Your error != a bug in my software

As anyone who has ever e-mailed me asking for help knows, I always respond and try to help as much as I can. So please, if after I’ve e-mailed you back asking a few questions about your implementation of something I’ve written, do not, before answering my questions, publicly pronounce that my software has a bug. Not only is this foolish, it’s just plain wrong.¹

Be courteous and use common sense.

Similar Posts

Ever since I started keeping my bits within the weblog CMS (and not del.icio.us), I’ve run the following in the side menu of individual archives where I usually display “possibly related” posts:

This is currently disabled and will probably remain so until I have time to hack up the Related Entries plugin to make it aware of categories; I want to exclude the bits from its results.

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Marsh e-mailed me to let me know that he had done this very thing with his Similar Posts WordPress plugin, which is a modified version of Related Entries. I just wanted to note that it works wonderfully out of the box — the “possibly related” section of my side menu is again alive and kicking. I should also point out that the plugin no longer needs to be run after an iteration of the “WP loop,” something for which I explained a workaround in my initial Related Entries post; apparently the apostrophe error was fixed somewhere along the line too.

Tetris documentary

It’s well known within my “circle” that Tetris is my favorite game of all time (I still have my original GameBoy cartridge) and I’ve never been shy about making known my ability to play it.

It is with this in mind that I present to you, Tetris - From Russia With Love, a wonderful, hour-long BBC documentary about the game, its creator, and its tumultuous ride out of communist Russia. It really is a fascinating story, though admittedly, you may not think so highly of it if you don’t share my love for the game.

Flak Photo

I’m currently the “photo of the day” at Flak Photo (archived here if you are looking after the 24th). Thanks Andy! I hardly ever mention these sorts of things here, but maybe I should start. Indeed, I guess I just did.  :)

On an unrelated note, later this week I’ll try to explain away my near-absence from this space over the last few weeks (if I can find the time!).

Death to liquid layouts

Why, why, why do people still insist on using liquid layouts? Let me rephrase that: why do people still insist on using the sort of layout where the main content column is not a specified width between 400 and 600 pixels (or thereabouts)? When was the last time you opened a newspaper or magazine and had to scan the entire width of the page to read the content? Never. The answer is never. So why is it that some people assume that just because they’re using pixels and not ink I want to scan my entire monitor (or, more accurately, the entire width of my browser)? I assure you, I don’t enjoy resizing my browser as much as you must think I do. Stop torturing me.

Upgrading the Mac Pro’s memory

Update: I’ve received nothing but positive feedback regarding OWC.

Since buying my Mac Pro a little over a month ago, I’ve been patiently waiting for memory prices to drop before putting another gigabyte (512×2) in the system. While most RAM these days is fairly cheap, the fully-buffered DIMMs required by the Mac Pro (specifically, PC5300 DDR2 ECC 667MHz) are still sold at a premium.

Crucial has what I want for $300 (curiously, Apple’s price is the same, which I’ve never seen before — they’re always more expensive), but a company called Other World Computing has the system crack for $249. Any of you guys have experience with OWC’s memory? I normally wouldn’t think twice about getting this from Crucial, but the price difference between the two (after having to pay taxes on Crucial’s memory) is ~$75, and from what I can gather, these OWC guys are legit.

Google is my favorite browser

I’ve just finished watching a very interesting, hour-long discussion between a panel of young adults about how they use various technologies (e.g., mobile phones, RSS, digital music players, etc.). It’s so easy for me to forget that I’m not the typical young adult and that 99% of the demographic thinks that MySpace/FaceBook accounts are indispensable and that conducting five concurrent IM conversations about Jenny’s hair or America’s Next Top Model is multitasking.

I encourage everyone to watch this, especially those of you who consider yourself tech-savvy, as it will bring into strong relief the fact that most [young] people are clueless. Case in point, Q: “What browser do you use?” A: “Google.”

MOO MiniCards

I received my free¹ MOO MiniCards yesterday morning and could not have been more pleasantly surprised at how good they looked (see the MOO MiniCard pool for examples). I must admit, I wasn’t expecting too much because (1) I knew they were going to be tiny and (2) they were free, but I figured I’d give them a shot because, well, they were free.

For brevity’s sake I’m going to bite Cory Doctorow’s Boing Boing post and say that it’s “hard to convey just how cool-ass these cards are. They feel like a fetish object, the thick card and soft laminate finish create a great hand-feel, and they’re visually stunning — playful and intensely personal.”

I can totally see myself using these when I eventually start selling prints of my stuff.

Aperture, MediaPro, and XMP

Anyone out there running both MediaPro and Aperture want to do me a quick favor? It shouldn’t take but a second and I’d be most grateful.

All I’d like you to do is go into MediaPro, highlight a picture that you’ve assigned to multiple keywords, and choose “Action | Extract Metadata…” from the menu at the top. Make sure “Editable Annotations” is checked and then save the resulting XMP file in the directory where the image resides.

Finally, try to import the XMP and/or image file into Aperture, either by dragging/dropping or through any import mechanisms it may have. I’d like to know whether Aperture retains the keyword (and other) metadata. Thanks in advance.