Deadly virus
So few survivors
Creeps up quickly
And leaves you darkly
– Tim Finn, “Hit The Ground Running,” 1993
Today’s utterly bizarre musical moment was hearing the above passage of the above song at, of all places, Wal-Mart.
While waiting in line at the pharmacy counter.
Perfect. 😀… Read more
In recent days/weeks (seems more like it’s taken years) I’ve been having an extremely intermittent dialogue with a reader of my site who has been imploring me to make the site Firefox-friendly. Actually, while I appreciated the initial input, I was already working on that (hence the gradual changeover to WordPress and modified versions of WordPress in areas such as news and my work section). But ironically, it was during the slow process of looking through WordPress theme templates that my distaste intensified dramatically.
I cannot stand self-appointed Firefox “evangelists.”
I have no problem with Firefox or the people who use it. It’s a nice browser, and has some useful features. I’m not completely sold on the whole tabbed browsing experience – it just doesn’t do much for me – though I can see where a lot of folks believe it is equivalent to the knees, if not the erogenous zones, of any number of species of bee. And I’ll acknowledge that it’s got a security advantage over Microsoft Explorer in that, unlike Explorer, not everybody who codes virii is targeting it. (Yet.) That’s all well and good. (I’m remarkably un-paranoid about my continued Explorer use because I’m responsible and aware when it comes to security upgrades (such as the recent security flaw that can be exploited through a simple freakin’ JPEG – see here for the details and here for the patch).
To put it another way, I have as much time for the small but vocal group of ‘fox fanatics as I have for people who respond to message board threads thusly:
Dude #1: My PC is giving me a Windows error and shutting down every 5 minutes. How can I fix this?
Dude #2: Get a Mac! / Uninstall Windows and load Linux! / [other unhelpful and unrealistic replies here] / STFU n00b!
I bring up the WordPress element in this because, with a few themes I looked at, the layout was completely mangled and there was a browser-detect-triggered script that said “I see you’re running Microsoft Internet Explorer. This theme only displays correctly with…”
Well then, let me tell you where you can put your theme. When so much of the Firefox “movement”‘s beef with Explorer is that Microsoft is forcing the world to accept its own version of web standards, what the hell is that if it isn’t the same damn thing? (Sorry for the language. Not much gets me going like blatant, out-in-the-light-of-day-and-not-even-caring-about-it hypocrisy.)
Could my own site be coded better? Of course it could. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be making a switch and committing myself to what’ll probably be at least two years’ worth of work to switch 3,000-odd pages of HTML over to a database-driven structure (while also having to make updates and add new content which will itself have to be converted over.) You have to keep in mind, my web coding certification dates back to 1996…when it really didn’t matter how your nested commands were closed out (at least not according to the college instructor I had at the time). I’ve tried to be better about that in recent years, but let’s face it, the site’s been “on the air” in HTML format for 10 years. A few problems have cropped up, and so I’m working on setting up a system that will let me do what I’ve wanted to do all along: concentrate on content, not code.
Trying to get me to switch to Firefox with all the fervor of someone trying to get me to change what flavor of Christianity I happen to be isn’t making the process go any faster. As the process goes along, I’m having my friends and a few theLogBook.com cohorts check what I’m doing in Firefox to make sure it all works. It’ll take time. That’s the best I can do for now.
Please understand, if you’re reading this with Firefox, my beef isn’t with you or your browser. It’s with a small but pesky minority of people who are, even if they’re well-intentioned, giving your browser a bad name. Their mindset isn’t that of someone trying to find an alternative to Microsoft. They come across instead as wanting everyone to do things their way. In short, they’re trying to be Microsoft. And I thought this whole Firefox thing was about providing a viable alternative, not merely doing a swap-out of monopolies.
If you know someone like that…you might want to say something to them about it. Because surely I’m not the only one who’s getting damned sick of it.… Read more
So, I caught a network promo tonight which says that ABC is going to be running an hour-long “catch-up-on-the-serialized-storyline” show not just for Lost, but for Gray’s Anatomy as well. (I could swear they’re doing one for Invasion as well.) I also see one just ran on Sci-Fi for Battlestar Galactica, and once a year they tend to do one for the Stargate franchise as well. This is an interesting phenomenon that I have to admit that I’m torn on. The Lost special looks like it’ll be an interesting editing exercise if nothing else, doing a kind of “edited highlights” combining the entire show to date with footage from the episode The Other 48 Days, as if we’ve been watching the survivors of both sections all along, and connecting things like the walkie-talkie scene. But at the same time…it kinda says something that they seem to pop at least two, if not three, of these “catch-up” specials for Lost every season, doesn’t it? I don’t know if it’s saying something good or something bad either.
On the good side: I remember once watching an episode of Buffy, I forget which one, which was very tied into the mythology of the show, and the “previously on Buffy…” teaser timed out to six and a half minutes before they ever got around to “and now the conclusion.” Specials like this help to fill that need and save the actual new episode’s program time for new story, so we can Just Get On With It. It’s also possible that the producers are thinking that the public will thank them for that step when it comes time to put it all on DVD.
On the bad side: The downside here is, as with so many things, promotional. These damned things are pushed like they’re part of some movie-length new episode – ABC is bad about that, especially with Lost, because who’s gonna turn down two hours of Lost? Only then they tune in and discover that the first hour is refried beans. That erodes audience trust in the promotion, and undermines everything we’re trying to do from the local level on up to try to drive people toward the show.
The serialized stuff isn’t bad. Remember a few years ago when Warner Bros. (and their cute Warner Sister) were grinding their teeth together at the very thought of Babylon 5 being a five-year tightly serialized storyline? Now you almost can’t change the channel without hitting a long-range serialized storyline. (I’ll admit, as enamoured as I am of story arcs and long-range character development and shows that take actions and consequences into account instead of hitting the patented Star Trek Reset Button every week – which is a pretty good trick if you’re a show that doesn’t have “Star Trek” in the title – I’m almost getting to where I miss standalones. I think that’s one of the many reasons that Everybody Hates Hugo was one of my favorite hours of television of 2005, even with a season and a half of Battlestar Galactica and 14 new Doctor Who episodes for competition.)
It’s too bad J. Michael Straczynski is pulling down something like three dimes in licensing/residual revenue for Babylon 5 all these years after it ended its run. Because I think he’s had more of a seismic effect on the medium than he’d let anyone give him credit for. (Not that anyone’s looking to credit anyone who isn’t Chris Carter or Joss Whedon for bringing that storytelling device to the forefront.)… Read more
Happy gnu year!
Just a quick note while I’m working on the next site update tonight – everyone may want to check out a new blog here at theLogBook.com, Philip R. Frey’s 365 Films A Year, in which Philip is going to watch a movie he’s never seen before every day through 2006. (I applaud him for that – I’ve been doing marathon “catch-up” sessions on the early seasons of Stargate SG-1 lately, and I’ll admit that there are times when I have to make myself watch an episode a day. I guess this means I haven’t mustered my catch-up skills, eh? Heh heh…hey, where’d everybody go?)
Anyway, give it a look-see. Between the high wildfire danger (and the high number of idiots who insist on shooting off new year fireworks or tossing cigarettes out of their car windows) and another coyote “fly-by” near the house (and this time, Xena was outside trying to warn them off!), I’m at a very tired kind of full alert right now. Fortunately I have a very short work schedule on Monday so hopefully I can actually get some rest in during this almost-a-three-day-weekend…… Read more
