d3ft.com

Someone I work with suggested this the other day. A one-item checkbox that would weed out most of the riffraff that show up at your place of business, looking for employment. It’s a simple checkbox, but it is really powerful.

Here it is, as it would be presented on either a web application, or just the standard paper kind (you boring, 20th century person):

Do you have common sense?

That would be it. The best part of this question is that it immediately lets you know which applications to toss in the dustbin. To explain:

1. If they don’t check the box, are they saying they don’t have common sense?
2. If they don’t check the box, are they just completely lazy, thus not a person you want to work with?
3. If the do check the box, at least they have sense enough to check the blocks.

That’s why it is such a good idea. Expect to see this on job applications from Best Buy to Wall Street (at least, until somebody sues somebody for some type of discrimination).

In November of 2008, I came up with what I think was a rather brilliant URL. That’s where you go to find your good internet, for those of you who don’t know what that means. The thing you type into the location bar for you internet browser, that’s what it is. That is an URL.

After trying to figure out what to do with that URL, for over a year, I finally purchased the URL. It is a fine, fine internet domain. It is a top-level domain name, meaning that it ends in something like .com or .net. But this one does not end in .com, or .net, or even .org.

It ends in something that you can only get in the US of A. A domain name that you can only get if you live in, or the site is mostly about, things in the United States of America. Fortunately enough, I fit some or all of that criteria, and now I can both register, and own the domain.

The most difficult part after getting the domain was making the stuff I wanted to work on the domain work. I did that by outright copying and embellishing what smart people who do this sort of thing for a living do. I took there good stuff, added other good stuff, put in some special sauce, and then seasoned to taste.

But mostly there was the stealing.

Stealing-well, taking the stuff people say you can have for free and use it without paying, which I guess isn’t technically stealing-is the point of the thing I made. Copying, maybe. Copying things. And showing them off to other people. All pretty much legal, as far as I can tell.

I made something. Here it is.

This month has seen precious little on the site. It is because I am working on something else. The something else is not ready yet. But it will be, soon.

What is my typical response to the question of, “What have you been up to?” It is this: “Devisin’.” As in, my personal colloquialism smashing the original intent of ‘devising.’

That’s really as complicated as the conversation gets. This is also as in depth as the conversation gets. To illustrate, here is how things go most generally.

Typically, someone asks me, “What have you been up to?”

“Devisin’,” I reply.

They laugh, and continue on their way. It’s easy, then, to continue to plot world domination, laundry, or how they get those funny words on those pictures of cats. I mean, “Caturday"?” Whomever thought of that should get the Nobel Peace Prize or something. Genius.

In conclusion, to answer what I’ve been doing through the month of June is this: working on something. Something I’ll show off pretty soon.

…are not here. Nor will they ever be on here.

I should also add that as I was taking the laptop out of the box, I didn’t take the first picture. Thus, I have no pictures to post. Even if, for some bizarre reason, I took some pictures while removing it from the shipping packaging, I do not see how that would interest anyone other than myself.

While I got that computer (and the thrill of a new tool), people still care too much about the opening and viewing of the innards of the packaging of technology. I say, for me and my house, we will not care that much about every new thing that shows up from the FedEx man. To be so obsessed with new things that you need to feed the desires just to know what’s in the box bugs me, really.

Also note, I bought a PC. Or, pc, I guess. That stands for “personal computer.” It is not a Mac (nor a Macintosh, nor anything OS X-y). I changed allegiances, and I’ll deal with that more in the future.

For now, I just want to revel in the knowledge that somebody out there is going into fits because I moved from a Mac to Windows.

A few days ago, I wrote a FAQ for d3ft.com. In it, I answer both things that you may wonder, and things that I’ve actually had to answer. As more questions arise, I’ll answer them, as well as add them to the list.

The need for answers came from answering the same question repeatedly: d3ft? Is that, like, a word? Or Something? Seriously, how did that happen?

Therefore, the FAQ. No better way to answer questions, than to provide answers, I say. The events that led me to write it came from two main misconceptions: (1) I grow tired of having to explain the domain name; and (2) I hope to someday educate all peoples on how you refer to a name by the object, not the identifier (e.g. refer to d3ft punk as punk, rather than d3ft).

A recent web comic brought to light something I’m not sure anyone really knows. For whatever reason, I adopted the nom de plume of “d3ft punk” shortly after registering this domain. It was a combination of the four–letter .com top–level domain, and a reference to a relevant, pop–culture phenomena, the techno band, Daft Punk.

Click the image to see it full–sized.

Sadly, only after reading the first panel three times was I sure I was safe. I just had to be sure, you know, because of the spelling. As an aside, it’s comics like this that prove this is inaccurate.

Last week I added a category titled simply, “Things.” It’s the place I keep the reviews of things I find in the Universe. There are many things in the Universe, and I have an opinion on many of them, some of which could be helpful for others, such as yourself.

