Archive for August, 2000
Netscape 6 can’t even get the basics right
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This is what my archer logo looks like under Netscape 6.
But at least I’m not alone here. |
I’ve read some reviews of Netscape 6 that blast it for its slow performance and lack of stability. So, I downloaded it and, yeah, it’s slow and crashy, but there’s another, more basic problem with this browser.
It doesn’t display tables properly.
Now, you’d think they would iron out a bug like that pretty early on in the development process, but there it is, in the final release.
I’m not too pleased with IE 5.5, either. The animated globe icon that is supposed to spin while the page is loading will just stop, while the page is still loading. And the status bar reads “Done.”
This might seem like picking nits, but the first few times this happened I thought the browser had crashed or my connection had timed out.
Feedback from the computer telling you it’s still working is important. That’s why all the operating systems have hourglasses or spinning disks or something to tell you that it’s still working.
So, I’m not too thrilled with the latest version of either of the major browsers. But I’ll stick with IE 5.5 as my main browser, if only because I have a feeling that trying to downgrade to IE 5.0 would be a major headache. Microsoft doesn’t seem to realize that we might want to have older versions of their browser for testing purposes.
Listen to me on todradio.com
The episode of todradio.com with my rant on it is up and on-line. This version has all the music and whiz-bang sound effects that the good folx at CBC Vancouver added. You can listen to it from here in both mp3 and RealAudio. (My bit leads off the show in Part 1.)
Johnny rants nation-wide
Well, that was pretty damn cool. I just made my debut on a radio station that reaches beyond Barrington Street.
The most excellent CBC radio show todradio.com aired a rant on Internet advertsing I did for them. In fact, they led off the show with it.
I sent them a recording I did on my computer, voice only, but they souped it up with wicked production values. As soon as they put it on-line I’ll link to it.
In the meantime, you can listen to the mp3 I sent them:
| Title | Run time | Type | Air date | Listen | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webwasher rant for todradio.com | 2:22 | Commentary | August 15, 2000 |  |
Bearing with a tragedy.
Like nearly everyone in Toronto, I was shocked when I heard about Suzanne Killinger-Johnson’s attempt to kill herself and her baby by jumping in front of a TTC subway train.
But I am very puzzled by how some people react to this kind of tragedy: by constructing make-shift shrines of flowers and teddy bears at the site. It sounds like a headline on The Onion:
Tragic death of child met with public out-pouring of stuffed animals.
I understand people wanting to make some kind of symbolic gesture, to help them cope, to try to make sense of an event that leaves even the newspapers wondering “Why?”
But why the spontaneous temple of plush? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make a donation to a women’s shelter or a mental health association? Is the public display really necessary?
Well, I guess each of us has his or her own way of grieving. Maybe some people think that the widely-publicized violent death of child wouldn’t be complete without the next-morning front-page photo of the teddy bear wake.
Retro gaming in the news
I don’t own a television. But considering what the hottest trend going on TV is, I’m kind of glad.
It’s not that I wouldn’t watch these “reality” shows; I probably would. That’s the thing. I can just imagine myself wasting all that time engrossed in the “lives” of these non-people. I’m just that sick.
Anyway, Salon does such a good job of summarizing (with tongue firmly in cheek) every episode of both Survivor and Big Brother that I don’t feel the need to watch. And I’ve heard that watching the live on-line Big Brother cams is a lot more interesting than watching the TV show.
I wrote an article about movie musicals in the MiSC. section of the Queen’s Journal in 1998. This was way back before anyone on this continent had heard of stranding people on an island and sicking cameras on them. In that article, I put forward the idea that a resurgence of musicals was on the way because people were tired of all the “reality” on television.
Well, the exact opposite happened, but that can only mean the backlash will be that much harder, right? We can’t watch mind-numbingly dull people humiliate themselves on national TV forever, can we?
Something’s rotten, alright.
I just saw the latest movie treatment of Hamlet, starring Ethan Hawke, and I was pretty disappointed. It’s a very, very sloppy movie. I lost count of the number of bad edits and boom microphone appearances.
I went to see it because I heard that Hawke performs the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in a Blockbuster. I decided that was something I wanted to see. I’m glad I did, too, because I’m pretty sure I saw a copy of Outrageous Fortune in the background just as he starts that speech. Nice touch.
Bill Murray is great as Polonius, offering comic relief without hamming it up. Julia Stiles brings cool teenage detachment to Ophelia. But Hawke’s film-school-student Hamlet never quite comes together. Despite all of his procrastination, I don’t think Hamlet should be played as a Gen-X slacker.
And, dammit, why can’t they just talk like normal people, for Pete’s sake? 