Zzot!

Regular LPC objects are loaded from an LPC source file — these new objects are loaded from a source file, but not an LPC one (and not named whatever.c). This makes the object loading path more complicated, so here’s an attempt to put a few of us on the same page.

This is obviously a first draft, scribbled down quickly so we have something to discuss. Let me hear any thoughts you might have.

Continue reading…

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Good news — I worked around the problem with the testing stylesheet was being displayed by default on Safari. Not particularly well, mind you, but it’s better than it was. I’ll dig into supported attributes soon-ish to see if there’s a better solution.

Bad news — I fixed this in JavaScript, the defect appears to apply to KHTML in general, but making the detector that triggers the fix less selective (to include anything KHTML-based) doesn’t work. I’m pretty sure there’s something wacky with the JavaScript part, however, since alert(navigator.userAgent) doesn’t seem to work either.

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Okay, two more of the site’s templates have been updated to follow the overall design; specifically those for the daily and monthly archive pages. I’m not saying that those pages are great now — they’re not. But at least they look right now.

Here are some items that remain:

• Both the Sitemap and the Monthly Archives pages serve basically the same purpose, so I will probably merge them together.
• The Sitemap’s layout is still a little rough
• So are the comment forms
• The breadcrumbs at the top of each entry page lead up the by Date hierarchy, but now that there is a by Category hierarchy, maybe they should be changed?

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Lins and I went to an Omnimax theater today — it was okay.

I think it is fishy that none of the top 10 Google hits for that word are the vendor. Now that I look, the vendor only appears to use IMAX as a trademark. What, did the theaters all make up their own name for it?

Anyway, the experience. I haven’t been to one of these in ages. It isn’t that the experience was any less — it was great. The projected image totally envelops you, just like it is supposed to.

First, I noticed a neck ache almost as soon as we got in there. It might have been there before, I don’t know. But as soon as we were in there, my neck was sore.

Second, the seats weren’t too comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that I’m a pretty tall guy, and most theater goers are, well…less so. That being said, our usual (ordinary) movie theater has really comfortable seats.

Third, there didn’t seem to be much agreement on where the screen is. I mean, omnimax appears to refer to the IMAX Dome projection, where the dome has a 180° view with a 30° rake, the seats are positioned high, at a steep angle, and in a convex arrangement so other seats (or the people sitting in them) don’t obstruct your view.

Once you get beyond that, however, only the designers previously mentioned seats seemed to have decided where they thought the focal point of the presentation was. It seems to me that usually these theaters project some sponsor-related material at a random spot on the dome before or after the main presentation — that’s not what I’m on about. During the film we went there to see, at no point from the opening credits, through the content, and the closing credits, was it apparent that the people who made the movie had any idea where they thought the sweet spot was.

Now, the reason that these theaters and formats tend not to attract a lot of commercial success is that the market just isn’t large enough to justify the expense of producing the large format films. That being said, however, you’d think the few people who are producing the films would do the best they can.

I mean really — if you have a format where the entire concept is that you can look at the focal point of the presentation and there’s enough screen all the way around to cover your peripheral vision, is it so much to have the producer edit their film to keep the focal point in the center of the damn screen? Feh.

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Indecisive moved over the weekend. The change should be largely transparent (although some of the CGI URLs visibly changed a bit). Let me know if there are things broken now that weren’t broken Friday.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms lately. Usually when you hear that in the summer of an election year, it means politics — I guess I do too. Sort of.

The old joke about geeks talking about what text editor or what UNIX lineage what programming or scripting language is best is that it becomes a religious issue. How many of these religious issues are there? Well, a lot more than you’d think.

Anyway, platforms — there are a lot of them. Right now, right this minute, I’m using a Mac. The web-server is a Linux box. There’s another Linux box next to me, which ironically is where I test my site to see how MSIE mangles it (thanks be to wine). There’s a lot more Windows at work, and a handful of other assorted platforms represented. So, which one is best?

Glad you asked. Not because I have an answer handy — I don’t. The problem is that a lot of people do have an answer to that question…and the question is unanswerable.

An (un)answer

I don’t own a full-size framing hammer. That’s probably not surprising, since I’ve never “stick built” a house. I do know there is such a thing though, and if I expected to spend a weekend doing framing, I’d buy the proper hammer. It’s not that I don’t own a perfectly good hammer, it just isn’t the tool for that job.

In the real world, people pick the tool they think is best for the job. While that’s different than using the tool that actually is best for the job, the fact remains that they chose on (their perception of) function.

Take your metaphors and…

Okay, okay. I’ve long believed that it is irresponsible for our colleges and universities to allow a homogeneous computing environment, let alone encourage one. I’ve never walked into someone’s workshop and found that they own one of every different size and shape open-end wrench made — and that’s it. But schools that have the same version of the same OS on every desktop, and a server variant of that same OS on all the servers are everywhere. Why is that such a bad thing?

Because computers are tools. Don’t get me wrong, Macs are pretty. I don’t have anything against good industrial design on your products; if I did, I wouldn’t have a Mac. Looking at some of the hardware I have around me, I apparently don’t have anything against terrible industrial design on your products either, but I don’t go advertising that.

The whole idea of a tool is that you’ve got a problem (the nail), and are looking for a solution (the hammer). Once you’ve got the hammer, anyone who figures they might as well get a screwdriver while they’re at it have one of these attributes:

• Expect non-nail problems
• Collect tools, or otherwise are geek-ish
• Have the same IQ as the hammer

So, how does this relate to politics?

Glad you asked. Schools teach that it’s normal to have just one platform — it’s not. Anyone who can tell you what the best computing platform, mechanical fastener, or fiscal policy is without asking you several questions first is selling something. And it’s probably something you want to not have. Just look at the U.S. government right now — the problem isn’t that there’s too much adversarial politics, it’s that they’re doing adversarial politics wrong. The whole idea is that our elected officials argue about what’s best, come to a comprimise, get something done, and move on.

Oh, right — I wasn’t talking that politics. What (computing) platform do I use? Well, a lot of them. I’m a software engineer, and a geek, so I should be expected to have all sorts of stuff — and I do. Of the top three desktop platforms, I use all three of them. Every day. What, you don’t? Well whose stupid fault is that?

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I rebuilt the site (again?) — this time there’s one weblog in MT with nested categories, instead of a stack of weblogs generating the one site. I also moved the various feeds to their own directory, so update your feed URLs if you’re using them. The templates aren’t back to where they had been yet, but they’re getting there. There’s even valid HTML in more places than there had been.

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