Because I Require Stimulation

During the keynote where Apple launched the iPad, Steve Jobs almost seemed to go out of his way to show that the new toy doesn’t support Adobe Flash on its browser. Apparently Adobe is all butthurt about that and sent their platform evangelist, Lee Brimelow to post an image of what the lack of Flash will mean on the iPad. Here, have a look:

Analysis

I’ve got a few things to speak of here, but first, I think corporations should be burned to the ground when they hire someone to promote their product and then call that person an “evangelist.” When I think of what an “evangelist” looks like, I picture a guy in a bad suit schmoozing for money by using your fear of God to pick your pocket. In other words, someone like the Skeezix to the right.

That aside, what you’re seeing here is how Flash is required for some really popular online activities like playing FarmVille on Facebook, watching TV on Hulu, checking the latest news on CNN, and… wait a sec, is that a porn site? Why yes, yes it is. Apparently if you’re in need of porn on your pad, you’re out of luck because wee all know that there’s no such thing as a porn site that doesn’t use Flash.

Oh wait, there are millions of them. Never mind.

Still, there’s far more going on here than is readily apparent, and none of it bodes well for Adobe Flash. Flash is so ubiquitous on the web, we encounter it every day and sometimes it’s so cleverly used, we don’t even know it’s there. It’s a medium to video delivery ala YouTube or Vimeo. It’s a way to display images in galleries. Heck, chances are good that you’ve signed up for some kind of website and their form was based on Flash. So it would seem like Apple is being left out in the cold backwaters of the Net if it can’t include it on their iPad, right?

Not even close, and this whole fiasco is a  harsh indicator of that if you know what’s coming.

HTML 5, the latest update to the new language of the web, supports and performs a lot of the tasks that were once only available through a Flash solution. It’ll do video. It’ll do galleries. And forms? Well, I have to say that a site relying on Flash for a stupid form is kind of weak anyway, but yes, HTML 5 handles forms just as well as HTML 4 did. That’s why Adobe suddenly threw out this image, to scare you out of buying something that doesn’t support Flash. No matter what your opinions are about Apple, the iPad, or any of that stuff, the fact that it doesn’t support Flash sounds bad, doesn’t it?

Looking Deeper

Well, let’s take a closer look at these websites here and see what’s really going on.

Turns out, Lee doesn’t seem to have bothered checking how these sites run on Mobile Safari, which is what the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad use for web browsing. If he had, he’d have noticed that these sites have dedicated Mobile Safari versions which load automatically upon detection of the browser. Others even have dedicated apps to deliver the same exact content that you’d find on the website. CNN, Disney, Spongebob, and yes, even the Bang Bros. porn site all work fine on an iPhone or iPad because the designers of these sites realized that supporting 30 million iPhones and 20 million iPod Touches is a little more important than worrying about Adobe’s aversion to Apple.

Kendal Helmstetter put together a nice chart rebutting all of Brimelow’s websites that won’t work without Flash. Turns out, the only two that don’t work through the browser, or through an app, is FarmVille and Hulu. That’s it. Thanks to things like HTML 5 and H.264 video, even the porn site works just fine. In other words, unless you want to play FarmVille or watch an episode of something that’s only available on Hulu, you don’t need Flash on the iPad, the iPhone, or the iPod Touch.

Libraries and Websites vs Flash

Now, what does this mean for libraries? That’s easy. Flash, and technologies like it, are doorways into your web presence. You can certainly have a site with lots of Flash and you can even require that a browser supports Flash for it to work with your site. If you do, you’re screwing yourself and your patrons. I didn’t use that “doorways” metaphor by accident. What if you built a library, but you used a specific kind of door that allowed only certain people to get in? Say you built a really narrow door that allowed people to get in if they were around average height and average weight. That means you’ve got a door that allows most of the population in, but far from all of them.

Taller people have to bend down to get through the door. People in wheelchairs are out because the chairs won’t fit through a narrow door. An overweight person can’t get in because they’re too wide for your door, and so on.

There are laws and building codes in place to make sure this doesn’t happen when you build your library. The entire point of these laws is to make sure that anyone can enter into and use your library building regardless of how that person is built. Since you can’t, and wouldn’t, make such a narrow door to your physical library, why would you want to make such a narrow door to your website? Indeed, requiring Flash on any website isn’t really building a narrow door so much as it’s building a narrow window.

