I wanted this to be a leap year. When things are going slow and you need an extra kick, a leap year makes everything fancier.
I hoped I could have another day in this February that has gone too fast before heading into the springy March and all the blossoming.

Who am I kidding? What is true is that I am quite uncertain about what I’m doing and all the things in my life and I needed some comfort in not seeing time slip by.

At least, we can enjoy this very funny video I found on Boing Boing.

Long story short, the blog is not dead.
Short story long, I would want to say (to myself since there’s no one here) I’ve been busy, which I was indeed, but the truth is I was uninspired.

Although busy, I would have had some time to write something, but the fact is I don’t have what it takes to write a diary, never had and probably never will.
Nor I am, in this specific situation, able to write about areas of my expertise or even generic knowledge. Since I don’t put my face in it, I don’t feel its worth it.

The wordpress.com choice is always a bit of a inner struggle, between the will to do more and the need not to get entangled in doing more.
I still get visits from popular misleading titles I used for a few of my first articles (I’m sorry for that), even after more than two months I wrote them. There still is somebody who (blessed laziness) read the feed, even though this blog looked deserted, like most of wordpress.com’s.

I spend lots of time reading what other drones like me write on similarly purposeless blogs. Most people is happy with just having a webpage like its the wonder of the new millennium, some other just try hard to follow what popular blogger do in order to become popular themselves.
I would like to write for the hell of it (this is my final objective), but I feel incapable of doing it if I know nobody will read.
My inner shrink said I shall not bother with listeners since my therapy is writing, but he knows nothing, after all he is not even a real shrink.

For the hell of it, today I’m done.

Lucid Dreams

A few nights ago I had what experts call a lucid dream. I am not really sure it was the first time ever for similar experiences since I remember realizing I was dreaming before, but it was definitely the first time I was able to have total control on my actions and total awareness I was dreaming.
Not only at one point on my dream I said to myself I am dreaming, but I have been able to modify space and environment at my will and even think to what would have been my next move.
Too badly I guess I got too excited and blew it after some time, but it was definitely a terrific experience I want to repeat. I am reading about lucid dreams and experimenting ways to induct them. As soon as I’ll be able to play with my Penguins I’ll post a recap of the game, boxscore and stuff.

What blogging is for

Blogs around the net are so spread and common, it hardly makes sense to start writing one if is not about the only unique thing still available: personal feelings.
And I don’t mean personal opinions about something, because somebody else has already blogged the same opinion.
So unless you write about how you feel inside, you are writing redundant information. But when you write about your feelings, most people won’t care and blogging loses the most of its fun.
I do not blog about my feelings, at least not mainly and not often, so I fit in the useless category.
I am a useless blogger. Well, just a thought.

I hate my speakers

Its my fault I know, always looking for cheap speakers for my computer, but what makes this set incredibly annoying and several times over weirdly bizarre, is not the poor quality of the sound, but the constant buzz it produces.
I know many low-budget speakers are cruncky and buzzy more or less, but this is truly amazing. When it is turned on, there is a buzz which is easily overtaken by room noises or music, but when you turn everything off, computer, music and the speaker set itself, there comes a slightly different buzz that can only be avoided by unplugging the power or by rotating the woofer on one side.
Fortyfive degrees of rotation are enough to stop the buzz.
Now, isn’t this weird?

To spam or not to spam

Spam is surely annoying and we all wish spammers to burn in hell while scraping poop from the bottom of the boiling pool of lava they’ll be dropped into.
But in trying to understand what brings somebody to become a professional spammer and to engineer all the systems to counter-measure the anti-spam systems, I realized that those who deserve to burn in hell are indeed the morons who eventually buy stuff from spammers.
Okey, they are quite probably poor helpless fools when they fall under well structured scam and organized phishing or banking frauds, but who is fucking buying viagra or penis enlargement pills?
I mean if someone is so dumb to buy those things from the first crap email he gets, then he deserves to be deceived and to be called responsible for all the spammers to thrive and annoy us with their spam.
Damned you spammers and damned you buyers!

A couple of days ago at vitamin.com Simon Griffin posted an article about websites that break on the new Internet Explorer version 7.
He made an extensive research through the websites of 100 companies on the FTSE 100 Index in order to see the differences between visualization on Internet Explorer version 6 and version 7.

Bottom line conclusion of his research is that on average, the more standard compliant the website is, the more faulty the visualization on Internet Explorer 7 is.
Before some dull-minded shmuck start thinking that this is some sort of anti standard compliance advocacy, read the following from the article:

The point we were trying to make (no doubt inarticulately) was that many of the sites we’ve studied make only the most basic use of CSS. They largely restrict themselves to styles from the CSS1.0 portfolio, and often use out-dated markup like font tags and antiquated design techniques like nested tables for layout. The net result of this is that they throw IE7 into quirks mode and, as IE7’s quirks mode is largely identical to IE6’s quirks mode, they see little difference in the way that the two browsers present their pages.

