Archive for November, 2004

Inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion over at The Autis­tic Cuckoo on whether you paint your­self into a cor­ner by start­ing with the seman­tics when build­ing a new site or not — or if you risk the exact same by div­ing straight into Pho­to­shop; One Way to Design a Web Site. [via 456 Berea Street].

Per­son­ally I often take the approach sug­gested in the post, mark­ing sec­tions up with­out think­ing about place­ment, then going over them again with the cre­ative glove. Often I do this based on some sim­ple draw­ings or a real design being made as I go. I can’t say I lean towards either side, how­ever I really only have one focus: To keep out of the cor­ners while set­tling on the best archi­tec­ture pos­si­ble; if you start cod­ing to deal with infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture, fine — if you start sketch­ing to deal with com­mu­ni­ca­tion and get­ting the mes­sage across, that’s fine too. As long as you don’t start cod­ing because it’s eas­ier or sketch­ing because you’re focused too on the graphic part, just do what­ever helps you focus on the right archi­tec­ture for the site.

Just pur­chased Nice­cast from Rogue Amoeba. It lets you broad­cast by pulling in either the audio out­put from an appli­ca­tion or the line-in. I’m using it for mak­ing a local stream to play on the Air­port Express-connected speak­ers via iTunes. BBC’s back in the air. Once I get back a router I con­trol myself, I’ll try and play with the pub­lic broad­cast bit. It’s really easy to set up and the 40-dollar price tag is ok, though it’s not a bargain.

When I’m done mock­ing walk-with-sticks peo­ple, I’m going to look into the magic that is Feed­Burner. Hope­fully noth­ing will break, but if you don’t hear from me in a week or two, please check the site. I’m plan­ning on offer­ing a new mix­ture of feeds, hope­fully mak­ing sub­scrib­ing eas­ier and/or more fun. I have — of course — been bab­bling about this for bloody ages.

(Search­ing for ear­lier posts con­tain­ing ‘feed’ — it’s a lot — I acci­dently dis­cov­ered that I’m the one who invented Base­camp. Why doesn’t any­one tell me any­thing? Gees…) 

As it turns out, you can’t splice sev­eral of your own feeds. You can plug in your del.icio.us, Blog­lines clip­pings, Flickr stuff etc. (which is great!) but yu need to go under the MT-hood to deliver a source feed con­tain­ing all the stuff from your own blogs (my blog is made up of three seper­ate blogs). I don’t mind get­ting my hands dirty, but I guess I’ll still need seper­ate feeds any­way, and Feed­burner just might add this fea­ture soon. We’ll see… But: Feed­Burner rocks! Easy setup, great func­tion­al­ity — and if the fea­tures keep com­ing they’re gonna take over that whole feed busi­ness. They even did some stuff with enclo­sures that I’ll take a look at as soon as I find some time and some pod­cast­ing hard­ware I can play with. 

Update: Media­mac picks it up (late as always). So does net­sum­mary. Btw: If you look closely, you’ll notice some weird opac­ity screw-up in the poor lady’s face. Les­son to be learned: If peo­ple link up your graphic and you’ve already done a rather poor job mak­ing the sil­hou­ette, make sure it’s at least all black.

Update II: i pod my photo/ offers a ser­vice where you can upload a pic­ture and get back an ipod ad.

Nede på Lol­land hvor roerne gror hvor jeg kom­mer fra (og hvor de på mange måder man­gler noget action — det fikser jeg senere, promise) har de styr på teknikken. Hvor­for spilde tid på det hersens hmtl eller hvadde-nu-he’er, når man kan lave et helt web­site i pdf? Ikke artik­ler, ikke enkelte dele til down­load — men hele jule­sitet. Hvabehar!

Du stilles nu videre til Folke­ti­dende og Lions store Jule­spil

(En pdf-fil på 2.5MB)

Jule­spil

Og med en heftig load­tid sparer man også penge til ani­ma­tions­fyren. Sådan, der.

Mere om Lol­land senere på sæso­nen, hvor regio­nen vil få hidtil uset opmærksomhed.

Jeg indrøm­mer det: Som endnu-ikke-læsende barn undrede jeg mig over, hvad de sjove teg­ninger med tale­bobler i Ide-Nyt mon betød og holdt stædigt ved; tænk hvis jeg en dag kunne læse — nu er jeg endt som en gam­mel, sur mand i lej­lighed (Ide-nyt findes i en om muligt endnu rin­gere “Vi bor i lejlighed”-udgave), der er overor­dentlig glad for sit ‘reklamer nej tak’-skilt.

Ide-nyt er de nævenyt­tiges medlems­blad, og når de ikke udvek­sler modige fifs med hinan­den er jeg sikker på de mødes i vin­d­blæste car­porte og plan­læg­ger hvor­dan de overtager nationen…eller som min­i­mum får fritaget gør-det-selv-produkter for moms.

Alligevel må man respek­tere, at de har for­mået at fæstne sig i min bev­id­s­thed så eftertrykke­ligt, at jeg straks sendte dem en tanke, da min side­mand i mor­gen­bussen — en vindjakke-warrior af guds nåde — åben­barede dette koncept:

Sådan lige en lidt fiks måde ikke at få ondt i nallerne, når mule­posen bliver for tung. Og en smart krog, så den kan hægtes på den lille vogn han selvføl­gelig også havde med. 

Nu læser jeg jo ikke bladet så meget mere, men — inter­web to the res­cue: Læsernes egne ideer.

