http://www.g9g.org/?utm_campaign=feeds en-us porter@cerebellion.com 2008-04-22T18:17:26-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2008/04/22/flickr-video.html?utm_campaign=feeds For those of you out there who are complaining that Flickr shouldn’t do video, you are cordially invited to suck it. 52@http://www.g9g.org/ 2008-04-22T18:17:26-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2008/03/29/when-statistics-attack.html?utm_campaign=feeds Dark side of the Google If you hadn’t already noticed Google has gone dark today. In honor of Earth Hour Google’s changed the background color of their home page from its usual white to black. Over on TechCrunch Michael Arrington has been scoffing at how ironic this is: We criticized Google when we first posted about this because, it turns out, black web pages actually may use more power than white ones (based on a study that Google itself cited last year). So Google is, ironically, causing people who visit their site to use more power to celebrate Earth Hour than they would on a normal day. The following is what the post that Arrington references by Bill Weihl on the Official Google Blog has to say: …on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this. So there you have it. A black Google increases the power consumption for 75% of the market, therefore Google going black uses more energy than a white Google. Michael Arrington says so. Google says so. It must be so. Slight problem: There’s no way to draw that conclusion with that amount of information. The critical missing pieces of information are: How much of an increase in power consumption does the black background cause on LCD monitors, and how much of a decrease in power consumption is realized with CRT monitors? The “new study” that Weihl mentions, by Darren Yates of Techlogg.com, comes the closest to providing that information. Yates’s study, while not a rigorously scientific sampling, attributes an average power increase of 0.1 Watts across 23 LCD monitors to the change from white to black, but an average power savings of 10.8 Watts from the 4 CRT monitors tested. If we take these figures as reliable, this means it would take more than 100 LCD monitors to wipe out the energy savings of a single CRT with Google running a black background. In other words, LCD monitor penetration would have to exceed 99% in the market before Google’s move would actually be wasting energy. A little information is a dangerous thing. 51@http://www.g9g.org/ 2008-03-29T14:23:02-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/12/06/aidan-emery-glendinning.html?utm_campaign=feeds Aidan Emery Glendinning Patience apparently does not run in my genes, because late Sunday night our son, Aidan, decided that we’re not the boss of him and that it was time for him to see the world outside. After a few hours in the hospital he was born early Monday morning, and came out screaming to beat the band. Over the last few days he and Laura and I have been getting into our routines, and for the most part he’s been an absolute angel — except for the times he’s decided that mid-diaper-change would be a good time to start pooping. Blowing bubbles from your backside with road tar can hardly be considered good behavior. Right now it looks like we’ll be bringing him home tomorrow, which will be great. The private hospital room is nice and all — it’s even got a couch for me to sleep on so I’m not stuck in a chair — but it’ll be fantastic to sleep in our own bed again. 49@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-12-06T12:25:27-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/11/19/amazon-thinks-my-son-is-a-bastard.html?utm_campaign=feeds Hey Jeff, I know you’re busy chopping kindling and all, but maybe you could take just a few minutes to recognize that children have two parents. You see, my wife created a baby registry on your site, but now she’s the only one who’s allowed to add things to it. Why? You even asked her to enter my name when she created it, and you taunt me with it saying that the registry belongs to both of us right there on the page. But we both know the truth: You just don’t trust me to add items to my own son’s registry. Are you afraid that I’d add a bunch of things that he shouldn’t have? Come on. I know he won’t be old enough for a BB gun for at least four or five years. Or maybe you don’t trust me not to put things on the list that would be more for me than for him, like, say, a new camera. But come on! I’m going to have to take tons of pictures of him. And, geez, you let Laura put a breast pump on there. How’s he going to use that? So come on, Jeff, stop treating me like a deadbeat dad and let me parent my own son. Sincerely, Porter Glendinning 48@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-11-19T23:08:48-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/08/05/i-need-a-new-phone.html?utm_campaign=feeds 47@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-08-05T11:14:06-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/07/08/jason-lee-must-be-stopped.html?utm_campaign=feeds Laura and I went to see Ratatouille this afternoon, and one of the previews before the movie was for a live-action dog movie about a beagle, or some other kind of hound dog, that gains super powers through some sort of lab accident. All at once the horror of what I was seeing struck me: Some miserable so-and-so has crapped all over Underdog and put it on screen. I think I would rather go with Laura to see Becoming Jane and actually watch it than be subjected to this pile of pants. But voicing the lead character in this crime against humanity wasn’t bad enough for Jason Lee. No, he just had to go and star in this abomination. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with us? We take the things we loved as children, turn them into utter garbage and hand them to our kids, and then we wonder why they think we’re all idiots. This isn’t “retro” — it’s “detro.” 46@http://www.g9g.org/ Things that Piss Me Off 2007-07-08T00:25:00-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/06/30/in-case-you-hadnt-noticed.html?utm_campaign=feeds Profile As you might have seen from my photostream already, Laura and I have some rather exciting news. Laura seems to be doing her best to get me used to the idea of being covered in vomit, but so far everything else is looking very good. We’re looking forward to a way better than average Christmas present. 