FUD

Flash is useful, sure, but it’s no longer the only game in town. That’s why Adobe is playing the porn card along with engaging in some Microsoft level of creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

I think it’s interesting to note that Brimelow has since removed the image of the porn site and claimed that it was a joke. Well, if that’s true then it’s a stupid joke by and for stupid people of which I can now count Brimelow among that number. Also, he’s upset that some “news” agencies are reporting that Adobe played the porn card. That “news” agency that he felt the need to put in quotes is Wired Magazine, one of the more respected and popular sources of tech news in the world. Placing the word “news” in quotes while referring to a tech news  site like Wired Magazine is tantamount to doing the same thing with placing “Netflix” in quotes when talking about an online video service which sends DVDs by mail.

Finally, he claims that his blog is not the official Adobe blog and that he’s not speaking on behalf of Adobe.

Lee, you’re the platform evangelist for Flash, Flex, and AIR development communities. I know that because that’s what it says on your blog. As an evangelist you are a public relations man and therefore when you’re speaking about Adobe then everyone is going to rightly believe that you are speaking on behalf of Adobe since that is, you know, your job. Seriously, if I were in charge of Adobe and found that my PR guy is speaking out of turn about a product, I’d quickly be in the market for a new PR guy.

If you’re not acting as a voice for Adobe, then why remove the image of the porn site because Adobe didn’t think it was funny? It’s your blog and it’s not the official blog right? So why do that? Maybe it’s because you’re speaking for your employer after all.

It’s stuff like this that, when I look at it, I kick myself and wonder why I didn’t think of it!

(via libraryland)

Submitted by: dunno source via Fail Uploader

Sniffing around online I’ve seen some of the most mixed reviews to a new Apple product that I believe I’ve ever seen. Some people are calling the iPad a stripped down netbook while others are joking that it’d have been better if it were smaller and could make phone calls. Others think it’s so cool they’ll buy two of them and a few others are writing about how it’s a decent product if it’s what you’re after.

I think the truth is somewhere in between all of this. I don’t see it as a stripped down netbook because it doesn’t even conjure up the word netbook in my mind. I have a netbook and it doesn’t do what the iPad does and the iPad reciprocates on this. I see it as a smart tablet, a paper notebook that doesn’t use paper and happens to have an internet connection. I’m most assuredly going to get one, but that’s because I fit that demographic of geek where the thing will actually be useful to me.

How?

Well, as a guy who blogs a lot and about a lot of different subjects from information to science to entertainment to tits and ass, you will find that I have a hobby that is secondary to my blogging passion: I collect a vast amount of content for my blogs.

One of the reasons I bought my netbook was to be able to blog anywhere with a WiFi connection and it does a very decent job of that. However it’s got some drawbacks. It’s kinda slow, not really slow, but sometimes Firefox just sort of stops working while I’m typing and I have to wait for everything to sort of “catch up” to what I’m doing. Multitasking, while available, is a bit of a pain for the same reason. I’ll open Firefox (I write almost exclusively in Google Docs.) then I need to look at a picture on the hard drive, so I minimize Firefox, wait for it to “catch up,” open an image viewer, wait for that, look at the image, switch back to Firefox, wait for the operating system to realize that I’ve done that, wait for Firefox to…

You get the idea.

Then I got an iPod Touch. Now, I only write on the netbook, that’s all it’s for. I’m going to eventually put Chromium OS on it so I can do nothing else but connect to the net and Google Docs and that’s it. For content collection and pre-blogging management, I do almost all of it on my iPod Touch. When I have some downtime, or I’m on a break, I’ll pull out the Touch and do some fiddling around. I open up Safari and surf to a few websites. I’ll find stuff I want to write about or post on a blog. I’ll collect it, route it, and eventually I’ll write a blog post or something. I don’t need to multitask six or seven different things. I don’t need a keyboard. I don’t need a huge screen. All I really need is a couple of free apps and a workflow.

Everything happens because of my workflow.

So here’s how a blogging nerd can collect, generate, and publish content using an iPod Touch; or at least how this blogging nerd does it.

