For what it’s worth, tumbledry can now backup its claim to “since 1999.” While I do not have, and do not intend to get, a catchy “tagline,” the phrase stating the year this all began has become the closest thing I have to a single-line representation of what is here. In my estimation, it is worth something that, in some form or another, I have been adding posts to the online world for five years. Granted, not with the consistent quality of a person like kottke, but let’s face it — I started young — like 13 years old young. I have much to learn, and to do. I intend to categorize all of the old updates so you can browse by category — a method infinitely more useful than browsing by date. Thus, I present to you the lost years of tumbledry. See the archives for details. And yes, that really old picture of me is still online (in a very obvious place) for those who know how to find it. No, I do not wish very many people to see it. No, I do not know why I put it online then. Shut up.
Our recent motto comes from Starsailor: “Silence is Easy” — its a good excuse for my spotty updates.
Reversing songs is my new favorite hobby. The process is fairly simple, really. First, you create a *.wav file of the song you would like to reverse. Then, you open it on up in your favorite sound editor (I used Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Sound Recorder) and reverse the file. Then, you save it. If you like it, you can recompress it. These simple steps lead to better understanding of the music you are listening to.
So far, the first track I have ever reversed is my favorite. Jimmy Eat World’s “My Sundown” is a fantastic song forwards. However, I noticed the effects in the intro and fade-out of the song sounded like they were reversed (so they play backwards when the song is playing forwards). Sure enough, reversal revealed that they started as a neat guitar loop and then were flipped around to be in the song. For some reason, though, I kept listening. Cymbol crashes were crescendos, bass kicks came with a slurping sound, it was an ordered cacophony.
The lyrics meant something different.
You can clearly here the words “no one” as you play the song in reverse, among other phrases that are almost meaningful. Nils’ reply sums it up well.
This sounds absolutely mind-boggling and I must see, or rather hear, this for myself. I am intrigued, at a high level. Please, reverse other songs. Please. When you discover other hidden meanings, notify me immediately.
So far, nothing has been as interesting as “My Sundown,” but I suspect that Radiohead songs could be quite interesting when played the wrong way. Go forth and reverse.
What you are looking at is not a finished product. Indeed, the design of this site is standards compatible, fairly well structured, and CSS based. Despite this, there are some major flaws. Please allow me to elaborate.
Use of Space
Horizontally, tumbledry v12.2 is a very efficient beast, comfortable fitting all horizontal content into a 800 x 600 monitor space. Vertically, however, it runs into problems. Notice the header. It does an excellent job of establishing the identity of the site, but does so at the cost of some very valuable space. The area where Content would normally live is filled with an empty yellow box as this site loads on a dial-up connection. If I am going to deliver what people come here for (to read), then I will have to reduce the massive billboard header and establish the identity another way. Next, you may have noticed the lists for quotes, links, inspirations (pretty much anything) waste copious amounts of space. This should be remedied by forming a double liquid column that flows down the page. Side by side, the headings will use half as much space and look better to boot. Finally, navigation is currently horizontally oriented and thus limited to a set number of sections. Navigation should be made vertical to stretch and change with the site over time. That brings us to the next point.
All Boxed Up
Newspapers are natural boxes. Their content looks good contained within neat lines and margins. The web is a different medium. The neccesity to box is not nearly as critical due to fundamental differences in the way content is flowed on the page (no webpage is structured to drop the reader off the bottom of one column and then to the top of the next). Unfortunately, tumbledry didn’t get that memo and boxed everything in. The overall effect is stifling, claustrophobic, cramped. The site feels like it is pouring content into concrete forms. Things need to be opened up a bit to let longer pieces of text “breath” and to prevent the reader from feeling like they are viewing everything through a keyhole.
Images
I know. This page is many kb’s too large. I love the background texture, the heading texture, the back-background texture, the special link underline, and the huge logo. In retrospect, however, these pretty images force the user to pay too high a price. They barely scroll on old versions of IE (which renders repeated images very inefficiently), and take their sweet time downloading. Plus, they hog Justin’s bandwidth; something I don’t want to do. A return to a white background (or a very light hue) at first may seem jarring, but I believe strategic doses of smaller images could maintain the site’s organic feel without the current cost of download time. Plus, removing the boxes would make things “feel” more convincing … as if the site wasn’t just special textures hung on the same-old rectangular structure. In short, we need some curves. Currently, I am playing with something similar to an aged cardboard, with rope, and screws. Together, these components seem to create a nice feel, even with the white background. Sounds like I’m talking about a design that already exists, doesn’t it? Well, that’s a secret.
