this blog is girtby.net

That Elusive Last Star

I’m sure the distribution of ratings in my iTunes music library says something about me.

The Phoney Internet

One of the unexpected delights of getting a 3G phone was discovering how usable and addictive mobile internet access can be.

On the bus? Want to check your email? No problem.

In the queue at the checkout? Want to catch up on your blogs? Can do!

In the pub? Want to check the game scores? Forget it.

Bad Company

Being added to someone’s blogroll is usually quite a sincere form of flattery. But I just can’t help but wonder if there’s been a mistake of some sort here.

The Browser's Other Scripting Language

You’d think that with all the excitement about AJAX and other new client-side (that is, browser-side) architectural focus that there would be a bit more lovin’ for the other browser-side scripting language besides JavaScript. But despite being turing-complete XSLT isn’t as widely talked about as its more glamourous sibling.

Herewith some observations on the current sorry state of XSLT in the browser, which may point to the reasons for its neglect.

Creative, Uncommon

Now I know you have no reason to trust my taste in music. I haven’t written much about it — except in passing — so you have no way of knowing whether my music recommendations will have any meaning for you.

Responding to Adrian

Regular readers are probably sick of me crapping on about WYSIWYG. I promise to shut up about it soon. In the meantime, I’m rather flattered to notice that a certain Adrian Sutton has taken the time to examine one of my earlier posts, namely This Is What You See, This Is What You Get. He provides a detailed and thoughtful analysis and I am grateful for this (next time send me an email or trackback though eh?)

On a number of points it seems we disagree, so I will return the favour with a response of my own.

The Document Is Dead ... Long Live The Document

The pitch: Certain human interface elements are metaphors for real-world objects. However the metaphors have been extended so far that the interface elements now have widely-understood semantics far beyond their real-world counterparts.

In this post I’m going to pick on a specific example: the document. Yes, those icons of a piece of paper with the top right corner folded down, are everywhere. The document is a user interface metaphor which is very common in modern operating systems. And like most metaphors they have been stretched. But more importantly, has the document outlived its usefulness, or can it be extended into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond?

Negative Result Bias

Continuing the tradition (started last post) of reporting heroic and non-heroic failures, here are some of the other things that I have failed to get working successfully in recent months. Never let it be said that Girtby.net suffers from positive result bias, although if I get any of these projects working successfully, you can bet I’m going to gloat about it.

In the meantime, read on for some tales of woe.

A Tale of Two ISPs

The past couple of weeks have been very busy for the Girtby household, mainly due to the household moving into a new house. A not-rented house at that. Yaay.

There was the usual chaos with boxes, paint rollers, and furniture rearrangement. In addition to this there was internet withdrawal. We finally got the internet installed a couple of days ago after much turmoil.

Read on for the tale of one very crap ISP and one very good one.

Collectik Goes Live

Got enough Web 2.0 in your life? No? What you need is a social podcast aggregator with folksonomic tagging!