RasterWeb!

My contribution to the web today is to let people who do not have a copy of Adobe InDesign know that if someone is sending you an InDesign tagged text file, tell them to choose Unicode in the Tags Export Options dialog box when they do the export, and not ASCII, unless you can somehow guarantee that the text going back into InDesign will really be ASCII, which seems unlikely in many cases… (See every discussion on Unicode in the last year for background…)

Since I found myself trying to explain such concepts to someone who had a copy of InDesign, but no knowledge whatsoever of charatcer sets and the like, I’m just hoping this might help someone else… …And if not, at least it’s here for my own use! ;)

I have (almost) nothing useful to contribute today…

So I present uptime via Atom, which will tell you how long my Mac has been on.

It’s like, totally experimental, and may change, or go away. Or something. I dunno. I was just looking for an excuse to use Perl, DBI, SQLite, and `uptime 2>&1`, while experimenting with Atom.

Atom is harder than RSS, and that’s alright. It kind of forces you to do things right. That is, if you consider the way Atom does things as the “right way” of doing things…

Anyway, I’ve been cranking out code, not words, so that’s all I’ve got. Later!

"Out with the old, in with the new!" Isn’t that how the saying goes?

I’ve been thinking about this, and trying to apply it to many different things. For instance, everyone is quite concerned with making computers/linux/the web/etc simple enough for Aunt Tillie to use. (See Eric Raymond, Jon Udell, and I’m sure others…) I admit this is a noble thing. I would like to see these things easier for Aunt Tillie to use, but part of me doesn’t want to worry about it… because time will take care of the problem.

I don’t mean to be rude, but face it, Aunt Tillie is old, and she won’t be around forever, sure she’s got a few good years left, but will she be compiling her own kernel anytime soon? Doubtful…

On the other hand, young people (aka The Youth) seem quite comfortable with technology. They happily use cell phones everyday without a second thought. They even pay to have custom ring tones. Ring tones? Crazy! Well, crazy to me, someone no longer a youth, who didn’t have a cell phone as a youth, and wouldn’t think of paying for a special ring for a phone. And that VCR, who can program those things? As a kid I did, but my mom sure didn’t. Of course today you’ve got a TiVo and it’s pretty darn simple to operate, it’s not even a matter or programming it, it’s more just a matter of using it.

Think about how much easier computers have become in the last 20 years, the last 15 years… Or using the internet? Remember getting on the internet just 10 years ago? Progress is being made, that’s for sure.

Who will benefit from this progress? The youth. My kids will… My oldest daughter is in grade school, and last year she showed one of the teachers how to use the digital camera they had at school. The kids coming out of college now (and in the coming years) use Linux, and they like it. This is one of the reasons I think things like open-source and Linux on the desktop will eventually really take off, because in the future, they won’t be new ideas, they’ll just be “the way it is” to some degree. (Another old saying comes to mind: “Unix is very user friendly, it’s just picky about who its friends are.”)

Kids are accepting of new technology because to them it’s not new, it’s just there. Wasn’t it always there? My kids have never seen a TV without a remote control. There’s a thing in the living room that plays movies, audio CD‘s, and shows photos on the TV. Making your own CD for the truck with your favorite songs from a library of thousands is no big deal.

Maybe it’s just me, and I’m getting old. People often ask where their flying cars and jetpacks are, but I think the answer is, they’re all around us. Sometimes they’re just hard to see through those old eyes with poor vision…

Are there IELovers outside of Microsoft? A show of hands:

one of the presenters… …asks: "How many here use IE". A few hands, reluctantly, show. Attendees start to giggle, then laughs. Applause. Presenter looks baffled and a bit hurt. Then he asks "And how many here would want us to fix it, so they can use it". Even less hands.

There is much talk of IE, and how it’ll be improved, and better, and support CSS and PNGs, but let’s actually see something. Working code! A released application people can install and use. Or not. As previously stated, I don’t care if Microsoft ever releases a new version, in fact I prefer if they do not, but it is nonetheless interesting to follow the story of such…

News Flash: Someone Really, Really Likes IE!

Don’t believe me? See: I Love This Browser! for proof:

…what we do every day at work – make Internet Explorer the best way for browsing the web. I realize that statement will cause some people to chuckle based on current press on security issues and perceived lack of innovation, but that is my job.

Well, ok… Perhaps someone loves IE because it’s “their job” and we all know you have to do your “job” else the man has no use for you… Still, I give credit to Scott Stearns for posting this. I also have to give credit to Microsoft for opening up like this, I can’t imaging being given the task of writing for IEBlog. Especially right now.

Many of the comments to this post are stupid and childish, but you can expect such things. Some do make very valid points though, so it’s worth a read.

I personally don’t care if IE gets improved, fixed, whatever, since it’ll only be available for one platform (Windows) it’s pretty much useless to me. I prefer that it “go away and never come back” as Smeagol might say.