On The Drift: Archive

Leave Tim Tebow alone

Yes, yes, the Denver Broncos lost to the New England Patriots. And yes, Tim Tebow has a history of throwing his piety in people’s faces. And while you could say that Tebow is a hypocrite for his overt religious displays, you could also say that he’s being entirely consistent. Big books written by many authors over hundreds of years are funny that way. Regardless, Tebow’s...

Jan 16th

The Mac OS X Lion address book UI refresh: FAIL

Having belatedly upgraded to Mac OS X Lion, I’ve recently been encountering some of the newer features and tweaks. One of the more unwelcome has come in the form of the new UI for Address Book. The “window” for Address Book is now a 3-page “book”, one page for the list of contact groups, one page for the list of contacts, and one page for contact detail. It even has...

Oct 31st

6 tags

Simulating colspan with CSS in a fluid layout,...

This is a supplement to the first part of a five-part series of posts that detail my adventures in trying to achieve a colspan effect with the elements of a CSS layout. The posts follow this rough outline: table trouble script solutions Opera issues subpixel issues conclusions Recap In the previous post, I introduced some of the challenges in trying to achieve a colspan effect when applying...

Aug 5th

2 notes

6 tags

Simulating colspan with CSS in a fluid layout,...

This is the first of a five-part series of posts that detail my adventures in trying to achieve a colspan effect with the elements of a CSS layout. The posts follow this rough outline: table trouble script solutions opera issues subpixel issues conclusions Introduction An HTML table element is used to define a tabular structure, whereas a CSS table display is used to define a tabular...

Jul 21st

2 notes

6 tags

Use CSS to Specify the Aspect Ratio of a Fluid...

This technique can be used to specify the aspect ratio of a fluid element using only CSS, no JavaScript or placeholder image required. By “fluid element”, I mean an element that can be dynamically resized. This requires that the width of the element be specified, and that the height of the element be expressed as a function of the width (or vice versa, though here the width must be...

Jul 7th

9 notes

Google Chrome: Two Steps Back

I navigate a sequence of pages A » B » C in Google Chrome (11.0.696.71). While on page C, nearly every time I navigate back, page B appears for a flicker and then page C reappears. Navigating back again brings me to page A. Subsequently navigating forward brings me again to page C, effectively losing page B (the page I actually want). This makes Chrome practically unusable for...

Jun 5th

The Palin-Obama false equivalence

Recently, @TheDailyShow launched the #AccordingToPalin Twitter meme after Sarah Palin’s gaffe about the mythos of Paul Revere. I admit to finding many of the tweets funny, even though the campaign is mean-spirited. While the degree to which she erred is debatable, one theme that keeps popping up on Twitter and the blogs is the false equivalence of Palin’s gaffe and a specific one made...

Jun 5th

5 tags

Sarah Palin's Presidential Gambit

I don’t make many political predictions, and of those that I’ve made my track record is maybe 50/50. However, I am confident in making the following prediction: Sarah Palin is not going to run for President in 2012. I’m leaving myself a large amount of wiggle room, here. I define “run for President” as meaning that you intend to be President. So, Sarah Palin could...

May 28th

Dear @Twitter iPhone app: For the sake of being open-minded, I’ve tried living with the #dickbar, but I just can’t do it forever. I’m sure that you did eye-tracking studies on the old UI and determined that the typical user’s gaze is squarely beneath the navigation bar 90% of the time when using the app. I can understand thinking that this is a good place to put trending...

Mar 8th

6 tags

Why Requiring Photo ID to Vote Is a Wrong Solution

A friend of mine recently asked, rhetorically I presume, what could be the downside of requiring someone to show ID when voting? A little bit of background for context: Over the past couple of years, the integrity of voting in Minnesota has been impugned by a parade of dubiously named organization, including Minnesota Majority and Minnesota Voting Alliance. These groups charge large-scale voter...

Jan 28th

5 notes

Dec 26th

Wow, get in the game, #google. http://tcrn.ch/ggqg2z You can’t possibly underestimate the importance of emerging social to search and ad revenue. Hurry with Google+1 or FacedIn will crush you after it purchases Baidu with its walking-around money.

Dec 20th

The Java slap fight…now with more money straps

Myriad picks up a bank bundle and joins the fray. This feels like a trial balloon for Google, particularly with the shared law firm, though Apache would likely be the larger beneficiary. At this point, the strategy of the anti-JCP coalition (for lack of a better label) seems to be injecting uncertainty into the Java ecosystem until Oracle cries “uncle”, lest one of its most visible...

Dec 14th

Next year’s #linkedin overused words & phrases to include the tortured synonym “oodles of experience”

Dec 14th

Apache resigns from the JCP EC

This is hardly unexpected. After Apache issued its challenge to Oracle, it was all but a foregone conclusion that the Java SE 7 would be approved. I think it disingenuous to simply label the “aye” votes cowardly, however. My opinion is that the Java ecosystem was at serious risk in the absence of Oracle dispersing some of the ambiguity. While the justifications for the...

Dec 10th

Selective versus nonselective franchise

With the number of security clearances in the millions, I have to wonder what percentage of US citizens hold such a clearance. What percentage of the population has the government determined to be worthy of having access to additional information? More interestingly, though, is what percentage would make me uncomfortable. Ten percent?, Fifty, or sixty percent? How about ninety percent? At what...

Dec 8th

Governments man tells me that #wikileaks has Medusa content, but I can’t know whether I’ll turn to stone until I look

Dec 3rd

1 note

#wikileaks dns troubles

With the loss of its DNS, WikiLeaks has moved to Switzerland (source: @mpoppel). This raises a few interesting issues, not the least of which is the contention between freedom and secrecy. But is the fight fixed? If the publication of content expresses freedom, and the suppression of content expresses secrecy, the media of publication become points of control. It seems to me that freedom is...

Dec 3rd

Eclipse project model #fail

Seems my years-old problem configuring #subversion controlled subdirs of an #Eclipse project dir is surfacing for others

Nov 30th

How much is a post worth?

What effect would sub-one-cent micropayments have on social sharing?

Nov 29th