Strix Nebulosa

Chronological, personal preference, total sales, perceived popularity or, like Rob’s record collection in the novel High Fidelity,  “autobiographical”?Do I take into consideration what other people think of these albums? The albums I hear other people listening to or talking about? Can I call in the most referenced albums from conversation about music that I have with my friends? Do I share which albums I think best represented the 2K’s as a decade? Should I write down those albums that I think will be “classics” one day? Do I a add in a space for the album(s) I personally listened to the most?

Yes.

I’m going to list them all in every order I can come up with, prioritize them in each individual category, use a complex algorithm of weighting and statistical analysis to determine the top 20. For completely logical reasons any “greatest hits” albums, compilations of previously released material, compilations of various artists and/or motion picture sound tracks will not be considered eligible. I don’t think it would foster a level playing field for any individual artist or band. For example, Ani Difranco’s “Canon” would have made the top 10 despite the majority of the music having been released in the 90’s. The soundtrack for Garden State would be in the top 20 – however, it contains a number of artists who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for this list, like Coldplay – who won’t receive any listin’ lovin’ on this blog while it’s still my blog regardless of the qualifications they may or may not have garnered on sub-lists simply due to the fact that they contain high amounts of Coldplay.

In fact, if I heard it in an elevator or while shopping for toothpaste, chances are the album got punted (or took a big hit) early in the selection process. Ironic, considering there are three albums that licensed songs for commercials that did make the list. If I didn’t see the commercial, that’s one thing. If I saw the commercial all the time, that’s something else.

I’ll leave it up to the gentle reader (as my friend Alexis is fond of saying) to figure out where and how the following 20 albums fit in my, “musical education”. If you disagree with a choice or think I missed something let me know. My memory isn’t quite like it used to be. If you think I should listen to something based on what’s on this list, by all means please let me know. I love nothing more than discovering my newest, favorite song of all time this week.

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I don’t like wearing a suit and tie, so I might be biased.

When I was asked to dress formal for the office I asked in return, “Why do you have a formal dress code?”.

Ok, to be honest, I didn’t really ask that question once. I’ve asked it a number of times. Here are my favorite answers and my retorts.

#10. It creates a sense of professionalism / Formal is as Formal Does

I don’t care how well tailored your Armani suit is, you’re still an asshole. I won’t leave women out of this. That $2,000 outfit from the cover of a magazine won’t make you look like a hooker. It will, however, make you look like very expensive prostitute and that price tag doesn’t make you any less of a bitch.

#9. It levels the playing field.

This is not a private school. A $2,000 suit is going to look much more top shelf than my $99 blue light special that I got at Suits and Ties Depot. I’m pretty sure that everyone can tell the difference. Everyone in the company knows who the CEO is and most people know who works in the mail room. A suit doesn’t change that.

#8. We want to appear to be professionals.

Well, I think that answers it without embellishment. You can paint on the lipstick with a spray bomb, but like I said above – appearances are worthless.

#7. Appearance is critical to keeping up a good business reputation.

Like I said above, appearances are worthless. So is customer service. So is returning phone calls. So is promising more and delivering more. So is building a better product. So are a lot of other things that a suit can’t cover, cover up or explain away. All a suit says is that I’m about to pay way too much for what little you’re offering. A suit doesn’t build relationships. That’s what golf shirts are for.

#6. My clothes are covered by my expense account.

That explains why nobody is getting a Christmas bonus this year, but it doesn’t explain why you’re such a raging asshole.

#5. You have to Dress for success.

There are far too many successful people out there who don’t wear suits to make this argument fly. I actually pointed this out once and the answer I got was, “When you’re successful you can wear whatever the hell you want to”.  SO what you’re saying is… (do I have to spell it out? ok fine…) …that people who wear suits aren’t successful? Thanks for making my point.

#4. I like to dress nice.

A hard pressed, well startched shirt with a double Windser knot… and you like that? You may be a masochist, but you might not be an asshole.

#3. It’s my “power suit” / it’s my “suit of armor”.

90% of fights aren’t determined by what the fighter wore. The silly English Kaaaanigit’s in their shiny steel outfits were cut down by invading Mongol bow fire before they could charge across the wide open battle field. Bruce Lee wore black slacks or blue jeans and a white t-shirt. The other 10% stormed into battle wearing a nose, err… a tie.

#2. If you want this job, you’ll wear a suit.

