is no bad thing.
Published on
June 7, 2007 in
Humour.
I came home from work this evening and opened a new tub of margarine to find a happy face looking back at me. It made me smile too so I thought that I’d share it with everyone.
Published on
June 4, 2007 in
Humour.
If you’re not sure what goatse refers to then please do not Google for it if at work, in a public place, eating, have any sense of decency or if you have a weak stomach. It is very, very NSFW. You have been warned!
After we stopped laughing at the new London 2012 Olympics brand I noticed some user submitted attempts on the BBC. Flicking through a fair amount of dross, my jaw dropped in disbelief. It couldn’t be, could it?
I took a screen grab just in case it disappeared (which it duely did, and in double-quick time too) and called for verification from my colleagues. They agreed it couldn’t be anything other than a goatse reference!
Sure enough, it was already the top story on Boing Boing.
It’s taken me a while but I think that I’ve come to terms with what happened in Athens a couple of Wednesdays ago. The more I think about it, the more I think that it could actually be for the best that Liverpool lost to AC Milan.
Okay, so Crouch could have done with more than 12 minutes on the pitch and taking off Mascherano proved to be a disaster as he’d kept Kaka under control all game.
Nevertheless, Liverpool’s weaknesses were more than obvious, even to the inexperienced new American owners. To come so close to winning the Champions League again and seeing a lack of a striker with the prowess of a (much as it pains me say) Drogba in front of goal may just open up the purse strings a little more.
If we can entice someone like Eto’o to Anfield for next season then a genuine push for the Premiership could be a reality.
