Monthly Archives for February 2009
Safari 4 beta and ad blocking
As I indicated here (in no uncertain terms), I probably wouldn’t browse the net half as much if I had to endure the obnoxious ads that most sites foist on visitors.
As such, I rely on SafariBlock for ad blocking and ClickToFlash for elective Flash animation loading.
I’d seen reports that ClickToFlash, which is not implemented as a hack, worked with Safari 4.
But I couldn’t find any information on SafariBlock compatibility with Safari 4.
So, as a service to the community (yeah, right), I decided to take the plunge and try for myself.
The verdict? It’s only been an hour or so, but I’m pleased to report that SafariBlock seems to work just fine.
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Logorrhea
This post has been brewing for a while…
It’s about a logo.
SFR is the second-largest mobile phone carrier in France. They have stores everywhere, they advertise like crazy, and they are folding other brands under the SFR banner.
Which is probably why they decided to redesign their logo. The decision was probably long overdue.
Consider their old logo:
It’s pretty damn ugly and old-fashioned. The horrible bezel. The ugly lettering.
This is one of the richest, high-tech corporations in France (ISP, mobile phones etc.). They had to do something.
So they did this:
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
On the face of it, yes, it looks more modern.
But it sends shivers down my spine. Because it is one of the worst logos I have ever seen in my life.
I won’t comment on the font. Although I certainly could.
Consider the drop shadow behind the letters: Uneven, random depth, thickness and intensity.
Now compare that to the drop shadow behind the big red square: different intensity, different distance.
Now consider the shadow and lighting effects inside the red square. Do you see it? No, not the butt-ugly shiny reflection in the lower right corner.
That’s right, the drop shadows on the letters and the outside of the square suggest a light source coming from the top right…
…while the shadows and highlights inside the square suggest a stronger light source coming from the bottom right.
I wasn’t able to find out who designed the logo (I didn’t search that hard), but I hope it wasn’t a professional design firm. Because it is worse than PC/PowerPoint “art”.
It makes me literally ill. It is disturbing not only to the eye, but to my inner ear. It ruins my day, it ruins my faith in humanity, it makes me ashamed to belong to the same species as the person(s) who designed it, and those who chose it as their emblem.
And I just had to get it off my chest.
TweetGeeks In Love: Redecorating
When I designed the Geeks In Love site, I originally chose to go with a cold, techy design (a variation on the standard WordPress “Kubrick” design, appropriately enough), because I thought the contrast with the sloppy brushwork might be amusing.
But it didn’t take very long for me to become unhappy with it.
It did take me a long time however (about 90 episodes!) to do something about it.
Yesterday afternoon, around five-ish, I stumbled on a site that I liked, which suddenly inspired me to overhaul the Geeks In Love site.
So I entered the bubble.
By midnight, I had:
- finalized the design in Fireworks
- coded it in HTML+CSS, and
- transposed that code into my WordPress theme
Then this morning, I fired up the dreaded and hated Internet Explorer on the PC, and as usual, spent as much time ironing out the bugs as I did designing and recoding the entire site! (For you non-geeks out there, Internet Explorer doesn’t follow Internet standards the way other browsers do).
I went ahead and deployed the new design, even though I have 2 major unfixed bugs in IE, one that isn’t so visible (but it is to me!) and another glaring one.
I may or may not try to fix them again (trust me, I spent a lot of time trying already). If you’re using IE, you’re not a very discriminating user anyway, so there’s only so much I’m willing to do for you… Sorry.
So all in all, I say not so bad for less than 24 hours worth of work, including 6 hours of sleep.
The Geekette likes it too, but she’s not the most objective critic.
So please, let me know what you think!
(If you want to compare, you can click on the image above for a reminder of what once was).
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