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New user? Saturday, July 22, 2000
Lance Morrow explained -- He's a secret weenie!
What a completely stupid article.
CNN: Al Gore explained -- He's a secret Canadian!
Lance Morrow refuses to explain HOW Gore is like a Canadian, just giving his readers a lot of "nudge-nudge wink-wink say-no-more say-no-more" bullshit.
The article ends with:
"How so? I'm not sure it would do much for American-Canadian friendship to go into more detail. Students wishing to pursue the subject, however, might explore fatal comparisons in the area of humor."
Lance, put up or shut up. We are not amused.
E-mail down until Sunday or Monday
I've just learned that a storm knocked out the mail server for my domain. The hard drive(s) and backup UPS are trashed. Apparently however, no mail is lost as it's cached on an external mail server. (I hope that's true!)
The server will be down until Sunday, or more likely Monday. Bugger. ;(
If you need to contact me, please use the address jim@oaai.com for now. Thanks.
Underwhelmed and Uninformed
Apple's Jobs fails to inspire - I must admit I was underwhelmed by Wednesday's announcements. There was nothing earthshaking, no big advances like we've seen in the past - iMac / Netbooting / AirPort.
Maybe Apple's done such a good job surprising and impressing us in the last 2 years that it's pretty much impossible to live up to that level of excitement.
Regardless, I'm bothered by how tight-lipped Apple has been about new products. I believe it's doing them more harm than good.
If they had told developers that MP macs were coming out so soon, more software could have been made MP-enabled by now. Then, these MP macs would have appealing to more markets in the short-term.
If they had told accessory makers about the new colours, they could have prepared for the transition.
If they had told WebObjects developers and sysadmins that the new G4s wouldn't be able to run OS X Server for a few months, they could have snagged the remaining supply for development and deployment needs while they waited for the update. People are complaining louder now than they would have had they had some warning.
Do you think it's important for Apple to be secretive about product rollouts? I'd love to hear a rebuttal.
Petreley on Enhydra
Arcane or not, Enhydra is a dream come true for the Java-loving servlet developer
Enhydra is pretty darn cool. If I wasn't already doing WebObjects development (which IMHO is still much better), I'd really like to be using Enhydra.
If you've deployed apps with Enhydra, I've love to hear your experiences...
Don't golf in a thunderstorm
1PM: I wanted to go golfing but there's a severe weather warning (thunderstorm watch) for the Greater Victoria area. :-(
8PM: This afternoon I traded in my first (starter) set of golf clubs for a full 11 piece set and new putter. The store I bought my first set from has a '1/2 back' program where you get 1/2 the cost of your clubs back if you upgrade in the first year.
After that I went to the driving range. I definitely shouldn't hit more than one bucket of balls -- by the time I'm at the end of the 1st bucket my swing is all over the place. The 2nd bucket was a total waste, and now my back is a wreck. :-(
When I bought my first clubs last year, I wrote about it on this site. It's kind of neat (for me anyway) to be able to go back and read that stuff... I wish I had kept a diary through my whole life.
.NET: "psychic hotlines and newspaper horoscopes"
Joel Spolsky totally understands .NET. Which is to say, he doesn't know what the hell it is either!
And that's his point. It's exactly what you imagine it to be, which is why you think you love it. Sneaky huh?
New Look
I know what you're saying. What the hell happened?
Well I'm trying out this new template I just finished. It's similar to the one I had been playing with for a few days, but I like this one better.
I don't know if the colours are good or not, but I tried it in 5 different browsers (IE/NN on Mac/Win and Opera/Win) and it looks nice to me. :-)
I'd really really appreciate your feedback on this new design.
Thanks in advance,
Jim
PS: The rest of the site still uses the 'normal' template. If I decide to keep this template I'll have the rest of the site use this template too. One of the many advantages to using Conversant is being able to have many templates stored and available all the time. I can revert this page to the old look in a few clicks.
Friday, July 21, 2000
Colour Theory - I think I like it!
James Spahr, the man behind the recent redesign of MacOSX.weblogs.com, among other fine sites, generously shares some of his extensive knowledge on colour theory with me as I'm trying to come up with a pleasing colour scheme for a new template for this site.
Thanks James!
I am Jack's fashion sense
Ed points Aaron's raison d'etre for The Cube.
At the bottom of Aaron's piece, he points to the crowd that the Cube is for.
That crowd's site reminded me of IKEA. Reminded me of Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden would just love to teach those folks a lesson. (If you don't know what I'm on about, see Fight Club, immediately. Really.)
Shudder.
Would you give it a rest please? I'm reading.
There are too many web sites. Stop it. Please, just stop making new ones until I've gotten through the ones you've made so far. STOP IT.
Here's an example. Rotten Tomatoes. I know for sure there are over 1000 sites that I haven't even heard of, like Rotten Tomatoes, that I'd thouroughly enjoy if only I knew they existed.
So just... take a vacation, okay?
If you know of other cool sites that most people don't know exist, please share them. It'll just help me get through them all faster. I'm sure everyone who is reading this page is in the same boat.
Thanks!
Keep that thing away from me :)
Chew Chew, the meat-eating robot, scares me.
Remember how the machines got their energy in The Matrix? Well, they weren't carnivorous, but they did use humans as their energy source. (their heat energy IIRC)
Lawn-powered lawn-movers sound interesting, but wouldn't solar-powered lawn-mowers work too?
Life imitates art.
E-mail still down
The mail server for my e-mail account jim@roepcke.com has been down for a full day now. If you're trying to send me e-mail, please send it to jim@oaai.com for now. Or, ICQ me @ 14287112. Or, AIM id JimRoepcke.
Thursday, July 20, 2000
ice cap melting
CNN: NASA confirms Greenland ice cap melting -- "When you consider a flat beach, an inch in sea level rise covers a large horizontal distance," said NASA researcher Waleed Abdalati.
"legions of pint-sized, wizard-obsessed fans"
CANOE: 'Potter' author to play SkyDome -- "Like a millionaire rock star or major-league slugger, J.K. Rowling, the wildly successful Scottish-born author of the Harry Potter children's books, will play the [Toronto Sky]Dome this fall."
The Reg on Apple
The Register: Apple's consumer strategy slips -- "In short, Apple is the Maglite of the computer industry. And that's a plan first outlined not by Jobs but by his predecessor, the now much-maligned Gil Amelio."
What market?
Looks like Dori and I are on the same brainwave with the new Cube, as far as market goes. Regardless, I still want one.
Perhaps that's the answer. People who want it just because it looks cool. James thinks that people without much space will love the thing... makes sense.
The Register also has a good article on this topic, and also mentions "returning to the bad old days" of having too many products.
C|Net: colour changes hurting accessory makers
NEWS.COM: Accessory makers stranded by iMac color change -- Ouch. Of course, this isn't the first time this has happened, and it's long been rumoured that new colours were coming, so if companies were unprepared for this they need to do their homework a little better.
There's at least 2 million iMacs out there in the fruity colours -- they'll be out there for years to come. I wouldn't strand those users by stopping to make accessories in those colours yet. They'll be buying accessories for those for quite a while.
RE: Time to Redesign?
I'd really like to hear your comments on this in-progress design. Thanks!
Note that there are NO graphics at all. I've found it looks best in Verdana, but I haven't forced the page to use that font -- that's up to your browser settings or your user stylesheet, IMHO.
Update: I've updated the look of this site (the weblog page) a little. I'll migrate this change over to the new template when I get a chance.