Typography/Readability
There is not enough contrast between the main text and the background. On top of this, the type becomes almost too small to read for people with very large monitors (although it is quite uncommon for a person with a very large monitor to be unaware of how to enlarge their text). On top of this, I would like to strike a nice compromise between serif and sans-serif fonts. This points towards approximately one font designed for screen use that falls between: Trebuchet. Available on both Macs and PC’s, Trebuchet seems to be the solution I have been looking for. It would be slightly larger, and a little more stylish than the plain-Jane Verdana you are reading right now. Headings would become Times New Roman (anti-aliased automatically on newer XP/Mac systems so they are smooth)
Color Scheme
Warm, deep, and even cinnamon have been used to described the colors around here. This is the major factor keeping me from changing things around again. Can I do better that this? What if I make things worse? Am I redesigning simply because I am bored? Those questions will be answered in the next couple of weeks as I try to add some old updates, rewrite some CSS, and recode some ancient PHP slop.
There they are in all their glory, the faults of the current design of this site. Your thoughts concerning a redesign would be greatly appreciated.
Can a person go from being a virgin to an addict in one short night? I think so. I did. Yes, The Quest was that life-altering. We tried to get John his t-shirt but it was only in small. “Bah” I said, or yelled, or muttered (or at least got the point across somehow) after we waited in line for a half hour. “I knew that would happen,” said John, just as frusterated with the wait as I was. “Still, I’d get the hoodie,” I mimed, and we waded into a sea of people.
Now, crowd dynamics are not a foreign concept to me. I have friends who went to large stadium style concerts and I have read from crowd control people about barriers and the tremendous force people can exert. Despite this, concert crowds are really fun on a small scale. While highly discouraged by anyone with authority in the building, the surges were the best part. Suddenly, you’d find yourself inexorably shoved into a forty-five degree angle with the floor.
Oh, and the music rocked, too. For one, the bass hit in the chest as if a little concert gnomes had been assigned the exclusive task of beating on everyone’s upper body in time with each frequency below 100 Hz. My only regret: we did not make it to the moshing. On our initial drive into the crowd, John and I were pretty pleased with our progress: almost past the non-jumpers and very nearly into moshable territory. Alas, it was not meant to be. Between the two of us, we did not have the courage to make a final pre-concert charge towards the front. “Think we’ll make it any farther?” I asked, standing on my tiptoes looking for a group that would be good to camp behind. My criteria weren’t overly demanding: short, small, preferably female - as long as I could see. “I don’t know,” John replied, “I wish Matt was here to charge through people; that kid is ruthless.” Fortunately, once things started, we forgot our position and enjoyed the show.
The drive there was hilarious. After helping Erin with some Mathematica (which was a fun time, I have decided I am going to find a homework buddy), time was at a premium. We hopped in the car and crossed our fingers. After practicing the time-honored technique of finding the freeway desired (in the wrong direction), and then grabbing an overpass to turn around, we were on our way. Right off the highway into a parking garage, down some stairs, and then running to get there, having only a vague idea of where we were going. The run was short, and we arrived with plenty of time to spare. Thankfully, the line was not bad, and a random group of people were giving out free pizza slices, which I ate only after realizing it could have been free deadly pizza. I counted on the fact that deadly drugs are expensive and killing people with pizza is probably a boring hobby. Suffice to say, the pizza had no deleterious effects.
“Alex!” someone shouted as we waited in line. I looked up to see a group of girls from Grace, looking for tickets. “Sorry,” I said, “I’ve only got my ticket.” Besides, I didn’t know how John felt about being left with a group of women for the evening. Turns out they got in and enjoyed the show thoroughly, which is as it should be. Shame about the scalpers though - they had to pay around $35 a ticket.
Dashboard is in town on May 22nd - my birthday. I think you’ll know where to find me then.
