The Geekorium

Quick plugin plug¹

Favicons are those little icons that websites display in the address bar (or in the open tab in Chrome). They’re usually about 16 pixels square (which is tiny) but it adds a bit of professionalism to your site, and lets people figure out which site is yours if they have dozens of tabs open. You can get plugins for photoshop that will let you save files as “.ico” files so you can create a favicon.ico file. Then you can upload your file to your website and link to it and… well it’s easy, but kind of annoying to get right.

Enter Shockingly Simple Favicon:

Shockingly Simple > Favicon A simple way to put a favicon on your site. – matias s

Install and activate and follow the instructions on the configuration page. The page includes better information than I’ve provided here, and a whole bunch of ideas for creating your own favicon.

Go to it!

The decisions Google makes don’t normally annoy me, except in small geeky ways that most people would pfft at, and you may well pfft at me now but they are seriously annoying me now.

://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/21469363/ The Google Master Plan http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/ / CC BY 2.0

On one hand we have the recent integration of Buzz into Gmail and Google Reader. The upshot being:

1. You cannot disable Buzz without disabling your carefully tended Google Profile.
2. Because you cannot disable Buzz, you end up slowly accruing followers - you could ignore them, but you start to look like an ass.
3. So you follow back and this breaks Google Reader.
4. So the choice is between using Google Reader OR Google Buzz to read content from others. Google Buzz is so tightly integrated with Google Reader that I can only choose one or the other. There is no way I can see to effectively and simply use both at the same time.

But then on the other hand:

1. Nothing looks the same as anything else - the interfaces of some products have similar elements, but there’s no universally consistent theme to the products.
2. Google Translate (which is so nicely integrated into Google Reader) is not integrated into Buzz, so all the non-english-speaking people I follow are just so much noise to me.
3. Google Bookmarks (which I used to use a great deal) now houses the annotations you make to Google results (starring results and so on) but
4. Google Chrome doesn’t use Google Bookmarks to store your bookmarks (!?) it uses Google Docs.
5. On top of that, I am yet to be able to actually produce a two-way sync across Chrome at home and at work.

So riddle me this Google: why are some products tightly integrated - inextricably so - while others barely work in ways that would make absolute sense to the user? Normally I can see where you’re going with things - heck, I write a site just about Google Wave - but in these couple of cases, it seems you’re making decisions not based on what’s best for the user, but forging ahead with integration only when it will push a product that you deem worth your time. No one was clamoring for Buzz. They thought it would be nice if Google entered the Social Networking space, but not at the expense of your other products. But users have been asking for years for tighter integration of products that matter to them - translate, bookmarks, the defunct notebook, docs and calendar.

I realise these are all different teams of people. I realise they’re all working as hard as they can on what they’re doing. But Google the Company needs to stop occasionally and say “Maybe we need to focus on fixing and integrating what we already offer before we introduce this new shiny toy”.

Google, you have a lot of excellent products - please pay them some attention occasionally and get them talking to each other.

When I started the Geekorium (back then, just “nunnone”), I decided to do it without ads. It was a protest against the appalling punch-the-monkey type ads that were most common at the time, and something I felt proud of. My website was not made to “generate revenue”, it was a place to be me and as such I was happy to pay for it out of my own pocket. It’s sort of my only expensive hobby that Mil looks away for.

Then a year ago I briefly dabbled with putting ads on my site, then in my feeds. I never generated any money from them, and they cluttered up my site so I killed them, and I’m still happily ad free here.

But I kinda feel the pressure to have ads on my First Waves site, so I’ve done it. I feel kind of dirty, but as someone who wants to make money off of this thing called the internet, I feel it’s my duty to understand how the advertising world works. If only so one day if someone asks me to help them set it up I can do so without looking like a goob.

