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Description: A sidetrack from my main site at vkps.co.uk. A more personal blog-like view of the world, with a web design slant.
Last Update: 17:40:41 03/02/2006
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Additional Info
First Fetched: 00:18:21 01/31/2004
Last Updated: 17:40:41 03/02/2006
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I know, I know. You're wondering why I haven't been filling your lives with long winded articles about obscure attacks, or strange foods or music that no-one else likes. When, you're surely thinking, will I find out what film Gary preferred out of the four he saw in January? (It was probably Jarhead by a whisker, to ruin the surprise). The reasons are threefold:Work. I've been incredibly busy for the last few weeks. There's nothing quite like a deadline to kill all creative and expressive urges; it's been a case of going to work, coming home, and vegetating.Going out. To stave off going nuts from the above, I've been going out a hell of a lot, not least of all being Mr Murray's 21st birthday last weekend. I do implore you to search out the photos from that particular night. Not because of the incriminating pictures of Derek (which are sadly mostly private) but for the fact I look like I've had a stroke incapacitating half of my face in nearly all of them.Moving. Preparation and ...
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| 16:31:51 February 5, 2006, Sunday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Solitude, as of today, has been running for three full years. Bloody hell. I've been going over a few random archive posts and it really is amazing how much the tone and style has changed over that time. I look back to early posts and see just how much my focus and enthusiasm has changed, I'm finding it much harder to post these days, particularly about technical issues which is bizarre since I understand technology and code far better now than ever. Half of the stuff I think about doing doesn't seem as worthy of a post these days: I assume most of the people who read this would already know what I'm talking about and don't need it again, and I certainly wouldn't be writing it for myself.As has become tradition on this site, last year I made predictions about what to expect on Solitude and got it hugely wrong. The Solitude sister project (code named "P") failed to appear because I did literally nothing towards it. The post rate was light in the first half of the year, but got worse ...
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| 20:37:48 January 12, 2006, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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From random discussions I've had with people over the last few months, it seems to me that not too many people really know about a particularly nasty and cunning form of computer attack: the decompression bomb.First, think about compressing data. Most of us have used an application like WinZip or some similar tool to make our files smaller, albeit less accessible temporarily. These programs take advantage of how signal to noise ratios work in most representations of data; that is, the way we try to represent information is almost always ineffecient. There are usually techniques available for removing the parts that aren't so important, and letting important (or common) information take less space.For example, the algorithm behind the ZIP programs is largely based on LZW compression: a technique that collapses common substrings down into single codes. Obviously, I've completely glossed over how it works, but if you want to know the information is out there (any computing scientist ...
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| 20:34:00 January 12, 2006, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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The piece on decompression bombs was not supposed to be a panic piece, as it seems is implied, rather it was an informative one about a hidden danger in handling compressed files and, in my view, a neat little trick.To respond to some questions about it: someone asked how you would create the compressed file in the first place since compressing that much data would have to be done in memory, causing you the same problem. Very astute! The answer is that you don't: the uncompressed data never exists. You need to know enough about your compression algorithm to construct the compressed file directly, writing the output without any real input. This is not that tricky for most formats. The fact of the matter is that you can download decompression bombs quite freely.In response to a comment by David Russell, and to illustrate some points more clearly, I'm going to discuss some more concrete examples. First of all, David raises the issue that this just means "you restart". Naively, yes, it ...
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| 20:29:38 January 12, 2006, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Around my first year of university, I noticed that people would go out of their way to avoid sitting next to me on the bus. Only once every other seat on the bus, including the few that face backwards that everyone hates, were filled would I be graced with human company. At first, this was great. I'm not much of a morning person so this afforded me the luxury of stretching out a bit more and getting some sleep on the way in.After a while, though, it makes I got curious as to why people were avoiding me. Maybe I looked deranged (no jokes, please, we're all above that), maybe I smelled (again... grow up), maybe it was something else. What had changed since I went to university? It didn't take long to figure out that I now had long hair when previously I did not.A few years later, I cut my hair right down and, sure enough, I seemed to be treated like everyone else on the bus. Maybe I'm not the first person people sit next to, that honour usually goes to someone prettier and more ...
