dgb's blog 2.0

sth · 23 Jul 2014, 16:03

Google's Panda: Making sure the money flows in the right direction.

Thanks, Google. Thoogle.

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jul 2014, 19:57

Muirium wrote: ↑Can we have … [h]is babies??

Aside: I cannot fathom why people seemingly of all intelligence levels feel that a single question mark is insufficient?? For some reason, current English usage seems to mandate their use in pairs?? Many people also make a habit of using statements as questions?? (i.e. without the change in word order grammatically necessary to indicate a question, which is more important in recognising a question than the terminating punctuation mark, which you don't see until the end of the sentence.)

I don't know the answer to your question — I haven't kept up with the options for same-sex reproduction, e.g. how far we are away from being able to take an egg, remove its DNA, insert the DNA from a sperm, and then attach the other partner's sperm, so that the two male partners have provided 100% of the DNA involved. Junior might still be a way away yet.

Personally I'm waiting for the day when someone figures out how to make real holograms, i.e. an image that appears in mid-air, and can be seen from all angles, where every angle shows a different image, with the object appearing to be solid without the other side shining through.

I'd like to think that plenty of you noticed that the Enterprise D's viewscreen was 3D. It wasn't something the show ever specifically drew attention to (which I hate: let people observe for themselves) but it was just there, subtly, as if it were completely normal. (The concerning part is letting the enemy receive a video transmission of your whole bridge in high definition 3D. Not all aliens did that, but I imagine that was to save the cost of a bridge set, not to indicate security-conscious thinking.)

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 20:04

I reserve multiple ??s and !!s (and potentially ¡¡'s) for emphasis, as I expect everyone else does. The particular example you quoted was the punch line of a little sequence. I also wanted it to sound both desperate and dumb. Honest!

(Yes, I can't separate writing from speaking at all, and everything I ever type comes out of the vocal parts of my mind, complete with tone and cadence… Did manage to train my lips not to move in the process sometime back in childhood, though. Just about.)

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jul 2014, 20:36

It may be that "??" is reserved for emphasis, but people have to emphasise every single question?? Maybe I am the only person who notices??

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 20:47

O…M…G!! Maybe you are!!!! !!!!!!!¡!¡!¡!!!!!!!!!

scottc · 23 Jul 2014, 20:52

!!

Edit: can we get a Daniel Beardsmore smiley too?

sth · 23 Jul 2014, 20:53

will we ever know why??

i, too, used to think it was kind of dumb and childish, but then i tried it and i really liked it

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 20:55

Uncool kids are passé. While cool kids are retro. Adults meanwhile, shuh…

scottc wrote: ↑ !!

Edit: can we get a Daniel Beardsmore smiley too?

(Aka. the definitive dwarf. That way I can picture a grumbling Scotsman… besides myself.)

Nuum · 23 Jul 2014, 21:22

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑It may be that "??" is reserved for emphasis, but people have to emphasise every single question?? Maybe I am the only person who notices??

Nope, you aren't the only one. I don't really like it as well. Aesthetics wise I'd rather have three but preferably only one. But two "!" is better than literally thousands of them, as some people like it.

We even have emoticons representing ! and ?:

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 21:27

Actually… one I don't like… but… I do still use too much, is… uh, let's say you can probably guess…

Mind, they can be quite effective sometimes:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/03/20/60-days

Compgeke · 23 Jul 2014, 22:00

Wow

I say we used smilies for punctiation more often

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 22:11

I've nothing against it. They're an opt in feature, after all. Somewhere in your account settings. I disabled them soon as I signed up. Where you see

I see ;roll; with colons instead.

Works well for everyone.

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jul 2014, 23:10

How did we get to page 2 already … oh, right. (Akismet sucks, anyway.)

scottc wrote: ↑Edit: can we get a Daniel Beardsmore smiley too?

I started drawing something (made up a blank head in Photoshop), but I really can't be bothered. You'd need to capture chaos, madness and alienness in 256 pixels. Crazy eyes, head in the process of exploding, and maybe some of those Andorian ears.

And there's another thing: what is so wrong with the world, that by 2014 we still can't have alpha channels in JPEG images or proper 32-bit animated images? I realised that the smileys are stuck as GIF for the sake of the stupid animations (I dislike graphical smileys), but there are times when animated images are useful, but then you hit problems making them background colour–independent due to GIF only having 1 bpp transparency.

DerpyDash_xAD · 23 Jul 2014, 23:15

The ellipsis is extremely underused when it really should be used, and over used when it should be used. It's very annoying. But it can be a very useful tool -IF- you use it well.

Halvar · 23 Jul 2014, 23:27

I -- and I'm probably not the only one -- prefer the -- well, what could it be -- dash -- it is even more despicable from the standpoint of the -- well, unconcentrated, I should say -- reader. For the writer though -- total freedom!

Best of all, the German word for it is "Gedankenstrich" (thought dash), which makes it look like it's a sign of a thoughtful mind -- well, guess what: it mostly isn't!!! (Oh -- hyphens are pretty good, too ...)

webwit · 23 Jul 2014, 23:29

Blog needs pictures of pets.

Halvar · 23 Jul 2014, 23:48

All I have is -- beards.

Muirium · 23 Jul 2014, 23:51

I woke up like that once. Long, long story.

webwit · 23 Jul 2014, 23:56

You woke up as a black man in Scotland? Must have been some strong drinking. Btw, the second guy has a very punchable face. Almost as good as Ed Woodward.

