Minimal

Silver linings and all that jazz

It’s a month since my home PC decided to play up and it’s still not operational. A whole month. This one’s a real doozie, I can tell you. At least it means my phone bill won’t be quite as shocking this quarter.

Usability coming first for once

Microsoft launches Office 2003 today. I’m quite looking forward to getting my mitts on Outlook 2003 — it certainly makes a nice change to read the following about a major new release:

For the 2003 version, Microsoft has focused on making the software easier to use, instead of building in more and more features.

Hallelujah! You can’t begin to imagine how much I wish we could do this at work. (Well, okay, if you’re Ash or Steve, you probably can.) Maybe I should forward that quote to the marketing department...

Shut! UP!

The internet’s full of cat-lovers. I’m not one of them. If cats really do have 9 lives, I’ve got another week and a bit of sleepless nights before I finish off the little bastard outside my flat. Assuming I have to kill it once a night, that is. You may be aware of the phrase from financial circles, dead cat bounce. Well, I might soon be in a position to test that theory. All I need is access to a suitably tall building.

Ventriloquism

Oh, ok — Ash has said it for me on the gay clergy thing. Well, he said part of it anyway. :)

I’m going to hell for this post

I’m an atheist. I neither feel the need for a religion nor believe there is any such thing as god. I’m quite content to be part of the wonder that is the universe. I don’t feel there’s a need for life to have any kind of meaning. Just enjoy it and don’t piss people off. (Now there’s a tag-line if ever I saw one.)

I also have some interesting views on the whole gay clergy thing (via t-melt), but I’ll keep them to myself. I’m not an evangelist and besides... I don’t want to piss anyone off. :)

Site search refreshed

If you’re one of the very few people who has ever used my search facility, you may be interested to know that it now works better. Nothing had been indexed for the last 9 months and most of what was indexed was my flippin’ site stats. Not very helpful, but it’s better now. Honest.

Get your own, dammit!

Thankyoutony.com [via Frownland]
Hey! He’s our president, not yours. Hands off. Besides, we think he deserves a good slap, not a pat on the back. (Warning: mystifying and vom-inducing content — enter at your own risk.)

Why I don’t use Mozilla Firebird

Following Microsoft’s announcement (threat?) that it would cripple its web browser for the sake of a court ruling on embedded media patents, I’ve been advised (yet again) to switch to Mozilla Firebird. I’ve given it a go before, but it’s never quite made the grade. Would this time be any different?

In short: no. Don’t get me wrong — Firebird is an excellent browser. It’s just missing one thing: the Google toolbar. Granted, it has a built-in Google search box, but there’s so much more than that to the toolbar IE gets. Here are the key features I’m missing:

• Buttons created dynamically for Googled search terms
• Parent folder button for quickly moving up site hierarchies
• Site search, for restricting queries to the current domain

If Firebird had these things, I’d be a lot closer to adopting it. Even then, though, it would be a toss-up. Internet Explorer would remain easier to update, as it doesn’t rely on skins to fit in with my operating system. Firebird would, however, win hands down on its page-rendering speed and general cleanliness. Internet Explorer could strike back with websites’ greater support for it. Firebird would, though, make a moral case for changing the web via support of standards. They’d be pretty much equal on pop-up prevention (the Google toolbar does it better than Firebird).

So, for me, right now, the slight advantage remains with the IE/Google combo. Until I accidentally install that dreaded Eolas ‘upgrade’, I’m sticking with it.

Update: Things just got interesting with this little find: a Google toolbar for Mozilla. Hmmmm... :)

Update 2: Nope, sorry, it’s too sucky. It hits your browser with the ugly stick and isn’t configurable enough. Really, I just want the listed features as part of the standard Firebird package (available from the search box and Customize command).

It’s Everyone Pick On Microsoft week. Again.

When the whole Eolas vs. Microsoft patent infringement thing hit the headlines (on the web, at least), I was a little puzzled as to why it was only Internet Explorer who was being attacked. Surely almost every other browser going supports seamlessly embedded media? Surely they too will have to drop their support, modify their browsers, or pay big money to Eolas?