But I still can’t help feeling a bit dirty about it. Ads have improved a lot since the days of AOL and Yahoo “start pages” where the ads almost drowned out the useful information, but now when I visit a site that I enjoy, I still have to wade through layers and layers of ads that push the content to the side and intrude on the reading. I never want that to be the case on my sites. Advertising should always be secondary in my opinion, but is that an unrealistic ideal? My biggest concern is that the ads I have are distracting and ruin the look of the site. I realise that’s kind of the point - to draw attention to them, but I can’t help but feel like the ads have killed what little aesthetic appeal I was able to impart to the site.

I know most of my friends with websites have ads, so maybe I can guess what they’ll say. I also don’t want to accuse them of being sell-outs - it’s purely my own misgivings about advertising that make me feel a bit like I’m selling out my “principles” such as they are.

But I am curious to know what you all think? I happily pay enough of my own money to keep my Geekorium running ad free, and First Waves currently adds no extra expense, so it’s not vital to have ads. I also don’t really make anything off the ads I have at the moment, so it’s not like I’ll miss them if they go. It’s just the “cha-ching” I hear when I think about it that’s got me a bit worried I’ve gone to the dark side. I also love the idea that one day¹ I might have a few people writing articles for FW, and would love to be able to pay them to do so.

So should I keep FW ad free and uphold my vision for ad free content that people like to read? Or should I forget my concerns and happily take the cash? Should I put even MORE ads on? Ads on my Geekorium? Monetise my Twitter Feed? Actionise my synergy? What do you reckon?

I love technology. The thrill of new possibilities. The excitement of learning. There’s nothing that beats it.

Actually, that’s a complete lie. There is something that beats it. Beats it hands down. Without question.

I love my baby girl. The thrill of her potential. The excitement of seeing her learn. By gum it’s the greatest feeling I’ve ever experienced, to watch her discover her world.

Hax0r the interw3bz

I’m totally looking forward to teaching her everything I can about the earth. The people on it, the cultures, the life, the bizarre phenomena we just can’t explain yet. I know she’ll be just as fascinated as I am. And I’m hoping that she turns out to be a geek like her Dad.

I’m not saying that technology can beat long healthy walks, or travelling, or hands on experience. But by golly, it can help fill some of the gaps in my knowledge. When Little asks why the sky is blue, we’re going to google it¹ . When Little wants to know where milk comes from, we’re going to look it up on Wikipedia together. And I’m going to use the technology I have at my fingertips to show her a wider world than I could, just on my meagre wages alone.

But the important part about it is I’m going to be with her.

When I give her the password to her shiny new Gmail account (it’s already set up!) I’m going to be there to hold her hand and teach her about spam. When I give her her own Twitter account, I’ll be there to show her how to block those strange people who just want her to buy things. And when I help her make her own web page (xhtml and css standards compliant) we’re going to explore the pros and cons of publishing an email address on the site, and how we can still communicate with people without exposing ourselves to harm.

I’ve been looking forward to this for over a year now. And by the time it comes to start all this, I’ll be ready. My wife will be ready. We’re going to show her the brave new world where information is at our fingertips, and new ways of communicating are instantaneous and free.

Except that maybe it won’t be. By the time my girl is old enough to read, the Australian Government may have implemented their “cleanfeed” policy. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy has been pushing a plan (that starts trials this month) that will see every internet connection in Australia filtered for “illegal and inappropriate” material. This sounds good on the surface, until you realise that something similar has been tried by the previous government which was in Conroy’s own words “millions of dollars of wasted taxpayer’s money”. The new scheme, which will see the internet filtered by the internet provider, has had $126 million allocated to it already, and one can only presume that when they see how appalling the results are, even more money will be sunk into something that critics have been saying from the outset will never ever work as intended.

Why am I appalled by something that’s supposed to be about protecting my child? Something that stops Amelynne seeing nudie pictures, or spares her the horror of “goatse²” must be a good thing right?