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| 02:33:21 January 7, 2006, Saturday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Since Channel 4 seem incapable of advertising anything I've ever been waiting for them to screen (for example, the American Gothic re-runs), I shall take it upon myself to point out that the newest Derren Brown special is on in 20 minutes. Only spotted because of sheer fluke.It's called The Heist, and the boy wonder is planning on convincing people to rob a bank. You just know he'll succeed, but it's the frightening ease with which he does things that makes him so entertaining.Go! Watch!Update: Terrifying. Definitely worth a watch on the next repeat, or when the torrents appear in about an hours time.Update 2: Might I suggest that the huge number of people arriving on this post looking for a torrent try somewhere else that might have it like UKNova
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| 02:22:57 January 7, 2006, Saturday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Yes, it's time for the Solitude 2005 awards! We've already covered the best film of 2005 but there are plenty of other awards going:Best album of 2005 - Being the first year for a while that Biffy haven't released anything and The Mars Volta album being good but not great, I think there is only one clear choice for best album: "Very Fast, Very Dangerous" by the excellent Reuben. Mixing some chunky British rock with some tight lyrics and sprinklings of pop mentality, this album has everything any fan of modern rock needs. Each of the singles showed off a different part of the band, and the album as a whole is just brilliantly pitched.Best new band - This means the best band I heard for the first time last year and is pretty tricky. I think the best band I heard last year were the impossibly tight Caretaker, a band with some incredible dynamics and transitions. I highly recommend their "Signs Of Four EP" (incidentally the best EP of 2005). That said, the industry being what it is, ...
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| 02:21:41 January 7, 2006, Saturday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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While, like any knock-out tournament, the film fight format cannot create a ranking for the films I've seen this year, it can show one thing (and only one thing): my favourite film of the year. Here are the finalists:Team America: World PoliceMillion Dollar BabyThe Life AquaticThe Assassination Of Richard NixonHitchhiker's Guide To The GalaxySin CityWar Of The WorldsThe Wedding CrashersLand Of The DeadA History Of ViolenceSaw 2Kiss Kiss Bang BangWow, those are some fairly excellent films (except Hitchhiker's and War Of The Worlds, which won by default), and that's leaving aside stuff that would have shined elsewhere (Batman Begins was out the same month as Sin City and there was little in it, for example, or pretty much everything in October).So from the list of finalists, remembering that some better films never made it to the final twelve, the best film of this year is...The Life Aquatic. While both Sin City and Million Dollar Baby nearly had it, the performances and perfect ...
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| 10:57:19 January 1, 2006, Sunday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Given that a new year is almost upon us, I figured it is a good time to get rid of the feeds I do not read any more. Before this cull, I had 218 feeds in Bloglines. That's a fair number to keep up with and I don't think my unread items count has dropped below a thousand in months now. Here's what has been removed:Scary Duck - It's not gone any worse, it just hasn't changed at all. I just don't read it any more.Query Letters I Love - Not entertaining enough any more for the throughput.New Urban Legends - Debunking urban legends. Good reference, but not feed worthy.World Wide Words - Why I ever subscribed to this is beyond me. Resolutely dull.Code Snippets - When most of the examples are so out of context and badly done, I don't want to sift through them in a feed reader for the few gems.The Religious Policeman - A well meaning site on the situation in Saudia Arabia, but one whose jaded writing has become more and more stilted.Creative Commons - A signal to noise problem: not ...
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| 10:50:11 January 1, 2006, Sunday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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For the final film fight of the year, we have a fairly forgettable bunch, with one stand-out exception among the mediocrity. Despite this lack of greatness, we shall continue.Doom has been a long time coming, with the rights being moved around for years. Was it worth the wait? As expected, no. It's a terrible and utterly mindless film that both misses the point of the game and pads the storyline out with some horrible faux-science. Despite some previously inspired roles, such as in the otherwise awful Be Cool, The Rock is dire; playing entirely to type, in the most unconvincing manner. Expect all the worst Hollywood action cliches. Do not see this.Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, on the other hand, is surprisingly great, despite the awful trailer and eyebrow raising cast. A modern pastiche of classic noir private eye films, this film manages to raise some laughs with an expertly done take on the classic stereotypes of the genre: our hero gets beaten up constantly, the icey cool PI is gay ...
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| 10:46:27 January 1, 2006, Sunday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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As all the cool kids seem to be doing it(oh the humour in that link text :P), I think it is appropriate for me to wish everyone who has been reading this site a Merry Christmas!Hope everyone gets what they want, stuffs themselves silly and watches some bad tv tomorrow. Enjoy!
