Vacuum Cleaners
My cousin once said, “the purpose of exhaust hoods is to be switched of”. Sitting here, with a vacuum cleaner as the unpleasant background noise, I’m led to believe there are other electronic items for which this apply.
Archive for 2008
The day the music died →
Wonderful piece by Mark Pilgrim on the danger of letting someone else control your music through encryption. As he so nicely puts it:
[T]he left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.
And yes, this does include iTunes. Plus or not, they still con you, although they are admittedly a bit more fair in their approach.
Open Letter to All Twitters
Stop bloody quoting yourself on your blog. Please.
Grammar is more than plain purity
I am infamous amongst my acquaintances for being pedantic, especially when it comes to language. For quite a long time, I would correct — and enjoy to do so — my teacher, if he or she would have a left out a comma.
And for the longest time, most people I knew hated me for it.
I have since all in all left this practice behind (although I still get the urge, I try to suppress it. And yes, I do make this sound worse than it is.)
So, it seems I have overcome the worst, and should just leave it all behind me, and get on. The truth is, however, I still stand by the goal of what I did — achieving better and more accurate language, particularly with regards to spelling. The only reason I do not do this anymore is I try to be less of a prick.
The thing is, I really do feel we need to stress the importance of proper grammar and reduce typos etc. as much as humanly possible1. Because I think proper grammar is essential to getting your message through.
I have at many times been called arrogant, asserting that everyone can uphold a language of the standard I myself hold2. I understand this concern, and I want to stress that do not assert this. I have a large deal of respect for people who suffer from dyslexia; I know I would personally hate suffering from this.
This is not directed at those unfortunate souls; this is directed at those who are simply too lazy to re-read their writings, to check for errors. I believe that is arrogant. To have the ability to do something which is arguably better than not doing it, and then choose not to do it.
I believe this shows a lack of respect for the intended audience of one’s writings. I believe it is arrogant — yes, indeed so — to put unnecessary trouble on the shoulders of people one wants to read what one have said. I do not demand perfectionism from others; all I long for is effort, that people put enough into what they want others to read, that they will want to read it.
This is not about wonderful, varied use of language. I realise that not everyone was born to be a great writer, but that some will still need to write something, occasionally. When you are not a great writer, the very least you can do is make sure that what you write is still readable, if not necessarily a joy to read. Doing otherwise is arrogant.
CSS Qualified Selectors →
I am a fan. I have been wanting this for a long time. Great initiative by Shaun.
Marc Andreesen on Microsoft–Yahoo! →
Quite thorough and interesting run-down of what could happen with the Microsoft–Yahoo! deal. It learned me some new things about the system.
The Super Hacker →
I would probably do the same. After all, I am a terrific hacker, and a super ninja.
Gamle danske ord →
En fantastisk samling af ord der er gået tabt.
(Via Bromer)
Zeldman on Personal Sites →
Heh, seems I am not up to speed. Here I am moving my links back to my personal sites, posting photos on this blog, and what not.
Seriously, though, I see what Zeldman is getting at. I just go the other way myself. I want to collect this stuff here, just as he seems to advice1. And also, I think he is putting more into it than it deserves. Yes, people might be storing information elsewhere than at their own sites, but, and this is something Jeffrey points out himself, it could as well be due to convenience. He says:
Like nearly everyone, I outsource discoverable, commentable photography to Flickr.com instead of designing my own photo gallery like my gifted colleagues Douglas Bowman and Todd Dominey.
Using Flickr might be a matter of taking the easy way out, more than anything else. Likewise with using ma.gnolia or del.icio.us — they can seem easier to approach, than to set up your own personal publishing engine to handle it.
Twitter is the only thing that does not fit into this. And in this, Jeffrey might have a point; it is easier to write something that should just be 140 characters, than something that should be substantially longer. But hey, that is why I have notes. Furthermore, people seem to have fundamentally misunderstood Twitter. Very few answer the question Twitter asks; I have a Twitter account, which I have updated a grand total of 9 times — one of which did not answer the question. I personally find Twitter useless, and I cannot see why you would go and use Twitter instead of implementing some sort of custom category to you own blog.
Anyway, I do not think a centralised brand is crucial to maintaining the value of said brand — I think it could well be a consequence of laziness. I personally store links the way I do, because I find it gives me more flexibility — people storing theirs at ma.gnolia might find it is easier. We all have different needs and priorities, but I think centralisation is and should be of lesser importance. As long as you make all your decentralised entities available, you should be home free.
-
I have one big exception to this rule: I still store my personal playlist at Last.fm. I can explain this, however: Last.fm has the kind of functionality I would never dream of storing manually, and as such, it would not make sense to duplicate it here. Uploading playlist information is an automatic process, storing links is not. ↩
Google AJAX Search API →
I must look into this. Although I probably will not be doing it AJAX-style, but it could easily make for some nifty Python action.