Ok. Gotcha.

#1. Respect the Suit and the Suit will respect you.

Have you read everything up to this last point? People that argue a suit gets them respect have an awful lot of insecurity issues n’est pas? No wonder they act like assholes, they’re overcompensating for the lack of affection their parents never showed them while they were growing… oh never mind. They haven’t grown up yet anyway. If you think a nice suit is going to get you respect then you have no idea what respect is and that, my friend, is why you’re such an A class, suit wearing, tie straightening, “eggshell is not white” business card toting – asshole.

This rant has been brought to you by the letter “eh” and my friend Patrick over at 3Freaks.net who has never held a job (for long) that required him to wear a suit.

Web design should attempt to do 3 things.

First, it should be appealing to the people who will be visiting the site.

Second, it should say something about the site itself.

Third, and most importantly, it should allow users to do things or find things efficiently.

I’ve never gotten around to expanding on the thoughts above. This post has been sitting in my “drafts” folder some months now and I’ve never been inclined to expand. So here it is.

I’m no Vancouver fan, but I gotta say Alex Burrows looks and sounds legitimately pissed in his post game interview. I don’t think he’s lying.

The really crappy part here is that most of the older experienced reporters all agree that Burrows is going to get a fine for what he said. Regardless of the truth. Even if Burrows is right and telling the truth he’ll still get a fine. He’s not supposed to go to the press with any concerns about officiating. There is an internal “process” he should have followed through with. Referee’s are untouchable and should remain so in the eyes of the public – Joe Hockeyfan shouldn’t know about things like this. Joe Hockeyfan, the guy who bets $10 every week on an NHL game “… wants to believe, needs to believe … and those walls are guarded by men with guns. And whose going to do it? You?”… I got distracted.

What everyone else is talking about isn’t if Burrows is telling the truth or not, it’s about why he didn’t follow that internal process and why he went to the press.

So let’s all blog about conspiracy theories about how the NHL is out to get the Canadian teams. Let’s all blog about how Bettman is doing his utmost to make sure the big US markets get all the big games. Let’s all skip the point at hand and start running to conclusions that are outside of the point of this incident.

Burrows felt like the internal process wasn’t getting any results. He felt like the Wizard of Oz was somehow a fake. He pulled back the curtain and found that the real Wizard was nothing more than an old, short, balding man who really didn’ t have any magical powers to fix – or, to extend the earlier, to direct things.

And that’s why Joe Hockeyfan isn’t so angry with Burrows, they’re angry with Bettman. They’ve been angry with Bettman since the player lockout of 2004-05 season. So if people seem to be jumping to conclusions, ask Bettman why.

Theme parks are interesting places. Take Disneyland for example. A vast chunk of land with a consistent theme and style across multiple different areas and disparate “themes”. Every section of Disneyland has a very different theme with very different purposes. Consider Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion. The two are similar, yet different, and both fit within the scope and style of Disneyland.

I would like to propose that designers should approach their work, their careers, as if they were Disneyland. Producing thematic elements that can all fit together with one another and yet have unique styles that set them apart from one another.

This seems to be in sharp contrast to a number of designers who are of the opinion that they need to do a number of very different styles to appeal to the widest range of customers as possible. Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that they drown out the one their prospective client might actually like with dozens of designs their client can’t stand. You’ll be lucky if your prospective client gets past the first three designs in your portfolio.

Further, many clients are looking for a specific style, certain thematic elements and design principles that they can wrap their heads around. They should know who you are as a designer by what’s in your portfolio. Just like artists.

My friend Jeff Lyons has been painting the same style and themes into his “Girlfriends” series for a number of years now. His style and those paintings are remarkably visible everywhere I go. I don’t even need to look at the name next to the painting to know which are his. When you buy a Lyons piece, you know what you’re getting. It’s not the individual painting that you buy, it’s what came before and what will come next – the style of his art is his style. This is what your clients are looking for.

Your client wants to know that you can produce, yes – but they will also want to know what you’re going to produce before you get the job.

A good, solid and consistent portfolio is critical to catching the eye of a client.

The more work you do in a similar genre the more you will be exposed to a certain degree of trouble shooting or problem solving regarding your particular style. The more problems you can identify with one specific gray scale, color palette or visual effect – the more likely you are to put that fix into each concurrent style or design. The end result is a consistent style that improves over time, from client to client, design to design.