Melissa was a kind, mature, and thoughtful person. She was in my classes both last semester and this current one. She disappeared about two weeks ago, and I foolishly assumed she joined the ten other people that had dropped out of this semester’s Physics class. Academics, however, were not the reason for her departure. Melissa’s mother recently died of cancer. I had no idea until I read the news in a campus-wide email. It brought me back to an issue I hadn’t encountered in a long time: death. At the college age, everyone feels indestructable. No one ever considers the possiblity that, next year, they might have much bigger problems to worry about than how to finance their education. This event reminded me of priorities. It should remind us all that people come before anything else in our life. It should remind us that our time here is fleeting. It should remind us to love while there is still time to love. I ask you, as did the email which was sent to us, to keep Melissa and her family in your thoughts and/or prayers.
I am not a picky eater. I never have been. Eating at a college cafeteria, however, has brought about the realization that critically analyzing one’s food prior to consumption can be a good thing. In fact, I have come to realize this analysis can save a person from eating what they would not.
I usually eat dinner late. Ten minutes before the cafeteria is set to close you will find me running to get there in time. I like eating late. The workers at the Binz Refectory, on the other hand, do not enjoy staying later than they have to. For this reason, they begin cleaning up before the 6:30pm weeknight closing time. Upon my arrival, I am given a heaping plate of whatever is left. Friday night was no different as I executed my habitual scramble and received my usual plate of steaming grub. “Hey, it’s calories,” I thought, as I walked to sit down.
So, I began eating my big steaming plate of rice fried in peanut oil. One of the better offerings. Suddenly, an outrageous spice flavor filled my entire mouth. Guessing a pepper of some type, I took a swig of milk to calm the burning. Nothing. Hmm. A chew and a swallow later, the strange flavor was nearly gone. Mystery herb? Bad rice? I did not worry about it and returned to reading my Java and consuming my calories. A few minutes later I scooped a particularly sticky chunk into my mouth and suddenly regretted my action. A powerful tingling began on the tip of my tongue and spread throughout my entire mouth, overpowering whatever rice flavor there was and screaming “Victory!” over my taste buds. As the woman who served me walked by, I tried to be polite. However, swallowing this was simply not an option. My eyes bulged out of my head as I tried to decide what to do. A nearby napkin provided the solution which elicited the question, “You chokin’ or something?” “Nope, I’m fine,” I replied weakly as my tongue’s nerves beat my brain senseless with burning signals.
Suddenly, I had lost my appetite.
Somehow, though, the flavor was familiar. I mentally flipped through recent experience. Ahh. That’s it. When employees of the Binz are cleaning up, they use a bluish industrial cleaning fluid to disinfect the metal surfaces over which the food passes. The overspray of said chemical thoroughly soaked my food and, from there, journeyed into my mouth. What an absurd thing to end up eating, I thought, as I tried to get my tongue to stop tingling a half an hour later. In the future, if I ever get the slightest hint of a flavor in my food that should not be there, I will make a beeline for the trash can and head home to enjoy some oatmeal.
Certainly, I am not the first person to fall in love with Gary Jules’ cover of the 1982 song “Mad World” and I am certainly not the last. I hope you are the next. A native of San Diego, Jules is a refreshing mix of pop, country, and alternative. At times, his musical style (and certainly his thought-provoking lyrical lines) makes me think of early Simon and Garfunkel. I certainly do not know enough about the music industry to say, “This guy is one to watch,” but I do think the entire album “Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets” is a good listen.
Rarely do we read something that makes us laugh out loud. However, such was the case when I clicked on a seemingly mundane link to a “funny eBay auction” from Good Morning Silicon Valley. This is the story of a Michigan man, an upstanding fellow with 100% positive feedback, who wanted to get rid of something. The auction title: “Ryobi Router Table - Worthless Junk NR!” Goal: get rid of the thing in any way possible. The description begins:
This Ryobi router table is the worst thing I’ve ever spent money on. Period. I’ve wasted money on a lot of things in my life: women, cars, other things I didn’t need, you name it, but I’ve never felt like I totally 100% wasted my money on something until I bought this router table. I’ve wasted money, but I normally got some sort of satisfaction out of it, no matter how small, I got something out of it. This is the most worthless piece of crap item I have ever had the displeasure of working with in my life.
