nabbed with my hinky cameraphone:
So kwoot!
Where be the search?
April 18th, 2008 – 5:36 pm
With thanks to stilgherrian for the heads up:
Australia 2020, the meeting of the best and brightests whatever in our great wide brown whatever. It has a big pile of submissions. It has no text search that searches the fucking things. For real. Try out the ’site search’ for the word ‘imperative.’ It appears in at least one submission several times and yet you won’t find it in the search.
Ingenious.
Tacky
April 6th, 2008 – 7:16 pm
Theme park adds up to Disney down under
Some of the world’s biggest and best adventure rides are proposed for the park, to be called African Safari World and set in the grounds of Werribee Open Range Zoo.
Village Roadshow is behind the bid to create Australia’s first safari-themed adventure park, being considered by the Brumby Government.
Roller-coasters and thrilling rides would merge with the existing zoo’s lions, rhinos, giraffes, zebras and other animals in a revamped safari zone if the park is approved.
Sounds… tacky. 
Captioning sucks!
April 1st, 2008 – 10:00 am
And now, a short message from the Open and Closed Project:
I shall presume it is an April Fool’s Day gag that the homepage I saw on Sunday is set in Comic Sans.*
In a related note, it’s 2008. What is it with all you vlogger types not providing a captioned version? What about you SERIOUS BUSINESS news types and your video reviews of products and such? God. Even a transcript would be better than nothing but you don’t even do that.
- Protip: don’t expose your development environment URL on your ‘prelaunch landing page thingy’ if you don’t want people to see.
From “happy hacking” to “screw you”
March 24th, 2008 – 11:16 pm
From “happy hacking” to “screw you” - the story of Meraki | virishi.net
So… in the course of six months Meraki has gone from “happy hacking - buy our equipment and use it to help poor people access the net” to “pay three times as much for our hardware and we’ll install whatever we want on it, whenever we want, and you can’t look under the hood to see what it’s doing or install your own software on it.”
Thanks Meraki.
This is expecially bad form (and probably illegal) given that their stuff was all orginally developed under an open source licence.
Needless to say I now think Meraki are total scum and they certainly won’t ever, EVER see any of my money again.
Boooooo.
Lamer catblogging
March 24th, 2008 – 5:07 pm
My weekend was much like this too. Happy Easter everyone!
Enhanced episodes - Lostpedia
March 24th, 2008 – 5:01 pm
Beginning with the launch airdate of Season 4 of Lost, ABC has broadcast “enhanced” versions of episodes. These enhanced episodes are not part of ABC Enhanced TV, which provides Internet-interactivity during viewing.
The enhancement features pop-up captions of text, in some cases accompanied by still images of the characters or objects, on the bottom of the screen.
Doesn’t that just take all the fun out of endlessly fapping about it on IRC/with your friends?
Train plan a ‘third world’ joke | Herald Sun
March 21st, 2008 – 10:28 pm
Train plan a ‘third world’ joke | Herald Sun
A CONNEX investigation into ripping out train seats to ease overcrowding has been slammed as a ‘third world’ joke and safety risk.
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu today branded the idea an insult to passengers suffering overcrowding, cancellations and delays.
The Herald Sun today revealed Connex may remove some seats from the back of carriages to make more standing room for commuters.
Yeah good one, dipshits. This is like the third or fourth time I’ve heard someone suggest this.
Open source sucks… sometimes
March 21st, 2008 – 7:47 pm
Modifying open source software seems like a perfect solution to managers - the solution is almost done, so surely it is just a matter of a few tweaks here and there, a splash of paint and Bob’s you uncle. Yeah - nah.
Yeah, nah indeed. He then goes on to describe a number of issues with getting mod-it-yourself open source projects off the ground, and the amount of aggro and/or cost involved in shoehorning it to fit your needs.
…Open source developers are very narrow minded - their contributions are to suit their specific need, which means every developer will try to include their feature, and unless the leads are ruthless, you end up with a application that has everything that opens and shuts, but that doesn’t really open or shut very well.