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| 00:29:16 December 27, 2005, Tuesday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Last night was the finale of the four day Biffy Clyro end of year gigs at King Tuts and what a finish it was.Arriving at the venue a little later than previous days, it was, again, quieter than the night before. Apparently we missed an early support act of a piper but were in time to see the main support act: comedian Phil Kay. As frantic and manic as always, he amused the crowd for the most part, even if he waned a little towards the end. Jamie Lenman (from Rruben) and Phil Kay could both be seen wandering around the upstairs bar, among other, harder to spot band members.At 10pm, as was their custom, the band took to the stage for the final time. This time, rather than known material, the set largely comprised material from their unrecorded fourth album. What an eye-opener. In places the new stuff is heavier with less screaming, and in others more melodic; a very wide selection. So as to keep things going, every two new songs was followed by a Biffy classic. The finale of "57" was ...
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| 11:42:04 December 21, 2005, Wednesday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Day three and the last of the Biffy Clyro gigs at King Tuts based on released material. The atmosphere was much quieter before the gig, with the downstairs bar remaining quiet (there were seats still available) and upstairs at the venue staying pretty room until much nearer the main act's stage time.Shame, really, since the support act was the most entertaining so far. Again foregoing another band in favour of something a little bit different, tonight a magician took to the stage. While his finale was entirely underwhelming (a flimsily crafted card trick), the rest of the act was well-performed.At 10pm, as with previous nights, Biffy took to the stage, this time playing Infinity Land; easily the band's heaviest album. While "There's No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake" was the song that really set the crowd off, the highlight of the night had to be the unexpected guest appearance of Reuben's Jamie Lenman. That said, the encore of "And With Scissorkicks Is Victorious", which the crowd ...
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| 11:40:52 December 21, 2005, Wednesday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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I like Asian cinema. Both Japan and Korea have a list of classic films which are more shocking, amusing, insightful, innovative and fun than the vast majority of tripe that gets released in UK cinemas. That's not to say that the West never produces imaginative or clever films, or that all Asian cinema is better; just simply that the cream of the crop released in this country from Asia (usually through the excellent Tartan Video) is above traditional cinema.That said, something troubles me when I watch a lot of these films; particularly those of Japanese origin. They tend to have a message and do something quite different, which is a good thing, but there tend to be long scenes that drag over minutae or are hugely superflous to the key concerns. While it seems fairly obvious that directors in that region have a reign less restricted, it is not always a good thing: they suffer from a lack of tight editorial process, something Hollywood tends to be rather good with.American studios ...
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| 11:40:31 December 21, 2005, Wednesday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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It seems that the excellent Nizlopi have gotten to number one. I implore everyone to go and buy a copy of this tomorrow to ensure they get the Christmas number one.I saw them play in Edinburgh a few months back when I went to see their support band for the night, Amplifico. The show they put on is quite unlike anything else, with a double bass, beatboxing, rapping, and folk music mixed together. After that, go seem that play at King Tuts in January (or wherever your nearest venue on their tour is).Buy it!
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| 11:26:10 December 21, 2005, Wednesday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Night two of the Biffy Clyro residency at King Tut's saw a slightly different atmosphere early on. With so much waiting around for the band the night before, and the near non-existent support act (a clown), the earlier part of the evening was much quieter, with much more room and less heat in the downstairs bar.Upstairs, the merchandise stand were selling a surplus of older t-shirts (not available the night before) and the band were milling around, talking to people and having a few drinks.Tonight's support act, while not traditional, was musical. A string quartet trio played a number of songs, largely comprised of Christmas tunes of which no-one knew the second verses. Many poor renditions ensued by the crowd.While I've never been overly keen on the first half of tonight's album, The Vertigo Of Bliss, I was surprised by just how good it sounded live. I guess that's how the album was shaped (recording took only 2 days) so it makes sense that it's such a crowd pleaser. However, ...
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| 11:16:22 December 15, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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For a while now, I had thought that the disappearance of the Degrassi (great band from Edinburgh) website was a temporary glitch. It was a fairly terrible looking website, and perhaps they were changing it. Sadly, that's not the case: the band have apparently split. To keep things clear in my head, and for the benefit of future generations of the musically inclined, here's a quick potted history of what happened surrounding that group of musicians.First, there was Idlewild; another Edinburgh-based indie-rock band who have become progressively more mainstream as the albums have come out. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the change seemed fairly natural, but by some accounts it is why Bob Fairfoull, the original bassist, left. The actual departure involved punching someone in the face, but details are somewhat sketchy on that front.Separately, Degrassi had recently finished their excellent "Terminal Ocean" EP and begun touring the local music scene. I'm not 100% sure what ...