Artists don’t often flip flop between still life, abstract and surrealism. Artists don’t usually work in oils, glass and then switch over to casting bronze statues.

When you buy a major work of art you’re buying into the artists entire portfolio as much as you are buying a single piece.

Designers, build your portfolio like you’re an artist and build your client base the same way artists do. This way you won’t burn out on bad clients who insist on changing your primary color palette to red and cyan on a black background. Let your portfolio act as a filter as much as it will act as a magnet.

In my few years of toying around with, producing, publishing, designing, programming and creating websites I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of web designers. I’ll describe web designers as pixel pushers, graphic designers, user interaction specialists and of course as artists. I’ll further this description by adding the following attributes; sociologists, researchers, methodologists, insightful, curmudgeons, arrogant, self righteous, pompous, egotistical and unmotivated flakes.

I don’t think I have ever met a web designer who doesn’t possess all or most of those attributes. If you find yourself relating to the description above, then perhaps you have a career in web design to consider? or, if you already are a web designer, perhaps you might be interested in a career as a sanitation technologist?

The younger, dry footed, recent entrants to the web design field have their heads stuck in the clouds and their feet so far from Earth they must find it difficult to breathe. The older veterans of the industry are so jaded and unmotivated to actually produce anything of value that they would consider doing almost anything to get out of their careers. If only they could drive a dump truck…

What happens between the rookie and veteran stage of the web designers career that can take a perfectly excited and talented artist and push them towards life as an alcoholic garbage truck driver? Marketing departments, presidents, CEO’s, CFO’s, advisory boards, investors, senior and junior management, clients, clients and more clients. All of whom have the same opinion – that they know more than the designer does. Or more to the point, that they’re voice and opinion matters more than that of the artist because they’re paying for the art.

A new designer can put forward the most amazing, ground breaking piece of design the world has ever seen and they will be immediately hit with two sentences.

1) I don’t get it.

2) If I don’t get it, how will the end user ever get it?

The lowest common denominator is now dictating design. Some MBA or CMA (the type of people who have spent a decade learning how to make businesses run) don’t “get it” . Is that surprising? Hell no. It shouldn’t be. How many MBA’s can tell you what Jackson Pollock’s No. 29  is worth today? Most of them I’m sure. How many MBA’s would have bought a Jackson Pollock back in the 50’s? None.

So what makes these same people think they know so much about art?

It’s simple. Web design is not art. Web designers are not artists and no matter what any of us might have to say about this ~ one thing trumps any argument you might give. Those MBA’s, those CEO’s and those clients, clients clients didn’t pay for any of Jackson Pollock’s paints, canvas or even a sheet of glass. Who paints on a sheet of glass anyway – they might have chuckled to themselves.

Web designers are there to take the owner of the website through a process and ultimately realize the owners dream for the site they have bought and paid for. After that, it’s up to the business folk to make the site work. The design is only one small part of that equation.

Art works the other way around. The artist produces a piece of work and, if they find an audience, they get paid for their work. Web design doesn’t work this way, but maybe it should. Who is at fault for that? The designers.

In this case, if the suits don’t like your sense of style or design, they won’t hire you. If you’ve been busily employed by a number of clients than I ask you this; is the design you put forward in your portfolio really your design? How does your future client know the difference?

Clients spend a lot of effort asking and pouring over your CV and portfolio looking for designs that align with their own sense of style. This is not unlike how one might go about purchasing a piece of art.

But whose CV is it that you’re showing off? Chances are that the designs in your portfolio aren’t your designs – they’re the designs you put together for your client. So if one client likes the work you did for another client because they’re stylistically similar what happens to the designer? They keep doing more of the same work.

So how is that different from an artist like Jackson Pollock?

Nobody told Jackson Pollock how to paint, what colors to use or, God forbid, “I don’t get it. Go pick up a brush and paint a horizon like a normal painter”.

No wonder web designers are flakes. They think they’re artists and their clients think they’re brushes to be dipped and pushed around.

This is post #201 on this blog.

A quick recap if you will on my blogging statistics…

Previously found on another site (I don’t want to mention due to bad feelings) were 504 posts.

Another 22 on a short lived site.

I had run up the total to about 60 some odd posts on yet another.

There were 2 posts on some site I just remember I started back in 2007.

I have 300+ posts on another big blog hosting site under a different name that I stopped updating in 2004.

I manually edited the HTML on a site I hosted going as far back as 1996. I think there were about 500 pages on that site.