45@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-06-30T17:15:23-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/06/18/web-standards-the-threelegged-race.html?utm_campaign=feeds A few days ago Molly threw a bit of a hand grenade into the community: COMPLETE HTML 4.1, XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 in specs and browsers where applicable CALL for consistent implementation of these most basic specifications in all current browsers and devices to this point WAIT for future HTML, XHTML and CSS implementations until these implementations are complete FOCUS on JavaScript and DOM fixes and implementations as we come up to par with markup and style Now, Molly, you know I love you so I’m going to assume that you were just looking to stir the pot to get people talking about this. I’ll bite. Our industry is engaged in a prolonged three-legged race. On the one side you’ve got the folks building the user agents and on the other the content and application developers. Where the two come together — the composite third leg as it were — is in standards bodies like the W3C. Just as in a real three-legged race if we spend our time fighting against each other neither one of us will get anywhere. We either win together or lose together. The more important parallel in this analogy, however, is that we also will not win the race if both sides lurch and pause in uncoordinated fits and starts. In order for us to move as quickly as possible we need steady, even forward progress from both sides. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the case that others have already made and examine the effect of stopping and waiting for user agents to implement the current language specifications. Let’s even imagine that within the next couple of years a sufficient majority of user agents would have reached this point — hey, we’re imagining, right? The problem with that is that it presumes that the specs the user agents would have implemented are complete and correct themselves, which, I can promise you, they’re not. We would have just spent a couple (more) years catching up to where we thought we wanted to be over a decade earlier. We have built mountains of practical experience in the relatively static period of the last several years; the Web we want now is not the same Web we thought we wanted (or thought we could achieve) back when HTML 4 was being formulated. Getting the current specs fully and consistently implemented would clearly not be a bad thing, but there would certainly be some bad things (or less good things) about it. More importantly, why should we give up any time at all that could be spent incorporating our current understanding of where we want to be heading? If we know the current specs don’t align closely enough with what we’ve come to need from them, why would we not continue to develop them? This isn’t a problem, it’s the way it’s supposed to work. We determine what we think we want, build what we think we need, find where either of the two fall short or go too far, lather, rinse, repeat. It requires cooperation from both sides to keep moving forward. I think Molly’s right that we need user agents to catch up; I just disagree that waiting for them is the best choice for the long run. Or, in the immortal words of Ace of Base, “Everyone everywhere, dance or fade out.” 44@http://www.g9g.org/ Web Development 2007-06-18T12:00:45-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/06/10/ways-not-to-wake-me-up.html?utm_campaign=feeds Not the best way to wake up on a Sunday There are nice ways to be woken up and there are not nice ways of being woken up. My personal favorite way of being woken up is not being woken up at all and Laura knows this, which is why I know there’s something wrong when she wakes me up on a weekend. Usually it’s because Arrow’s ripping up something he shouldn’t be, or is eating something he shouldn’t have been ripping up, or has thrown up something he shouldn’t have eaten. But sometimes it’s truly spectacular. A few years ago Laura came rushing into the bedroom and began shaking me. “There’s a bird in the air conditioner.” Now, my brain did what I’m sure any right-thinking person’s would and assumed that this obviously random arrangement of words was part of some strange dream. “Wake up! There’s a bird in the air conditioner.” “Huh?” No this doesn’t seem to be a dream… I’m being shaken. “There’s a bird in the air conditioner!” “What do you mean, ‘There’s a bird in the air conditioner’?” “I was letting Arrow out in the backyard and there’s a bird stuck in the air conditioner and I’m afraid that the air conditioner is going to turn on and the fan is going to hurt it so you have to come and get it out.” (Yes, it was a pretty healthy run-on.) At this point I was awake enough to figure that there probably was something wrong because my wife is not usually a crazy person. So I went downstairs with her and out into the backyard, and, sure enough, there was a sparrow sitting inside our condensing unit. I still can’t figure out how it got in there; we looked all around the thing and couldn’t find any openings for it to have squeezed through. More to the point, what would have made it think a condenser would be a good place to hang out in the first place? After assessing the situation I went back in to the utility room, grabbed a screwdriver, and turned the A/C system off. Then we removed the top grill from the condenser’s housing, keeping well clear of it in case the bird took off the second the cover came off. But she didn’t, so I had to reach down inside and scoop her out, at which point she was happy to fly away. So this is how I know there’s always going to be fun when Laura wakes me up. This morning it was, “The dishwasher’s running and water’s pouring out under the sink.” “Well, did you turn the water off?” “I don’t know how.” “Turn the dishwasher off.” “It’s running out of the garbage disposal. I have a bucket under it now.” “Yes, but it’s coming from the dishwasher. Turn the dishwasher off.” “Aren’t you happy that my first thought was to come get you?” “I’d be happier if your first thought was to turn the water off.” So after checking that it wasn’t just a drain clog backing things up to the garbage disposal, it looks like we’re not going to be going up to Pennsylvania today after all. Instead we get to go shopping for a new garbage disposal and I get a fun new project. 