Archive for September, 2010
Oh Shift!
Posted by Marek Jedliński in The Internets on September 17, 2010
The software that runs FileForum has a neat/annoying bug. When you type a review and use the word Shift (the modifier key starting with “S”), the forum software thinks you’re swearing and replaces the last 4 letters of the word with three (3!) asterisks. As in: “press Shift+Enter” becomes “press s***+Enter”. And no, I did not forget to include the letter “F” when typing the name of the key.
This is what you type:
And this is what gets displayed on the review page:
The stuff. It’s coming.
Posted by Marek Jedliński in Recursion on September 9, 2010
I should say: most of the stuff that was on display here before is coming back soon. I just need some time to WordPress-ize all the hand-crafted HTML pages, and arrange them in all the finicky categories, pages, menus and all. Thanks for asking (to anyone who asked)!
Temporarily, the freeware part of the site is still available at the original location here.
A Walt Whitman software upgrade
Posted by Marek Jedliński in Software on September 9, 2010
The original Walt Whitman wrote
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
and it’s a great quote both in and out of its original context. Who knows, maybe there’s a closet Whitman fan among the makers of CSE HTML Validator? They’ve just sent me an email asking why I did not upgrade to the latest version of the validator. Here’s a part of it (click to enlarge):
Now tell me: would you reply to this email?
My guess is someone composed the body of the upgrade solicitation message, to which their boilerplate email footer was appended, and not read. I mean, why would you want to validate a message to a customer asking said customer send some more money your way? Proofreading is for sissies, anyway!
But that’s just slightly funny. What actually surprised me about the email is that, of the nine (9) clickable links it contains, not one points to a “What’s new” page, where I could find out how big a mistake I am making by not upgrading. I scanned the message twice, thinking I must have overlooked that link, the single most useful one when you’re dangling a hot new software release in front of your customer’s eyes. But nope, no “What’s new” in the email.
(And the reason I did not upgrade is that at $29, it’s not exactly cheap, and I hardly use the program any more, though I still love how it works. WordPress is good enough though, and if it doesn’t always validate, I’m not going to pick a fight with it.)
…and for the click-image-to-zoom effect I thank 23Systems Web Devsign, authors of the fantastic Lightbox Plus plugin for WordPress. Works out of the box and that makes me happy.
Don’t do this, either
Posted by Marek Jedliński in Software on September 8, 2010
Started Foobar today and got this:
Click OK, the program shuts down. Without an internet connection you get locked out of the application. I don’t care that it’s beta; it’s not like the code became stale overnight. Warn me, inform me, by all means, but never lock me out of your software for an arbitrary reason like this. It annoys me and breaks my flow.
(And no, when I am traveling with a laptop, I do not always have an internet connection ready. And when I do, it’s metered and expensive. I will download the new release when I get back home, thank you.)
This blog will be huge, I tell ya!
Don’t do this.
Posted by Marek Jedliński in Software on September 7, 2010
A drop-down list to select priority from an otherwise fetching task management application. I don’t think a comment is necessary.
In the unlikely case the colors are throwing you off the scent, here’s the same design principle in its pure form – a list of risk levels:
Don’t do this!