Other discussion of this can be seen at the man with no blog’s place.
I’m a big believer in the potential of open source and that’s why I chose to work for a company whose business is open source. And I think that because Squiz’s focus is a combination of both development (the devs, obviously) and implementation (the ’service’ end of the business — ie the ‘ruthless leads’), it’s meant that the development has been driven towards creating a system that addresses broader needs, not two or three unique cases that need to be hacked into submission to address something else.
I think a lot of open source projects (or indeed any project) could stand to follow a similar model of development — developers should be aiming to create things that can be extended to fit more than just a simple, single need. The problem is not with the idea of open source, it’s with narrowly-focused developers and a generic, extensible approach. Shareware and other commercial ventures suffer from the same difficulties.
Haiku Project
March 19th, 2008 – 11:45 pm
Haiku is an open-source operating system currently in development designed from the ground up for desktop computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku aims to provide users of all levels with a personal computing experience that is simple yet powerful, and free of any unnecessary complexities.
Pay more for iPod, get free access to iTunes? - Technology - theage.com.au
March 19th, 2008 – 11:44 pm
Says the Age, and presumably a heap of others.
Apple is talking to music companies about giving customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices, it has been reported.
It’d better be able to burn CDs and all that, the same as another iTMS purchase, or it’ll tank.
WordPress › Blog » 2.5 Sneak Peek
March 19th, 2008 – 9:35 pm
Hmmmmm. And I was thinking about going back to Movable Type, but…
WordPress › Blog » 2.5 Sneak Peek
A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.
Buyer beware
March 13th, 2008 – 2:50 pm
Geese Aplenty: Be My “It’s Complicated” on Facebook.
(I thrust a paper in her hand. She looks at it, reads): MADAME: “Great work on the introductory paragraph! Be sure to work on your transitions, and also support your thesis statements with secondary reference sources. Other than that, another sterling essay and you’re well on track to a very strong report card.” ME: My seventh grade teacher. I’d…I’d like one of your girls to read those comments to me. Over and over. MADAME: Hmmm. You’re sicker than I thought you were when you walked in here.
Etsy :: KungFuCowgirl :: Gameboy Plushie
March 12th, 2008 – 4:42 pm
Etsy :: KungFuCowgirl :: Gameboy PlushieYouTube - Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine
March 11th, 2008 – 9:11 am
YouTube - Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine
Destineer’s upcoming game title, Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine for the Nintendo Wii and DS. For real.
A balance does not a slacker make
March 10th, 2008 – 2:16 am
Seeing as it’s Eight Hour/Labour Day tomorrow, this latest stroke of ‘genius’ from Jason Calacanis is perfectly timed.
Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.”
Having received a few dozen reamings from the rest of the world (small selection: a, b,c, d) he amends this to:
Fire people who
are not workaholics.don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life,it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into ityou want balance in your life. For realz.
Nice backpedal, for realz. He adds:
This got me to thinking, why are folks so upset with this concept of working really hard? (…) Truth be told, I’ve never asked anyone to work harder than I do, and I work seven days a week.
See, according to Jason, ‘working really hard’, ‘loving your work’ and ‘workaholism’ seem to equate to the same thing. And there’s a horrible undertone (or even an outright statement) in some of the comments supportive of Calacanis’ stance, that people seeking balance at work are slackers.
And that’s dead wrong — there’s heaps of published proof that it’s the direct opposite, that inflexibility and overwork actually wreck people’s lives. Conversely, organisations who afford time for personal learning, family time and flexible work arrangements experience huge gains in productivity, staff retention, and reduced absenteeism. The proof is everywhere you look, but for a bit of currency there’s a great response to Jason’s post from 37 signals about how working less hours and taking an interest in staffers’ lives makes for a better all-around experience.
On Monday those of us in Victoria and Tasmania get a day off to commemorate the efforts of workers to demand better conditions and a reasonable working day. It’s a fine time to have a day off work and spare a moment to remember some of the issues that face employees today — like the attitudes of the Jason Calacanises of the world, and how we still need to fight against people like him.