Wrong. Here’s why:

1. I work in a school. I wrote two months ago that I see too many teachers (and parents) letting technology do their job for them. Years ago it was television, and now it’s the internet that we plonk our kids down in front of, and expect them to learn or be entertained. Then we complain that the device is teaching them the wrong values? How screwed up is that? If you are concerned for your child’s mind, teach them with their hand in yours. Don’t expect an electronic baby sitter to know what values you want passed on. If a filter goes in, how many parents will dust off their hands thinking the “internet problem” has been solved? That is dangerous.

2. I also see the technology fail to many times to be useful. We have mandatory filters in place in every school in South Australia, and I know how often legitimate sites are wrongly categorised, or overzealously filtered. I also see how much “inappropriate” material gets through regardless. The internet is spawning hundreds of new sites every day, and before a filter works, it has to have looked at each of those sites and classified it as safe or not. If you let the technology do it, you end up with false positives (or negatives) that can seem almost random, and if you get a human to do it, it’s subject to their prejudices or frame of mind. I think in a school it’s possibly a necessity to have something like this in place, but in every home? That’s madness.

3. The technology cannot keep up. As well as the millions upon millions of sites that must be blocked, you have the problem of the internet traffic of every user in Australia needing to go through some sort of filtering technology. I see massive slowdowns at work when even half our school use the internet at once. A lot of the slowness can be attributed to the filtering technology. It’s just not at the stage where it can reliably catch “illegal and inappropriate” material without slowing down the connection significantly. In a country that is simultaneously trying to create a national broadband network that improves broadband speeds, it’s inconceivable to put such a serious bottleneck in place.

4. We’ve already seen politicians use the proposed filter to further their personal agendas. Family First wants all pornography blocked, and even reliable old Nick Xenophon has made noise that he might want online gambling blocked. In both cases it might be argued that they are totally right to want these blocked, but how long before a new government or political lobby group decides that their particular bugbear - gay marriage, or abortion, or pre-marital sex - is inappropriate “for the children”, and we no longer see it on our internet? That’s all too possible.

5. It wont stop the damage being done by the real criminals. The majority of illegal activity online is done through “peer to peer” networks - that is, groups of people who bypass the Google and Youtube internet, and go straight for the content they want from other people that have it. It’s the way that people who download movies and music predominantly do it. This sort of traffic isn’t illegal in-and-of itself, and law makers cannot block it outright, any more than you could stop all Australia Post mail for the occasional illegal package that gets sent through it³. So regular folk will be inconvenienced in the ways I’ve mentioned, and criminals will continue to do whatever they want. Once again, Joe Six-Pack⁴ gets the raw end of the deal.

So that’s why I think this is a Bad Thing^TM^. But don’t take my word for it. Some smart people have written why they think its a colossal waste of money. Why it won’t do anything but hurt you and me, and do nothing to stop real criminals. Read their opinions, and make up your own mind. If you explore their sites, you’ll even find the other side of the debate. But keep in mind - no one with a knowledge of the technology has said it’s a good idea.

• Start with No Clean Feed

• Browse around “Somebody Think of the Children”

• Check out what average internet users are saying about it

These sites will also direct you in ways you can help oppose the proposal. I’ll be writing to my local member for a start, and if you’re concerned I recommend you do the same.

I truly hope we can stop this travesty. It’s a disgrace in more ways than one. I want my child to grow up in a world where information is at her fingertips, in a fraction of a second. The “cleanfeed” will make this a memory for us older folk. Don’t let that happen.

A month and a half ago I was contacted by a Martin Vrabel, who sent me this:

email from Martin Vrabel of Taskee.comHi Joshua,

I found out you are writing about webdesign on your blog. I though you may be interested in writing about the new URL related task management tool for web designers - Taskee.

Taskee is a hosted website task management tool for small and medium size webdesign companies. Taskee simplifies website task management communication process and makes it easier and cheaper to collaborate during website testing process.

You can find more info and demo at www.taskee.com [website no longer working]

Sorry for this email if its not worth your attention or was interrupting you.

