My thoughts and whatever about random topics.
“They’re coming to take me away, ha-haaa!” — and if you’re not happy with the way you’re taken away, try another one. You have 21 different ways to choose from.
This is of course about the Napolean XIV‘s 1966 hit single – and various international… eh… variations of that hit, making a total of 21. But there’s no use in me telling you this if you can’t enjoy it yourself, right? So strap into your straight jackets, and go to be taken away, ha-haa!
Enjoy! 😉
A while ago, we were told by Opera that they would have some big news for us at a later time. Speculations were rife if this meant a free version of Opera without advertising banner – but we didn’t know, and Opera wouldn’t tell.
Then there was a party, and to celebrate its 10 years, Opera gave away free registration codes. This were of course big news, and millions got their code for free. So in a way, it seemed that the big news we were promised were a free browser, without advertising – if not the way it was expected.
However, don’t forget: This is Opera, a company with a great taste for PR. Today Opera 8.5 was released – and it’s free! The advertising banners are gone! If the banners were turning you off earlier, now there’s no excuse anymore. Go to Opera, download it. And if there’s too much traffic, download with bittorrent.
Authors have tried experimenting with publishing their books in different ways on the web. Some put their old book(s) on the web, some put their new book out. Some serialise the book, some put it out all at once. Here’s a new way: The blook!
Tom Evslin is trying a new twist with his work, the murder story hackoff.com: He’s blooging his book! The web site is complete wit a faus company site (the company in he story) a wiki, forum and the unfolding story, so that readers can take part in it. I think this is an exciting experiment – it will be interesting to see how it develops.
The updates here are going straight into my feed reader! 😉
Interactive Fiction – or old fashioned adventure games if you want – may not be particularly visible these days with the commercial interests mostly being in other genres, but it’s still thriving. Also on the web.
I have no intention of writing a lot about IF this time, but the classic Hamlet by Shakespeare caught my eyes just recently. Not the book as such, but a little reworked into an IF story. So instead of encouraging you to read the book, I propose that you try to play Hamlet.
It happened first in July, and it’s happening again now: The majority of Firefox users that visit my site, are drawn to my page with unicorn poetry. That means that Firefox users are attracted to unicorns, right?
Of course, I can read my statistics a different way, too: There was a surge in Firefox users in July, and again now. They’re referred to my site – or that unicorn poetry page in particular – from a blog that is a bit popular: boingboing.net. Yep – I’ve been boingboinged for the second time. To the same page, from the same page. 🙂
Bad habits are hard to change, and with MS accused of killing off competitors before, recent news at Jogn Battele’s site are interesting to read. Former Microsoft employee Mark Lucovsky started to work for Google in 2004, and in legal documents in the current lawsuit between Google and Microsoft over Google’s hiring of Kai-Fu Lee, Mark has the following statement from a meeting he had with Steve Ballmer to discuss his departure:
At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I’m going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.”
Ballmer calls this a gross exaggeration of what took place
For a long time, making web pages that work has been synonymous with making web pages that work in IE – that’s what matters. Well, maybe not for those who do the actual coding, but more so with those who make the decisions. Now that alternative browser, and Firefox in particular are getting known and mentioned in the press more and more often, it’s inevitable that “those in power” will find that the “IE only” way is not sensible anymore. Making web pages that comply with web standards should be the logical choice – or…
Robert Nyman tells us what a Firefox investigation means for a project manager…
Opera is a great browser that has its friends and supporters, and people who have no problems pointing out its strengths, even though they may use a different browser themselves. There are some, however, who seems unable to be happy on behalf of Opera or say anything about Opera unless it is to pull the browser down.
With the recent registration code giveaway to celebrate Opera’s 10 year birthday, complaints over the ads in Opera were almost gone – although I did see one who blamed Opera for the ads on the web pages, because Opera don’t feature a built in ad blocker… The usual claims of bloatednes prevailed though.
Now, as said in the Wikipedia, software bloat is two things: To use larger amount of system resources than before, or to implement extraneous functions. How does this relate to Opera?
Opera is a small download, smaller than its competition, even though it includes more features. Installed, it’s also less demanding on system resources, so obviously the bloat can’t refer to the coding. This is confirmed by those who claims Opera is bloated, in that they speak about the interface and features. So, let’s look a bit closer into that.
First a definition:
Extraneous functions in Opera should therefore be functions that is outside its intended “working area” – this is not just a browser, but the whole internet suite. However, let’s look at the browsing experience first.
Email, irc, newsreader, rss feed reader – these things are by default not enabled. Thus, if you just want a browser and nothing more, there are no extra features to clutter up the UI and confuse you. In practical terms it means they don’t exist. The sidebar also contains various options; some enabled by default, some not. Again – if you don’t want them, they don’t exist, for all practical purposes.
So those features that don’t show up in the user interface don’t contribute to the claimed bloat. That leaves only the browser features themselves. Are they really that bloated – that is, do they really include much that doesn’t have anything to do with browsing? At the first glimpse: No. The few buttons that are immediately available all have to do with the navigation of web pages. Clicking on the address bar reveals some more, but these functions are also directly linked to navigation of web pages. How is it, compared to other browsers? It’s different – but not really more than people expect to have these days.
So, no bloat in the browser, I’d say. All of the available functions have to do with browsing and navigating the web pages, the Opera way. True, you may prefer a different setup, different functions – but these are only a right click away, to customise everything to your liking.
With this in mind, what is it that makes these people claim that Opera is bloated, when looking at what the browser actually do goes against these claims? It’s just plain silly…
It’s already all over the net: Opera is turning 10 years, and at the party today they’re giving away birthday presents to their users: Free registration codes! What a pleasant surprise. 🙂
Of course, while this is the most exciting news at the party, there’s also nice music to listen to, sung and compiled by Opera employees. IRC logs of the chat with Jon von Tetzchner, HÃ¥kon Wium Lie and Trond Werner Hansen will probably be up all over too soon, for those who didn’t attend or want to read it nicely formatted. There’s pictures and film from the Opera party, and a trip down memory lane with pictures of how Opera has evolved through the versions.
But it’s still not over: While the registration code giveaway will only last for a day, there’s an anniversary competition, too:
Share your birthday wishes with Opera and win a prize! Use your imagination – the more creative the better. Write a poem, haiku, a story, draw a picture or just something fun. Our 100 favorite submissions will be shared with the Opera community and the winners will receive a super-cool Opera t-shirt!
The submissions for this is due September 6th. See more details at the page.
When moving, there’s often a lot more to take with you than you expected, and once installed in your new home, there may be some small things that you don’t seem to find again, or something. So it is with me.
OK, I’ve only moved my site to a new host, but there is the small things here and there that may not be in place yet. I struggled a bit with the databases I had started to use, but I managed to get them over and populated. It looks like they work now – well, except for my Norwegian blog… I haven’t quite figured why that one should behave different, but I don’t worry much. It’ll work out in the end.
Maybe there is a few more things to do (just remembered that I have to check the hi-score table of the breakout game – it needs to be writable… ;)) but things seems to fall in place.
This post was mainly written to spread the joy I feel right now because of that. 😉