the simple ramblings of a boy…
I’ve known for a while that I could successfully make a nine-foot standing jump. This video clip, however, is the first time I’ve been able to see myself do it… which is cool because I can now see where I can improve. My upper body is quite stiff throughout the entire jump and I don’t actually get much vertical in the middle.
Still fun to see though.
Video, courtesy of Metal Leaves.
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steelie
This is just a short post to let anyone who has been semi-following my comlaining about this wank of a project, that today, the entire thing came to a close… and on a positive note. I wasn’t able to see the final display’s before they were shipped off but a co-worker/manager, whose opinion I trust, said they look great. And they will get to the client on time.
…relief.
I have accumulated almost five full days of time off. Some of it I will use to sleep the rest I shall use to do Parkour. :OD
There is more to say but I am very tired now… I was sent home a few days ago for “resting with my eyes closed” at my desk — nothing bad, everyone knew that I had just burned myself out…
Alas, it is done.
Final curtain please.
Good night all…
And sweet dreams.
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steelie
Thanks to Mena for the Camino reminder!!
Fellow Mac users… I do believe this is the one…
I used to use it years ago when I had gone on an anti-MS spree, before I was able to upgrade to OS X to get Safari. I’ve just downloaded it again… I had fogotten how nice it is. For anyone who’s looking for that Safari alternative but doesn’t was to go to Firefox, Camino is that great little middle ground between the two. Now, it doesn’t have the same level of customizability as Firefox but it was built specifically for OS X so it behaves in a much more Mac-like way.
Also, if any of you are interested in customizing things like I am you should go to pimpmycamino.com to see what’s available. I highly recommend the Camitools and Caminicons to tweak the look and feel.
One of my favourite interface features about Safari is the Address/Progress bar combo which, unfortunately, Camino does not have. However, in a very Mac-like way, Camino lets you shuffle around the Icons so you can at least place the spinning progress wheel next to the Address bar for some immediate visual feedback (see image below).
Thanks again for the Camino reminder, Mena.
Camino. Yeah. I’m all over it…
Oh, right. Camino also allows you to sync your bookmarks with an FTP server of your own choice and sync those bookmarks with other computers as well. NEAT!
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steelie
What's the nerdiest thing about you?
Well, I was trying to figure this one out for myself and I was thinking it would be Mac related, Harry Potter related, Design related or something like one of these anyway. I wasn’t sure, so I decided to get “T’s” thoughts on the matter…
steelie: “What would you say is the nerdiest thing about me?”
[zero hesitation…]
T: “Math. Numbers. The way you have to figure the tax out on things, in your head.”
She’s right. I have an obsession with figuring out the “Math” of something… as precisely as possible. Usually it’s just the tax (to the penny) on something of what the exact temperature is in C° when “T” gives it to me in F° (she used to live in the States for a bit). However, sometimes it goes a bit beyond and usually have no control over it. Once in my brain, I have to fugure it out… even when I’m not actively thinking about it my brain is processing in the background…
Example… my son “L” has one of these classic Fisher Price toys where children can have hours of enjoyment stacking rings, and fathers can (apparently) spend hours trying to figure out the mathematical equation to describe how many moves it would take to transfer the entire stack of rings from one peg to another, one at a time, three pegs total, and only smaller rings can placed on top of larger rings (not the other way around. This type of puzzle is called the Tower of Hanoi.
I can’t tell you when I started think about it but my brain has been trying to figure it out for at least a month… seriously… I have a problem.
I managed to figure out the pattern of which ring gets placed where and when in order to move the entire stack in as few moves as possible a while ago. However, I haven’t been able to nail the formula to figure out the fewest number of moves require to move the stack…
Until tonight! Which actually makes this QOTD v’timely… and for those who care, the equasion is x = 2n-1, where “n” is the number of rings you have to move. Of course, as soon as I told “T” that I had figured it out, she just smiled and shook her head…
Yup. Math makes me nerdy. Other nerds, care to try the tower?
Have fun.