First, before I start, let me say one thing. The ability to manipulate data and information with my fingertips is something so elegant and so natural for me. It’s a huge benefit for me per my own personal tastes. If you’re not into touch screens and what they can do, then this isn’t going to work for you. For me, the ability to guide and control my device without the aid of an external keyboard or mouse is so wonderfully useful, I feel hampered by a traditional desktop with its mouse, keyboard, separate monitor/tower setup. That said, here’s a typical way I find and save information for blogging.

I use two free apps readily available from the App Store on iTunes. The first is the Evernote app from the company of the same name. I use Evernote as a method to transfer links, notes, images, and whatever else from my iPod to any computer I care to write on. The second programme I use is the WordPress app. Naturally I have that app set up to publish content to my various and sundry blogs all of which, except one, are based. The odd blog out uses Tumblr, and I intend to install the Tumblr app, I just haven’t done that yet.

Okay, software set up is done, let’s go. I sit down, because it’s a bad idea to do this stuff as you walk around, and I pull out the iPod. I’ll bring up Safari and start browsing a few sites to see what’s up in the online world. For this narrative, let’s say I start at Reddit. I find a story that looks interesting and, after reading it, I know I want to blog about it. From here I can do two things. I can copy the link to the story, switch to the Evernote app, and paste the link into a note that I set up specifically for links like this. When I get home, I can pull up that note, hit the link(s), and start writing. Or I can tell Safari to e-mail the link to me. Obviously, I have my own information in my contact list and this is a quick and easy process. I’ve been saving more to Evernote recently just so I don’t fill up my mailbox with stuff from me.

Now, there are times when I have a simple post to make. This happens a lot when I find an image I like and want to throw it on a blog. So let’s go back to Reddit and, oh look! Here’s a cool image, and here’s another. I’ll put one on the adult blog, but I want to write something about the other one when I get home. Going with the one I’ll post right away, I simply save it and now it’s stored in the Saved Images folder on my iPod. Dropping out of Safari I’ll open up the WordPress app and select the proper blog. Using the app I can compose a post, attach the image, and publish it. The image I want to write about later will also get saved, but then I’ll hop into Evernote and upload it as a Camera Roll note. I suppose I could e-mail the saved image to Evernote, but I figure that’s using one programme to interface with another programme when I don’t really need to.

I’ve actually used the WordPress app to compose full on posts with images and text and the like. I don’t mind doing that at all really, it’s just that when I’m using the iPod for these things it’s because I’ve got a few minutes to do something and don’t really have the time to write a whole lot anyway.

To me, the issue of multitasking doesn’t even enter into it. What would I be doing on a desktop computer? I’d be flipping in between programmes. I’d have a browser open, my blogging client (I love Windows Live Writer.), perhaps an image viewer, and probably some kind of music playing in the background. Except for the music, which is a continuous thing, I’m still only going to be using one programme at a time on the computer. I’m not simultaneously doing something with the blogging client and the browser. I’m using one or the other and flipping between them. To me, I’m doing precisely the same thing on the iPod Touch. I’m flipping between programmes which I’m using one at a time. I will grant you that while I’m flipping between multiple running programmes on the desktop instead of closing and opening different apps on the iPod, it’s also not like the Touch apps take a long time to open. Flipping between them literally takes only a couple of seconds. (I know because I timed it.) While I may be busy, I’m not in that big of a hurry.

So for me, and my workflow, doing all of this on a similar device with a much larger screen is damned near irresistible. So while some people are grousing about the iPad, the truth is that I’m getting more done on an MP3 player than I normally do on my netbook. So while Apple’s new toy isn’t for everyone, it’s definitely for me.

Puzzle pondering professor pleasantly propels his person… on ice skates

So here’s a tea infuser shaped like The Beatles Yellow Submarine.

I MUST HAVE ONE!

Shared by Faceless Librarian
You know what? Wil Wheaton cracks me up.

(Thanks to my friend C., who made this when I needed a bit of cheering up.)

Faceless Librarian posted a photo:

Two Soundwaves agree that the This Week In Science 2009 Music CD is
awesomesauce!

The good folks at TWIS selected one of my songs, Tesseract, to be on the CD.
At which time I think my geek cred went soaring since the song refers to a
four dimensional solid, was recorded on a digital keyboard and computer, and
then selected for an online show about science.

Also, the rest of the CD is pretty amazing!

Look, I’m a video game nerd. I adore my PlayStation 3 and I watch the video game industry like some people pay attention to sports. Hell, video games are far more interesting to me than sports because, unlike most American sports, something is happening all the time in the average video game.