All in all, that’s over 1000 posts I figure and it’s nothing compared to some of the other blogs I read who update 30-60 times a day.

I’m lucky if I get one post in a month these days. Maybe that should change? I don’t know.

But here is post 201, for what it’s worth.

Working with a site that’s tied into Facebook Connect is like waking up after a party in a bathtub. The party seemed like a good idea until some wanker breaks open the tequila.

Using FBC to attract users to another website is a grand idea. Compare the FBC one click connect to the traditional site sign up process and you can imagine how many UI designers, marketing officials and MBA’s will jump on board.

FBC has two glaring flaws for developers, however, and getting the bigger mucky-mucks’s to recognize them is difficult when the upfront idea of FBC is so appealing.

First, the amount of requests that must be made to Facebook on every single page are astronomical. Depending on how your site is developed and designed, these requests will cause the performance of your system to plummet. On every page load you will be asking Facebook if the user is connected. Then you ask if the user has permission to use your site. Then you will ask if the user has granted your site specific extended permissions, such as email or publish … one… at … a … time.

When I asked if there was a way to combine all these multiple requests into a single unified request, Facebook was kind enough to let me know that they were drafting a new API and that performance enhancements would be considered.

Secondly, and this really only applies if you’re a developer, is the horrible documentation on the various API’s that exist. It’s interesting to note that FBC is extended via several different programming languages from PHP and Javascript to C++ and .NET. All of which are on one single Wiki site and none, I repeat none, of them have any page headers to let you know which language the current documentation applies to. I’m fortunate enough to have at least some experience with almost all of the languages they reference, but I can see from the state of the discussions and the forum posts that not too many other developers do.

It gets worse though. When discussing an error in the documentation for the Javascript API, the recommended solution from a Facebook representative was to write a handler in PHP. If Facebook staff can’t even keep track of which section of the API documentation they’re in I wonder how they expect developers to keep track?

Further, the documentation is inaccurate, incomplete and in some cases it is flat out wrong. There are pages at the name space level that do nothing except link back to themselves. There are pages that offer code snippets or examples written in programming languages that are outside the scope of the API in question and their primary example application (Smiley) doesn’t work at all. Smiley, actually, only has one FBC function in it, but is specified and referenced on pages that don’t even make use of that function. Smiley is actually referenced on a couple of PHP (and .NET?) API pages. Even more inconsistencies exist, such as the is an entire section on the FB.api_client name space that is incorrectly documented site wide, but I don’t intend to list them all.

My position on FBC right now is that it might just be the biggest failure on the Internet that you just can’t stop. The appeal to marketing and advertising executives is too overwhelming that all you can do as a developer is to find and join some kind of local support group that meets for beer once a month. I have such a group and they’re all too happy to bemoan Facebook Connect.

I don’t think any of us are excited to see the next iteration of FBC. We’re all pretty much convinced it can only get worse and more popular. A statement which stands for almost everything that’s popular in the IT industry.

Ubuntu 9.10 rocks.

I’ve been a long time Linux user (and abuser) and Ubuntu has always been my favorite distribution. The latest release, Karmic Koala is fast, stable and pretty. The other sister distribution, Kubuntu (featuring KDE 4.3) is slow, cumbersome and ugly. I used to love KDE, but even now that people say KDE 4.3 is ready to go… it’s not. I think I’ll wait until version 5.3 before I try it again mostly out of frustration with those who keep saying it’s ready. Hello boy, this is what a real wolf looks like. When you see one of these then you can start crying.

I have all the desktop effects enabled in Gnome without any lack of speed. Some would say that the effects are simple eye candy, but when you’re on a computer 12 hours a day they’re a nice touch. When I pop over to a windows box for a little while the absence of eye candy is painful.

The new Ubuntu login screen sucks. Just sayin’.

Firefox 3.5 as the default browser – oh. my.

The Ubuntu Software Center is how all software should be found, downloaded and installed. Period. It makes the Windows method look absolutely barbaric. Synaptic, however, is still my personal favorite. Apt is good too, for a command line tool.

Installing Ubuntu takes about a half an hour. Windows Vista takes about 4 or 5 hours. Windows 7 probably takes even longer.

All my brand new hardware was detected properly, drivers installed promptly and easily. My video drivers took 10 seconds and I didn’t even have to dig through the box to find the CD.

