…and the living is easy.
Some recent shots around Cambridge.
Summertime
July 18th, 2010
I’m on a horse
July 18th, 2010
The real interest of the Superbowl is not, for me, the sport, but the creativity that goes into the phenomenally expensive commercial breaks. The most famous example is Apple’s 1984 ad that introduced the Macintosh, but there have been many others.
This year’s most talked-about ad was from Old Spice, and I think it’s brilliant.
These days one immediately assumes that it’s all green-screen and CGI, but in fact there is almost no ‘trickery’. Isaiah Mustafa maintains this running commentary while bits of scenery move around him, and it’s a trolley, on which he sits part-way through, that transports him and deposits him on the horse. And he maintains this focus even though they eventually used something like the 57th take…
Leo Laporte interviewed the guys behind it, if you’d like to find out more….
The Making Of…
July 17th, 2010
What do you think of those ‘special features’ sections of DVDs – the director’s commentaries, deleted scenes etc?
I’ve always rather enjoyed them, and they generally give a greater appreciation of a movie… why the writers chose not to follow the book here, what the stuntmen had to go through there, and so forth. It’s easy to sit back and enjoy a story without thinking of what’s behind it, though of course there’s a good argument that that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, and that seeing backstage destroys the illusion they’ve so carefully woven for you. I’m not sure…
As some of you will know, my wife Rose Melikan is a novelist, and her books are set in the late eighteenth century. What few of her readers will appreciate, though, is the level of research that’s behind them: many of the characters are real people, for example, who were in the places described on that day in history. Often, the weather described in the books has been cross-checked against that day’s Times. And so forth.
In general, Rose says, she does this just to feel comfortable that she’s not making any glaring mistakes, but we thought that some of the factual background might be of interest to readers, so her website now has a section for each of the books with a little more background information on some of the topics.
Click on the page for The Blackstone Key, The Counterfeit Guest or The Mistaken Wife and follow the links in the box on the left. There’ll be more coming when time permits…
Baby on board
July 10th, 2010
Not being a parent myself, I find them interesting as objects of psychological study. And one thing that has always puzzled me is this enthusiasm for sticking signs on your car telling people that you are transporting your offspring.
Why do people do this?
Is it just pride in your reproductive abilities? A badge of club membership to win you support from other parents? A warning that you may suddenly swerve because somebody has just pulled your hair or screamed in your ear?
Or is it, perhaps, something rather more sinister and insulting – an implication that other drivers – like me – may have no qualms about endangering your life, but will be inspired to take pity on your innocent sprog and so curb their otherwise naturally reckless driving?
Can anyone enlighten me?
The nightmare that is IE
July 9th, 2010
If you ask any web designer what would constitute their dreams coming true, they will probably say something along the lines of “Internet Explorer vanishing from the face of the earth, never to be seen again”. Web development has for many years consisted of building your beautiful online creation and then polluting it with all kinds of hacks to get around the bugs and quirks in the various versions of IE.
We’ve just run into a nice issue with IE8, where a site running on our intranet will render completely differently from a deployed site running on a public server. The HTML and CSS is identical, it’s just that IE recognises that one is in the intranet zone and, for some completely unfathomable reason, decides that it should therefore be displayed differently.
For any sysadmins who haven’t yet replaced IE on their users’ desktops, this helpful page by Henri Sivonen gives a hint of the problems that you are helping to perpetuate. This is not a rant, it’s a useful guide to what designers have to think about, just to make their pages display properly, because you’re not using Safari, Firefox, Opera or Chrome.
An excerpt:
IE8 has four modes: IE 5.5 quirks mode, IE 7 standards mode, IE 8 almost standards mode and IE 8 standards mode. The choice of mode depends on data from various sources: doctype, a
metaelement, an HTTP header, periodically downloaded data from Microsoft, the intranet zone, settings made by the user, settings made by an intranet administrator, the mode of the frame parent if any and a UI button togglable by the user. (With other apps that embed the engine, the mode also depends on the embedding application.)The lucky thing is that IE8 uses doctype sniffing roughly like other browsers if:
- There is no
X-UA-CompatibleHTTP header set by the author.- There is no
X-UA-Compatiblemetatag set by the author.- Microsoft has not placed the domain name of the site on a blacklist.
