Published on
March 30, 2009 in
Cool.
In and among the carnage of a weekend that involved both a stag party and a wedding (sensibly the they weren’t both part of the same celebration) I met up with some friends to go and have a gander at Kevin Harman’s latest skip installation on Gloucester Place.
While the workmen renovating a house had left the skip unattended for the weekend, Kevin emptied the contents out and then rearranged everything.
Very interesting to see. Plus he gave us a beer while chatting about how he approached this work and some of his previous stuff (which includes ‘borrowing’ 200 doormats from the residents of Bruntsfiled).
Published on
March 27, 2009 in
Rants.
Unlike last year when a similar token effort was almost done with before I even knew about it, there seems to have been a larger effort devoted to getting the message out about Earth Hour which is appropriate given its global reach.
Now into its third year since being started in Australia in 2007, Earth Hour is a simple premise: turn off your non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour starting Saturday March 28 at 20:30, local time. In my opinion, it is a completely symbolic effort. Actual energy usage may decline, energy production won’t. Environmental changes also play a big part. The Saturday on which Earth Hour fell last year saw temperatures 12°C lower than the previous week in Calgary, Canada, and consequently energy demand rose 3.6%.
I’m not saying that highlighting the cause is a bad thing but people shouldn’t be patting themselves on the back for an hour spent in reduced lighting conditions. We need to change our habits permanently and start thinking differently. Thinking about cradle-to-grave: the energy used in production, transportation, usage and disposal or recycling of products at the end of their life cycles.
I expect that rather than sit in the dark, many people will light candles. It may surprise them to find that this could be around ten times worse for the environment.
So, knock down your thermostat by a degree or two. Take the train instead of the plane. Concentrate your products and learn to pack more efficiently. Stop pouring hot water down the drain. Turn off unused PCs. Get rid of your bottled water cooler and get a plumbed in version fitted. Buy a lighter coloured car.
That last idea may sound ridiculous but the theory behind it has been confirmed by Mythbusters no less and is just the kind of thinking that we’ll need if we want to really make a difference.
Published on
March 21, 2009 in
Software.
Internet Explorer 8 was released on Thursday but I have to admit that I haven’t touched it. The last beta that I saw (which wasn’t that long ago) still identified itself as being IE7 in the about dialog but there have been a lot of improvements made over previous version. There are new features too: increased performance, “porn mode” private browsing, data accelerators and improved crash recovery (here’s an idea: try and not crash in the first place).
I have an issue with the first sentence of Wired’s First Look review. Internet Explorer is not the most popular web browser in the world. It is simply the most widely used.
Looking at the IE8 page of the Microsoft website doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s claims of paying attention to standards compliance or maybe this doesn’t apply to all aspects of their work. Of course, there’s also the __VIEWSTATE nonsense that results from coding your pages with .NET and in this case the hidden form field value is a whopping 68KB which is included in any request.
On visiting the page I was prompted to upgrade the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. I first installed this purely for CNN’s Photosynth of Obama’s inauguration two months ago. The Silverlight 2 GDR1 upgrade was released one month ago which just goes to show you just how low the adoption rate has been from the slew of websites I visit.
Silverlight isn’t the only threat to Adobe’s Flash dominance. Emergent technology like HTML5 and CSS3 Chrome experiments that are being supported in modern browsers like Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari are being used with JavaScript to achieve some promising results. Competition is good.
Speaking of Safari, the browser was also in the tech news on Thursday but for the wrong reasons. Safari was the first to fall to a serious vulnerability – albeit with several hours of preparatory work. IE8 and Firefox fell soon afterward. Chrome was the only browser to resist the attentions of the hackers. Interestingly, there was no mention of Opera. Does it really have that insignificant share of the browser market that nobody wants to try and exploit it?
Link: Buzzfeed
Jerry Javala from Finland has had his finger fitted with a USB flash drive after losing part of it in a motorcycle accident. Not something that would appeal to everybody.
I don’t think I’d ever want this for myself but only because having one hand plugged into my computer would slow my typing down by somewhere around 50%.
Published on
March 10, 2009 in
Personal.
This image from the BBC News website had me completely flummoxed today:
Why, exactly, does this man have a big sheet of something sticking through his head? It doesn’t look particularly sunny so I don’t think it’s to shield his eyes.
We’ve all been there. You’ve made an update to your website but you can’t see the change for some reason. It pays to check the basics first before you get totally frustrated and stare at your SQL query or regular expression blankly for 30 minutes, screaming “why don’t you just work?” and turning the air blue.
Ask yourself:
- Did you edit the right file?
- Did you actually upload a file?
- Did you upload the right file?
- Did you save the changes first?
- Are you connected to the correct server?
- Did you upload it to the correct directory?
- Are you refreshing the correct browser window or tab?
If you can confidently reply yes in answer to each of these questions then you’re probably suffering from some form of code blindness. Either ask a collegue to take a look at your work or take a break and go for a coffee – the solution will be so obvious when you get back that you’ll feel like screaming again.
As part of a multi-pronged attack on my current bout of transient insomnia I went along to the gym late yesterday evening to relax awhile in the jacuzzi. Just under an hour later I was on my way out and about to head back to the flat for a hot chocolate when I was collared by the Virgin Active front-of-house staff who were pushing their “MoveMore Challenge” – perform a timed series of exercises 15 times over a three week period. I signed up.
This has come at a most opportune time as I’m in desperate need of some motivation to get back into a good routine. The gym is simply mobbed at the start of every year and it’s a real struggle to access the equipment you want, which has been an all too easy excuse for me to stay on the sofa too often.
I’m looking forward to this actually. It should be a bit of fun and not all that strenuous in reality. If you want to hear what a real challenge is then check out the guys attempting the Outer Hebrides Sub 60 in order to raise a target of an amazing £25,000 for the children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent. Please give generously.