Kind Regards,

Martin Vrabel

This was my first ever request for comment about any product, so I dutifully starred it in Gmail and promised myself I’d look at it when I could. Well, the wait is over. I thought I’d set it up today and give it a go. This post is part review, but mostly feedback at the moment as the product is only at version 0.3 and not ready for prime time.

First up, I’ll just explain what I think Taskee is, having used it a tiny bit and finding Martin’s marketing speech a little overcomplicated. Taskee is a simple way for people to leave notes (or to-dos) about specific webpages with the people who are actually making the website. I might make a website for a client, and as they browse the site and pick up changes that need to be made, they can put them straight into Taskee instead of writing them down or emailing them to me. For sites with a lot of collaborators (or even just two) it could be enormously helpful.

Taskee is really quite easy to use. You sign up and paste a tiny bit of code into your website. The next time you load a page, you’re greeted with a big blue ‘Open’ button that helpfully stays put, even when you scroll around the page. Clicking the big blue button allows you to log in, and you can start to ‘Taskee’. The button is actually quite large (maybe a little too large). Taskee was designed I think with pre-production sites in mind. With a less obtrusive button it might be just as useful for live sites.

The software takes note of what page you are on automatically, and you can start leaving notes about changes that need to be made, information that needs to be included and ideas you’d like to explore. What makes Taskee helpful here is that you can set up multiple users and assign your message to specific people. John can tell Tony to fix the fonts, and tell Sue to spruce up the copy. Then when Tony visits the page, he can check the tasks he has to do. And it’s all done from your own site.

There is also a neat feature to set a version of Taskee for visitor feedback. Instead of the ‘Open’ button, visitors are greeted with an unobtrusive (although colour options might be useful in future releases) ‘Feedback’ button that pops up a box where people can tell you stuff like “There’s spam on this page” or “Change your colour scheme for heavens sake!”.

It’s such a simple concept that it almost doesn’t need review - either you’ll find it useful or you won’t. It’ll fit into your way of doing things or it won’t. This version does demand some feedback though, so I’ll share my initial reactions. Please don’t think it’s a comment on the idea - only on the current stage of execution.

I had a few buggy problems. The control panel gives you an option to move the ‘Open’ button somewhere else (on NunnOne it gets in the way of my title). It doesn’t seem to want to move without a cache/cookie clearout though, which could cause some confusion.

Turning on the Feedback option and clearing my cache/cookies had the adverse affect of removing my ‘Open’ button completely. If I hadn’t turned on Feedback I might still be able to see the ‘Open’ button, but I can’t find any documentation on their site that can tell me how to get it back.

Unfortunately I did this before going much further, or having the buttons for longer than a day, so I can’t really even tell you yet how useful it has been long-term. I’m sure they can tell me how to get it back, or make it easier to find out, but you might want to know that these two bugs alone have made just setting it all up a little more complicated than necessary.

There are also a few options that aren’t clearly explained (in my opinion). I just can’t get back into the admin panel to tell you what they are. I can’t even really show you any proper screenshots.

The only real non-bug downside is a bi-product of its simplicity - all the data you create gets stored at taskee.com. Perhaps a future version will have a local installation option.

Currently Taskee is in beta - everything is subject to change before the product is finished - so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Their latest blog post also seems to say that they will have both free and paid options and a new interface very soon, so it could be very different next version.

Update: 2007-11-20 The blog post on the Taskee site that first mentions the Feedback feature mentions how to get the ‘Open’ button back. It should be clearer though.

The day after reading about Niniane’s brush with Godwin’s Law, I had my own internal conversation cut short by it…

Godwin’s Law states that

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.Excerpt from Wikipedia on Godwin’s law

Now, when someone does make the comparison to Hitler their opponent is declared the winner and the discussion is over.

