I’m lagging behind the great ones… But i’m not interested (i think i’m becoming somewhat of a nihilist, seeing my attitude towards most matters)—or rather say i am, but no way would i hurry to catch up just so that i’d be “up to date”. Especially since the sites i’m talking about, the ones having had a redesign nowadays are really giants: deviantArt, last.fm and Facebook. In my opinion last.fm changed the most… Not only did they switch to a new layout, but also changed lots on the system itself. There’s a lot of debate going on whether or not the new layout is better than the previous one—it’s very different for sure. Those who used the old layout for a long time will need a bit of time to get used to this new one—and what’s strange, it seems that new users too, which i think indicates that something’s not really alright with this new design. Skip (this reminds me of “Mother’s” telegram in the Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4: “ADRIAN STOP COMING HOME STOP”, and the poor boy starts wondering why should he “stop coming home”). There is a new (?) feature called Library, which is a great idea in my opinion, instead of (but not replacing) all those relatively ugly charts with much more usable, good-looking mosaic. The event handling didn’t change much, only it’s not always that evident where and what should i click. (Summary.) Though the layout’s not the best choice ever made, i think the new version worth it. I at least like it and will go on using last.fm as long as it’s there and free. (Yeah, i haven’t written about dA and Facebook, those are coming in a later post.)
Blogs and ufos
I almost forgot, but an article about recent ufo appearances over Wales and Texas reminded me of something i’ve seen last friday. I was sunbathing at the swimming pool looking at the bright-white clouds when i noticed a small object moving among them. It was like an airplane, except it had no wings and had no contrail, which most planes have—this could be still explained with the huge wind up there and that the plane might have been turning so that i couldn’t see the wings (except it seemed to be moving straight). Then my reason called a second option: it seemed like a rocket, but then again without a contrail, and what would a rocket do above hungary? I thought of calling the air control centre or whatever, but dropped that idea, since i bet they wouldn’t tell me anything anyway. So most probably i’ve seen an ufo in the sky over Dunaújváros, around 1:05 pm on the 18th of july, 2008. If you don’t believe, provide any other explanation, i won’t be disillusioned.
I gave up reading over 300 blog entries gathered in the past three weeks, and decided to rather read them tomorrow… At least some of them. Today i dug through about just as much news posts, that’s the reason i haven’t reappeared commenting on blogs. Tomorrow. I’m dead sleepy anyway…
Burn, burn, burn
It was so fun to lay down and be browned dark by the sun in that week from 9-16 this month i spent with my family by the lake Balaton. It was good as usual, only the weather could’ve been better for a few days, when it was either just cloudy and windy (at least then we could go out to the beach and fly my kite, which in the strong wind was much fun) or in worse cases even rained, when we had no other chance than to sit in the hotel room reading or watching telly or just sleeping twice as much a day than usual. When the weather was good enough, after waking up around nine and eating breakfast, we went down to the beach to sunbathe, or to have fun in the water, playing or whatever (frisbee is fun in water). I usually had lunch around three after noon, after which i played chess with my little brother. At about six we ate dinner. After that there were a couple of choices. Either went down to the beach for an afternoon splash in the water, or had a walk in town, down the beach, or we went in town roller-skating. Monday i had to go to Budapest for my interview for the japanese scholarship (luckily the weather wasn’t that good that day, so i didn’t miss much), which i really enjoy: though i had to introduce myself in japanese (that didn’t go that well, i haven’t practised japanese for more than half a year now) i had a good talk with the interviewer—i learned that i got a top score of a little bit more than 50% on the written test. I think i could’ve received the official results by now via e-mail, but up till now i didn’t have time to check…
Switch off
I will be gone for two weeks. Put it in the very beginning so that i could be sure that everyone reads it. That means i won’t be going around commenting for a while now (not as if i was in the past weeks, but i was in the past days and earlier), nor will i be reading any blogs or manga or anything except for a few books i’ll bring along. Tomorrow i’ll have the application exams for my japanese scholarship, in english and japanese language and maths. I’m only afraid of maths, because i feel safe when it comes to english, the japanese one doesn’t really matter, but the maths one is dead hard, so far as i’ve seen in the past exam papers published. Anyhow it may turn out, in the evening i’ll be leaving, spending the night at my love’s, heading out in the morning after together for the lake Balaton. Wednesday i’ll then join my family on our usual yearly holiday there, and arrive home the wednesday after that. The problem is, that on that monday or tuesday i may have my interview for the scholarship, if my written exam turns out to be good. So… I’ll be gone. Don’t worry… at least as long as someone doesn’t post here that i’m dead… though i hope that won’t happen. See you!
