Category: Technology

Categories
Technology

I’d like a Big Mac

AppleWatch has an interesting article on the price differences between Apple computers and PCs. According to its analysis, Macs now cost close to twice as much as a PC for approximately the same hardware. Though people may prefer the Mac OS X, at the same time, can we afford such a price difference?

I recently wrote about needing to get a new computer. Both my Powerbook G4 and my Dell Inspiron 1505 are aging, and though they’re able to handle the load, my interest in HD video has really a strain on both. In addition, I’m starting to run into “Intel only” issues with my Powerbook; enough to make it difficult to keep up with my interest in, and work with, web graphics.

I have looked at refurbished iMacs, as well as Macbook Pros, and Macbooks. The Macbook Pros are way too expensive—I can’t swing them, end of story. The Macbooks have integrated graphics, and just won’t work for my interests. The iMacs, now, do interest me, but the one that I would want to get is still close to $1800.00, refurbished. I can get one of the new Dell Studio Hybrid, or an HP, or other machine for half the cost.

There is that issue of operating system, though. I do prefer the Mac OS X, hands down. I love my Macports and all that free software. I love how easy it was to set up Rails for a book I’m currently tech reviewing. I also appreciate the Parallels capability, in addition to others, that would allow me to run Windows and Linux side by side with the Mac OS X. It is, to be succinct, sweet. However, I can’t afford spending close to a couple of thousand on a new computer, not at this moment. It’s not a question of being frugal, or cheap, but of literally not having that amount of spare cash.

My hope for the Secret of Signals web site was that I could somehow turn it into an income earning site, focusing on digital how-tos, and the new state of internet video, and so on. This is one reason why I need an upgraded machine.

At the same time, to be ruthlessly honest with myself, I’ve never been able to really turn any kind of profit from my online sites, and I’m not sanguine I can do the same with SoS. Or any other of my sites, come to that. I couldn’t even earn $5.00 a quarter posting Amazon links for my books. In fact, my sites have never been anything but a labor of love, and sometimes not even that.

Pair that with spending an extra thousand on a computer and one can see why a person, such as myself, died in the wool Mac fan, would hesitate between a Mac, with its lovely OS, and a PC, with, ugh, Vista.

My hope is the rumors I’m hearing of newer, cheaper Macs hitting the streets soon are true, which is why I haven’t bought anything yet. In the meantime, I make do.

update I just noticed that the percentage difference for buying a refurbished Macbook Pro over a new one has increased to 35% for some models. I wonder if this isn’t signaling that there is some truth to cheaper Mac laptop coming, soon? Probably not, but it’s nice to dream.

Categories
Browsers

Shiretoko: First Looks

I downloaded the first alpha of Shiretoko, or Firefox 3.1, and I’m delighted to see the text-shadow I have attached to my site name showing up in a Firefox browser.

Not just text-shadow, Mozilla has also added JavaScript query selectors to this release, which means that we can query for all elements of a given class name, such as:


var list = document.querySelectorAll(".elements");

A behavior that we also had with the older, supported, document.getElementsByClassName. However, we couldn’t do the following with getElementsByClassName:

    var first = document.querySelectorAll("div > p:first-child");   
    for (var i = 0; i < first.length; i++)   {    
       first[i].style.backgroundColor="#f00";
    }

This code snippet accesses the paragraphs that are directly the first child of any div element, using the CSS selector syntax, and sets the background of each returned element to red. You can see it in action with this simple example containing three div elements, each with three paragraphs, the first of which now has a red background. Well, you can see it with browsers that support querySelectorAll, which are Safari/Webkit, IE8, and now Firefox 3.1a. Opera has also committed to the support of querySelectorAll (as well as rgba, we hope).

Of course, I can do something like this with JavaScript by getting all div elements, and then all paragraphs of all div elements, and then accessing the first of the returned set, but how much simpler, and how my more robust will this process be if this type of functionality is built directly into the browser. Especially since my example is quite simple, but other queries on CSS selectors could be quite complex.

Firefox 3.1a also has support for border images, which means no more nested div elements to achieve specialized borders, which is what’s used in the design of this site. However, support for this CSS3 attribute is limited to Firefox 3.1a and Safari; until support for the option reaches three of my four target browsers, I won’t use it for my site designs.

