General

I have been trying to reduce distractions in my computing environment lately. Apparently, our brains aren’t wired properly for task switching: …research has also found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory. I spend a lot of time in front of my computer every day. I discovered that over time, I have added so much attention-stealing stuff to my main work environment that I feel constantly interrupted. You get growl notifications, tweets, new email sounds, new email icons, RSS feed notifications and IM alerts. When you are reading stuff on the web you are constantly bugged by the latest in advertising technology. ...

My son has the dubious pleasure of being the primary beta tester of T-shirt messages. This time it is the first draft of the model that will be called “Ballmer”. Turned out pretty OK…

Spring is in the air and it is time to start using the balcony. Currently it is in a state of decay and mainly used to store old furniture. I am out of ideas what to make of it. Can you help? Measurements below.

This pretty much speaks for itself. If I am not mistaken our own packet pro Patrik Fältström is visible in the audience at the end of the clip.

Via Tim Bray’s blog I found zestyping’s “Why PHP should never be taught”. In it he provides some interesting PHP code that will be difficult for beginners to understand. 1 $a = 0; $b = "eggs"; $c = "spam"; yields: 1 2 3 4 5 6 a == b b != c a == c a == d b != d c != d (Please note that d hasn’t been defined). In the comments, people freak out and tell him that this behaviour is defined in the documentation. I guess that makes it even worse. ...

Please note the video progress bar. Via Jim Carlberg’s Finstilt.se.

I am guessing this would be a valuable addition to web browsers in the future. With this technique it is easy to target an image for viewing in multiple displays (e.g. a 4:3 screen or a 16:9 TV). “Seam carving” allows an image to be resized non-uniformly, so you can change the height to width ratio in the image without cropping, but also without distorting important features in the image (such as faces). ...

I have received an increasing number of advertising inquiries from MySpace layout sites. Apparently the term “MySpace layouts” is a very popular search term these days. Looking at the default MySpace layouts one can unserstand why. I am confident that they didn’t hire a designer to create the default MySpace look and feel. Looking at the MySpace HTML, they certainly didn’t hire a GUI developer. The markup looks like it was ripped from a teenage fan site from the early nineties: ...

So the iPhone is out and the Apple cult followers are going crazy all over the place. Unpacking porn and disassemblies are being posted. When the iPhone was announced I had my doubts about the touch screen keyboard. I had been using a HTC phone for a while and did not really see how they would be able to make a decent touch keyboard. Especially not for us in the norhern hemisphere that use gloves during winter. TUAW is reviewing the touch keyboard and concurs that there is “nothing wrong with the keyboard”. The error seems to be the “meat mittens” of the user. How is that for self criticism? The user is to blame instead of the phone…

So, I was looking for an offer on IP telephony and thus decided to point my browser to one of the larger ISP:s. I get a blank page back (blank as in “all white”). A couple of years ago, this wasn’t uncommon if you were brave enough to use a non-mainstream browser. But today it is 2007. A brief look at the HTML source gives: ...