crazed monkey

The Web Standards Project: Check, please!. Checky is a Mozilla add-on which facilitates document validation through one of 18 different services. The validation service is selected through the context menu and the current page is validated in a new window or tab. What’s more, you can bundle several services to run at once through the Checky-Agent. Damn, that’s sweet.

The downside is that some of the services, such as Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby’s RSS validator, do not perform auto-discovery and so end up validating the page itself, not the linked documents. As a result, you cannot configure the Checky-Agent to automagically validate your HTML and RSS in one go. Arguably, Checky should be auto-discovering these links and passing that URL, instead of the URL of the current document, on to the validator.

Posted on January 9th, 2003 in computers, internet - No Comments »

The Motley Fool: SUVs Deemed “Uncool”. Glancing through this article, I just had a vision of an ad for a compact car, such as the Mini. Picture this:

SCENE: An almost full parking lot. A white man in a suit sitting alone in a giant dark-coloured SUV near an empty parking space.

The man attempts to park the SUV in this space, possibly the only remaining one in the lot. He is visibly frustrated as he tries to back in, reverse indicators beeping. Unfortunately, the SUV can’t fit. The background music is sad, possibly making use of a trombone.

Rhythmic montage sequence as the man tries numerous ways to get his truck in the spot, even getting out of his truck with a measuring tape, surveying the area. One shot features the man banging his head on the steering wheel.

Reaching his limit, the man drives away, very flustered, nearly hitting a pedestrian.

Suddenly the music turns happy. A young black woman in a brightly coloured compact car drives up to the parking spot, executes a swift perfect reverse in, opens the door, gets out, and locks the door as she walks happily away.

Shot changes to centre the car on the screen. Display logo.

If you’re an ad executive and want to use this for a promotional campaign, contact me through the comments for this post. I have more ad ideas. Let’s talk.

Posted on January 8th, 2003 in culture - No Comments »

Following Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote speech, there has been much hubbub about Apple’s new web browser, Safari, not to be confused with Internet Safari, the kid-friendly web browser put out by Heartsoft. Dive Into Mark probably has one of the better technical reviews of Safari out there at this time. Although Mark’s review focuses on items of interest to web developers, he includes links to other pages which review Safari’s features.

Safari is based on KHTML, which is what the Linux desktop environment KDE uses in its web browser, Konqueror. Some have wished that Apple had chosen Gecko, the layout engine which Mozilla uses, notably because it is probably the most compliant rendering engine out there. Can Apple turn KHTML around so that it is as compliant as Gecko? Possibly. Apple understands the importance of open standards (Sherlock, the web services client integrated into OSX, makes use of JavaScript, XQuery and XPath) and open source (Apple open-sourced its Rendezvous networking technology). No doubt they will fix up Safari, and by extension KHTML, so that it properly adheres to the W3C specifications. Heck, they’ve already started. It is only a matter of time before Apple users can drop IE or Chimera and make the switch to a faster, compliant Safari.

Hopefully, with two compliant HTML rendering platforms on the market, Gecko and KHTML, someone will wake up and take notice. Perhaps web developers will start to code for standards rather than for Internet Explorer. Or perhaps Microsoft will fix IE to be more standards-compliant in order to fight back. Either way, standards win. Sure, those are high expectations, but I can dream, can’t I?

Posted on January 8th, 2003 in computers, internet - No Comments »

The Globe & Mail: Toronto effects firm wins Academy Award. Alias/Wavefront will be presented an Oscar honouring scientific and technical advancements in film-making. It’s about time Canadian special effects shops received some recognition.

Congratulations to everyone I know who works at Alias/Wavefront, even though they probably won’t ever read this. I did a stint at both Discreet Logic and Softimage in Montréal a while back, and have much respect for those who can handle and enjoy the work in high-end graphics software development. It took me two attempts in that industry to realise that I wasn’t as into it as I had previously thought.

Posted on January 8th, 2003 in culture, movies - No Comments »

The Globe & Mail: What this war is not about. Rick Salutin tells it like it is and echoes what I have been saying and what I have been reading in the “alternative press”. It’s nice to see thoughts like these in a mainstream paper.

It is not about terror. [...] It is not about weapons of mass destruction. [...] It is not about democracy. [...] It is not about preventing damage to the U.S. economy.

Posted on January 3rd, 2003 in politics - No Comments »