Fra den lidt sære (hvor­dan man deler et æg med en snor) til den lidt lig­e­gyldige (hvor­dan man lige kan have en liste over ting der er gode at have med på en rejse — løbende opdateret forstås), det smarte mix af sild og kaffe (vi kan ikke have at kaf­fe­filteret folder sam­men under­vejs), rist­ning af blødt knæk­brød (man tror det ikke, det bliver sprødt igen) og et par ideer, der knapt kan siges at være ideer over­hovedet; afmon­ter­ing af gum­mi­handsker og dejf­in­gre i pose under tele­fon­sam­taler.

Og hvis man ikke fanger den første gang og ikke kan over­skue at slå det op på net­tet, har Ide-nyt en smuk tra­di­tion for at bringe de samme ideer jævn­ligt, blot med en ny mod­tager af vingaven.

Og da jeg tydeligvis har alt for meget tid, har jeg ikke vil­let snyde Ide-nyt’s læsere for det lille haveslange-fif, selvom det vist er bragt op til flere gange. Der er lidt uklarhed omkring hvorvidt jeg mod­tager bel­gisk choko­lade eller “2 stk. Piet Hein Mul­ti­stager til en værdi af 795 kr”, men jeg er ikke bleg for at leve i åndeløs spænding.

Note to self: Opret kat­e­gori; pupertær tomsnak/branding/spild af tid/tror du selv du er bedre/tågehorn.

Update: Ide-nyt svarer, men holder under­teg­nede hen i unødig intens spænding:

Tak for ind­sendte idé. Vi skriver tilbage såfremt vi bruger den.

Med ven­lig hilsen
idé-nyt a/s

Ecamm Net­work releases iGlasses, a lit­tle set­tings app capa­ble of enhanc­ing your iSight image. Flip / mir­ror, brightness/night set­tings. Seems to work like a charm, priced at $8 — should be stan­dard in iChat. 

Via macosx­hints — with a review.

Pod­cast­ing ID3 tag incon­sis­tency: Amen! (brief sum­mary: use ID3 tags wisely, remem­ber dates in titles, pod­catch­ers — please don’t make all those playlists.)

Fra sub­ot­nick:

hvornår: fre26./lør27./søn28.nov.04
fra kl12 til kl24.
hvem: mar­tin kuentz, hanns hol­ger rutz & ralph schreiber
hvor: noishaus stu­dio, liflands­gade 15, inde i går­den, amager.
hvormeget: 50entre + ca 100 kro­ner pr solar modul.

sub­ot­nick tilby­der som noget nyt, en 3 dages work­shop for elek­tronik intresserede, musikere, instal­la­tion­skun­st­nere, per­formere o.l. der delt­agerne under­vises og hjælpes til at udvikle, pro­duc­ere og bruge solar mod­uler af kyn­dige vejledere. solar mod­uler kan kort beskrives som små, lys-følsomme, elek­tro­n­iske instru­menter.

der er få pladser tilgæn­geligt, så der skal rea­geres hur­tig om man er inter­esseret i at delt­age. der er ikke oblig­a­torisk frem­møde. der vil blive serveret safte­vand og lidt at bide i. egen lod­dekolbe ønskes medbragt. 

Mere udførligt om solar mod­uler: http://www.sciss.de/chromaticfield/texts/modules.html (check video og lyd — good shit!). Lurer på, om blitz-fotografering til optræ­dener er bandlyst eller ej. 

Lyder som et opbyggeligt weekend-projekt. Har vist fak­tisk mere end een loddekolbe…

My Power­book is act­ing strange. It’s been doing it for a cou­ple of weeks now and so far I haven’t been able to google some­thing up. 

1) When wak­ing it from sleep mode, it dis­plays the arrow on a black screen for some sec­onds then goes back to sleep. Nor­mally I would log in here — if I turn ‘log in after sleep’ off, I can come back to a func­tion­ing OS fram sleep mode. So can any­one else, though… 

2) When using Soft­ware update, press­ing the actual Install-button once I’ve selected what to install…won’t work. Strange thing is, I had a sec­ond pro­file on the machine as a test — when logged into that, I could just give it my admin pass­word and it would install. 

I have no idea what’s going on. I’ve been play­ing with extra pro­files, exter­nal hard­drives, typeit4me and other lit­tle exten­sions, updated OS X itself etc. — so it might be one of these things, a com­bi­na­tion hereof — or none of the above…I don’t know. 

Any­how, any help or hints would be greatly appre­ci­ated. And no, I’m not send­ing my Power­book to the Nether­lands to get it fixed — I’m not really in the mood for work chaos … it’s messy enough as if at the moment. 

Update: Mys­tery seems solved: A friend had bor­rowed my lap­top and installed Pro Tools on it as he was try­ing to fig­ure out whether his own Power­book had been hurt dur­ing a repair or not — and Pro Tools was actu­ally what I myself thought to be the cause of the trou­ble at first as I had just pulled the app to the trash instead of unin­stalling it. But as I couldn’t any­thing with a Pro Tools name on it on my hard drive and had per­formed numer­ous other things just as likely to cause mis­chief I let that thought go. I have now proved myself wrong (or right, if you will) — after try­ing a bunch of dif­fer­ent things, includ­ing a few from the com­ments (thanks guys! I should have done that any­way — it’s now a part of my rou­tine) I came back and did a search for the man­u­fac­turer, DigiDesign, instead. I found a bunch of stuff includ­ing some startup stuff scat­tered around the place. It’s now been removed — so far everything’s back to normal…Fingers crossed.