Laszlo is cool. I’ve been playing with it a bit and for me, the idea of using my text editor of choice to develop Flash apps, ehem, Rich Internet Applications™ is pretty compelling. The main competitor in this space seems to be Macromedia’s Flex. Both look like decent products. I see that Macromedia released a free non-commercial licens for Flex, perhaps in response to the recent decision by Laszlo to open-source their product and make it free.
I just want to go on record saying (er, writing) that audioblogging is stupid. Reading most blogs can be painful enough without actually having to hear them. Not only that, but there are no links in an audioblog entry. Oh, and I can’t skim them either. I’ll stick with tiny, impossible to read medium-grey on light grey text, thanks.
Laszlo has always looked like a good idea, but I wasn’t interested in lockin to yet another vendor by buying into an expensive, proprietary system. Apparently this was a common feeling. In response, and wisely, Laszlo Systems has released what looks like the entire platform under the CPL open source license. This means it’s free (as in beer and speech). Somehow, I’ll bet that turns out to be a very important detail.
Years ago I used the Programmer’s Font on a Mac with BBEdit. It wasn’t available for Windows, so when I moved to a Windows box it was back to Courier. A while ago I took another look, but it didn’t work in Vim for some reason. Seems they’ve solved that and I can see my colons again. Get ProFont here
Ballmer says: “…The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen'.”
Oh I dunno, there are about 3,000 or so songs on my iPod and as far as I know, not a single one of them is stolen. In fact, I’ve purchased more music in the 2 months I’ve had my iPod than I did in the 2 previous years. So there.
**UPDATE Jan 2006** I’ve ignored this plugin since moving my blog to WordPress, then Typo, then ExpressionEngine. I’m at least temporarily back to Textpattern, so I may finish it someday.
**UPDATE April 2006** I’m back to WordPress. Let’s just forget the whole thing, eh?
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I’ve finished the first version of the Textpattern plugin for displaying photos from flickr. It’s called Gallry (yep, the missing “e” can get old after a while, but there you have it).
The most fun I’ve had watching a movie this year was during Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’ll admit I was confused when the opening credits (finally) began, but knowing it was a Charlie Kaufman script forced me to shrug that off and stay with it. And what a reward for doing so!
Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet both give what I think are their best performances ever. Carrey makes one silly face – just one – throughout the entire film.
My work-in-progress gallery using the Flickr API took a bit of turn tonight, as I quickly converted it into a simple Textpattern plugin. The thumbnails below are generated using following tag:
<txp:jab_gallry set="14145" linkTarget="window" columns="3" /></p> Where the set attribute is the id of a flickr photoset. Currently it can be configured to display any number of columns and the full image can be any size supported by the flickr account.
One of life’s great things is being near the beginning of a book you just know you’re going to love. This is what’s happening to me right now with Don DeLillo’s White Noise
Some have complained that there are no real characters, only psychological constructs used simply to convey the author’s point of view. Well Duh! Characters schmaracters, there are some clever, interesting and fun things coming out of those constructs, and I love it!
Jim Jarmusch films are something else entirely. I hated Ghost Dog and really hated his Cannes-winning Stranger than Paradise. On the other hand I loved Dead Man, Mystery Train and Night on Earth.
Coffee and Cigarettes falls into the category of successes. Imagine 11 shorts, shot in grainy black and white, starring some of the coolest folks anywhere: Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Meg and Jack White (The White Stripes), Steven Wright, Bill Murray, GZA and RZA and on and on.
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