Thinkcage

Kurt Wenner’s work has been making the rounds for the past few weeks and each time I receive a link I am even more amazed.

Wenner is a street artist who “paints” in chalk in public areas. His subject matter leans to the classical but it is his mastery of geometry and perspective that is so fascinating. His paintings display an astonishing level of vision that I have never seen before. Images of classical figures and scenes appear to be fully three dimensional as if carved from and climbing out of the surfaces upon which they are rendered.

Even as an artist I am baffled about how one could possibly create these images in a perfect and perfectly unusual perspective. Truly amazing. I highly recommend spending time looking at his work online.

The Mac-faithful no doubt know that Apple upgraded their Safari web-browser to version 1.2 last week, and the usual cries of outrage soon followed as some users soon discovered that it was a Panther-only upgrade not available to users who had not bought the latest version of OS X.

Many assumed this was part of Apple’s strategy of the annual fee, that is, releasing a new version of the OS on a yearly basis for $130. Many Mac users feel like its almost a rental of the OS, a fee to keep current and many, like myself, think it’s a fair trade. However, Apple’s response to the outcry as reported by MacWorld UK is quite different:

Apple says: “Safari 1.2 has been designed to leverage advances in Panther not present in the Jaguar release of Mac OS X. These Panther technologies are needed to deliver Safari v1.2’s most significant improvements. For example, personal certificate support is made possible by Panther-specific security technologies that are simply not available on Jaguar.”

The company explains that is does in fact continue to offer support for the Jaguar-friendly Safari 1.0: “Safari v1.0 continues to be available for customers running on Jaguar-based systems and has recently been updated with the latest security improvements,” it points out.

Essentially, Apple explains that the browser is so tightly integrated into the OS that it is not possible to offer a version for the previous OS. Sound familiar? A key argument in Microsoft’s long-running anti-trust case has been that IE was an integral part of Windows and could not be completely removed.

So, what is happening here? Is Apple pulling a Microsoft and using their OS dominance to ensure that all Mac-users use Safari and continually buy paid upgrades? Or is this idea better related to Microsoft’s recent announcement that they were ending stand-alone development of their Internet Explorer browser? Essentially both makers are saying the same thing: you have to upgrade (buy) the OS to get the latest version of included software.

As a web designer, this has several points of interest. For one, it could potentially simplify web development as the number of browsers and versions that have to be supported would most likely dwindle. It would be convenient to know that a user running Windows version x.x has y capabilities and Mac user running OS X version z.z has xy capabilities.

While that might be convenient, another point worth noting is that only updating browser features (and potentially bugs) with an OS upgrade is a very slow process. Already Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is several years old and the next version is not scheduled to appear until it is released with the next version of Windows, speculated to see the light of day in 2005 or 2006. That is a long time to wait for fixes to well-documented rendering bugs and other failings of this market-leading browser. Even Apple’s annual upgrade is too infrequent in the current world of web development where a single browser non-conformity can hold back the state of development for years, despite only affecting a small percentage of users. (Any developers still supporting Netscape 4.x know what I mean?) And that is not to speak of upgrade rates and adoption, which can take years. In fact, Windows XP which was released in October 2001 still does not have the majority of OS version share among Microsoft users. Similarly, Mac OS X cannot boast more users than its previous version despite three years of trying.

While the prospect of an OS where the web browser is no longer a stand-alone application has some appeal, the reality is it will likely retard an already slow-developing web. What we can do as developers, is make sure that content is browser independent and make browser/OS versioning irrelevant.

Well another Super Bowl has come and gone. Another game has passed that didn’t live up to the massive hype. Sure, after sitting through the defensive struggle of the first half of the game it did get interesting, but I still didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

For me, I think the biggest disappointment was the CBS broadcast coverage of the event. Everything about it felt contrived and out of style. From the personalities and attire of the broadcasters (Phil Simms and Greg Gumbel) who wore khaki pants, black blazers, white shirts, and shiny Regis-style pink ties; to the cheesy on-air graphics. Every part was a shadow of the show Fox put on for last year’s event. While fox is generally guilty of over doing the techno-metal robo-graphics theme, in general, their graphics are more modern and interesting. CBS, please stop using blue gradients. Seriously. And that is to say nothing of the on-air personalities on their crew—especially on the halftime studio show.