Since I decided that I wanted to start reviewing things, I figured, like all good users of WordPress, I would add a plugin or two that would help me express my opinions (in 3200 database calls or less). Perusing the options for ratings plugins, I wondered to myself, “Why don’t I just use some Unicode stars?” And so I did just that.

While trying to over–think this, I just decided that I would just put in the star ratings. On a scale of 1 to 5, how good or bad is this thing? Since this isn’t YouTube, there isn’t going to be the inevitable 2.5 rating that almost every video on the site gets after the wisdom of crowds takes hold.

Then, I use an obscure HTML tag that I can only guess I’m not supposed to anymore. The <big> tag takes something that looks like this:

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

And makes it look like this:

★ ★ ★ ★

The fun thing is, since this isn’t driven by some sort of CSS hack, and by an honest–to–goodness tag, it’ll show up in your RSS reader of choice. And it better show up larger, because I don’t really want to add a whole lot to each review. Gotta fill up some space, you know. Nothing worse than having your point made, and then not padding it to make it seem like you have more to say, when you really should just stop. People don’t like brevity, anymore. Give ’em a few 19–sentence paragraphs, that’ll show ’em.

And that is exactly why I don’t add anything else.¹ If I post a terrible review, you’ll probably want to know why it was so bad. You’ll probably use some sort of internet search engine to find other reviews of the same thing. You’ll then see that others thought the item was either as good or bad as I said it was, or much better or worse.

Since you have your own opinion of things, you’ll probably take my review and let it shape your opinion. It could be that you can let my words (really just Unicode stars) embolden your own decision. It could also be that I set your soul ablaze with a seething rage. Anywise, I hope that my terse, prosaic entries help others who want to know about things.

1. Okay, so I add some snide remarks in the excerpt. That’s just because Google gets upset when you don’t have enough content in a post. Go figure. ↩

Here, I present to you, an unaltered screenshot from my iPhone, taken on the 19th of March of this year. In it, an advertisement for a certain wireless cellular company that wants to assure people that its products are as good (or better) than any of its major competitors.

This is an advertisement run in an iPhone app, that could only run on an iPhone, that could only use one cellular data network.¹ AT&T was the only company that could buy space on this network (ads for iPhone apps). How in the world did this even happen?

Let us hope when Apple is doing its “tasteful” iAds they don’t have trainwrecks of logic like this.

1. This was before the iPad was available for purchase, so it had to be on an iPhone. ↩

I’ve always been concise with my post titles. This is, as I am told, a problem for the web–skimming general populace. The problem with concise titles is that they don’t convey enough information to entice the reader to stop skimming the article titles and read the post.

While trying to create a title for a blog post about some random, anecdotal thing that happened to me this evening, I was going to use a fairly long post title that I figured would amuse…well…me. But the length caused the title to break into several lines. For whatever personal reason, I do not like post titles that take up more than one line.

The irony, of course, that I put together a design with humungous post titles. Therefore, I need a way to break up those long titles. There are at least three ways I know of to achieve this:

1. Truncate your post title, then add it to the post
2. Add break tags (<br />) to the title
3. Go with a shorter title, add the rest to the post

To truncate your post title, you would need to then add additional tags inside your post to differentiate it from the normal text. Not only will this make your post look goofy, it could confuse people. I constantly remind myself that the majority of traffic for this site is from the US, and this is the country that has yet to outlaw soap operas for gross stupidity and contributing to the sloth of the citizenry. That means, stupid people live here, don’t confuse them.

You could add break tags to the post title, but that would cause all kinds of behind–the–scenes problems. Mainly, search engines (read: Google) will index your context with strange HTML entities. Unless you like the way that WordPress will mangle your post title with extra characters, it is best not to give WordPress the chance to mess something up.

What I do (and what I suggest you should do, as well), is just to add that incredible wit and wisdom to your post. That will require another title, but your anecdote probably wasn’t as interesting as you thought it was. Another major benefit of this is it will probably be the best way to make you better as a writer, other than just writing.

The shorter title does not, however, always bode well for search engine optimization (SEO). Sorry. I’m not saying that anyone will read your original, un–formulaic–ly titled post, it’s just that it will look better. The web will look better. I will be able to sleep at night.

For some odd reason, the second–most used search term that sends traffic to this site is “xkcd sucks.” Most of the time, with that capitalization. Most of the time, with that exact phrase, “xkcd sucks.”It is an odd coincidence that my personal opinion deviates so from the entrance point for so many people searching on the internet for evidence that, in reality, xkcd sucks.

Please tell me you’ve clicked that link. Have you? In the off–chance that you haven’t clicked that link, do it now. I’ll be patiently waiting here, a mere step away in your browser’s history.

Just going to check my Twitter, while I’m waiting.

Be back any time now.