Whoa, this is not your normal eBay auction. The description delves into more detail, outlining the wide variety of problems with the table. I couldn’t stop laughing; it could have been because I was punchy and up late, but this is still the best eBay auction I have ever read. It continued, as the seller added updates in response to inquisitive emails:
I’ve received some emails, and yes I am willing to set it on fire, shoot it full of holes, etc. and mail pics/video to you. If the bid gets high enough to cover my ammo costs, I’d be willing to shoot it full of holes with your choice of the following: 12 gage slugs, 00 buck, or a 40 round mag from an AK.
I hear you, you’re wondering 1.) why the extensive quoting from the auction? and 2.) why haven’t I gotten the link yet? Well, 1.) eBay auctions are only online for a short amount of time. Eventually, they disappear and are no longer available. I think it makes sense to save parts of this auction for those to enjoy in the future. 2.) You may read the auction by clicking here.
Finally, many of you know Jason Kottke. However, you may not be familiar with his photo project website. On it, I found a great series of photographs of the nearby town of Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Sign Project takes a focused look at both the famous and obscure signs of our lovely neighbor across the river, Minneapolis. It is always nice to visit something close to home when you are out in the impersonal world of computing for so long.
So get off your backside and run out into the world. You will be glad you did.
Think about it; is it acceptable for text-highlighting to work unbelievably poorly (if at all) in CSS designs rendered in Internet Explorer? If not, why wasn’t this fixed two cycles ago in the development history? This, of course, begs the question: why do bad products sell well? When do marketing and perceived worth trump intrinsic value? A possible answer: when you are Microsoft, and you have massive business deals with massive companies, you can throw your weight around and compete in whatever market you choose.
Excuse the digression. Let us return to Internet Explorer. The knot of the problem is this: the majority of the population does not understand that Internet Explorer is inferior to other web-browsers, some of which can be had for free. This would not be such an issue if Internet Explorer use was not so widespread: 82.9% of the online population use some form of IE, according to the W3C. The accuracy of this estimate is not critical: no matter how you examine the numbers, many people are using this browser. Let’s examine some of its faults.
Memory Usage.
The savvy computer user might notice the amount of memory that instances of Internet Explorer use up. Open another window and suddenly you are consuming another 18 to 20 megabytes of memory. Features liked tabbed browsing in Mozilla (and other browsers) allow you to open many different pages all within one browser window. True, Mozilla runs at around 36 megabytes of usage (depending on your install) but the increase in usage as new pages are opened is flat compared to IE. Open four different pages in IE, and you are certainly way over Mozilla’s usage for the same four. Thus, for those who use the internet with many pages open simultaneously (I do not consider myself a power user and I consistently have 8-10 pages open at any given time), Internet Explorer is a waste of system resources. Considering IE was developed originally for Windows, why haven’t the developers been able to get the basics such as memory usage down to reasonable levels after all this time?
Downloading.
We’ve all downloaded gargantuan files from the internet, and a good browser should keep track of this. Internet Explorer does not offer any pause or resume features, and offers no way to review past downloads. Why settle for file transfers we can not keep track of when there are so many other browsers with built in managers?
Vulnerability.
While I do not have the resources to definitively prove this, Internet Explorer is vulnerable to many exploits. This is glaringly obvious when you examine the amount of spyware and/or adware on other people’s computers. It is amazingly easy to install many ad-serving applications (that will pester you endlessly) if you click the wrong button while browsing in Internet Explorer. Many hours of my life have been devoted to cleaning these evil pieces of software off other’s computers. I do not blame the users, I blame IE. If another browser was hugely popular, would it attract the lion’s share of malicious coders as IE does now? Most likely. Would it be as vulnerable? Most definitely not.
Pop-Ups.
Pop ups are on their way out. An Internet Explorer user has no way of knowing this as IE will pop up anything and everything it is told to. Take any other browser and give it a dead-simple pop-up blocking task and it will stop the ad from being displayed. Along with IE’s penchant for popping, JavaScript exploits surfing the internet a down-right risky endeavor. This pop-up situation is analogous to the download-manager: sure, you can find a program that will track downloads or stop pop-ups, but these add-ons should not be necessary.