My interest in this article though, is not really about the results of the study or the advices on how to make a website look ok in IE7 too.

In my old article Microsoft and Internet Explorer 7 I already pointed out my frustration toward optimism and positivity around this new IE7.
This article by Simon Griffin indeed, still points at understanding why and finding ways to remedy to Internet Explorer flaws instead of standing against it and its flaws.
Attention, I don’t mean to blame or criticize Simon for his indeed interesting research, but I truly don’t understand why they (influential web designers and developers) keep being cool instead of starting a revolution.

Today we have two to four (at least) different versions of Internet Explorer to deal with, each one with its own hacks. Microsoft has shown no interest whatsoever in adhering to Standards and I hope no one is fooled by the cheap enhancements of IE7. All major browsers are quite updated and working hard to be everyday better and more standard compliant, Microsoft’s browser is instead still pulling the handbrake to the web.

And what shall we do when Microsoft will release Internet Explorer 7.5 or 8? We will hack for one or two more browsers?

Who if not you (influential web designers and developers) can stop this evil trend and force Microsoft to make a good browser or step off the plate?
I am sure that starting a revolution has costs, costs that professional everyday webdevelopers are not willing to pay.
But if Dave Shea or Roger Johansson (just to name a few) and all the authors at vitamin.com start preaching to boycott Internet Explorers as much as they preach (may they be blessed for their efforts) and advocate for Web Standards, sooner or later people will listen, and will start to understand.

How much time wasted on cross-browser compatibility issues because of Internet Explorer flaws? How many interesting CSS features are still in the box because IEx does not support them? How many of you web developer working on operating systems different from Windows are using two computer side by side to test (and get mad) on Internet Explorers?

All these energies and resources wasted because the largest Operating System producer still feeds their little sheeps with IE and they keep using it.
Let them find a style-free website and they will switch to another browser so that Microsoft will have to make a good browser!

Unless YOU (influential web designers and developer) start this revolution, all webdeveloper will still be wasting time on Internet Explorers.

I can help but admit I am stuck.
After barely a month of so-so blogging I am having my first drought. I have a few arguments up my sleeve, but they are still in development. I keep having visitors from google searches about Nervous Breakdown and Fake Leather (its amazing how many search fake leather!) and I feel kind of sorry for them when they find this is the wrong site.

I wrote my last article about how the Pittsburgh Penguins were doing good with the new rookie and soon after that they started a loosing streak I would have felt responsible for if I was superstitious.
My experience with the wordpress.com environment is a bit frustrating. I am still sure I made the right choice to come here so to not have control on the blog files, but I feel the need to adjust things. Its my therapy though.

Whenever I look at the dashboard page, I can’t help but wondering what the hell is for the Latest Posts section. I mean, have you ever noticed the average duration of visibility of new posts? Its like forty seconds, a shift of hockey!
Who does ever benefit from that? Take it off and reduce loading times! Or -I don’t know- change the way it behaves, maybe a random list of blogs is more productive. Speaking of which, is there somebody who ever use the next feature accessible through the admin bar on top of the blog when your logged in? I did it in the first days, I though it could have been useful in order to understand how the community goes, but honestly I don’t think anybody use it that much.

This blogging experience is giving me something anyway. I am practicing english, I am refraining from touching the files (which is a like a drug for me, how many people you know who look thoroughly the source of almost any web page he visits?) and I am trying to express myself in several areas.
Still need to work on some aspects, but generally I feel I’m doing good.

I’ve been wanting to talk about Evgeni Malkin’s first hit on NHL’s ice since his debut, but later on, in respect for his ongoing streak, I decided to wait for it to end, in secret hope of never posting this ever.
The first six games with a goal isn’t that bad after all, I just wished for him to get the seventh so he could be alone in this stat. We’ll wait for another young star to do that.
Stats and streaks apart, Evgeni Malkin has had an incredible impact in NHL, quite as if he was a veteran. He was ready and he proved it, he also proved to be really the best outside NHL by becoming not only and by far the best rookie, but one of the best in the whole league and even if he didn’t score that amazing goal against New Jersey (watch below), he still managed to dominate with his speed and his class.

I remember being a little disappointed when, in 2004 drafts, Washington had the first pick and got somebody named Alexander Ovechkin. That was because in that year all scouts prospected Ovechkin to be so good and far better then the rest, that even some promising clips of Malkin and many extremely positive reviews of his game, could put me (but I think anybody else) in the position to choose him above Ovechkin. And since Pittsburgh did so bad that year, I was sure they were gonna get the first choice, indeed Ovechkin.
One more thing that had me a little disappointed, was the fact that I knew Malkin could not come immediately to the NHL while his fellow Russian could.
You can imagine how sad I was when, after the lockout, I still couldn’t see Malkin to play with Sidney Crosby while Ovechkin was doing what he did last year.