43@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-06-10T10:30:40-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/04/29/return-to-old-school.html?utm_campaign=feeds You might notice that I’m in the middle of some major design changes here. I’ve decided to go back to a look that will be more familiar to long-time readers. Back when I migrated over to this domain name I had the idea that I would do a series of redesigns using different basic color palettes, so I went from my grayscale + red look to one using primary colors that I never really finished. But I got to missing my old design and decided I wanted to go back and do a refined version of it. I haven’t gotten around to touching absolutely everything in the site yet, but the core stuff is swapped over. Barring a minor change to bring in more photo thumbnails from my Flickr photostream on the home page and tweaks to the code for the Google sponsored links on post pages, everything I’ve done so far has been accomplished simply by providing a new style sheet for the site. I’ll probably go beyond that at some point; at the very least I need to swap out the logo for one that’s anti-aliased against a pure white background — or maybe for a transparent PNG so I don’t have to swap it out again. Anyway, enough geeking out for now. We now return you to your regularly scheduled crickets chirping. 41@http://www.g9g.org/ About the Blog 2007-04-29T23:32:41-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2007/03/11/back-in-austin.html?utm_campaign=feeds I’m back at SXSW again this year — getting caught up with everyone and enjoying some good panels and parties. I would have posted sooner, but the Internet connection here’s a bit like the port-a-johns at an outdoor concert and the hotel’s connection was no better until today. I’ve been able to throw a few pics up onto Flickr, though. As usual, that’s a better way to see what I’m up to than waiting for me to get around to posting here. If you want more frequent (if not more more trivial) updates you can find me on Twitter. 40@http://www.g9g.org/ 2007-03-11T11:55:38-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2006/12/06/search-terms.html?utm_campaign=feeds I was looking through my server logs yesterday and checking out the search terms people coming to my site from search engines had used. It’s always good for a chuckle — yes, if you’re a big geek like me. One of the queries jumped out at me this time, though: my husband doesn’t love me. I did a quick Google search myself and, sure enough, my home page was listed at #44. Now, up until a couple sentences ago my blog didn’t even use the term “husband,” but likely I still rank on the term because of all the links from my wife’s site that point to me. I’m not sure which is more disturbing, really… that my site comes up on that search or that someone was actually doing that Google search. 38@http://www.g9g.org/ 2006-12-06T09:41:47-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2006/11/14/a-year-ago.html?utm_campaign=feeds Right around this time a year ago I was sitting, about panicked out of my mind but trying desperately to stay calm and stay present, waiting for Laura to be prepped for an emergency C-section. It was pretty clear that the two nurses who were staffing the otherwise empty recovery room where I’d been told to wait hadn’t been briefed on the complete picture of what was happening. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I remember one of them asking me if I was excited and me explaining that I was more nervous than excited considering that my wife wasn’t supposed to be due for another three months. That was when the entire mood in the room changed. Excellent. Now they could panic with me. One of the nurses pulled out this secret-decoder-ring-type cardboard wheel thingamajig that would calculate the baby’s approximate size and weight based on the original due date we’d been told. Thinking back on it now, I’m not exactly sure how this was supposed to make me feel any better, but at the time I didn’t mind so much. Maybe I was already so saturated with worry that I simply couldn’t take on any more. I think you could have told me that robots from outer space were landing outside and killing everyone in sight and I wouldn’t have cared—that is, of course, if I even would have recognized the sounds coming out of your mouth as words strung together into sentences at that point. In many ways it doesn’t seem like a year could possibly have passed already; these feelings all still feel so fresh. But in other ways it feels like these things all happened in another lifetime. When fear turns to relief it’s easy to relax again, but when fear turns to grief where are these emotions supposed to go? The same perfect little man who so infinitely expanded my ability to love has left me with no earthly outlet for that love. I don’t feel empty—I feel overfull… All the things I wanted to be able to share with him are just pent up scratching, sometimes screaming for someplace to go. The same memories that hold the purest joy I’ve ever known bring with them more pain than I thought possible. This is the knowledge of Good and Evil. 37@http://www.g9g.org/ 2006-11-14T19:53:17-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2006/10/27/goodbye-vacation-buzz.html?utm_campaign=feeds You know that nice relaxed feeling you get after a good, long vacation? Yeah, that’s long gone. I think it might have actually lasted all of two days back at work. Laura and I had a fantastic time in Ireland. In two weeks we made it around almost the whole island. You can check out my whole Flickr set from the trip to see more. Laura’s posted hers too. Also, if you’re so inclined, you can vote for two of my Ireland shots in the themes for Issue 8 of JPG Magazine: 36@http://www.g9g.org/ 2006-10-27T16:05:27-05:00 http://www.g9g.org/backblog/2006/09/26/off-to-ireland.html?utm_campaign=feeds Laura with the beasts Laura and I are off for two weeks vacation. We’ve just rented a car and are driving around the west of Ireland. Right now, we’re in a little cafe in Lahinch that has free wireless Internet. Hopefully we’ll find some more places on our trip where I can post more pictures. Keep an eye on my Flickr photostream to keep up with us. 35@http://www.g9g.org/ 2006-09-26T11:44:02-05:00