the-inbetween.com

Other People's Designs

Other People's Stories: #61: My Friend Jason in "Dead Lock". Dan Zettwoch on game theory and J.Lo. A comic.

There's a slick new Nintendo.com redesign. Irregardless of the console wars, and the struggles within them, Nintendo has consistently been the top dog on the web front. No other publisher or developer even comes close in that capacity.

Speaking of new designs, Saila points to the new Mississauga city site. It's useful, informative, clean, and it looks great. We, the suburban Mississauga folk, might be the butt end of many jokes by urbanite Torontonians, but for such a new media friendly city to have such a lousy site [toronto.ca], that's the joke. ha! *points and laughs*

RSS Firebird Extension

My kind of luck. Just as soon as I get started on my own RSS reader, I find Firebird Ext. - RSS Reader Panel. An RSS reader that very easily and very seamlessly integrates into Firebird's sidebar. It's nice and small, and I had it working almost instantly. There are a few problems, though. For one, it's not very lax on the RSS validation. A malformed feed will generate errors, and you'll end up getting nothing out of the feed. While this really isn't a problem with the Reader Panel as much as a problem with the actual feeds that are provided (garbage in, garbage out!), some element of flexibility would be nice.

It would also be swell if the feeds could be sorted by thelatest items, rather than having them grouped under each individual channels. Minor complaints, really, as Reader Panel is quite good overall. The "keep it simple, stupid" philosophy works in its favour, and that's something I like.

Coder Curiosity

Here's a pretty good list of RSS readers. I think I've tried about five of them, and none of themleft me satisfied. They were either too bulky, or too buggy, or too slow. The stand-alone desktop application factor was annoying as well, as I wanted something far more transparent.

Earlier this month, I came across Feed on Feeds. Milov was using it and I liked what I saw. It was simple, clean, web based, and it used the very familiar PHP/MySQL combo -- so it was open to customization. It seemed nice, but I didn't bother because of server restraints, and because I didn't have a real need at that point.

Then came del.icio.us. That gave me a bunch of ideas. Then I was told I might have access to a new server, for free. Several possible future job leads followed (though nothing definite :\) Then some more ideas. Then, all of a sudden, I had rediscovered my coder curiosity. It's been dormant for months, but it seems to be waking again. Thus, using magpie, I've decided to roll my own feed reader.

Got nothing better to do. Well, I do -- but nothing as productive.

Also, the backyard is covered by some strange, white, powdery substance. It is, quite possibly, anthrax. More on this news as it develops...

Delicious

I've been playing around with the pre-alpha-alpha del.icio.us lately, and I've been using it as a massive link-dump. Since I currently have no means of aggregating those links for local display, I'll just link to my del.icio.us page. There's some good stuff there. In particular, check out Bizarre Love Triangle, NHL 97 (they have FIFA 97, too), and, if you want to get creeped out, Happy Sabrina.

Pink is the new Gray

It took nearly a week to fine-tune and finalize, but the new style -- along with some relatively minor fixes in the underlying XHTML -- is done and live. Quite clearly, it is not my typical fare as it has colour (and not just colour, but pinkish colour.) Yes, I have decided to opt in on pink, shunning aside all those years of dark-gray on light-gray with touches of grayish-blue. I am comfortable enough in my masculinity to use pink.

There are a few minor browser inconsistencies with Internet Explorer 5.5 and up (strangely, 5.0 works fine ?) and I no longer have access to a Mac so I can't test it there, but if you are using a Mozilla-based browser, you should be fine; you should also be commended. Go Mozilla!

If you absolutely hate it, then hit the "Config" link and set it back to the old "Gamer Classic" style.

Buying Online oivfb

While my spam doesn't quite reach the literary depths of collision detection's spam, I have noticed a drastic increase in verbosity. Thus, I present to you, Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], master whispered solemnly:

feathery oneupmanship referral amnesia convert benign cretaceous sse pest watchman fusion requisite bobcat shadow hibernia bypass bergson wacky gates gingko ness digitate armco tonnage lithe conspire downtrend thump catalysis morphism benevolent gland aerate diurnal abridgment clare apotheosis solidarity daughter

I'm assuming that the "author" didn't properly replace the variable in the subject, hence the "%RND_UC_CHAR[2-8]" instead of, say, "VBXAO" (as in another email). Fortunately, all email that I get goes through two seperate spam filters -- my server's Spam Assassin, and my client's (Firebird) built in filtering -- and this pretty much guarantees that I see VERY little spam, unless I specifically seek it out by going to my "junk" folder. I've had a few false-negatives here and there, but the fault with those is with me; I rarely get regular email, so the filters have a hard time knowing what isn't spam. Give the filters a year more and they'll catch on.