(I felt comfortable using the text-shadow when only Opera and Safari supported the CSS attribute, because it provides such a nice effect, which degrades beautifully if the attribute isn’t supported.)

Firefox 3.1a also supports the HTML5 Canvas Text API, but I haven’t had a chance to play with the new capability, yet. I had rather hoped that the Mozilla team would add a little SMILe to the browser, but I guess it’s not to be with this browser release. Perhaps our man on the SVG street, Jeff Schiller, can update us on a SMIL timeline for the browser.

Oh, and look: anyone can try the browser and report a bug.

Categories
Browsers

You can stuff your bug

In reply to the IEBlog web post that is asking people to apply for the right to submit a bug:

Why, on earth, when other browser developers provide open and easy to use bug systems, would Microsoft limit itself in this way?

I have a bug in Webkit, five minutes can help me determine if someone had already reported the bug; no more than another five to submit the bug, with test case.

Mozilla created software to make it easy to search on, and submit bugs. Why, I bet even you all could use it.

Opera has a handy, dandy bug form that makes bug submission a snap.

And here is the IE team “If you email us and ask us really nice we may, just may, mind you, deign to let you actually tell us about that bug, which if left in the released product will haunt us until the end of time. If you don’t ask nice, you can stuff your bug.”

Categories
Technology

Liar, Liar

Scott at Lazycoder writes on his recent job interview experiences.

Certification and licensing should be about setting a base level of competency. You shouldn’t have to ask someone what the difference between a div and a span element is during a phone screen if they are a licensed web developer. You shouldn’t ask a C++ developer to find the memory leak in a given piece of code. What you really want to know are the intangibles. Are they a cowboy coder? Are they continuously trying to improve their skills or are they set in their ways? Will they speak up during a meeting if they see a bottleneck or problem coming or will they just ignore the problem? We, as a group of professionals, need to determine a structure and governing body that will allow us to not wonder if an applicant is lying on their resume, but instead focus on whether or not a person will be a good fit with the rest of the team.

Most tech interviewers haven’t a clue how to interview. Instead, they set up some code, and allow the code to do the interviewing. Worse, they set up the interview in such a way as to make themselves look good, while making the process as difficult and painful as possible for the interviewee. Rather than a co-worker, the interviewer sees the interviewee as a potential competitor, and acts accordingly.

It’s the only field I know of that uses this approach. Most other fields are populated by people who genuinely care about finding the best person for the job.

Categories
Graphics/CSS

Vector Magic: The tech that could, the company that could not

Vector Magic originated as a free online service hosted at Stanford University. You could upload a raster image, such as clip art or a photo, and use the service to generate a vector-based image. You could then export the image in a format such as SVG.

The service was simple to use and did an excellent job, especially if you’re not experienced with using tools like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape’s Trace functionality.

The developers behind Vector Magic split their software off from Stanford, creating a company named Vector Magic and began to offer the web services for a price. Unfortunately, the price was high: to download a vectorized image would cost about $2.50 American, which ended up being too steep for most folks.

The company then came out with a monthly “all you can download” subscription service, costing $7.95 a month. That’s not a bad price for the service. However, the company also demands that you maintain a credit card on file, which is something I’ve never been comfortable with. Again, a case of good technology but not the best business practices.

I looked forward to the long awaited Desktop tool, where I could create as many vectorized images I wanted without having to pay $2.50 per vectorized download, or tie into a monthly subscription service that wants to keep my credit card on file.

Vector Magic just announced the release of their first desktop product, this one for the PC. The Mac version will following in a couple of months. This is a production release—if there was a beta release, it wasn’t public. I tried the application and it is very efficient, and does a terrific job at converting raster images into vectors. For one license you can also run the application on two machines, though you have to activate the license on each machine over the internet. If something happens to one machine, an email to the company should be enough to open the license for install on another machine. Should be enough, as there is no formal deactivation process, like you would have with Photoshop.

However, the cost of the application is $295.00. This is more money than I’m willing to pay for a tool just to make a vector conversion of an occasional raster image. I’m not one to begrudge people making money off their work and products, but I’ve been effectively priced out of Vector Magic’s market. It’s time for me to return to an open source tool like Inkscape and regretfully leave Vector Magic for those whose use of the product either justifies the cost, or who have deeper pockets than mine.

Vector Magic desktop tool