The Burn of a Copycat 7
Shaun Inman has felt it, and so have many others. And today, you can add me to that list— the list of those who have seen their work, writing or design or otherwise, taken from them and used without permission, notification, or what-have-you. And it burns like no other.
I can’t complain too much, however, the burning in example isn’t too extreme, I simply had one of my post titles ripped off. Most of you should be thinking at this point, “So what? It’s a post title, that’s common language and the such, you can’t exactly get angry, and besides, people copy post titles all the time, it’s inevitable with so many blogs and sometimes used for memes and such,” and this is a very valid thought. However, I know this guy (I’m not going to name him because it’s not warranted for this lowly example), and he has pushed me beyond my limits before. As soon as I demanded he take down the title, without naming which, he did it, without question, and quickly. He knew what he had done, and quickly tried to blame his memory for the use of it, saying, “I forgot whose it was … it just sounded cool, so i did it.”
I’ve been burned, marked, desecrated. I don’t like it, and I won’t live with it— not quietly, anyways. I’m taking on a policy much like Inman’s. You take my design, my posts, my writings, anything of mine within reason, here, copyrighted to me, and try to make it your own, you will be publicly humiliated, here. Right here. You will come back red-faced and embarassed, and I hope it makes you heart-sick, because that’s how I feel.
To clarify, I know it’s just a post title, but I was extremely irked because it’s not just that he took my title, it’s that he took the title knowingly… Most people just don’t know there’s others of the same title floating around, and really, this whole thing isn’t that big of a deal, and I really don’t care that much about post titles, but this fellow and me have a history with this sort of crap, and I’m fed up with it.
Addictions 34
I’d like to point your attention to the sidebar for a moment, and at this time, you should be seeing a “My Addictions” section (psst… people of the future… if you don’t see it, don’t worry about it… Joey-of-the-Future may take it down or change the title for some unknown reason to Joey-of-the-Present). It’s a nice little addition there, I think… let’s you know what I’m doing, what I like, and what not, inspired by the sidebars of Jason Santa Maria and Jon Hicks. There’s more to this, though.
Being the freeloader I am, I wanted something like this and I wanted something pre-made. However, I could find nothing like it for WordPress (automated at least, there’s always the… hand-coded way *shudders* ). I was bummed about this, but this is my last day of school for 2 weeks until summer school, and I wasn’t about to let my want go to waste. Oh, no, quite the contrary. I decided to make the plugin myself. Yes… Yes, me… the one with little to no PHP experience, but the will to learn. So, I put my nose to the grindstone, and got to it, and with the help of cross-checking with the source of Eric Anderson’s wonderful WPDI.
So… I present to you the output of “Addictions,” the plugin. For now, since it’s in an extreme alpha stage and this is my first foray into both PHP and Wordpress plugins, I won’t be releasing it, but I will continue testing, and adding features, and will have a doc page up very soon. So, expect a beta very soon, and that page.
The official documentation and info. page for Addictions has been created, along with a Plugins page as a placeholder for a listing of created-by-me plugins ;P .
Coder’s Insomnia 15
For the sake of adding to my personal list of coding-induced medical disorders, I’d like to talk a little bit about what I like to call Coder’s Insomnia.
Insomnia, as defined at dictionary.com, is the “chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time.”
Well, I think you can draw your own conclusions about me and this “disorder” considering the time of this post, and the relevance therein. What keeps us designers, developers, scripters, coders, geeks, and what-have-you, up all night is one of a few things:
- Caffeine
- The need to code, whether to keep deadlines (more often the case), or trying to put into code that idea we’ve had for a while
- Fixing a bug (stupid bugs…)
- Interrupting our own sleep with the thought of new ideas we either forget by morning or have to hurriedly find paper and pencil and scribble down the idea (I keep paper by my bed =\ )
It’s fun, but it’s tiring. Quite. And it’s happening to us all, I think. Blake Ross has had a post asking what helps others keep themselves awake through the night to complete coding, and more recently about pulling some all-nighters. But more importantly, I myself have fallen prey to this. This isn’t just the caffeine (as some of you know, I’m quite the … lover of it), but … the code. The inability to sleep at night because I’d rather be coding, flinging my creative juices at the screen and putting them online for the world to see. It’s not just code, it’s my … creativity, my contribution to this world, as little or insignificant as that contribution may be, considering the big picture. To me, and to many others, I think that’s worth the sacrifice. Worth pulling all-nighters, filling our bodies with caffeine, smashing our heads on our respective desks. It’s worth it because it’s what we do and who we are and what we live for. And I think, if it gives us this “Coder’s Insomnia” — which it does, no doubt — then so be it, because it’s worth it to say I know I did something with my life.
7 and Point 5 Questions 8
So… Both myself and Tommy Park decided to rip off— I mean, err, do what Mr. Oxton did and do Seven and a Half Questions. We’re shameless.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Buahahahahaa… This shall be fun. Right-o. So. Do tell… what do YOU think about this Apple and Intel fiasco?
I think it is a good move on Apple, business-wise. It was about time to get rid of the apple-worshipping-religious-geeks.
Hehe… Right on. Speaking of business moves… What do you think about Internet Explorer 7 and MS going back on its word when it said it WASN’T going to make another IE until Longhorn came out?
I’m happy to see that MS is actually making something decent… Last time I saw something decent from MS was when they released Windows 98 Second Edition…. Well, as for faking.. I think it was a desperate business move on Microsoft. Firefox is slowly dominating the browser market. However, Firefox has still a long way to go… and I don’t think IE7 will be as good as advertised.
