Month: February 2008

RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

I am a big fan of the music of Sheryl Crow. I have all of her CDs and have bought each one (no, I didn’t “borrow” someone else’s MP3 files). I have enjoyed her music over the years but, to be honest, her first CD was probably her best and she could be accused of coasting since then – a couple good songs per CD with so-so songs after that.

I have listened to Ms. Crow’s latest CD several times. It is titled “Detours”. It is an apt title since it is a detour from her usual high quality work! I feel like the Democratic Party, Al Gore, and Laurie David have been injected into my brain via my ears! To think that I spent $15 for a CD of political propaganda.

I have no problem with the occasional activism song. I actually applaud this even when I don’t particularly agree with the message. For instance, Matchbox Twenty’s recent video “How Far We’ve Come” (see the bottom of this post to watch the video) is absolutely a political statement and it is excellent (I am not sure that the ending of showing Mr. Gore, Ms. Clinton, and Mr. Obama is a statement to the positive after watching the fall of the Berlin Wall but maybe that is their point).

Thankfully, Ms. Crow has put the lyrics to her songs in the CD package. I appreciate that gesture and she has regularly done this for her listeners. However, the words that she is portraying are over the top. Does she really know for a fact that the President was lying to get into a war? When I want to listen to someone exaggerate the truth, I will watch Al Gore’s movie since the British courts have already called that a political document.

Sheryl (and other artists) should limit her political statements to one or two well done messages and then spend the rest of the CD entertaining me. That is what I am paying her to do.

SHERYL – I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR POLITICS! I WANT YOU TO ENTERTAIN ME, NOT LECTURE ME ON YOUR OPINIONS!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Long statements in instant messages that are broken up

RANT! Long statements in instant messages that are broken up

A lot of us use instant messaging (IM) in our private and professional lives. It is a convenient and quick way to talk to others without the formality and delay of email. A new jargon has been created to talk in this medium and emoticons are often used to express feelings and emphasis.

You can tell a lot about someone by reading their instant messages. The biggest thing you can tell to see if someone is just plain clueless is if they send you messages like this:

IDontKnowHowToIM: Did you watch the game
IDontKnowHowToIM: this weekend? I thought
IDontKnowHowToIM: it was great and I was
IDontKnowHowToIM: amazed at how well Tom
IDontKnowHowToIM: Brady played he must be
IDontKnowHowToIM: the best player in NFL

What IDontKnowHowToIM meant to type was this:

IDontKnowHowToIM: Did you watch the game this weekend? I thought it was great and I was amazed at how well Tom Brady played he must be the best player in NFL

Having to hit the return key pretty much went away with manual typewriters. In fact, I would venture to say that your keyboard doesn’t have a return key but instead had an enter key in its place. There really isn’t any reason to break up your text manually. Your client surely supports word wrap. You can keep on typing until you get to the end of your logical paragraph!

Most IM clients open up their default window and show only 1 line of text. So fools like IDontKnowHowToIM get to the end of that window and hit return. Then they keep on typing. However, an amazing thing was popularized about 20 years ago – the mouse. Use your mouse to drag that typing window up and before you know it you can see 2, 3, 10, even 100 lines of text. No more one line IM messages!

Here are some examples from Trillian and Yahoo:

Before Trillian:

before t

After dragging in Trillian:

after t

Before in Yahoo Messenger:

before y

After dragging in Yahoo Messenger:

after y

INSTANT MESSENGER USERS – LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR CLIENT AND STOP SENDING BROKEN MESSAGES!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Internet browsers need to handle favicons better

RANT! Internet browsers need to handle favicons better

Do you even know what a favicon is? It is the little image that sits just to the left of the URL in your address bar. For this site the favicon looks like this: Angry_1185 If you can’t see it then that pretty much proves my point!

When you surf to a page that you have previously visited, the browser checks to see if anything has changed since the last time that you visited. It then downloads the new text and graphics and combines this with data in your cache and displays this to you. This technique can greatly reduce your surf time.

Unfortunately, most modern browsers (Firefox and Internet Explorer) do a pretty lousy job of checking and updating if the favicon for a site has changed. In fact, if you using an older version of IE, it may not even display a favicon. Even Firefox will occasionally display the wrong favicon for a site.

This is poor software design. Favicons are very small and would not detract from the user experience if it was checked every time.

HEY SOFTWARE DESIGNERS, FIX YOUR FAVICON IMPLEMENTATION!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Did you know that you can have these articles emailed to you? Click on the Email link in the upper right corner Subscribe section, fill out the details, and you are set. No one will see your email address and you won’t get more spam by doing this.

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