tecznotes

Michal Migurski's notebook, listening post, and soapbox. Subscribe to this blog. Check out the rest of my site as well.

Jun 25, 2006 8:46pm

paraphrasing

To paraphrase Malcolm McCullough, two things you don't say when you walk into a supermarket:

  1. "I can't make somethig with fish, that's already been done."
  2. "How am I going to fit all this stuff into my dinner?"

(Sketching wrap-up, on the topic of choice in hardware standards)

Jun 23, 2006 3:37pm

digg, v3

Last night we attended Digg's version 3 launch party, where Kevin showed two examples of our work to a packed house at Anu:

(Digg Incoming by Laughing Squid)

(DSOC by Laughing Squid)

Jun 23, 2006 6:16am

future perfect

I'm becoming an increasingly excited fan of Jan Chipchase's site, Future Perfect.

As I understand it, Jan is an ethnographer and researcher for Nokia. He travels the world, mostly Asia, photographing and documenting local practices relevant to Nokia's business. The site is a travelogue of tight, observant photography and short conjectures, and makes me curious what kinds of brilliance can be found in his actual reports.

Jun 5, 2006 6:17am

javascript redux

A week ago I vented my dislike for ajax abuse. I got a few comments about that, including one from Ray, who recommended Safari Stand as a possible answer. I'm here to say that it works really well.

It's a bit of a mystery application, apparently written by a Japanese developer as a sort of browser swiss army knife, adding all kinds of navigation features to Safari. I've come across it before, but have stayed away because I generally prefer lean software. I've been able to ignore all of its features, except for site alteration:

Each domain listed on the left can be modified to enable or disable certain site features, and impose new behaviors or stylesheets. I have most of these sites modified to kill javascript, and a few also have font-size adjustments. It's been a significant change for the better. The New York Times and Wired are both now usable, and I've also disabled scripts on other sites that seemed to be doing a bit too much client-sniffing or slowing down normal interactions. Even Flickr benefits: what I thought was server slowness for the past few months turns out to have been Ajax lag. Photo pages load significantly more quickly, and the only drawback has been the appearance of useless "For a better experience, please upgrade to a Javascript-capable browser" messages on NYT and Flickr. The reason there are a bunch of Google's in the list is that I'm shutting out all of *.google.com, and selectively allowing certain google.com subdomains that seem worthwhile. Stand reads the list from top to bottom, and the first match wins.

So far, I've been taking a black list approach. Sites that annoy me get the axe. If the list grows especially long, I may switch to a white list and allow Javascript only on certain domains. In the meantime, this is working very well.

Jun 2, 2006 5:56am

reconstructions

(photo of Mission High School by Ian Fuller)

Jun 1, 2006 10:11pm

cow orkers wanted

We just bought an extra chair, and it wants to be filled:

Our busy San Francisco design and technology studio is ready to grow again. We're looking for a few people who can help us realize our vision: doing great work for the smartest people we know.

More info at stamen.com.

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