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| 11:12:44 December 15, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Earlier, I was looking at my GMail account, clearing out my junk mail folder. After I got rid of the first few messages, I happened to glance at the adverts along the top of the main content area when I saw this:Amusing ad placement, or someone at Google with a sense of humour? You decide.
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| 11:08:13 December 15, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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A few months back, arguably the best rock band in the UK, Biffy Clyro, announced that they would play an unprecedented four nights in a row at King Tuts in Glasgow. On the first three nights they said they would play one of their three albums per night, whole and in-order. On the final night, they would play their unrecorded fourth album for the first time. Despite tickets selling out entirely on pre-sales, I managed to get several tickets to each night. So loud band, small venue, absolutely packed.The first night was the Blackened Sky show. Being their most straightforward and most loved album among the ardent fanbase, this was always going to be a good night.The support act was... unusual. A clown came onstage and made a balloon animal. Then, while Christmas carols were sung by all, he made his way around the crowd making more balloon animals for the prettiest girls he could see; smart clown.Then the band took to the stage and slammed through the first album in its entirety. That ...
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| 11:07:56 December 15, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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After several years of very little comment spam, I've started getting a reasonable amount, particularly on old posts. Going in and manually deleting it is getting to be a bit annoying so I've decided to experiment with filtering.I'm going to start with a very simple solution and make it more and more complex as each level fails (I can see a Bayesian filter in my future).Right now, all you have to do to comment is type in a generated number which is so ludicrously simple as to nearly not be there. It's essentially the numerical values for the year, month and day added together; a very low pass filter, I think. Let's see how that works.As a bonus for those commenting near midnight, it has a leniency of +1 on the value. If you take longer than a full day to comment, then... well... tough. You can just damn well go back and get a new number.
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| 11:07:16 December 15, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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To children and novice programmers:When writing various kinds of applications or APIs, it is often the case that you will have functions of the form is<em>Object</em>Valid() (or a similar kind of check that begins with "is"), where Object is some variable or object. This is fine: checking data and providing methods to do so is a Good Thing, in that it is considerate and generally fulfills a use case.Something you should never do is write a function like isObject<em>In</em>valid(). Putting negation into this kind of check is a lot like a double-negative in English, it makes life more difficult for everyone else because they have to spend more time straightening out the negations. This mistake is compounded by the fact it is almost always used in conjunction with the language negation to give: !isObjectInvalid(). Argh!Next person to do this gets hurt.
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| 02:21:55 December 8, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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In an extremely tenuous link to the last post, I recently managed to get a hold of an album, "Megaton Shotblast", by Texan outfit De Facto. Why am I mentioning this? Because they are the band who were more influential in forming prog-rock supremos The Mars Volta than their prior band, At The Drive-In.Formed as a side project while At The Drive-In were still going strong (that split causing the well-documented Mars Volta/Sparta divide), De Facto make an interesting sound: mixing up dub influences, with jazz, salsa, electronica and the tiniest smattering of prog. The album is the obvious pre-cursor to the long instrumental sections found on both Mars Volta albums (as well as their live shows, where 20 minutes is not too long for a solo), as the vocals are near non-existent.If you're a Mars Volta fan, it's well worth it, but not necessarily if you're just an At The Drive-In fan; this is self-indulgence at it's most powerful and worst, if you don't like lengthy solos.
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| 02:21:54 December 8, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Despite all the usual bravado one would expect from the Proctor and Gamble lot, the Gilette M3 Power Nitro (one assumes marketing came up with a name that bad) is surprisingly good. I'm not one to gush about razors (this is a first for me), but it really does make a difference in the number of strokes, which I'm reliably informed means less irritation.It's different from it's big brother, the Mach 3, in that it has a vibrating motor inside. The outcome of using this is that it just glides through the hair. Now previously, it took me a good while to slice through the hair (particularly when trimming my goatee a bit). The downside? Shaving with a brand new blade can be dangerous at the best of times because it tends to be, as one would expect, razor-sharp. With additional vibrations, it tends to go a bit awry. Worth a go, though.
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| 02:18:59 December 8, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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After hearing two other stories about this and having done it myself before that, it seems like there is a de facto standard for testing hi-fi and home entertainment systems. It's rather simple:Turn up your equipment as loud as you can, and ramp up the bass.Whack in a copy of the film Swordfish.Enjoy the madness that is the opening "human claymore" scene.If the ball bearings don't feel like they're going past your head and the floor doesn't rumble enough to upset the neighbours when the car lands, your equipment isn't good enough.
