http://www.definingterms.com Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:50:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yesterday, I came across this wonderful sentence while reading "Das Parfum" by Patrick Süskind: Und wenn er auch wußte, daß er den Besitz dieses Duftes mit seinem anschließenden Verlust würde entsetzlich teuer bezahlen müssen, so schienen ihm doch Besitz und Verlust begehrenswerter als der lapidare Verzicht auf beides. This can be roughly ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/07/25/adventures-in-translation/ Here is a simple example of drawing pixels (rather than paths) to a canvas element with JavaScript. The algorithm goes left to right and draws across the canvas, and for each pixel column draws two blue pixels, one for the top half of the circle and one for the ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/03/31/simple-canvas-example/ I wrote a few weeks ago about how Rotten Tomatoes did a redesign of their site that broke my primary use case. Since then, they have done an update that makes things a lot better for me, though it's still not as convenient as the original design. Right ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/03/25/rt-update/ Ticketmaster has long charged too much in service fees, but this is the first time I've seen them almost double the price of a ticket. This is what I saw this morning: Ticketmaster made the price go from $15.00 to $27.30, and that's if I print off the ticket on ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/03/24/ticketmaster-price-doubling/ I haven't really gotten into the whole online backup thing. I'm not sure I want to spend a week uploading my files on my cable Internet connection, only to depend on some company keeping my files safe and private. But, yesterday it was announced that Microsoft's new online backup/file sharing ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/02/22/windows-live-skydrive/ I saw Night Watch a few days ago. The film wasn't bad; it had great cinematography and decent effects. Sadly, the story was a dim shadow of the one in the book, but I suppose that's to be expected. The most interesting part of the movie, for me, was ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/01/29/night-watch/ Rotten Tomatoes recently did a site redesign. It looks a lot shinier, but it broke my primary use case. Here's what I used to do when I went to the page for a particular movie: Read the fresh percentage for All Critics. Read the fresh percentage for the Top Critics. Compare ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/01/20/rotten-tomatoes-redesign/ A while back, Jeff Atwood wrote about the "maximize" behavior in Windows and Mac OS. The subject: There's a button on the top-right of each window in Microsoft Windows that resizes the window to fill the screen. There's a green button on the top-left of each window in ... http://www.definingterms.com/2008/01/16/maximize-zoom-and-the-art-of-window-management/ Many of the Penguicon panelists referenced extra reading materials over the weekend. I wrote many of them down, and I hope to read what I can. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find enough time to read these days, but I hope to get better at that. Here's the list, ... http://www.definingterms.com/2007/04/25/penguicon-reading-list/ Last weekend Olivia and I went to Penguicon. Olivia has already done a recap from a non-geek's perspective. Here are my thoughts from a slightly different perspective. I have geek cred. Played CCG's in Junior High. Started programming TI-BASIC as a freshman in high school. Read ... http://www.definingterms.com/2007/04/25/penguicon-50/