But the long wait is through, and what a way to repay the fans for it!
Malkin, together with Crosby and the rest, is giving us Pittsburgh fans a hope for the playoffs. We had a six years drought here and what is worst, a drought coming from the six worst seasons in the team history.
So go Evgeni, make the best of it and let us dream again.

Evgeni Malkin amazing goal against Devils

How many times we’ve heard this phrase: stop using tables for layout, use divs instead?

This is the most common misleading phrase that can be told to a webdeveloper who still uses tables for layout.
Every standard-semantic acknowledged webdeveloper knows the downside effects of using divs as replacement for tables. Overuse of divs, commonly known as divitis, results in non-semantic markup as well as that of tables, probably worse.

When you design using tables, you implicitly say that your text or images or whatever you put on your page, is indeed data. This is because tables are meant to contain data. On the other side, divs are meaningless containers that implicitly mean nothing. So whatever you put in a div, is just some unidentified content.
That’s why I think we shall never say that tables can be replaced by divs in order to avoid confusion.

Table layout design, is not only common because of practical reasons, but mostly because very few webdevelopers truly studied HTML during their learning phase, only relying on its relative ease of use and on tag soup parser’s leniency (without even knowing they were exploiting it).

Ignorance of the meaning of each HTML tag together with the wrong attitude of exploiting tags presentational defaults values, gave us this legacy of br’s used to space blocks of text in table cells or whole tables and so on.
If we replace tables with divs, but we keep using divs the same way we used tables, semantic is still a mirage.

So divs, in the new course of correct, semantic markup, shall be used only when proper HTML tags cannot be directly addressed with style, or when several tags need to be grouped together. In addition to that, divs can be used, together with semantically wise ids and classes, when a proper HTML tag does not exist for the purpose.

Same thing when you hear someone saying that he wants to switch from a table based layout to CSS. Pretty much as saying you want to change your car’s (crappy) engine and chassis with a new colorful paint.

What webdevelopers should do to leave the dark side of tables layout and, more in general, of ignorant web-making, is to study HTML tags one by one, thoroughly, and reading and watching around how renowned webdevelopers use those tags in their websites. Once they have a proper understanding of the use of HTML tags, semantic and its uncountable advantages will pretty much come along straightforward.

There is nothing new in this brief post, and I certainly didn’t go too deep into the problem. Tons of similar information are available in the net, but according to many of my favorite authors, still not enough. I agree with that, and little by little, I will give my contribution.

Being Halloween I could do a Halloween thing here, but I won’t for two reasons:

1. I don’t know what to say
2. If I ever had something interesting to say, it’ll last too little to be worth the effort

I hope you appreciate the fact that I’m not pretending to be cool in not talking about Halloween on Halloween since everybody does.

Since I’m not talking about Halloween, but I don’t want to let this last day of October slip through without posting something (and today I have nothing interesting to say), I guess I’ll just make a quick analysis of my first month here at wordpress.com (ok, its not a whole month, but I wanted to even things up with the end of each month).

In this first 20 days I wrote 12 articles tagged with 23 categories, I added a temporary blogroll with just a few links of my interest, I received two comments (one was just being sarcastic for not finding what he was looking for) out of a total of 82 visits (I’ve been very careful not to browse my pages if not logged in). This makes an average of 3.9 per day, with only one day at 0 and a best day of 13.
Two users are reading my feed, but only one quite regularly, I hope they don’t feel they are wasting their time reading me (beside this one of course and ehy, leave a trace).
My Technorati rank swings between million point two and million point one, while I’ve only being linked twice by a single site (some automatic thing that links all the blogs with SEO as a tag or category) and I am no one’s favorite.

What do I think of these numbers? Am I encouraged to keep up or not?
I don’t think much of them, and whilst I would be obviously happy to receive a little more traffic and especially participation, I’m not here to make numbers, I’m here to waste my time in a constructive way.
So I will keep up as scheduled, up to the day when I will not need this anymore.

My overall feeling about this new blogging experience is not as bright and flawless as I imagined, but definitely not negative at all.
I have been trying not to be as picky and methodical in writing as I’ve always been, but my efforts were not fully satisfactory. I still need to make shorter sentences and avoid brackets, but I hope with time I’ll make it. In addition to that I think it’ll be anyway a good exercise for my written english, so not all is lost.

Since I don’t want to make this post a total bore, here is a funny thing I’ve seen today on youtube.
Enjoy!

In the last few days I’ve been muttering a lot about the Michael J. Fox’s appearance in a Senate campaign ad for Claire McCaskill (Democrats, Missouri) and the little controversy that sprout out.
I was going to say something about Rush Limbaugh’s declaration and subsequent side-taking comments, but while I was writing, I felt I was just being one of those comments and so I decided to skip that and go straight to the point of the matter.

