Solitude 

Tim Bray: Someone I have great respect for. His work on XML and searching (the On Search series) is fantastic; the latter seriously influencing my own developing search tool for this site.

However, his link text is terrible. Look at this table of contents for OnSearch. Ouch. He uses the word “this” as the sole link text 3 times (for 3 different articles), the word “here”, and various other bits of link text that require context (”this chapter”, “herewith”).

His headers for each section are exactly what should be used as link text. They describe the article being linked to in a short phrase, without being repetitive. They’re far more accessible than the current links.

My mobile phone is very basic. There, I said it. It doesn’t have polyphonic ringtones (or even customisable ringtones), video messaging, downloadable java games, or interchangeable fascias. I know it’s almost a crime in certain places to not have a phone that is on the bleeding edge of technology, and that’s why I’ve admitted my guilt

However, my reasons for not getting all these features is simple: I don’t want to spend money so I can continue to spend money.

Think about the above features (and most others being added to modern mobiles). While they might be great ideas (or not), they all involve paying out more money to use them. You pay X amount for every game, video message, ringtone or fascia you want. So you pay to have a phone equipped with the feature and then more to use it. Why, thank you mobile companies for recognising my plight: I had all that money going to waste.

The truth is that there are features that I want in a mobile phone. Useful features that, unfortunately, won’t earn the communications companies any extra revenue per usage. As far as I’m aware, these features don’t currently exist:

1. A USB port - This is key to the whole thing. I want a USB port shoved on the side of my phone to be able to access the SIM card. Reasons for this will be more apparent in a moment, but access to a cheap widely available port is necessary.
2. A synchronisable address book - Ever lost a friends details or new number when changing phone? The ability to synchronise number between your SIM card and PC would be invaluable to do this. With the right software and the press of a button you could easily be keeping up to date. In fact, store in the right format and you could use the same information for your phone, mail client, LDAP server etc.
3. SMS message transfers - How many times has your SIM’s inbox been full? On most phones, you can expect around 20 message slots (although this varies wildly). Once you save all those nice messages from your significant other, funny stuff from friends, and other potentially important messages, you’ve potentially stuffed or limited the available slots on your phone. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could transfer them all to your computer for posterity, thereby storing them forever without hogging up your phone? I think so. Perhaps of less value, but still good, would be the ability to prepare a message on a small notepad program on your PC and transfer it for transmission on your phone. Spell checking, no limits on your keyboard, and an endless number of editors.
4. Dictionary updating - I’d kill for the ability to add words to my phones predictive texting dictionary. There are so many words that I use that aren’t in the standard dictionary because not many people need them. Place names are generally very localised, but common within that region. If I could simply add them to the dictionary via my PC, I could potentially save hours of time per year lost when trying to mung them together using predicted text blocks. Very useful, and that’s without getting onto slightly more radical ideas like passing local words around local network cells.

These are the features I’d pay more money for. Simple things, yes. Powerful, certainly. Will it happen? Not while the companies don’t see any more money from it.

I have a new favourite CSS Zen Garden design: Hedges. Very funky, cartoon-type stuff.

A lot of the new entries are worth a look. Not too take away from the excellent previous entries, but the newer ones seem to be a generation ahead. Good stuff.

This is (very) old news, but Eric Meyer’s Color Blender is helping me a great deal on the redesign of my site.

I’ve done about 5 different beta designs: each one taking about 20 minutes from getting a clear idea in my head. The first 4 were scrapped for varying reasons (from “crap” to “too bright”). The last one though, I think this is a keeper. Not as bold as this design, but a lot more relaxed. Fits in more with my idea of the site’s title, Solitude.

I think relics of the previous designs have crept in (”Keep the best, throw away the rest, repeat till complete”), but this one is a lot more distinct. I’d probably say it’s quite Anti-pixel influenced. Make of that what you will.

The second album by Biffy Clyro took only one day to record, yet sounds as highly produced as any other modern rock album. Titled “The Vertigo Of Bliss“, it is not as immediately catchy as their previous efforts but the pay-off comes in the long term.

After a few listenings, it becomes clear that it’s a more mature album with enough hooked chorus to make each song of anthemic proportions. All I can do is recommend it, and their previous album “Blackened Sky“. Fantastic stuff.