VLC wasn’t installed by default, but I can understand why (proprietary media codecs can’t be distributed by default). Even so, that took another 30 seconds.

That damn Open Office was installed by default. I have, however, used it a fair amount in the last month with much success. I would say there’s something highly unusual and very suspect about that. Perhaps they finally dropped the plugin war with MS Office and started to focus on stability and usability? I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

Wine is stable and runs my 16 bit dos game VGA Planets just fine. (A few VB .dll’s were required). I’m going to push that and see if I can get Starcraft and World of Warcraft to work under wine.

Sound rocks… finally. The much bemoaned low-volume level issue appears to be behind them now.

Empathy, the IM client (and more) is now very integrated into the system. I don’t know how much I like that, even after a month of using it. That probably has more to do with the fact that I don’t chat than anything else. People who chat a lot can comment on that feature.

Evolution is still here. I’ve decided to actually try this email/calendar/groupware thingy-ma-jig. I hear it plays nicely with Gmail and Google Calendar now.

Ubuntu One is a 2GB online web folder with automatic sync-able backups of your important files. Like that new website I started building? That might be a good idea considering I always forget to back it up.

Ubuntu 9.10 needs a tag line. I think, “Kicks this shit out of Windows 7″ could become popular, except for the fact that I already know Ubuntu won’t run Starcraft 2 when it comes out in a few months. I guess that’s about the time I really push the limits of Wine, or install Windows on VirtualBox.

The broadcasting companies in Canada ie. CTV, CBC, etc… want to charge the cable providers like Shaw, Rogers, etc.. a fee to carry their broadcasts.

Superchannel, HBO, and other “premium” broadcasting companies already do this. That’s why you have to pay extra on your cable bill if you want access to those services.

The broadcasters in Canada already tried for this ‘carriage fee’ once before and the CRTC told them to take off eh.

The providers have stated that any fees that the broadcasters might implement would be passed on to the consumer. Just like they do with the “premium” content you can electively subscribe to.

What I suggest is that the broadcasters implement their fees and that Shaw, Rogers, etc.. put those channels in the “premium” subscription service and let their consumers decide.

I think paying an extra $72/year for CTV, CBC, etc… won’t be such a big thing for a number of cable subscribers.

An extra $72/year, however, will be a tipping point for a number of people who simply won’t pay.

The question is, will the number of people who decide against paying the extra fee out number those who will pay it and, in the end, will the revenues of the broadcasters (CTV, CBC, etc) actually go down because of the loss of consumers?

There is a very well documented “law” that all business executives learn about in their business 101 class. I guess they’ve forgotten it.

It’s called the “Law of Diminishing Returns” which states that fewer people will buy your product if you raise the price (given a consistent supply, quality and quantity).

The broadcasters are claiming that this fee is required because of the “troubling economic times”. I think that asking your customers for more money in these, “troubling economic times” is a pretty bad idea – isn’t it? Pay more for your basic cable subscription when your job is at stake?

I’m pretty sure that the first thing to go will be the premium cable package, if not their cable all together. Raise the price of that cable package because times are tough and money is tight? That makes about as much sense as roasting oranges on a stick over an open fire. There are a lot of things that taste great roasted over a fire, but oranges?

I get really ticked about one very specific aspect in this. The CBC is on this TV Tax, I mean “carriage fee” bandwagon. Speaking as a Canadian citizen who pays taxes – part of which goes towards paying for the CBC – I’m down right angry. They tax me to pay for it and now they want to tax me again? That can’t even be legal.

What’s wrong with executives in the entertainment industry? Are they trying to kill their industry?

I think that the providers have it right. Pass the fee on to their consumers and let them vote with the money.

I’m pretty sure that the broadcasting industry in the country is about to shoot themselves in the foot, but that’s ok. When I cancel my cable TV I’ll have more money to up my broadband service level and download, stream TV and purchase the entire NHL hockey season directly from NHL.com – in high-def no less. I’ll have plenty of money left over to upgrade my home theater and media center PC.

So yeah, go ahead and raise my cable bill and make me pay extra for crap I don’t watch anyway. Frankly I don’t care. I don’t watch the crap on CTV, Global or CBC anyway – local or otherwise. I’ll vote with my hard eared money and hand  you the bullet for that gun you seem to want to shoot your foot with so badly.

I’m pretty sure that the customers of CTV, Global and especially the CBC will say “No” to the TV Tax – one way or another.