- An intranet admin has not placed the site on a blacklist.
- The user has not pressed the Compatibility View button (or otherwise added the domain to a user-specific blacklist).
- The site is not in the intranet zone.
- The user has not chosen to display all sites as in IE7.
- The page is not framed by a Compatibility Mode page.
For the points other than the two
X-UA-Compatiblecases, IE8 performs doctype sniffing like IE7. The IE7 emulation is called Compatibility View.In the
X-UA-Compatiblecases, IE8 behaves radically differently from other browsers. Please see an appendix on this page or a flowchart available in PDF and PNG formats.Unfortunately, without an
X-UA-CompatibleHTTP header ormetatag, IE8 lets the user accidentally drop you from the IE8 standards mode to the IE7 mode that emulates the standards mode of IE7 even if you used a proper doctype. Worse, an intranet admin may do this. Also, Microsoft may have blacklisted the entire domain you use (e.g. mit.edu!).To counter these effects, a doctype isn’t enough and you need an
X-UA-CompatibleHTTP header ormetatag.
God help us.
‘iPad (and low keyboard)
July 5th, 2010
On the London train recently I was using a bluetooth keyboard with my iPad, and it was a very good match for the limited space in the seat. The iPad sat on the little table-shelf thing and the keyboard on my lap, partly under the shelf.
It may not look it, but it was really comfortable, and the Vodafone 3G connection held up well. There is no way I could have done productive work in this space on my laptop, but I managed to fire off quite a few emails and Skype messages on the iPad, and, of course, it had enough battery for the journey there and back and quite a lot of use in-between…
Up periscope
July 3rd, 2010
As a small puppy, our English Cocker Spaniel, Tilly, used to like running through long grass, and occasionally through crops.
But the grasses grew faster than she did, which left her with a navigation problem…
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…
July 1st, 2010
Those familiar with Cambridge will know the rollers which allow you to move the very heavy punts between the lower and upper river.
Last week some of us decided to ride the punt down the rollers, which I’ve done many times before, but they seemed to be rolling rather better than in the past, and you can’t steer the thing as you’re going…
Many thanks to Sarah McKeon for the photo…
Favourite movie quote of the day
June 18th, 2010
-
Are you one of these emancipated women we’re having so much trouble with at home?
-Kenneth More’s character to Lauren Bacall’s in North West Frontier
S.O.S. – Save our signs
June 13th, 2010
I know very little about spectator sports, as can be demonstrated by the fact that I only found out two days ago that the World Cup was starting yesterday.
However, it’s hard to avoid it completely, so I overheard enough news about unfortunate goals in yesterday’s match to recognise the irony of the banners hanging from the ceiling of a local supermarket:
No doubt the young marketing chappie who thought up this excruciatingly clever play on words now feels a little foolish.
This, of course, is why you really need Digital Signage: so your message can react quickly to changing events!
A master stroke
June 10th, 2010
I’ve just seen a very inspiring gadget: the Pool-Mate, from a small UK company called Swimovate. It’s a watch designed for swimmers, which will count your strokes, laps, etc and provide a variety of statistics about your swimming. It’s an elegant design, simple and affordable – nothing flashy.
This may be of limited interest to those who aren’t serious swimmers, but the bits that inspired me were twofold: Firstly, the watch contains a simple two-axis accelerometer. By analysing the movement of your wrist, it can tell all sorts of things about your swimming. This is a lovely bit of signal processing done with very limited CPU power, and with no calibration required. Remember, the signals will be different for each person, and also for each different stroke, arm movements for breaststroke being very different from those used for front crawl.
The second thing that inspired me was meeting the CEO, Lisa Irlam, and hearing how she and her husband built the prototype and then the product with their own funding on a very limited budget. They deserve to be proud, both as technologists and as business people.
All my spare energy is going on dog-walking at present, but if I ever get back to swimming, I’ll have to get one of these!
Thoughts from a Baggage Claim area
May 26th, 2010
Some luggage trolleys have no brakes. Others require you to press or pull the handle to stop. And some have brakes that are on by default and require you to take some action before they’ll move.
Can you deduce anything about a country’s psyche from the option they choose?
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