A-List B-Movies: Chronicle Of Greatness 
1 Comment
It’s been a while since I chronicled my top movies and while I still pretty much stand by that list (Okay, so Rambo 1 and The Day The Earth Stood Still deserved more), I remember deciding to myself that movies should be rated on watchability as well as greatness. So step out of your french art-house-critic suit for a moment and smell the burnt celluloid; some movies, bad movies, are just awesome. That’s what we call A-list B-movies.
Directors, actors, effects-people, you who are about to be listed, I salute you.
1 means awesome, 2 is awesomer and 3 is awesomest.
- Time Cop, Zardoz, Braindead, Cobra, Death Race 2000, Judge Dredd, Soldier, Mortal Kombat, Masters Of The Universe, Total Recall, The Lawnmower Man, Commando
- Escape From L.A., Leviathan, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, The Last Dragon, American Ninja, Bloodsport, Highlander 2, Soylent Green
- Forbidden Planet, The Running Man, Escape From New York, Cherry 2000, Westworld, Logans Run, Outland, Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun
To make this list extra handy for your next hot-pockets powered get-together, here’s a really quick checklist to let you know when you’re watching an A-List B-Movie:
- It features an action hero that says “He had to split” after sawing a man in two or “He blew a fuse” after electrocuting him.
- Smoking is allowed aboard the space ship.
- Sidekicks proclaim: “I’m not your buddy, pal!”
- Features green milk.
- Has a montage to either of these fine songs: “Live to win”, “Fight for love”, “Push it to the limit”, “You’re the best”, “Eye of the tiger” or “Hearts on fire”.
By the way, despite being a highly exact science, somehow everyone inherently knows how to enjoy B-movies. With that in mind, please educate me on which B-movies I haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching. Pings and discussion are open. Oh, and please: no Uwe Boll movies; they set the standard against which all badness is measured. I leave you with Hearts on Fire by John Cafferty:
Service Announcement: Adblock Discontinued, Upgrade To Adblock Plus 
Comment
Users of Adblock should upgrade to Adblock Plus. This should solve a number of problems with Flash not showing up. Adblock has a bug that consequently nukes object tags, causing properly embedded Flash content to simply not show up, even when Adblock is disabled. For A Better Experience, Upgrade Today!
Synology DS 107+ (Network Attached Storage) Mini-Review 4 Comments
A network attached storage, or NAS, is a micro-computer that sits somewhere you’re not. You access it as you would any other network drive, and as such, it’s simply a storage solution. Plug it into your wireless router, and you have wireless access.
I bought myself a 107+ and a 1TB SATA drive. Connection of the two was easy, as no cables were involved (by the way, the 1 in 107 refers to the number of drives you can add, the 7 to the hardware revision, so a 407+ is a 107+ but with room for 3 more drives).
You’d think that was it; 1TB wireless storage (delicious). It’s not. Because the Synology is a computer with firmware from a company that does little else than implement user suggested features, the NAS is SSH accessible, it’ll turn on and off for you on a schedule, it’ll automatically backup stuff, it’s Time Machine compatible, it’ll broadcast your music library, it’s PS3 compatible, and it’ll even download episodes of Lost for you. All that, right out of the box. Best gadget I’ve bought.
10 Violated Usability Conventions In 2008 18 Comments
These are not original mistakes, in fact most of them have been violated ever since I started caring about usability. Nonetheless, these are the most glaring ones of 2008.
- Styled push buttons
Most common examples: Admin interfaces (Wordpress, Habari), personal websites, high-profile expensive looking websites. Most common excuses: “The default push button doesn’t fit the design”, “We’re trying to create a uniform look across platforms”, “Design matters”. - Other than white background in searchboxes and inputfields
Most common examples: Personal weblogs. - “Click here” links
Most common examples: High traffic weblogs (Joystiq, Lifehacker). - Bad link designs
Most common examples: Small weblogs. Most common excuses: “This is a minimalist design”. - Inability to distinguish links from visited links
Most common examples: All types of websites. Most common excuses: “Oh right, I forgot that”. - Links open in new browser windows.
