Archive for the ‘Interwang’ Category

Under Destruction

Monday, October 26th, 2009

dedeevatvunderconstruction

It’s hard to shed a tear for the demise of GeoCities, even though I should as it started my web design career.  It’s difficult to mourn that which is long-forgotten, though – it’d be like becoming upset about for my cat who died years ago.

ma_geo_1The truth is that I once had a GeoCities site, but all I recall about it was that the background was black, the URL was impossible to remember, the web FTP interface was unbelievably bad even for those days, and they had some Javascript that stuffed a shuddering GeoCities logo into the bottom-right corner.  I have no idea what it was actually about, and slipping peacefully away into history is the best thing for it.

The Archive Team are to be applauded for their efforts, though.  They’ve rescued all the under construction GIFs that they could possibly find and whacked them on one eye-bleeding page for posterity.  I haven’t seen so much irritating crap in one place since I was last in a Starbucks, so naturally I picked out a few of my faves and archived them here too, y’know, just in case…

MoMotorCity4109construct“More updates to come once I’m back from primary school”

AtAthensTroy1330underconstructodoecran“Who turned out the lights?”

CaCapitolHill1114Under_ConstructionNothing says class like a 3D rotating construction sign (with only one side)

SiSiliconValleyVista2013constructor-indexNothing says “we’re not quite sure what we’re archiving” like saving ancient Javadoc .gifs for posterityTokyoFuji7118constructsonic

Hey, quit ruining my childhood memories!

HeHeartlandForest8728imagesunderconstruction3

This is just a little bit like that Catchphrase episode.CaCapitolHillLobby9717construction

I seriously have absolutely no idea what is meant to be going on here.

Nova1466underconstruction

Believe it or not, this was actually about as reliable as Mac OS 9 dialogs got in my experience.

CaCapeCanaveralGalaxy8999construction1 Achtung!  Awful designen!

thefirepoliceconstruction10

Actually, I know a couple of people who could use this.

I’m Backing Britain

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

imbackingbritain_cvr

They’ve sampled Roger Miller, American sex-education films and John Peel, so you can imagine my glee when I saw this fantastic Brucie Bonus as I took an occasional surf to the weird end of town.  It could only be the Cuban Boys, doing their bit to beat the gloom and doom with a rousing rework of a national anthem from the 60s.

The formula’s pretty simple: Sample ancient song, add tubthumping beat, mix in some sampled guitars, stir and recover.  It’s similar stuff to Every Girl Has  A Volvo yet it manages to surpass even that in so-bad-it’s-good catchiness.  I’ve been stabbing repeat feverishly at the player on their website for the last fifteen minutes.

I’m Backing Britain isn’t yet available from their online store, so camp out until the relevant communicon arrives.  Chalk another up to the Cubans for being the silliest people in pop, or as they put it:

This is not flag-waving nationalism but tea-sipping eccentricity.

Sage-Too is dead, long live Sage++

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

logoA couple of days ago I wrote about using Sage-Too in Firefox 3.5, which has had a rocketing number of hits over the last couple of days.  Nice to know that other people share my taste for the simple plugins in life.

I was going to package up the existing Sage-Too .xpi, but while following the discussion around the net I noticed that Sage-Too has been replaced by Sage++ that runs on 3.5, which as far as I can tell is by one of the Sage-Too authors, Higgmer.

I’ve had it installed for the day or so since I found it, and I can report that it’s working perfectly.  So, for everyone that’s been looking here for a decent RSS reader again, it’s a pleasure to send you over there to Higgmer.

Get Sage++ (Higgmer’s Edition)
(Click “Switch To English” at the top-right, then installation instructions are halfway down)

RSS nirvana restored!  Let me know how you get on.

Finally, a decent alternative to SonicStage – JSymphonic

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I’ve had Sony hardware for years.  Various flavours of MiniDisc came and went – one of them got stolen, another got smashed – and now I have a couple of Network Walkmans sitting about the place.jsymphonic-logo

I don’t use them as much as I should do.  Why?  Sony’s platform-itis.  Whether it’s MiniDisc, ATRAC3 or UMD, they’re determined to lock people into their own software platforms as far as possible.  Apple do this all the time of course, and although I don’t like them either, I will concede that iTunes does for the most part actually work.

Sony’s SonicStage/Sony Connect/OpenMG Jukebox has always been rubbish.  Various grades thereof, but still rubbish.  OpenMG Jukebox used to crash arbitrarily on any MP3 that wasn’t crafted by flaxen-haired audio angels using anvils of the finest mythical diamonds, Sony Connect was slow and only in recent releases has the experience become anywhere near pleasant.

So it was with some rapture that I stumbled across JSymphonic tonight.  Aside from the usual open-source lack of visual polish, and some minor UI confusion (which reading the documentation fixed) it’s been plain sailing. If you’ve got some nice-looking but irritating-to-synchronize devices hanging around, then I heartily recommend using this to rediscover them – my Network Walkman is happily charging away for the first time this year.

*groan*

Friday, May 8th, 2009

No time for an exciting update today, so here instead is that rare of things, a funny “Motivator”:

well_well_well

Sorry.