The research on stem cells is opposed by all those that, in whichever way, think a stem cell is indeed life. Ethic reasons mostly hinted by religious beliefs, brought many people to think that a group of cells is life and has rights.
So, as well as we all condemn experiments on animals (but we still buy products tested on them) and we don’t make experiments on humans in order to cure other humans (oh wait, we do that), they don’t want scientists to make researches on stem cells.
Yes you visitor from Mars, you heard right: in 2006 there is still people that don’t want scientists to make researches on stem cells.

In Medieval times, men and women were still living under the laws of God, pretty much as still does the part of the Muslim world that we -as western civilized citizens- strongly condemn and fear might endanger our freedom and security.
What allowed us to escape from the darkness of Inquisition’s repression, was the light brought to us by scientific discoveries and gradual defeat of ignorance. In this light we have been able to get rid of things like superstition and witchcraft and publicly condemn such practices. We now live taking benefits from those discoveries and inventions to have a better, longer and healthier life, and people is generally very proud to be enlightened and conscious of the achievements of mankind.

In spite of this enlightenment, some people still want to put the good of personal ethic/religious belief, over the good for a human being. This happens with stem cell research as well as with euthanasia, homosexual’s rights and so on.
Now, hearing my argument, a shallow minded anti-science bigot might think that by opposing stem cell research, he indeed protects life thanks to his beliefs. How wrong!

Let’s pretend for a second that a stem cell is life, and I don’t mean life in prospect, I mean actual life, almost like a fetus.
Those who are opposing stem cell research, put the life of a man like Michael J. Fox on a lower level than the life of some stem cells.
They would say that this is not true since they are not condemning Michael’s hopes for nothing, they are just doing this to save innocent maybe-to-be lives. How noble!
Indeed the cells Michael is asking permission to research on, are already there and are not going to be used by anybody, therefor are going to be thrown away. I want to repeat that: the cells Michael is asking permission to research on, are going to be thrown away.
They are doomed. No use for them. Only the long way to the flush-way.

Now let’s regain posses of our minds and stop pretending stem cells are lives with rights and in need to be protected. A bunch of cells is not a life, has no self consciousness, no feelings, no nothing.
They are just cells, like blood or skin.

So how they dare, how they dare in these days and age, to oppose stem cell research?
Moreover how they dare to still use our knowledge, our aspirins and our surgeons and our microwave ovens if they crush Michael’s hope because they believe some cells are life?

Those third millennium ignorants believe that stem cells are life, and so people like Michael can go fuck themselves.
Then lets say it straight: go fuck yourself Michael, fuck you and fuck that friend of yours Muhammad Ali, fuck my best friend’s mother and fuck all the Parkys bastards out there. Sorry Michael, you have been unlucky this round, but don’t worry, God will take care of you in your afterlife. Now you only need to pray to live as little and with as little pain and humiliation as possible because if -God forbid- you will happen to live long in terrible pain, you won’t be allowed to put an end to your suffering.

Please people, think about the fact that if you still oppose stem cell research, you destroy Michael’s hopes.
What is left to Michael and people with similar diseases, if not hope for a cure?
Be reasonable, don’t be selfish imposing your belief on somebody else’s life.
If you really believe in God, let God judge those who are wrong and give Michael a chance for hope.

Michael, for what is worth, I am with you.

What do I think about the Firefox 2 pre-announcements?
I think all those who made the pre-announcements are morons.
I think all those who gave links and downloaded it before it was time are morons.
I think all those who will get offended because I say they are morons, are indeed extremely stupid morons.

1. Do you think you are smart or cool because you announced something everybody knew was coming?
2. Do you think you did some sort of public service announcing a yet to be released release?
3. Do you think that Mozilla is some sort of secret clan that takes for themselves the longed release of Firefox 2?

Somebody might say he did it to get traffic on his blog or site, in which case is deplorable, like exploiting children for commercials, or might say he did it in good faith, which is forgivable if there’s repentance, but I think most just did it to be the first cool smart guy, the one who is quicker and cooler then the rest. To be the one smarter than the masses.
Let me tell you something: you are just a moron!

You slowed down the whole mirror population process and by doing so, you endangered the future space and bandwidth contribution by third party servers.
You have put Mozilla in the uncomfortable position of making statements and praises about not announcing and linking the builds on the release servers, while they were hell-busy working on a major release and website restructuring.
Thank to you and your untimely and incorrect announcements, many many people got confused about which one is the official release, putting many in the position of doubting the version they downloaded was final.

All this and much more for what?
For being the tenhundredthousand idiot who announced, or better erroneously announced the release of Firefox 2.

You are a moron.