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| 02:18:36 December 8, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Someone was asking me not too long ago about the best way to approach an assignment in Computing Science. Well, I'll tell you, and the same approach works for most decent specification documents for any project in which you're going to build something. I believe we call this process "engineering" or "design", but let's not get hung up on that.First, get a hard copy of the spec, something you can readily annotate, because the first step is to do exactly that. Comb through the document, word by word, and underline every noun and do a dashed underline of all the verbs connected to those nouns (in a well written spec, this will cover pretty much every verb). Why have we just done this? Well, now you have the basis of the model you're building. All those nouns represent the things you're going to need to build, and all the verbs represent all the actions that they perform; in OO-programming, those are your Objects and methods.For step two, find yourself a pen and some paper. Now draw a ...
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| 02:13:22 December 8, 2005, Thursday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Anyone ever used Lotus Notes? No need for hands in the air, I'll pick you out from the gentle sobbing. I feel your pain. Notes has got to be one of the worst pieces of crap software I've ever seen in terms of design. It is woefully poor. Here are 4 of my favourite headscratchers:Alerts that aren't - Sometimes you'll set a reminder in notes, say for an important meeting at 4pm. A sensible program would tell you 5-10 minutes in advance, thus providing a "reminder" that you have something to do fairly soon. Not so with Notes. Instead it tells you half an hour after the event begins, by default. Genius; you're so late that there is no longer any point in going. Thanks for streamlining my life like that, Notes.Save - The Save button often, but not always, means "Save and Exit", kicking you out of the document after every save. This is despite the frequent inclusion of a separate Save and Exit button.Standardised Exiting - Instead of doing the same thing that every other Windows App has ...
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| 21:57:38 November 4, 2005, Friday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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You think my last post on the design of Lotus Notes was all there was wrong with it? You've never even seen it have you? Remember we're looking at v5 so these bugs gaping holes in design may have been fixed later. Four more:Back and Forward - I have no idea what kind of rationale is behind the back and forward navigational buttons in Notes, but it does not conform to our Earth logic. Instead of having a back button that sensibly means go back within the current context (i.e. the current tab), it goes back through different tabs. This is particularly infuriating in browser mode, where there is not necessarily any other easy way of going back a page. It's also easy for it to just get stuck and throw away the history, stranding you where you are. Good move. The forward button? Well, it doesn't work so much. It goes forwards when it wants to, but not always.Attach - The Attach icon only works if a new email message body is in focus. If you're in any of the header fields, you can't ...
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| 21:52:22 November 4, 2005, Friday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Anyone who uses linux or unix-like systems will, at some point, shoot themselves in the foot with rm and *. I, after several years of being careful, just joined the glorious ranks of people who messed up by executing the following in my cygwin home directory:rm notes *The space between notes and * was unintentional. Ah the fun.
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| 21:47:05 November 4, 2005, Friday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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A History Of Violence is quite unlike many recent films. It does not try to cleverly tie together a dozen plot strands. It does not mind if characters are their to serve a single purpose and then move on. It does not need order and tranquility to be restored to the smalltown world view it portrays early on. And it's far better for it.Cronenberg shows us a portrait of a man who has forgotten his past and does not like the blood it coats his life in. Tom Stall wants to disappear back into his new community, but his world has been changed irrevocably and his family have to deal with the consequences. Viggo Mortensen is tragic, and broken, as the main character; only occasionally allowing events to become a touch comic book. The ending makes this film though, with no forced resolution. Great film.Next is Serenity, the film based on the ill-fated but absolutely brilliant Firefly tv series. What can be said about the film? It's good, it has some excellent action sequences and character ...
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| 21:46:28 November 4, 2005, Friday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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Yes, it's another obligatory birthday post (see last year's and the one from 2003 for examples). Last year I said 21 was an interesting age and that it'd be a good year. I was very right.It's been a very busy year, but also an enjoyable one. I've learned more about the world, people, friendship, the real world (come back, student life, all is forgiven!) and everything else in the last year than I have in any other period of my life. I guess that's growing up.New friends, new challenges, new job, a new band (with new drumkit), and new world view.Then there's the old. For the first time on a birthday, people have been calling me old (I'm only 22!). I almost feel bad about calling Matt old all those times... then I realised he'll always be old. Also, I know Derek has this fun to go through in a year or two, so I'm sure there's some karmic balance between those two with me in the middle.It's been busy. I can't remember a time when I had so much stuff going on. Since starting my job in ...
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| 21:46:11 November 4, 2005, Friday (PST) |
Source: Solitude |
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