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steelie
Okay, I have to admit… I’ve been known to be one of those pain in the ass people who occasionally feels it necessary to inform VOX of my thoughtful suggestions to make the site better (even though the more I use it, the more I realise how much it just kicks ass). Well, I think I may have posted ± three separate ”feedbacks” complaining about how Apple’s Safari’s incompatibility with VOX has been a source of frustration for me.
As per VOX’s suggestion (every time I try to compose a post in Safari) I finally decided to try Firefox. While it does allow most/all of the composing features one would need to successfully compose a post in VOX, it is thoroughly less pleasant to deal with on a regular basis… it's clunky… it doesn't do really some really simple things that you get spoiled by over in Safari.
For example…
When you go to type in the address in the URL bar it will auto-complete the entry with your most visited site with the same spelling AND provide a pull-down list of all other options — in order of most visited by ME. With Firefox you are presented with a pull-down list of the most recent places you’ve been which rarely includes my most visited places.
In Safari, I can choose to block or un-block pop-up windows from the FILE Menu or by simply pressing a keyboard shortcut… same for emptying the cache… and deleting history can be done from the HISTORY menu. There is no need to open the preference panel every time you've visited your online bank and you need to empty the cache of your personal information or delete history… novel ideas, I know.
The tabbed-browsing feature has the “close tab” button on the tab itself as oppose to the other side of the screen so you can close a tab in the background by means of this little button. Plus you can toggle from tab to tab using key-commands. With Firefox, you either have to highlight the tab then go click the button to close, or you have to right-click the tab and choose close from the pop-up menu… both ways take three to four times longer — I know, I know, we're only talking seconds here but they add up to frustration and interface friction.
Of course, you can install various extension to Firefox to increase its functionality including ones for closing the tabs and adding key-commands to allow for tab-toggling but the interface is still clunky.
In Safari, one of my favourite interface features is the Address Bar which is also the Progress Bar. So, as soon as you’ve entered your destination URL and pressed enter, the blue progress bar travels along the back of the Address Bar giving immediate feedback that things are working to get you where you need to go. In Firefox the progress bar is a bout an inch wide and tucked down in the bottom corner where you have to go searching for it every time…
ANYWAY…
Following another “suggestion” from the VOX team (more like a “swim at your own risk” statement than a suggestion really) I installed the latest nightly build of Webkit which promptly crashed Safari… brilliant. After restarting, however, I was pleased to find that I can now at least use some of the basic formatting tools. Specifically, the following: bold, italics, underline, left-align, centre-align and right-align. Colour me excited…
Oh well, it is getting there, slowly but surely… just too slowly for my liking.
BTW, for any one who cares, this entry was composed entirely using Safari with the latest nightly build of Webkit, except for the hyper-links and spell-checking, which were done in TextEdit.
Goodnight all.
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steelie
[UPDATE]
I did a bit of searching and it turns out that you can also download an extention that will allow Firefox to combine the Address and Progress bars and it can be found here. It is way more intuitive than Firefox’s default Progress Bar so I (personally) highly recommend it.
I guess the personal goal for this will now be to try and make Firefox as Safari-like as possible.
I’ll start a running list of all the extensions I find to make life more Safarifox and bearable.
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steelie
[UPDATE]
Well, I decided I should wait until the day after to update this post so that I might get as much work done overnight as possible…
So, at roughly 4:30 PM yesterday, I went home to take care of my husband & dad duties. I made my way back to work after I put ’lil “L” to bed and got here at approximately 10:00 PM.
At almost 11:00 PM one of my co-workers called to let me know how much he had gotten done on my project while I was at home. He offered to come and help me with the rest.
Over seven hours, three cafeinated beverages and one burrito later, we were both so tired that we had to call it quits at 5:15 AM this morning.
I went home, showered, shaved, ate breakfast, got ’lil “L” ready for daycare and put out the trash.
And so the day began again continues… everything has to be done today so now I’m stressin’ some but also relieved that I’ll be done my part v’soon.
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steelie
Going home from my normal shift now… I’ll be back for round four tonight. Keep posting y’all so I’ve got something to keep me awake…
I feel like I could sleep for a year…
[sob]
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steelie