Cascading Style Sheets.
Internet Explorer does not support CSS the way it should. There have been so many other articles written that prove this pointbetterthanI can, so I will not bend your ear. Regardless, working around the idiosyncrasies of IE results in frustration, design changes, and much more time than should be necessary invested into making things work right in this crippled and outdated webpage mangler.
Future Development.
As Slashdot says, IESP1 will be the last “standalone version” of Internet Explorer. Thus, this browser is going to become very tightly integrated into some operating system that supposedly complements the way we use computers. Not everybody wants a computer that constantly offers ways to “personalize” their experience. Some people get tired of everything automatically ending up in “My Documents” or “My Images.” Like it or not, some future incarnation of Windows will likely be popping up to ask you if you want to go look up a word you just mis-spelled, find out more about an artist, or research the author of the painting you just opened. Regardless of opinions about this interactive data-driven computing experience, something better be done to improve Internet Explorer before it is further integrated into an OS and before the computing masses have it jammed further down their throats.
Because of the tight integration between IE and other Microsoft applications, notably Outlook, there is no shortage of ways to trick unsuspecting users into visiting a Web page that a hacker controls.
Suddenly, I am hearing all sorts of rumors about this GMail. I originally read about it at Good Morning, Silicon Valley and immediately went to go check it out. Apparently, Google’s service will focus on archiving messages and then applying their search technology to it. The cost? Free. The space? 1000 megabytes. Yes, 1000 megabytes of email. My Hotmail account contains pretty typical sized collection of emails, and it has stored 317 messages in 930 kilobytes. Thus, 1000 megabytes would store around 340,860 email messages. For free! There has also been a rumor going around that this is an April Fool’s joke. A pretty good joke, if it is.
Speaking of, I still have some things to do for April Fools - let’s see if they work out! The best joke I have seen so far was the design trade between Mezzoblue and Stopdesign. A great commentary on the problematic design stealers that comb the web for designs they like and steal them. Oh, and I did not know plastic wrap on the toilet seat actually worked.
An interesting article about hard drive capacity states, “Now, new technology just about to enter production will boost desktop drives to about 2 terabytes — or 2,000 gigabytes — around 2010.” That is simply astounding, considering the Library of Congress is considered to be 20 terabytes.
Pure and simple, same sex marriage should fall within the lawful parameters defining marriage. The Puritanical roots of the American society are sprouting up in order to attempt to strangle an inexorable worldwide march toward more liberal social policy.
Consider President Bush’s statement from February 24, 2004. In it, he outlines why White House policy will favor keeping the traditional form of marriage. He says, “If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America.” The big question accompanying this statement, however, is not what the White House is looking to do, but why they are looking to do it. Considering it is an election year, I would say Bush’s hand has been forced and while the administration is partly responsible for this bone-headed decision, “Bush has been under pressure from social conservatives within his political base to come out in favor of such an amendment, several versions of which are floating around Capitol Hill.” (CNN.) There is, however, a point at which the cause for the decision does not matter. It is what it is, a stunningly foolish step backwards towards limiting personal liberty.
A chief cause of this uproar (in addition to party pressure and election year politics) is, of course, the Massachusetts decision to legally uphold the laws establishing same sex marriage as equal in status to heterosexual marriage. (CNN.) This decision elicited the now-classic response from Bush, calling marriage “a sacred institution between a man and a woman.” (Statement.) The case in Massachusetts is, naturally, not over. A proposed ammendment to that state’s constitution would ban same sex marriage. (NPR.) It will be interesting to see where the issue is in 2006, the earliest that a state constitutional ammendment could be voted on.
It boils down (as all political issues do) to politicians doing what they think will keep them in office, what they think the people want. There are some extremists with wild agendas (on both sides of all issues), but the big question really is what the people want. While I believe a vote for a constitutional amendment opposing gay marriage would unfortunately not pass right now, polls do show that as the age of the sample population decreases, same sex marriage becomes more and more favored. (Pew Poll.) I would say, as the population ages, this trend will continue, and same sex marriages will become more and more mainstream.
So why ban it now? What is popular now is simply not right - what is popular down the road will be.
