Marty May 23rd, 2007
If you tuned in yesterday, you may have noticed that this blog (and my site in general) wasn’t quite right. It turns out that my domain - martytdx.com - expired at 9:09 a.m. EST yesterday, and by 12:43 p.m. a placeholder had been established and the domain taken by enom.com. Continue Reading »
Marty February 22nd, 2007
Well, today was one of those “I’ve got good news … and I’ve got bad news” sort of days. But in an effort to be more positive about things, I’m going to try to do what they call in all of those silly ‘Better Management” books, the Oreo Cookie method and sandwich the bad items in between good ones, where possible - or at least look at the bright side when I can. Continue Reading »
Marty February 6th, 2007
Wow, Wal-Mart really screwed the pooch on this one. If you visit their new Video Download beta site, you get a somewhat nice experience - not great, but not too bad - provided you are using Internet Explorer:
If, however, you are using a modern browser such as say, Firefox, your experience is somewhat … shall we say, different?
Notice anything wrong? Obviously, no one mentioned that over 10% of the country uses Firefox, including what might be a disproportionate number of the users who might use a download service like this. Of course, we are talking about Wal-Mart customers…
I sure hope that someone loses their job over this - this is sloppy and a REALLY poor example of what happens when you don’t do proper QA (or use qualified designers). I could go to town on the code itself, but could I really do worse than what they already show here?
Marty January 23rd, 2007
Marty January 17th, 2007
I’ve been using greasemonkey scripts almost as long as I’ve been using Firefox, and I’ve had little to no trouble with them - up until now. Last night, my darling wife suggested that I might like a script for Flickr. It looked pretty nice so I installed it. The next thing I know, I can’t actually CLOSE greasemonkey. Hmm, peculiar but not necessarily that big a deal. I use the big X button to close the window, and then restart Firefox to let the new scripts (there were two related ones, actually) do their things.
What they did wasn’t quite what I had expected. Continue Reading »
Marty January 10th, 2007
And for information on the new iPhone itself, check out the Apple Site
See the iPhone mania
Marty December 28th, 2006
When my wife told me that Adobe was putting out the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta last Friday a few weeks ago (yes, I know - she knew before me), I had a Pavlovian response. So, I kept checking all last Friday day to see when it would (finally) be ready to download. Then, late in the afternoon, it was there and I grabbed a copy. It should be noted that those without a current CS2 license can only try CS3 for 2 days, what is 30-day limit, but those with an authorized copy of CS2 get it for free until the actual release in the spring. Pretty sweet deal, actually. Continue Reading »
Marty December 11th, 2006
There are detractors that say that Microsoft has been following Apple for years, borrowing from their innovations and creating a popularization of that adapted technology - and I would argue, though I usually won’t defend Microsoft, that they did do so, and they did it pretty well. For all of the faults of the Windows platform, there is a reason that it grabbed so much of the market share. However, Apple turned the tide with the introduction of the iPod, dominating the market and putting Microsoft to “also-ran” status. And the introduction of Microsoft’s new digital music player, the Zune is NOT going to unseat Apple any time soon.
For me, Apple’s dominance is partially based on their method of treating ownership of the music (MP3s and MP4’s, mostly) with sane, understandable limits instead of Microsoft’s previously introduced proprietary and draconian DRM-managed .WMA files. The iPod was excellence, its music management and iTunes were genius. While others have tried to compete, adding radios and bigger screens, ability to record and satellite radio, none has come close to dislodging the iPod’s dominance. Enter the Zune and Microsoft’s attempt.
The Zune does have a few nice features (FM Tuner, WiFi networking and more adaptability of the interface screen), but almost immediately starting seeing some bad press. Granted, some people love to disparage Microsoft, but I have a friend who had similar installation problems (if not as severe), so this isn’t just sour grapes.