Well, yes and no. Most other browsers do infringe the patent, but Eolas is willing to let freeware off the hook, according to the latest SitePoint Tech Times. So that’s Mozilla safe, then. Opera and Safari, however, could be in just as much trouble as IE, albeit with a smaller user base and, I guess, smaller fees to pay.

Still, this leaves an interesting question. Why the hell is nearly everyone still rounding solely on Internet Explorer, ignoring all other browsers infringing the patent? Is the web really that anti-Microsoft?

Computer-based translation — an impossible dream?

Getting lost in the translation [BBC News]

“It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn’t think — and you need to be able to think in order to translate.”

What a load of tripe. At what point does a computer algorithm not qualify as “thinking”? To me, there is no cut-off. An algorithm is thinking. Algorithms can vary in complexity as much as thoughts can, so what is there to distinguish them as being different to thought processes? Nothing.

To get back to the quote, it seems that the quotee (a translation agency, of course) simply hasn’t had exposure to some of the best translation programs out there. Even back in 1995, I saw a program at university that was streets ahead of Altavista’s Babelfish (which is, no doubt, the translation service referred to by the BBC article). It worked by actually understanding the original text and then translating it.

Needless to say, anything of this complexity isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to be made available to the public for free. There’s a lot of money to be made here. Indeed, the system I saw is no longer in academic hands, it since having become the basis of a business venture. As for when we will see such powerful translation in the public domain, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe we never will. It might just be too lucrative to give away for free. Regardless, it would be a mistake to think that computers aren’t up to the job.

Gaijin invasion

A few weeks back, I bought my first slice of J-Pop after catching a few late night repeats of Adam and Joe Go Tokyo. The CD in question is Fakevox by Plus-Tech Squeeze Box. It’s a bit like listening to the soundtrack from a quirky Japanese video game, probably Super Bust-A-Move 2. At only half an hour long, it’s not the quantity, but the quality that counts. That half hour is chock full of playful insanity and just begs you to press the Repeat button.

If forced to compare Plus-Tech Squeeze Box to another outfit, I’d say they were closest to the Avalanches, but lighter and faster paced. Even Frontier Psychiatrist, the Avalanches’ wackiest tune, feels incredibly sober and grown up next to this lot. All they really have in common is extensive use of sampling. Elsewhere, on track 7 (named simply *) there are brief echoes of St Etienne. The endearingly childlike vocals combine with the tinkle of a glockenspiel to give a sound faintly reminiscent of I Was Born On Christmas Day.

But... that’s about as far as I can draw comparisons. Maybe a quick Mmmm Bop (Hanson) reference on the start of track 9, Milk Tea, followed by a taste of Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles) later in? Nope, that’s just daft — like most of this CD, in fact. Daft, but beguiling. Well worth the money, even for such a short-player.

Non-sponsored link: read reviews of more music that’s too cool for school at Plink.

Bush time

Only 1 year 104 days remaining. It can’t pass quickly enough.

Microsoft invasion

For a while now, one of my colleagues has been passing me links to Raymond Chen’s weblog. (Raymond, for those unfamiliar, is a software engineer at Microsoft.) The articles have been quite revealing about various design aspects of Windows, often giving an interesting historical perspective — well worth a read. It’s now on the permalist.

Also on the permalist is another Microsoft-based weblog — that of Jason Moore. Jason’s a user experience guy rather than a code monkey. Although his blog’s only recently been launched, it looks like it could be just as interesting as Raymond’s. Enjoy.

Unbelievable

Saddam ‘may have bluffed’ on WMDs [BBC News]
Well, Mr Hussein, it appears you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Have weapons of mass destruction, that is. Does the US really want to admit it was tricked into believing Iraq had them? Or are they just looking for any way to say this almighty fuck-up wasn’t their fault? You decide.

(Note: I'm not saying we’re any better.)

Babble

No, it’s not the return of babble.co.uk, but a stupidly addictive daily word game called Babble. Please note the words “stupidly” and “addictive”. You have been warned. :) [via svn]

Update: I got the second highest score! Nothing to be proud of, I know...