Plainly, the human fetus presents a practically unlimited number of utilitarian scenarios.
RMagick installation instructions on OS X. Cliffs Notes version: “Compile everything from source.” In all fairness, though, this worked flawlessly on my new Intel Mac (props to DarwinPorts), and it’s pretty much the only way to do it that actually works.
My MacBook Pro arrived today, ahead of schedule, as if to symbolize how goddamned fast this thing is. It can run laps around my iBook. Everyone who uses one of these has been saying how “snappy” and responsive the interface is — “snappy” is the perfect way to describe it. “Snappy” is one of the things I like about Windows XP, despite all its flaws. If this is the future of OS X, then I’m all for it.
I really don’t know whether Webaroo is useful or not; and, to be honest, it’s not their fault that I suddenly decided this was the last straw. But I’d have to make flash cards and study them for days before I could distinguish between Asoboo, Cluckoo, Gumshoo, Orangoo, Picaboo, Polloo,…
At work, I’ve started to test stuff in IE7 in addition to Firefox and IE6; this has forced me to figure out how to pass certain CSS rules to all versions of IE and nothing else. (Virtually all known CSS hacks for IE have been fixed in version 7.) I know conditional comments are usually the way to go, but what if you need to override just one or two rules? Not worth the trouble of creating a separate stylesheet, in my opinion. After some hunting around just now, I realized that IE’s expression property is what I want: instead of postion: relative; one can do position: expression('relative');. Tell your friends!
My iBook has died. Actually, it’s just got whooping cough, or something like that, and I’m unwilling to expend the energy and/or money to fix it. It’s two years old, and I’ve loved every moment of using it, but a brand‐new MacBook Pro is on its way and should arrive on Tuesday. I’m giddy.
Mark Pilgrim has returned from his blogging sabbatical, which he seemingly spent vacationing off the face of Earth. (Or raising his “child.” Or something.) I’ve missed his rhetoric.
There are exceptions, of course, but the attitude of Ruby on Rails users toward Ruby skeptics or critics has been less than kind. This is a crowd convinced that it has found the ultimate answer to everything, and they are not afraid to let you know. I only have a simple advice for these people: you might be right, but just be humble. It never hurts.
Derek’s tired of “user‐generated content” as a buzzword. In addition to what’s listed here, what pisses me off about this trend is that some startups think that they won’t have to provide any content at all. If your only source of content is the user, then your app’s value is strongly correlated to the size of your userbase. Which means that when you start your application will be worthless. How do you get people to sign up for something that has no worth?
Complexity is slowing Microsoft down. How much of the Windows architecture is dictated by obligations to “compatibility”? (Why do we still use drive letters? “Because that’s how it was in DOS” is an unacceptable answer.) BootCamp makes me think that the next 18 months are going to be really, really good for Apple.