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jul 2014, 23:57

En dash: –
Em dash: —

Those don't even require Unicode. I've got both as custom bindings.

I don't have any pets, but here's a butterfly I put outside the other day:

: Aglais urticae 1.jpg (78.72 KiB) Viewed 3284 times

: Aglais urticae 2.jpg (105.11 KiB) Viewed 3284 times

I had my camera with me (taking pictures of my PC-8201A maybe), and I managed to get a shot just after opening my hand and before it flew away. I don't know why the first shot didn't focus, nor why I bodged the focus on the second.

Boring story: a couple of years back, I was shown a PDF by a customer and asked why their website link didn't work. I was able to confirm that it just wouldn't come up. I realised that there was something wrong with the text, so I copied the text into JujuEdit and examined it as hex.

Turns out that the typesetting software used by whoever created that PDF had replaced the hyphen-minus characters in the URL with actual hyphens, rendering the URL inoperative.

I wish they'd been as impressed with my diagnosis as they should have been, but I think the problem of hyphen, minus and hyphen-minus went over their head. I have no idea whether they ever did get that PDF fixed.

Odd story: The above story reminded me of another. Several years back, I was walking home one night, and saw something on the pavement ahead of me. As I got closer I could see that it was a mobile phone.

Straight out of Hollywood, the phone rang just as I got to it! I answered it — the caller turned out to be the owner's neighbour, and she was able to direct me back to her flat so that I could hand over the phone (they only lived down the road).

Unlike Hollywood, the caller looked to be in her 70s or 80s, and the owner of the phone was a man.

Life loves to troll people, as it seems to be doing to me again lately.

Muirium · 24 Jul 2014, 00:02

En dash – Option + Minus
Em dash — Shift + Option + Minus
Been like that since the black and white compact Mac days.

@Webwit: To be fair, I've woken up unexpectedly in blackface more times than I have with a verdant beard. (Usually because of dirt and booze and sleep and booze and rain, rather than actual makeup, although, oy, the 1990s!) You'd be amazed how few people are surprised by such things here. Especially the cops.

BlueBär · 24 Jul 2014, 02:27

This blog has almost three pages already and you say it's boring??

Daniel Beardsmore · 24 Jul 2014, 09:32

Most of page 1 is spam …

Muirium · 24 Jul 2014, 14:13

Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap.

But is 10% of crap any good, I wonder? Let's keep going and find out!

Daniel Beardsmore · 25 Jul 2014, 22:37

I was trying out a piece of software earlier, and … well, if the guys who wrote it had their mouse stop working for a minute I think they'd drown in their own tears. For example, if you try closing the program, you get a confirmation dialog. It's not a native Windows dialog box, because that would be too obvious. After all, it would spoil the challenge of creating a fake one that doesn't respond to alt+Y, alt+N, Y, N, enter, space, tab or escape. There is absolutely nothing you can do with it from a keyboard, short of MouseKeys.

The only controls that accept the focus are text boxes. Shift-tab ignores shift and goes to the next control, not the previous one. They even have trouble with the idea of using the enter key to submit information (especially with a particular web form where the submit button doesn't accept the focus, but you can't submit with the enter key either).

They even managed to break taskbar pinning somehow. (Apparently it works in Windows 8, but not in Windows 7; my Windows 8 laptop is out of action.)

I sent Irfan Skiljan one of my spare IntelliMouse Optical mice once as a joke to tease him about forgetting to support more than 3 button, but in this case I need to fly over to the country where this is developed (in Europe, not India), set fire to all their mice, and issue them with Poker keyboards and whip them and beat them until they figure out what the keys on the keyboard actually do …

Aside: I suspect many people would actually be OK with a Poker, since they don't know what all the missing keys do anyway.

Laser · 25 Jul 2014, 22:45

Soo, you know, in this case, i could develop some bad software for you ...

Muirium · 25 Jul 2014, 22:57

Alt F4. Alt F4!!

Daniel Beardsmore · 25 Jul 2014, 23:21

It's not a real dialog box, so I am not sure what Alt+F4 would do for a fake dialog box presented when closing the window … It doesn't even have a title bar.

Muirium · 25 Jul 2014, 23:28

No, quit the app! Then run!

It's been long enough since I used Windows that I can't remember the fact it merges Command+W and Command+Q. An instant kill combo for the running app (without data loss, even) is vital for me.

Daniel Beardsmore · 25 Jul 2014, 23:44

Cmd+Q quits an application, and Cmd+W closes a window.

Alt+F4 closes a window (including dialog boxes), unless it's an MDI child window, in which case it's Ctrl+F4. Whether it quits a program depends on the type of window you're closing. When you're working with MDI and SDI programs side by side, close document is Alt+F4 or Ctrl+F4 depending on the program, which is just annoying. It's hard for me to press Alt+F4 as I think of it as close application, with MDI being so widely used in the past.

I still use MDI in the shape of Excel 2010 and Photoshop 7. (Excel 2013 finally broke free of MDI, but Office 2013's activation system is such an abomination, and Click to Run so fragile, that it will be LibreOffice for me next time; it seems to be a lot better than the clunky old OpenOffice version I put got on my work PC for opening ODF files a few years back. With that said, I do use Outlook 2010 with Exchange at home.)