One thing that I scoffed at from the beginning was the Zune’s continued utilization of DRM and DRM-protected files. I’ve found DRM to be a ridiculous restriction of current Fair Use laws, but the Zune takes it to another level. Having the ability to share files via a WiFi network is a great idea; but it is an idea hampered by the DRM restrictions. You see, unlike the iPod - which does not have the file-sharing ability, wireless or otherwise - you can literally share your music and files with your friends directly on the Zune. However, that sharing of music files is controlled by the “3 plays or 3 days” restriction that locks a file after it is played 3 times or after 72 hours. I have no problem with this as a general rule, particularly with purchased/protected music. But that restriction is universal to all music, even if the material is your own and you don’t extend copyright protection or if it’s free domain stuff; i.e. Microsoft is setting use rights on material that isn’t restricted and they don’t have the right to.
But fear not, ’cause Microsoft and DRM have once again proved laughably fallible. As described on Gizmodo, the solution is as simple as setting the Zune to be recognized as a hard drive, changing the file extensions to .jpg, and shipping the files along with a real .jpg to another user who has also set their Zune to be recognized as a hard drive. They then rename the files back to .mp3 files, and voila - unprotected files.
So, once again an expensive attempt to restrict the consumer unneccessarily through DRM has failed, felled by a decidedly simple and low-tech method. I wish I could say that they’d learn their lesson, but I know better.
Marty December 7th, 2006
I’ve been a fan of fast internet ever since I used my first T1. I might have been a bit young (and naive), but I thought everyone should have one at home (instead of a stinkin’ dial-up). Eventually, when DSL arrived I was one of the first to sign up in my area - only to find out that I wasn’t actually eligible for this nirvana. When I moved in with my future wife, however, I got to enjoy the pleasures of DSL and the speed associated with it.
So, I became a DSL zealot. I dislike Comcast as a rule, and sided with DSL over cable modem whenever asked (and usually when I wasn’t). I explained the differences, and how DSL’s speed was a function of distance (how far you were from the trunk, which was about 2 blocks from us) and cable’s was a function of users (if you’re neighbors want to be online, too, you all get sucky speeds).
We upgraded to high-speed DSL a couple years back, moving up to the blazing 5Mbps speed - which never actually beat about 3Mbps, but that was okay because it was still 4x faster than our old one. Then my wife gave me a surprise this week - we’re getting fiber optics put in, and fiber optics meant I was getting 20Mbps speeds. TWENTY MEGABITS PER SECOND. I think I had a Pavlovian response right on my desk at work.
Coming home last night, I came home and tried it out - indeed, our download speeds are 19.5 - 21.2Mbps, and uploads nearly 5Mpbs, meaning that stuff flies on the web. And Daddy likes that.
Marty November 2nd, 2006
IjAD - Information (Inside joke) Architecture Document
Recently, much of my design work has been involving tools work and CMS, back-end systems, etc. I like the challenge of solving design problems and throwing in U/A standards where I can, but there’s not a whole lot of room for creativity. So, to add a small bit of humor to my designs, I started adding small ‘easter eggs’ (for a lack of a better term).
It’s always subtle things that avoid being overtly ridiculous or NSFW. Must of it has been relegated to finding better usernames: instead of J. User or John Doe, I’ve taken to A. Lien, B. Cirius and D. Lishus. Sometimes it’s a subtle joke word or phrase in the Lorem ipsum… text:
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla ligula ligula, tincidunt vel, insert nifty web twopointoh phrase here gravida ut, gravida consequat, justo. Curabitur sit amet quam ac enim viverra interdum…”
So, aside from amusing myself and the rare notice by anyone else, it’s harmless. But is it professional? I understand that it does have a childish element to it, and that it might be considered so by others, but the outlet after 8 hours of staring at Visio, Dreamweaver and Photoshop is something that I’ve enjoyed.
So, I’m wondering if there are any thoughts out there among the 4 or 5 readers I have about this? Anyone else put in hidden/secret things within their designs? Many artists have done things like this for ages, such as Shepard Fairey and his “Andre the Giant has a posse” graphic which found it’s way into other pieces of art, or the old Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs, who hid his personal Riggs Logo in the drawings of Eddie, Maiden’s mascot. Programmers are notorious for their Easter Eggs, although they are usually hidden; IADs - being a visual medium - aren’t that complex.
I’m just curious how normal this is among IA’s and related design fields.