Well, sadly I invoked Godwin’s Law on myself today. I was thinking about how weird it is that I used to be so certain that I would always be a Christian. I made promises to God that I would always be His, so certain that no hardship would ever make me doubt Him.

I tried to think of other situations where kids have made promises that might have been misplaced. That’s when I thought of the Nazi’s and their brainwashing. Then I had to invoke Godwin’s Law and exit my own conversation. You know how humiliating that is?

For good measure, here’s an xkcd comic about Godwin’s Law

The Internet is so fun, I love it!

Was uploading some photos to my PicasaWeb album and noticed that someone had managed to find my photos and had left a comment!

It didn’t bother me much that the comment was in what seemed to be Spanish, or that for all I knew it could have been spam. But I did what any curious geek would do: I ran it through a translator.

ES UNA HERMOOOOSURA ..
DE PERRITO =)
PUPPY,
EL DEL ANUNCIO DE PAPEL PARA LIMPIARSE EL CULO

Comment from my photo album

becomes:

IT IS A HERMOOOOSURA. OF SMALL DOG =) PUPPY, THE ONE OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF PAPER TO CLEAN THE ASS

Of course, this is NOT a satisfactory translation. It’s almost offensive at first glance - like they could be saying he should be used to wipe someone’s butt. Or something.

But I persevered. I tried Babelfish with much the same result.

Hermoooosura didn’t translate, and I guessed it might be spelt strangely - like with to many o’s for instance. But Google wouldn’t translate ‘hermosura’ either. A quick search brought up this page and this discussion though, which says it means ‘incredible beauty’. So I believe ‘hermoooosura’ is better translated as ‘sooooo beautiful’ - like a young girl might say about a tiny white dog.

Realising that she was probably being nice, I kept trying to understand the translation. Further poking around in translations sites helped me realise that ‘anuncio’ while translated as ‘announcement’ can also be translated ‘advertisement’ or ‘ad’. I then quickly realised ‘paper to clean the ass’ (papel para limpiarse el culo) is actually TOILET PAPER! And it all falls into place. This is my rough translation:

It is soooo beautiful and small =)
It looks like the puppy off the toilet paper ad.

Translated comment from my photo album

What a lovely thing for a complete stranger to say! And how fantastic that someone I’ve never met - who doesn’t speak my language - can leave me a message, and I actually have a chance to understand her. To actually communicate across languages!

I have since learned that ‘perrito’ can be translated ‘doggie’ which is even cuter! and ‘limpiarse’ conjures images of flossing! How marvellous is language?!

NOTE: I will post this on my education blog as well.

They do what on the Internet?

I recently spoke to a staff member at one of my schools who in all respects is a lovely person, but who shocked me thoroughly when we started talking about ‘the Internet’. The topic somehow came to MySpace in particular, and in general the idea of putting personal stuff out there for all to see. Now this person has a child, and their opinion was that they would never let their child do anything online that might expose them to the dangers of the Internet. This sounds good and proper

• but my shock was at what their idea of Internet danger extends to.

Do you believe that some people use the Internet for banking!?

they exclaimed.
As I was about to explain that actually the ’net is getting very good at keeping everything you put out there safe I was forced to cut the conversation short to reset yet another password.

Now this person isn’t so old you can forgive their scepticism - and even that’s not fair when you consider that my Grandma has been banking online for at least a couple of years now. More confusingly this person is fresh out of university - so they MUST be using the ’net at least occasionally.

Before we ended the conversation I tried to impress upon them that with a very young child about to grow up in an increasingly net-connected world, they have a chance (nay, a duty) to learn everything they can about this newfangled technology to better educate their children in its proper use. I’m not sure if I got through.

They grow up so fast

Since then, I’ve thought a lot more about our jobs as educators and technologists (and parents) to make this technology safer for our kids (and by ‘our’, I mean the ones we work with as well as the ones we own[^1^](#1sup)). I’ve kinda been interested in this area since starting to work with Al Upton who put me on to a couple of educators who think about this stuff. Until I talked to this staff member though, I never really seriously considered how important it all is.