And on the line of advertisement… Do you think IE7 will have much affect on the market since most Joe Q. Consumers hardly even know of its existance, much less care?
I think there will be some affect on regular customers. Now that Windows XP SP2 actually downloads updates automatically, by default, people should experience some different browsing experience. I think IE7 wasn’t really designed for the regular customers. First, the regular customers don’t care or don’t know much. Second, MS don’t care about them either, as long as they get good media attention. IE7 seemed more like an answer to the Web Standard/Design community about firefox, more like… “Hey! We know how to make one too!”
Well… I don’t see how it’s going to affect us web devs much, except for us having to deal with a browser with which we don’t know how much of an impact there’s going to be. But anyhoo, on to question 4… Did you really tell John Oxton to punch you in the face? :P
yes. I did. You can ask him.. or go see my new archive page! :) [Ed.’s note: Please see Tom’s entry about his email to Oxton for more info on this. :) ]
Oh my. And speaking of which… what really inspired you to do that minimal redesign? Was it another blog? Or just being fed up with images and headers and bandwidth?
As some of “ma people” know, I don’t like my own design after a few weeks…. So I thought, I’d go and redesign. Bandwidth, headers, images weren’t really my concern….. just my a** was a little itchy…. :P
Oh my, the language :P … Anyways. Moving back into a more web dev topic… What do you think of what will be CSS3? Specifically, the sIFR-type replacement abilities, multiple backgrounds, etc.?
Simple. Let us worry about proper CSS1 support before we even jump to CSS3 or CSS2… for that matter… Look at IE.
Good point. Stupid IE dragging us down. And for question 7… What do you think about Blogs? Specifically, their impact on life, how you view things, the way you get news, etc….
hehe. A few things. First, president of library of congress stated that blog is composed of random sentences without a purpose or a meaning. And further stated that it is hurting the traditional journalism. I think he is wrong about that. Although, most blogs are composed of random sentences, that doesn’t mean it is actually hurting proper journalism. I mean, if you look at it, it is not the blog’s fault. Rather, kids are getting more accessible to computers, and thus they are 1337 sp34king w/o proper grammar or sentence structure. Blogging is not all the problem. Second, for me, I think blogging is something that made me realize that I was a horrible writer. Before I started blogging, after learning English for only a few years, I thought I was amazing. But, blogging sorta gave me a revelation. But yea, it is a medium at which I try to write something without making any errors….. Third, as for news, I don’t get much news from Blogs. I think blogs are presenting gossips, not news. I like to sit down and listen to NPR or read the New York Times…. I dunno. I might be just… old… :D on that note. here is what i thought about blogs..
Bah. The New York Times… I can’t be bothered to read paper. Kidding, of course. But for the half question… Is Shaun Inman… ?
a bloody coward? yea. SHAUN! YOU ARE A BLOODY COWARD! Now. punch me in the face! :P
- - - - - - - - - - - -
[Ed.’s note: Shaun… if you read this, don’t hurt him. We like him ;D ]
Today in Apple News… 8
I wanted to cover two stories today, and they both invovle Apple, so let’s have at it.
Rumors about a switch from IBM to Intel have been running amuck for a couple of weeks or so, now. Yesterday, C|Net’s News.com ran a story confirming the validity of the rumors by saying Apple will be making the switch from IBM’s PowerPC series of processors to Intel’s x86 processors, and Apple will announce this at this year’s WWDC so developers have time to make the transition. However, if you look at the story, it’s filled with lines such as “sources familiar with the situation said.” That sounds like more rumors to me, and I find it hard to believe Apple and Jobs would make a move like this considering the current success of Mac OS X. That’s just my view on the matter, though. We’ll see at WWDC what happens here.
Apple recently set-up another deal in Cobb County, Georgia, to provide students there with iBooks, the largest such initiative in terms of the number of iBooks. However, they have hit a legal brick wall, as, so the person filing suit claims, the citizens weren’t informed that a 1% tax hike was put in place for the purpose of buying the iBook. I feel sorry for the students in Cobb County. The iBook initiative here has been nothing but wonderful for me. I hope it works out for them.
Apple announced that they are, indeed, switching to Intel.
Microsoft’s New Problem 8
The problem: trying to catch up with everyone else. They’re still trying to stick to the “release when we feel like it” method, while most everyone else, such as Firefox and Apple, is following the open-source favored method of “release early, release often.” As we’ve seen with both Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Mac OS X, “release early, release often” is very profitable, and very powerful. It keeps the project active, and brings the users back for the new features.
And while these projects are competing against MS products, MS tries to catch up by mimicking the features of these new products. Take IE7, for example. The IE team recently released two blog entries (one general entry and one more complex entry) stating they were implementing tabs. They only do this to catch up to others, after the roaring success of tabs in browsers such as Opera and Firefox. Another example is Longhorn, Microsoft’s famed OS in-developement. Press release after press release shows Longhorn trying to keep up with OS X in features and usability, but with Longhorn being slated for release late this year, if that, will it even compare to whatever version of OS X Apple has out by then, or a version they can put out prior to the release of Longhorn?
This is the problem MS faces, and they’re either ignoring it because they can soak up the losses, or are just trying to remain blissfully ignorant. Either way, they need to embrace the future, and begin applying the principle of releasing early and releasing often, or else in the long run, they will sink (though that may be a very long run).