Hmm, Zoroastrianism. I wonder if that was the symbolization that Jacob was working on in that tapestry he was sewing right before Ben shived him? That would explain the duality of Smokey and Jacob, but could you logically go from there to Tawaret?

[THREE HOURS OF FASCINATED CLICKING]

Err…that wasn’t supposed to happen. Sorry about that. Um, in conclusion, uh, I don’t think XKCD sucks.

This thing lets you stylize Twitter tweets in the way they (sorta) look on their site. And they sorta look like they do on your site. Sorta.

This raises questions, like, is this the next big thing? Or is it just a gimmick to waste bloggers’ time? Are they going to make it easier for bloggers (and other, more reputable outlets, like, uh, news sites and such) to take an individual tweet and post it? And is there some enterprising person out there crafting a WordPress plugin (as we speak) to take advantage of this to add every one of their boring–life–having tweets to their personal–ramblings blog (such as this one?)^1,2,3 And the biggest question, is it that much better than the old style screenshot version?

1. HINT HINT.
2. Not that I’m going to beg, or anything.
3. But, yeah, please? ↩

After weeks of work, trying to gussy up the place, I’m finally ready to show off the completed work. This is a major milestone in the development of the WordPress theme that displays on this site.

Havok was the rather haphazardly chosen name of the theme I was working on when I was trying to make another, incredibly minimalist theme. I was going for nothing but words. I ended up with that, plus a couple of images. From the start it was never intended to evolve. Yet, evolve it did.

From The Internets

I’ve uploaded a few pictures onto my Picasa account to show off just how much it changed. The fact that I’ve already changed the footer—twice—before I could write this post should tell you that this is more of a constant work in progress than an endpoint.¹ You should be happy about that–some sites never change.

So come by, kick the tires, click some links. Tell me if I’ve completely messed everything up. There are a lot of CSS3 elements in here that you really need to check out. If you are just reading this in a feed reader or aggregator, you are totally missing out on the fun.

1. By the time this was published, the theme was up to version 2.1. ↩

This week, Steve Jobs put together and posted an even–handed explanation of the reason there is no Flash on the iPhone, iPod, or iPad. His (or the PR department’s) reasoning being level–headed, pragmatic. It was typical of Jobs, someone who has a vision of what he wants, a devotion to fulfill that vision. You would think I would be all for that kind of thinking, and I am.

After several attempts, I can’t come up with any adequate rebuttal of his argument. Everything written about proprietary standards and closed systems was dead on. I don’t want to support a company that produces proprietary products that it has the sole ability to control. It’s not how the web was intended. So I’m moving to Ubuntu.

Yeah, I know Steve was talking about just the internet, but why stop there? Instead of a web experience that’s fully open, how about an operating system that’s open? Know what else is great about an open operating system? I can use it on tons of different hardware configurations, not just the stuff from the Apple Store.

The least expensive way to own a computer is to get rid of as much as you don’t need. Proprietary operating systems, for one, make computers more expensive (or less, in Microsoft’s case). And seeing as how Apple products tend to survive long past their usefulness, it doesn’t make sense to me to buy something that will last much longer than a microwave.

After my new computer arrives from the internet computer fairy, I’m switching to Ubuntu Linux. It’s a win/win (for me, anyways). Cheap hardware, free OS, and the knowledge that Steve Jobs is in my corner.

The battery on my wireless Mighty Mouse went out, and I needed quick mousing for a few things. That, and because I am a lazy–butt who doesn’t have any more easily–purchased–from–a–store batteries. The complete lack of any surplus functions other than axial and clicking made me realize that, sometimes, you can be too minimal.

For instance, the old–style single–button Apple Pro Mouse. It is stylish, but the lack of buttons makes me want to kill. That was the most two minutes of my entire day, something I don’t want to recall, ever again.

My experience with the simplistic mouse reminded me that there is a time to remove features, and there is a time to add them. Since opening this site for blogging wares (among other things), the goal was not to overwhelm with flair, but only what it necessary. This limited some of the aesthetic decisions, but the most important part is, and has always been, the written words.

To that effect, on this site there are no comments, no links to various social networks, and no massive advertising campaigns. It isn’t because I’m against that sort of thing, it’s because I just haven’t added them—yet. I do not think I will ever add blogging pieces of flair, in any regard. While I’m sure there are thousands of users who have used them successfully, I find even the idea trending to the gauche.

Besides my mousing incident, I was reminded how minimalist design seems to be growing in popularity on sites like Tumblr or FFFFOUND! While I understand the milieux (people focused on nothing but the quality of the content), there’s something to be said about the frame. I think this means that my taste in the matter is changing.

There was a time when I was trying to make this site as artifact–free as possible. Just as there are times to add and times to subtract, this could be the time for additions. Nothing drastic, of course. As I remarked after adding the d3ft links to the site, this is just another part of the natural evolution of the site.