ps just kidding

P.S., just kidding!

The Smashing Pumpkins' new album

The Smashing Pumpkins’ new album

I just heard about this. Also, the first single is circulating. It’s… good, I think!

This is technically only half of the Smashing Pumpkins (no D’arcy, no Iha). Oh well, take what you can get. I wonder if this will last.

(via Nall’s away message) 

Dell's first three Ubuntu PCs

Dell’s first three Ubuntu PCs

Here they are. Slightly cheaper than Windows equivalents, but that’s not really the reason for getting one, is it?

Glaring error in their copy:

Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system. It’s also one of the most popular open source operating system (sic) on the planet.

I’m sure if they had put some effort into that, they could have made it sound more appealing, and, er… grammatical.

Update: here’s something I didn’t notice at first:

Dell provides hardware support only. Software support is available through Canonical and Linux Community.

Dell helpfully offers to add software support to your shopping cart: $65 for 30 days, $125 for 1 year ‘Basic’, $275 for 1 year ‘Standard’. All three will presumably get you a direct line to Canonical, the company that created Ubuntu. Expensive.

iGoogle's themes are really nice

iGoogle’s themes are really nice

I only just tried out the ‘themes’ feature of Google’s personalised homepage, now called iGoogle. They’re really nicely done. Apparently they change based on the time of day, too!

I don’t really care about the functionality of the page, but it’s nice to look at. I’m making it my new start page.

Yet another release of Lego Star Wars

Yet another release of Lego Star Wars

This one combines both previous games (covering all 6 movies) with some extras, and will be for the systems that haven’t yet had any version: 360, PS3, Wii. And a new DS version, since the original was apparently full of bugs.

Lightsabre battles with the Wiimote sounds fun, if they do it well.

Tumblr comments!

Whew! I’ve done it: I hacked up a comments add-on to Tumblr (which powers this site). Later, I may cobble it together in the form of an open-source package, or at least explain how I did it (it’s fairly hackish, involving JavaScript). For now, though, why not leave a comment to this post, just because you can? :)

Joost 0.10.3 released

Joost 0.10.3 released

The ‘Now for Friends’ tagline for this release apparently refers the the ability to send people links directly to shows or channels (yay, I guess?) - here’s a link to Adult Swim, for example.

Very little else has changed, but it still deletes all of my preferences (i.e., the channels I picked for my lineup) when I upgrade to the new version, as it has with every new version.

There’s also now even trashier content than before (‘Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Demand’? WTF?) that is causing my hope for the service to wane.

starcraft2.com's source code is really interesting

To a web designer, I mean. I got curious when I saw that their pages all end in ’.xml’. I figured they were just being cheeky, but when I checked, they’re actually throwing XML (not XHTML!) documents at you!

For a page such as http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml, the entirety of the source code is this:

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<?xml-stylesheet type=“text/xsl” href=“/layout/faq.xsl”?>

<page lang=“en_us”>
  <faq/>
</page>

 Then in /layout/faq.xsl, you’ve got stuff like this (just an excerpt):

    <dt><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=‘sc2.faq.basics.q1’]”/></dt>
    <dd><p><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.a1’]”/></p></dd>
    
    <dt><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.q2’]”/></dt>
    <dd><p><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.a2’]”/></p></dd>

 …which references stuff in /layout/includes.xsl, which references stuff elsewhere… the rabbit hole just keeps going down.

I know some of the basic concepts about XML and XSL, so I can only just begin to understand how it works. It’s really fascinating, though, because I’ve never seen web design like this before.

How to Write a Thank-You Note

How to Write a Thank-You Note

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that this was of some help to me.

Oh, HSBC, how do I hate thee?

Let me count the ways.

1. The entire premise behind your ‘virtual keyboard’ concept is flawed, as it presents only a false sense of security. It is designed so that a keylogger (a program that subversively records every keystroke that you make) is unable to capture critical login details, as they are entered with this tool via the mouse instead of the keyboard. However, if one of your users has a keylogger installed in the first place, they certainly have much larger security problems and are going to have their identity stolen one way or another. Account numbers? SSN? Mother’s maiden name? All of these are so easily captured and can do so much harm to the exact same accounts you are purporting to protect, if the user’s machine is already compromised. And if it is not compromised, then your virtual keyboard provides absolutely no benefit. It does, however, provide considerable annoyance to all of your users.
2. The overwhelming majority of your users do not understand how the virtual keyboard is purporting to help them, making even the illusion of protection utterly useless.
3. There was a bug in the original implementation of the virtual keyboard that resulted in a double letter entry being mis-recorded as a triple letter. Unluckily for me, the password I chose ended in two of the same letter, which was recorded in the initial setup process as three of the same letter.
4. This bug was later silently fixed, rendering all of my subsequent login attempts with what I thought was the correct password impossible. Luckily for me, I eventually figured this out on my own. I don’t even want to think about how (un)helpful my bank’s outsourced customer service would have been, since even the people implementing this system are apparently oblivious to the implications of what they’re doing.
5. Both the ‘old style’ password (which you can actually type into with your keyboard) and the ‘virtual keyboard’ are required to login, and they are both presented on the same page. When the page loads, the text insertion point (you know, the blinking vertical line) is automatically shifted to the ‘old style’ password field, indicating that it is ready to accept the typing of your password. But wait! As soon as you begin typing, an alert box pops up telling you you’re using the virtual keyboard wrong… even though you weren’t trying to use the virtual keyboard at all! In short, the designers of this system cannot even grasp basic concepts about how a graphical user interface works. Is there any bank these days that has a clue? I’ve heard that more and more of them are doing similar things.