Reflective Surface
Still powered by a contradiction in terms
Archive for October, 2002
October 23, 2002 at 6:37 pm · Filed under Random
For sometime now there has been a new kind of advertisement in web pages that consists of “flying” content, that is, a chunk of HTML that hovers over the page for some seconds blocking part of its content and effectively hampering reading while it’s active.
I was extremely annoyed to find this ads in some sites I visit. One of the biggest online Brazilian newspaper started using them some time ago, which almost made me stop using the site. They have since stopped the practice.
Today, some colleagues at work where discussing how to implement a similar feature in a current site, and others in the future. I pointed that this practice is annoying and rude to the site readers. I got a blank look from some people, and laughs from others.
I was surprised with this reaction. As a developer I care about the users. I want them to enjoy using the site. I can understand advertisers wanting ads; I just can’t understand developers doing the same.
October 23, 2002 at 4:05 pm · Filed under Technology
A compelling article by Richard Stallman about the dangers of the so called “Trusted Computing”, which he properly calls “Treacherous Computing”. In the article, he highlights the inherent problems and the possibility for abuse that kind of technology poses.
To me, particularly, the current developments in the computer industry are disturbing at best. Sometimes it seems like 1984 has come true in disguise. I just wonder where it will lead us.
October 23, 2002 at 2:19 pm · Filed under Life
I keep rediscovering the Google Zeitgeist. Now and then I find the page, browse the statistics, and promptly forget about them until the next time I see it mentioned somewhere else.
Yesterday I found the Zeitgeist again. As always, it was a fascinating experience to see what holds the world’s interest. Although the results are somewhat obvious — they’re in the news most of the time after all -, it’s interesting to see how they reflect the present times. What is a hot topic one week is boring in the next. What people care now it’s not even remembered some days later. Life is too fast; there’s no time to stop and think about what really matters.
Time to forget the Zeitgeist again. But the lesson remains.
October 22, 2002 at 6:49 pm · Filed under Life
The rain is falling softly out there. Another work day ended, it’s time to go home. My muscles hurt from sitting the whole day, and my eyes are tired to look at the computer. Yet I’m content.
Content with another day I had. Because of my friends, because of deadlines met and deadlines not met, because of coffee breaks, new problems, old challenges, a last joke shared at the door, conversation at lunch time, longing for home — everything a day means.
Seizing the day is almost an art. Balancing what is good, and what doesn’t seem good at the moment, but yields valuable lessons later. Stopping to look back, getting the right focus and the true perspective of things. Counting to ten, a hundred, a thousand, whatever is needed. So that, when the day ends, I can feel happy.
Thanks God for another day.
October 22, 2002 at 11:18 am · Filed under Weblogging
After some tweaking, my RSS feeds (1.0, 2.0) validate.
To those subscribed to my RSS 0.91, it’s been changed to a RSS 2.0 feed. I hope everything continues to work.
October 21, 2002 at 6:11 pm · Filed under Funny / Weird
Useless Information: “Stuff you never needed to know but your life would be incomplete without.”
October 21, 2002 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Software Development
Today I went through one of those debugging nightmares that happen now and then to all programmers.
Due to a company policy, we use ASP at work. Although it’s a dated language, which should have been buried long ago, we have a partnership with Microsoft, and until .NET is widely used, we will stick with ASP.
So, I lost almost two hours today tracking a problem in two routines in an web application written in ASP. It turned out that ASP considers all variables declared in the page to have global scope — a fact which I didn’t notice until much later in the debugging process. I was using a loop-control variable in one of the routines, with the same name as a variable in the page. I forgot to declare the variable in the routine, and you get the picture.
It could happen in other languages, too, with a careless programmer. But ASP is more prone to have those problems because of its weak typing system, lack of proper scoping and error control, even when you try to program defensively.
Arghh!
October 21, 2002 at 10:46 am · Filed under Weblogging
It seems BottomFeeder doesn’t support conditional GETs. Well, I will keep searching.
October 21, 2002 at 10:25 am · Filed under Weblogging
I decide to stop using FeedReader. I’ve been using it for a few months, but it has been to unstable of late. Also, it doesn’t support conditional GET or HEAD requests, which wastes bandwidth on the sites I’m subscribed to.
I’m using AmphetaDesk now, but as I don’t like browser-based approaches, it’s only a temporary solution.
I will try BottomFeeder as soon as I can, but I still need to test whether it supports conditional GETs or HEAD requests or not. It’s a bit unpolished, but may solve my needs.
Anybody knows of other good RSS aggregators and has experiences to share?
October 20, 2002 at 4:15 pm · Filed under Reading
Finished reading “The Other Foot” by Damon Knight. It’s the story of a mind, or body, switch between an alien and a human, due to a failed temporal experiment none of them was aware. The human ends in a cage, to his dispair, while the alien is free.
I didn’t like the book. It tries to be amusing, and fails completely, at least to me. Although the narrative is fast-paced, and easy to read, it seemed too predictable. And I didn’t like the ending either.
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