Our kids are using mobile phones earlier, blogging younger, playing video games before they can walk, and MSNing before they can speak, but instead of teaching them, we’re banning them in classrooms and homes and hoping that they’ll get over it instead[^2^](#2sup). We block out everything new that we see (iPods, websites, phones) and never really re-evaluate it. It makes sense to hold back a little, to evaluate how safe these things are - but too often they are pronounced ‘too difficult to make safe’ and banned outright.

The ban-everything problem

The problem with the ban-everything-new approach is this: new toys, new ideas, new things cry out to be used and played with - every child who was dragged to church Christmas morning knows this. Every geek with a new computer/browser/new-mouse-button knows this. Everyone who’s bought a new mower or car knows that regardless of whether you need to or not, your new things call out to be used in some way. And if you cannot use them in the ways they were intended you find other ways to use them instead.

You get bored of your old software on your new computer - so you buy a computer game to make the most of it. You don’t need to drive anywhere fast, so you do burnouts up and down the block. You don’t need the new phone with the camera, and you can’t find anything constructive to do with it, so you take photos of your friends humiliating themselves instead, and then you post them to your ‘till-now-unused MySpace page. Why do we ban myspace? Because kids can do hurtful damaging things with it. Why do they do hurtful damaging things with it? Because they haven’t been given an obviously positive thing to do with it, and their friends are doing it, and they want to be a part of it, and it’s in our nature to default to the easiest and laziest things. Our kids want desperately to use this technology. They have access in their own homes and at their friends homes. They sometimes just don’t see how to go beyond the simplest and most juvenile uses for it.

But kids can be taught. That’s why we have schools isn’t it? Because they’re still learning and open to guidance (mostly)… Why do we find it difficult to encourage them to use tools productively instead of destructively? These tools are there, the kids will use them. We must keep up.

In the Air

I’ll leave my rant with a link to a story of a family that I think is amazing. Matthew is a very intelligent boy with a blog. He’s nine years old, and his goal is to interview 100 ordinary people. From his mum:

Despite having an above average IQ, everyday learning is difficult to The Boy. Out of all his challenges, I view the output and sequencing problems as the biggest obstacle. What would it be like to have so much knowledge, but not be able to organize it and express it clearly? Or to read well above grade level, but be unable to retain anything you just read?
…
The Boy has huge difficulties … with the most frustrating being the reading…not able to retain information from what he has read. Most times it feels like trying to put out a wildfire with thimbles full of water….you keep dumping and dumping, but it has no effect.

I’ve read this kid’s writing and I’m impressed that he continues to post even with such difficulty. But what impresses me most is that his mother has encouraged him to use the ‘net as a way to express himself. Unlike my staff member friend from earlier, this mum joins her kid at the computer and helps him understand what he’s doing from a more mature standpoint. She does her share of vetting, but not so Matt is left out in the dark, but guides and encourages her child to explore his world using the tools available.

Isn’t that our job as adults?

1. We don’t actually own children. ?
2. Kids don’t need to get over it. This very concerned adult thought that their younger relative needed to get over their computer games, and was put in their place by a 13 year old boy.?

When I started writing in my blog (infrequently as it is), I never expected anyone to read it outside my friends and family. And I’m talking across the span of my life - I expected family and friends to visit my site occasionally and get maybe a few visits a year. Primarily, NunnOne is so that I have a place on the web that embodies ‘me’ when someone Googles my name.

Of course, I kinda wished deep down that other people would find my little home and derive some small pleasure from reading about me and my thoughts, but I never seriously thought that it would happen. It still doesn’t really happen, but I do get a small number of visitors here that find me (mostly through Google) via a couple of topics that people seems to care about. One of them is Hercules Returns for which I still get many visitors (but few comments or repeat readers), and the other is my commentary on Fred Basset. These two topics are my most heavily found/read/commented-on posts but for different reasons.