But what is the deal here? First there’s this guy, sitting around in a costume and strumming his plastic guitar. He’s totally oblivious to the three way lesbian action occurring behind him. Now you’ve got this guy…

Look, I may be a gamer, but I’m a gamer second only to being a pervert. I would like to think that, even if I’m really into a game, I’d stop for a few minutes to appreciate the show happening right fucking next to me.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series is pretty good. I can easily understand why they chose to make a movie out of these books and I look forward to seeing it. If they do it up like the book, it should be a decent…

HOLY CRAP MELINA KANAKEREDES IS IN IT?

Oh I am SO there.

If there is a definition of bliss…

libraryland:

sweethomestyle:

spaceships:(via i’m Jac)

From the always awesome and entertaining Shortpacked.

libraryland:

National Library of China, Beijing

There’s an upcoming game based off the Transformers called Transformers: War For Cybertron. From what I gather, it’s set in the same universe as the Michael Bay movies, but takes place before contact with Earth ever happened. The upside of this is you get to play as Transformers on Cybertron and you’ll be using their Cybertronian alternate modes rather than the familiar ones you see on Earth.

It actually looks pretty cool. I defintely want to try it out if for no other reason than it’s Transformers.

But this morning I got a surprise! They’ll be releasing a toy line based on the game! So we’ll be getting toys based on a game which was based off a movie that was based off a cartoon which was based off of toys.

Yes, it’s mind blowing, but one thing is for sure: I must have this cool looking Cybertronian Optimus Prime!

When it comes to being ecologically friendly, I try to do my bit. I happily recycle anything I can. I reuse quite a few things because, let’s face it, grocery sacks are good for more than a single use. I really don’t like driving all that much, so I avoid it when I can. Driving around downtown Phoenix can cause a spike in my blood pressure and profanity to proper English ratio, so I drive to Mesa and take the train.

But it’s never enough, and never will be for some people encouraging others to live an ultra green lifestyle. I normally don’t care, but the issue of water conservation and what they (green folks) expect you to do about it. A friend of mine marked a rather typical list in her Google Reader, and I wanted to comment on it.

First, and foremost, my friend 7ohn really put things in perspective when it comes to personal water conservation and its effect on the environment. As an individual, I’ll start worrying myself with water conservation right after they shut down all those water slide parks. Until then, I don’t see this as being a big thing; not when some park has millions of gallons of dihydrogen monoxide coursing through it day after day. So, here’s their ideas and my thoughts:

Shower instead of taking a bath

Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with water conservation. I typically shower because I don’t normally have time for a long, luxurious, hot bath. Besides, showers wake me up, and baths relax me. Telling me to shower rather than taking a bath is kind of like telling me to go for a run rather than take a nap. For me, the two are used for completely different things.

Shower together

This one is written with a wink and a nudge that it might also be a fun way to waste water together. But what about people who have no one to shower with? You know what, as hot as Sasha Grey and Lisa Ann are, and as much sex as they have, I bet there are times when they both just have to shower alone because they’re on a trip or something and no one shared their room that night. Even if they are porn stars, I don’t expect them to pull strangers out of the hall for a quick, water conserving shower. Seriously, I have kids and my wife usually winds up watching them when I shower and vice versa. Showering together isn’t always an option.

Don’t wait for the water to get warm to shower

Fuck that damn water heater and all the money you spent on it! After all, humans have come all this way to develop technologies which kill cancer, orbit the planet, and provide lesbian pornography on demand. But hot water? You’re not good enough for hot water. Personally, I just love it when I get into shower that’s so cold my balls shrink up inside my chest. I don’t know about you, but if we’re going to go this far in water conservation, you can save a whole lot of money, pain, and anguish by not showering at all. It’s the ultimate water saving technique and you’ll look and smell like the hippie you are.

Repair dripping faucets and leaky toilets

Yeah, because that kinda shit wastes money, man! If there’s anything I want to conserve more than water it’s money. Also, dripping faucets and showers have a nasty habit of keeping me awake when I’m trying to sleep. If there’s anything I want more than money, it might be a good night’s rest. So naturally I fix those dripping things, but it’s more for selfish reasons rather than green ones.