There are a few styles of blog posts. Note: this is not a comprehensive list.

• Personal - Posts about the writers personal life. I tend to avoid these as much as possible.
• Subject-based - Take a subject (film, music, web design etc) and write about it, or a subset thereof (a particular film, song, technique etc). I do a fair few in this style, and always have.
• Link-based - A collection of links to other interesting stuff on the net, maybe with a small amount of commentary. This is what the rest of this post is about.

When I started this site, there were practically no link-based posts. I didn’t really think them to have much value, preferring to add something to the blogosphere rather than just passing on other information.

A while ago, I realised this was a mistake. There is nothing wrong with being a conduit for useful entries. In fact, it’s one of the biggest contributions you can make to the blogosphere. By the simple act of linking to something you find interesting or useful, you help bind the web and allow others to discover articles that they find interesting. As link theory suggests, the more people linking to something, the more people will see it. This effect rises exponentially.

So really, there is no shame in having links based posts. You’re just doing your part to keep everything fresh and good. Nice work!

Simon Willison has been talking about comment authentication, even building a prototype (which seems to act a little flaky to me - but it is just a prototype). I like the idea, but it will always have trust issues and currently has a reasonably high entry barrier.

For one, you have to trust the server doing the authentication work and storage. If it is comprimised (either by the human running it or through technical means), then the whole system becomes worthless. This is obviously a big concern for such a comment authentication system, and one which is very difficult to overcome (although, I’m pretty sure Simon can be trusted).

The current implementation, however, has a high barrier entry. It requires that a person has an email address and control of a website. The former is not so much a problem, but the latter is. How many web users actually have a website? I’d imagine it’s a fairly small percentage. On this, the system severely falls down.

I’ll keep watching this one for when I eventually provide comments (hopefully not as far away as it could be).

Double Whammy has some promising ingredients; a lead played by Denis Leary, and support from Steve Buscemi. There are also some very poor ingredients: Liz Hurley, “quirky” characters, a half-baked plot, and plot strands that don’t really go anywhere.

Although the preparation is well-done, the film seems to have gone flat somewhere in the middle. Rather than do something well, it tries to cater for everyone; which just doesn’t work. Those plot strands I mentioned earlier? Too many things going on that are only half done, some quite disconcerting in their lack of conclusion.

For example, a rival cop gets suspicious about a suspect’s credibility (he says as much). It’s obvious that he would do some investigation into the matter. Do we see it or hear anything about it again? No. Very annoying.

It didn’t have to be like this. Rather than slow bake everything haphazardly, one or two elements could have been done to perfection. It’s a true shame that the better bits didn’t get a chance to simmer through, because this could’ve been a great film.

Buffalo Soldiers begins a bit like a very dark version of Sergeant Bilko: soldiers bored in the army getting up to various scams behind the backs of the incompetent commander, until someone new arrives and tries to catch them. But with drugs, guns and industrial cleaner replacing the odd poker game.

It’s funny, and well-paced, with only a very discontinuities.

The biggest problem, as with many modern films, is the insistence on a happy ending. There’s a very clear, obvious and satisfying ending that gets stepped over to provide that Hollywood happiness that seems to be essential to film makers these days. The film suffers for it.

I apologise to everyone for this post: it is, as the title says, pointless. It’s for me to get a few things down now as a time marker. Feel free to read no further.

Today, I came closer than I’ve come before to getting fired. I didn’t do anything majorly wrong, just a few different small things working against me; mostly out of my control. Although, perhaps it was just unjustified worrying.

Either I’m spending more time online (summer holidays, after all) or people are updating far less (perhaps both), because I go through my rather substantial list of sites to visit every day now; it used to take a fortnight at least, with various sites being visited with varying frequency.

I’ve finally loaded my archive into Feedster. I don’t think it has been indexed yet though, since I can’t seem to find anything after using lines of text directly from old entries. Oh well.

Thunderbird is officially a great mail client. It is now my default.

I’m in the middle of redesigning my site and keep hitting walls. I’ve tried art deco style blocks of colour, shades of minty green, and a few other things. They all seem like great ideas in my head, but don’t pan out. Very frustrating.