The other thing that bothered me was the feel of the game itself. I don’t know if it was the CBS coverage, the endless periphery, or something else, but the game just didn’t feel right. I think in general the Super Bowl pales in comparison to the conference championship games in delivering that gritty intensity of a do-or-die, a must win game. I just did not get that here.

Maybe it is because the Packers weren’t there. After all, there are fans of 31 teams that aren’t particularly happy with the outcome of every Super Bowl. Sour grapes, perhaps.

There is a really fascinating story coming in from the London papers this morning… the tale of a baby dragon preserved in a jar of formaldehyde for over a hundred years.

Found by an Oxfordshire man in his garage, the prevailing theory is that it is a clever fake, devised by German scientists in the late 19th century to out do rival English scientists. Speculation is that it is made of rubber or wax but it has reportedly not been opened, x-rayed, or examined yet so I suppose there is also the possibility that it is real.

Photos like this one show a very detailed, miniature dragon in a tall glass jar. Witnesses have described the intricate detail of claws, teeth, and even the umbilical cord.

Likely its a clever fake and we’ll never hear of it again, but I’ve always been one who believed that many of these types of legends have some basis in fact. Perhaps there is a lost fantastic reptile that gives the dragon its name.

I have kept a pretty close eye on the Lego Master Builder Contest over the past few weeks as they held regional contests to fill a seventh U.S. Master Builder position in their California Legoland theme park. The contestants were each competing for what many would consider a dream job, despite the fact that it was really a $13-$15 per hour job in California. I’m not so sure that is a very good wage in the golden state.

Still, my imagination has soared thinking about it. As a child, Lego was my favorite toy. I spent hours upon hours building from my imagination and I consider this a very strong foundation for my creativity to this day. The continual problem-solving, designing, adjusting, invention of building with Lego parallels so closely what I do in web and graphic design. So much of HTML and CSS, especially, is tied to tinkering and tweaking; you have a set of pieces and must push yourself to find new forms with that limited set. Sure, every now and then you get a freebie like a molded plastic windshield (akin to a well thought out CSS hack perhaps) that makes life easier but each new piece brings possibilities and limits. To think about a job or career that consisted of playing with Lego(s) is a fantastic thing.

Today, I have passed my well cared for Lego collection to my son. He is seven years old and we sit down together and build at least one evening a week. Its fun for him and a bit therapeutic for me after a long day at work.

Here are a couple of good reads on the contest:

• Slashdot discussion
• Livejournal of a contestant
• Wired News article with photos of the final

The glaring deviation from the typical blog format that this site has been guilty of is the lack of a comments function. Its a one-way street. I write, you read; the end.

But all that is about to change. I finally got around to coding a comments system. Astute readers might have already noticed the comments link at the bottom of each post which can be used to read and add comments to each. I have done some limited testing and everything seems to be a go, but I’m sure some bugs will creep up here and there. So comment away, and let me know if you break it.

Coding the function was easier than I expected and only took a few hours. I was pleasantly surprised that PHP made many of the things I was unsure about how to implement (like stripping HTML from posts) a breeze. I still need to code the admin side which will allow me to stifle the free speech of those who would make an inappropriate comment or otherwise abuse the system, but I suppose I can delete from the database for the time being should anything like that occur.

All said, coding my own weblog and content management system has been a great learning process and I am really glad I decided to take this road rather than implementing a stock solution like Moveable Type. I will say it again, I have no doubts that MT is a great product but I felt and still feel that my time was better spent learning to build what I needed from scratch rather than learning how to use someone else’s software. And much of what I learned has carried over into my clients’ sites. Very much a win-win.

Future plans? There is not much more that I want to do with the system at this point but there are a few things I may try down the road for the purpose of challenging myself if nothing else. I think categorization of the posts would be nice and probably not very difficult. Additionally, some more robust GD tools would be nice for uploading images to the portfolio section, and along the same lines, tighter integration between the moblog and weblog—perhaps even a full combining of the two. I also have this need to try a Flash version. The goal would be to use the same database (and images in the case of the portfolio) to display the same content via a Flash interface. Theoretically, it seems possible but I haven’t tried it yet. The last thing I would like to try would be a full optimization of the code; creating re-useable functions, making it more easily configurable and installable so that I could distribute it.

I think it is worth a shot.