If anything, this whole post has given me reason to verify that my trackback functionality is working.

Good news: USAToday - "Family Guy" May Return. Title says it all!

Three Sea Shells

Having just watched Demolition Man for the nth time, I have just realized that one aspect of the movie is turning out damn-right prophetic. It was once a slight jab at the other action star. Now, the "Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library" doesn't seem so improbable.

Another fun little trivia fact is that the movie Predator featured two future state governors -- Arnold Schwatzawhatever and Jesse Ventura. According to this trend, the guy that played Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies, Carl Weathers, is going to be governor within the next four years. Or perhaps the guy that played Dick Tracy's "Pruneface", R.G. Armstrong.

I just found out that CBC has organized all of their online Flash games on a single page. All those games (except for that "Naughty Pig" thing) are 10Plus1's babies, all made during my time there. Four of those are mine. The crappiest four, eh.

All of those, however, can't hold a candle to the glory that is Robotron -- very accurately ported to Shockwave. The best part of it? You get the same great taste without any of that MAME guilt. Not that I have any.

Other than saying "I've commented on it at three places already", I will make no mention of that Paris Hilton video. It's pointless anyway, as everyone has seen it before already. If you haven't, then you might want to see this, as it is undoubtedly new to you as well.

Finally, don't forget, it's Leonid time. The peak is on the 19th. Hope the skies will be clear, because November is almost always overcast. I can't remember the last time that the Leonids had a clear sky (and I've been checking for years).

Speed Run

Metroid Prime, 100% complete in 1:37. The videos are definitely something. While I won't go as far as to pretentiously call it a sort of digital "performance art", I will say that they are strangely fascinating. There's a certain pleasure in seeing something executed so flawlessly and so expertly. The best comparison I can think of is rally racing. In my opinion, watching a driver perfectly weave and slide through a challenging stage is far more enjoyable than watching a lap of the more directly competitive Formula One. Same idea.

Available for download: Winamp 5 beta 2 (Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5). Haven't tried it yet, so I can't comment about its quality. Will try to later. As an aside, if you want a good audio player for Windows, without having to bother with those attrocious "skins", try foobar2000.

Kevin Kelly's Out of Control. The whole book is available for online reading.

Out of Control is a summary of what we know about self-sustaining systems, both living ones such as a tropical wetland, or an artificial one, such as a computer simulation of our planet. The last chapter of the book, "The Nine Laws of God," is a distillation of the nine common principles that all life-like systems share.

Halo World

Word on the street is that Halo is finally getting the Platinum Hits treatment this week. Maybe now I'll get a chance to try it, as I've refused to buy it full-price. Other rumours and innuendos, or just geeky day-dreams, have suggested that it might have XBox Live play added. It makes sense from a hype and marketing stand-point, and it would be damned cool if it were to happen, but don't hold your breath.

I've never seen Normal Bob Smith before. It's definitely... something. Something I, likely, should have seen earlier. Oh well.

Finally, get this good 80s cheese out of my head!. Daytime all I want is Nighttime I don't need the Daytime all I want is Nighttime I don't need the

Kill The Wabbit!

While browsing DVDs at Futureshop the other day (a temptingly dangerous task for a broke man), I noticed the Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection. I was curious as to what episodes it contained and, more importantly, whether they were the complete non-cut-for-TV versions. I took a mental note to remind myself to check later. Naturally, I forgot.

Conveniently enough, as I was randomly flicking channels today I came across "Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-Fourth-and-a-Halfth Century!" Soon enough, the episode where Bugs Bunny became a conductor to take out that asshole tenor was on. The mental note resurfaced, and Amazon's user reviews graced my screen. The reviews, immediately, bemoaned the fact that "What's Opera, Doc?" wasn't included. Then, before I could even get upset about that, that very same cartoon started playing on TV. How fortunate!

I tell you, they don't make cartoons like that anymore.

Missing "What's Opera, Doc?" is partly forgivable, but further reading of the Amazon reviews showed that my favourite Bugs Bunny toon was missing: "Ali Baba Bunny." Now that is intollerable.

As is the case with the majority of DVD releases, I think I'll wait for the Super Complete Extra Special Edition. Hopefully, one day, a true compendium of the old Warner Bros. toons will be released. Until then, the cut and censored TV versions will have to do.

Anyway, I don't get much traffic -- and even less feedback -- but I'm going to go fishing for comments here. As they say, "let's toss this idea into the oven and see if it bakes." Anyone else have a favourite WB toon?