Most common examples: Extremely high traffic websites (Digg). — Sidenote: These guys forget Jakobs Law of the Web User Experience: “Users spend most of their time on other websites”. - Full Flash websites
Most common examples: Movie websites, photographers websites. Most common excuses: “We’re special!”. - Dropdown navigation
Most common examples: Content-heavy websites (Adobe). - Windows that change size
Most common examples: Popup image slideshows on news websites. - Content that requires registration
Most common examples: Digital newspapers (NYTimes). Most common excuses: “Our content is so good, it’s worth requiring registration”.
The Universe - Yours To Discover Comment
Beautiful poster for a great event. 2009 is the international year of astronomy.
Things To Look Forward To In 2009 Comment
While every government is busy buying up bad dept and obsolete car companies and every company is busy firing people (out of a cannon, into the sun), it may be hard to see what there is to look forward to in 2009. But there is stuff. Good stuff. Here’s my top 7.
- January 20th, in just a few weeks, George W. Bush leaves office and Barack Obama takes the helm. It will be a pleasure to follow him try and undo the damage done.
- Lost will be returning. So will Fringe.
- There’s a new Star Trek movie coming, which for once has me excited. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it features the Lost/Fringe team, not to mention Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
- Housing prices may enter an area where people other than those who think Cristal is a good champagne can afford one.
- Having hopefully learned from the last three decades of eco-disaster, I’m getting distinct vibes of a budding green revolution. While gasoline prices have dropped, only the dimwitted believe those prices will persist. Instead, in attempts to create jobs, reduce dependance on oil and lower prices on heating, there’s a chance we may see governments that focus on clean energy technologies. Bring on the super-batteries and hydrogen cars.
- There’s a chance the war in Iraq will wind down as troops are moved towards home or Afghanistan.
- Atheism will be a growing topic of discussion due to the continued efforts of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Pat Condell and now also Bill Maher. On that topic, it’ll be Charles Darwins 200th birthday. Perhaps people will finally learn what the word theory entails. I’m not holding my breath, though.
What are you looking forward to?
Almost Two Years Ago Comment
Come May 2009, it’ll have been two years since I stopped doing installments. That’s what I called them; monthly graphical explorations on various themes. I made 5 illustrations every month, for six years. One of them looked like this:
There are 360 other images and interactive experiments available from that period, and I just revamped the whole section. So go explore again, I’m quite proud of what you’ll find there. Jump right in, or explore the archive.
Flash Shorttags for Wordpress Plugin 8 Comments
Todays serving is another Wordpress plugin. It is written as part of my community service program and with its release, I hope to have paid back what I have taken from the open source community (damn you, GPL, and your “stay free” mantra).
In any case, this plugin is for the minimalists who needs to embed Flash files in their Wordpress content. Look, see:
Flash files are embedded thusly:
[flash src="filename.swf" width="500" height="400"]
That’s what there is to it, and that’s all there is to it. There’s no options page, and while you can specify a plethora of other attributes (see readme.txt), the above are the only required ones.
So how is this different from Vipers Video Quicktags or Kimili Flash Embed, plugins that also allow you to embed Flash? Well this one only does Flash. This one does it using the superior SWFObject 2 embed method and with as little code as possible. Finally, and most importantly, this plugin goes to eleven.
Download Flash Shorttags (SWFObject) 1.0
Comment Live Preview For Wordpress 5 Comments
On the topic of Wordpress plugins, I’d like to point out that I have another of those plugins which I honestly think deserves some love.
Textile Live Preview provides a realtime, JavaScript powered preview of your Textile powered comment. It’s plug and play (and you can test it in the comment area below). As opposed to the recently released Quote Comments, which works just fine without Textile installed, this one pretty much requires it.
Quote Comments (JavaScript) Plugin For Wordpress [Update 2] 16 Comments
This plugin adds a tiny link that says “Quote” on each comment on your posts. Click it, and the contents of the comment is copied to the comment area, wrapped in blockquote tags. If you have Textile installed, the plugin will use “.bq” instead of blockquotes.
This plugin is now active on this website, so you can test just below in the comment area (provided that there are comments, of course).
Update: The plugin is now hosted on Wordpress.org.
Update 2: Version 1.1: Fixed a problem with the “Quote” icon appearing on the Recent Comments widget and on pingbacks.