03 Aug 2005
I’ve just uploaded the Bake the Cake video from the beginning of the year to Ourmedia/Archive.org because my iiNet webspace ceased to exist some months ago now, and it lacked any other permanent home (with sufficient bandwidth).
It’s still just the WMV file, but I’m hoping to put a higher resolution version/different media format version up at some point in the future. You can grab the WMV file here, or view the video’s page on Ourmedia. If nothing else, consider this an experiment on my part with Ourmedia/Archive.org’s services.
02 Aug 2005
I wrote some time ago about Opera performing brilliantly and how, when Firefox collapsed on me (it’s still a bit shaky – middle-click opening of new tabs is now rather flawed, even in the ‘fixed’ release), I fell in love with it. Well, as much as one can with a piece of software, anyway.
I also wrote briefly of how Tori told me about a very cool media service called GarageBand, which publishes music from independent artists free of charge, even going so far as to offer (shock, horror) un-DRM-encumbered MP3 downloads of the vast majority of tracks.
So where does Flash fit into all of this?
Well. About that. GarageBand has this nifty Flash player thing going, which is very cool, except for when you’re using Firefox: every time I have it running whilst trying to do anything in the background (that is, within Firefox, in another tab or something), the audio buffer dies until whatever I’m doing in the background has started to render (or maybe resolved a host, or something… whatever).
Opera, on the other hand, handles this flawlessly. The window pops open, Flash loads faster (notably, using exactly the same plugin as the Mozilla family, if I recall correctly), and I can do whatever I want in the background without it skipping a beat. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a browser should be.
02 Aug 2005
Okay, this should hopefully be the last word from me on this. I’ve discovered there’s a bug report on this issue in Ubuntu’s Bugzilla system, which has some pretty informative comments.
I uninstalled Tabbrowser, Web Developer Toolbar and Image Zoom extensions (as well as FireFTP, but that’s just because I never use it anymore/it’s always been too clunky), then restarted Firefox — presto, the Preferences work again, as does myriad other things. I’ve reinstalled the Web Developer Toolbar extension as well as Image Zoom, and restarted, and now everything appears to be working as normal again.
02 Aug 2005
There’s a new TV network out there that’s got a radically different programming model, and looks immensely interesting. They’re foward-thinking type people. This is Cluetrain-model television programming. And I wish they’d gone and launched a video stream as well, because neither I (nor anyone else outside the US) can see any of it live – only what’s been specifically selected and uploaded to their online Current Studio section (not yet live).
(Oh, and if any US people are reading this — I’m looking at you, Matthom ;) — expecting a full report! :P)
I’d say some more nice things about them if their website were as foward thinking as they clearly are: they could easily have a validating website if they cared (look ma, no tables… also no doctype), and streaming is obviously not beyond their reach if they already have the facilities to provide some of their content selectively.
02 Aug 2005
Anachronistic.
It can mean outside its proper time, in reference to an idea that has become an anachronism and should have expired… but I think it’s more useful for describing a non-linear style (that is, that ideas exist outside of their historical chronological order).
The word came from no-where in particular, I was just reading an essay and remembered that word but couldn’t remember what it meant, exactly, so I went and looked it up. The end.