Cirque
I wanted to write some french title inspired by Cirque du Soleil, but i dropped this idea since i don’t know but a few words of that linguo. Today was (and will be) great. In the morning i woke really, really early (around seven) (reasons coming later), then had a 20 mile bike ride down to my girlfriend’s love’s, and spent the day there chatting nonsense (really), watching the also nonsense but at least very funny movie Johnny English, then rode back home… It was a nice distance, but i enjoyed it much, except for a crazy hill, which made my switch gear, something i don’t really do at all. As i arrived back in town, i had a coffee at the usual place–though this time instead of an espresso they gave a cappucino (not as if i cared much)—and at home rollerballed, had a tea and a shower that i really needed. Nowadays i’m into drinking caffeine-containing stuff, such as coffee or tea, because i’m for some reason dead sleepy by late afternoon. Drinking something like that at that time though causes once again that i can’t go to sleep at the normal time, and the circle starts over again. My dad always says i should go to bed early because my mom’s always tired because she sleeps less than i do—this is why i woke early today: to be on my feet as long as she is. I think i’ll do this whenever i’ll be at home—and in the coming three weeks that won’t happen often…
Developing
You probably know that it’s my hobby and as of now my only income source to make websites. While doing so, i often meet problems that are complicated to solve, not because of their complexity, but because i have to optimise for all the browsers i can: FireFox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Netscape, just to name those i can test with. Having a couple of versions for each (especially IE is problematic), that’s at least four browsers to optimise to, and that already makes the creation of a relatively simple floated layout a nightmare.
But what was even more troubling for me is the usage of JavaScript. I know there are loads of possibilities in it (think of the dynamically created websites, the reload-less page loads and such), but i also know there are people, even if just a few, who browse without JS—not to mention that search engine crawlers don’t have JS either (nor do spam bots), which is useful to know when you’re protecting your forms from spam, but troublesome when you need to develop a website for the top of the search engine result list and for the everyday “lame” users.
Of Coffee
I’m surprised how much a double espresso can speed me up. Really… A single one could do the job as well, but i was so very sleepy that i almost spaced out while reading Queen Loana so i decided on the double one. Now i’m spinning at top speed, but i have the feeling that as soon as the coffee effect wears off, i’ll fall to sleep immediately. I’m so easily surprised. By stuff i that shouldn’t be surprising at all… Such as how addictive StarCraft can get after a few days—but you can see that much yourselves, if you consider that in the past three days i’ve been at home and still i haven’t blogged at all. It’s sometimes annoying how the computer players can mess me up quite quickly (i know, i know…), but sometimes i do the same… I can’t see any order in this as of now, but i hope i’ll be able to get better as time goes.
End of year
I’m overhung.
FireFox 3
Finally, it’s out. I hope everyone downloaded it during the Download Day, if not, do so now. At least give it a try, especially if you’re still suffering with Internet Explorer (that thing makes both the user and the developer suffer). The Download Day was, i think, a success, since FF3 was downloaded more than eight million times in that 24 hours. To write something about the browser too: it’s about the same as before, i couldn’t see many changes, except for that the skin i used (Noia) and some of the plugins do not yet work with the new version (at least the webdev toolbar had no problems). The base skin of FF3 is not bad at all, by the way, it’s simple and compact, but not ugly. If there’s an increase in rendering speed, i’m happy about it, although while browsing as usual there was no significant change. On the other hand, the settings panel and the bookmarks changed a lot, and there is a couple of other minor changes too, about which later.
MirrorMask
Once upon a time there was a writer called Neil Gaiman, and he decided to team up with Dave McKean (or vice versa) to do a movie, a movie that would eventually turn out to be MirrorMask. It wasn’t long ago when i’ve seen it in television, and i really liked it then, even though i could only see the last third of it. This time it was the whole, and as i guessed correctly last time, it became my favourite movie.
To put it short, it’s about a girl, whose parents run a circus. For most teens, the ultimate dream is to run away from the “real world” and join a circus–in Helena’s case it’s the exact opposite: she wants to run away from the circus, and finally see real life. She’s really artistic too, taking part in the shows juggling, and the back wall of her room is covered with drawings too, drawings of a dream world. The major twist comes, when her mother is hospitalized with some very dangerous illness, the balance is broken by the Princess of Shadows, and she takes over Helena’s life as she falls asleep. Now come the ultimate quest: find the Mirror Mask, the Charm, that can wake the sleeping Queen of Light and take Helena back to her own world (though the dream-world is no less hers). It may seem a bit childish told this way, but actually it’s so surreal, so bizarre, that it would be hard to bear and understand by a kid–and to match up with the look of the land of light and shadow, the music’s great too. (Summary.) MirrorMask is hard to categorize: it could be an adventure movie, a drama, a fantasy film or a disguised ethics lesson, but what matters: it’s very good (once again, this phrase is way too shallow to express it all).