Avoid flushing the toilet unnecessarily

If it’s yellow it’s mellow if it’s brown flush it down. Sure, I see absolutely no health and safety concerns about living in a house with kids and having a couple of toilets full of piss stewing away in the bathrooms. Also, I totally love it when my house smells like the New York subway system and bum urine. That’s just awesome. Every so often, just to complete the illusion of New York underground, I’ll squat in the corner and drop a huge turd. That way I don’t have to flush that down the toilet either. Also, there’s no problem with piss turning my toilet bowl nasty colours. I’ll just scrub it out with the harshest fucking chemicals I can find. I may be saving water, but I’ll make up for by flushing bleach and lye down the toilet.

Pee in the shower

Doesn’t everyone? Moving on.

Replace your shower head with an ultra-low flow unit

Absolutely. I did this once. I put on a shower head that cut my water usage by a third. I also found that my normally five minute shower took fifteen minutes. Do the math. Seriously, if you want me out of the shower faster, you’re going to have to allow me water pressure with a force greater than my urine stream. In other words, if I can piss faster than a shower flows, you’re wasting my time which is, incidentally, far more valuable to me than water ever will be.

Don’t let water run unnecessarily

Turn off the water while you’re shaving. (I shave in the shower.) Turn it off while you’re brushing your teeth. Hey, since you’re not going to flush that toilet so often, why not turn the valve on the floor behind it and shut that off too? Hey, that old house down the street was a fire trap anyway. No sense wasting water to put it out. Just turn that big wrench on top of the hydrant. That’ll save water and it’ll teach those firemen a lesson about conservation too. Or, better yet, get one of those auto off water faucets with the added bonus that you’ll be putting batteries into the landfills because, you know, I’ve never seen a solar powered auto off faucet.

Install water heaters wherever you can

Wait, I thought you didn’t want me to wait for the water to get hot? Now you’re telling me to install more water heaters? They point out that, since the water heater uses a lot of electricity or gas, you can save money by installing more water heaters which use more electricity than you were probably using to heat the water in the first place. This all bespeaks of lovely irony if you happen to get your power from a hydroelectric dam. Also, multiple water heaters aren’t free. Exactly how long does it take before those supposedly pay for themselves? It’s a simple physical fact of thermodynamics, you want to heat something, you’ll have to apply power. There’s no way to get around that. Where you apply the power really doesn’t make a difference.

Do not use a garbage disposal

Instead, grow your own food and compost instead. After all, it’s completely and totally easy for me to grow a huge garden in my tiny backyard in the middle of the desert while I’m working an eight hour job, raising two children, writing, making an online show, and living a life. So I’ll just take all of my shit and throw it in a composter which, I’m sure, will smell absolutely amazing when the temperature hits 110 degrees F. Also, growing a garden? Do you know how much fucking water it takes to grow a fucking garden, stupid? Believe me, I know. My dad raised one for years and still does. It takes a shitload of water which, I thought, we were trying to conserve.

This… is awesome.

aleahmarie:

I want to work at this library. It’s straight out of Hogwarts!

infinitebutterflies:

devincastro:

Where The Fame Monsters Are.
I found this on Kody’s tumblr. It just made my evening.

I’m an image junky and I have been since the early 90s. Back then I had just gotten my first PC, a Packard Bell 386sx/33. Coming from a Commodore 64, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it or how it worked. Where was the BASIC compiler? DOS? Vas is DOS? Windows three point what?

So a very knowledgeable friend showed me the ropes and gave me some software to do different things, software like CSHOW.EXE, or CompuShow. CompuShow was a DOS based image viewing programme. With that I was introduced to files ending in .GIF or .JPG.

And I’ve been looking at and hunting for images ever since.

I’ve been fiddling around with different methods of placing galleries here on my blog. It’s not as easy as you’d imagine because I’m picky as hell. I wanted something that looked decent, something that didn’t look like a table layout. I wanted something that looked clean, polished, and well designed.

Naturally I found something that looks like Apple kicked it out.

Now that I’ve got this thing going, I want to start posting some images here every so often. Sometimes they may have a theme, but most of the time, they’re just as random an assortment as my travels across the world wide web. I’ll also gather an archive of them on a separate page, so they’re there without too much trouble or searching.

Right, let’s get started:

Black and white. Classic setting. Four guys on four different instruments. Jazz.

Ladies and gentlement, the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Faceless Librarian posted a photo:

Don't bother me, Daddy. I'm checking my e-mail!