Hercules Returns: PLEASE! was a post about a service I was trying to provide - getting Hercules Returns on DVD. Once that service had been given and visitors found their way to a copy, they no longer cared about my involvement or what else I have to offer here. That’s fine - I’m not complaining just illustrating.

My Fred Basset post was a rant on how pointless I find the comic Fred Basset. It’s entirely opinionated and completely rude, but it isn’t anything that my friends and I haven’t said to each other in private conversation - just that now it’s on the web. And I stick by the sentiment. On the other hand, I wasn’t writing the post entirely seriously and I don’t think that the author is a terrible person for writing a comic that they obviously enjoy writing (for some reason).

What I didn’t expect is how many people I would annoy by stating my opinion. I’ll re-iterate that I never expected people to read anything I write here, but thought it would be nice if people did. I just wish that they left opinions on posts that I actually bothered to think about before posting, and not some silly throw-away rant.

It makes me realise why so many people write ridiculous inflammatory stuff on their web sites - because not only do people read it, it makes them care enough to write! And when people write, the commenter feels like they are being heard. And it’s a nice feeling - being heard. It’s the typical negative reinforcement problem: being nice doesn’t get attention as quickly or in such volume as being naughty. Children learn it, trolls learn it, Dvorak learnt it.

I realised this myself after the most recent comment on my Fred Basset post:

also you dont need to make a friggin thesis on stupid comics. we all have our own opinions. if ur not happy with anyone elses then shut ur mouth and keep it to urself. so clearly ur thesis was ur own opinion. u were not necessarily ‘correct’
emma - dumbarse

I toyed with the idea of doing it again. Not specifically with Fred Basset, but anything else. Just saying shit for the sake of the traffic it makes, and the comments it could generate. But it’s not me. I usually only say what I think (maybe I go over the top sometimes but it’s normally a warped distortion of what I really think) and I want people to know me by what I say. I’d love to be able to share things with my readers that I’m passionate about and not have them wonder if I’m just taking the piss.

So rest assured gentle reader, that Fred Basset was a once off. I still think it stinks, but I don’t care enough about whether some random person who’s actually searching for Fred Basset to begin with disagrees with me to write about him or anything else I don’t enjoy again.

Yippee! My biggest Christmas present so far has been finally getting a copy of Hercules Returns on DVD. For those of you who don’t know why I’m so excited, check out my previous post on Hercules Returns

A classic Australian film featuring the talent of the wonderful Des Mangan and Sally Patience (and those other three who somehow get all the credit) has finally been made available legitimately on DVD.

If you checked out my previous post you’ll realise that I’ve had a wonderful run out of my quest to get Hercules Returns on DVD. I’ve contacted shadowy figures at the production company that owns the rights (thanks Tim), found the website of the original genius, lost it again (Oh, I haven’t mentioned that yet have I?), and had more comments and emails about this one topic than all the other posts I’ve made across two blogs and my accounts at Reddit, Newsvine and Digg combined. Frankly I’m thrilled that so many people share this passion with me and I’m delighted to tell you all that you can buy your copy online now at Atlantic DVD. I bought mine today (what a great Christmas present) and am proud to bring you a brief review of the DVD (not the movie… I mean that’s five stars right there… no hesitation).

Hercules Returns DVD review

First up, the packaging tells us that this isn’t a high-class, fancy new directors-cut special-edition release of the movie. The cover image (and critic’s quotes) are straight from the VHS copy - at least it looks identical to the one on IMDB. The only difference I can see is the new Australian rating info (which is one of the only things that makes me think the the DVD is actually legit).

Popping the DVD into my player I’m slightly surprised that someone has made a nice animated menu with two options: Play and Extras.

The main dvd menu

I’ll get to the extras later.

The movie is a straight transfer of the original by the looks. It doesn’t look particularly polished and it isn’t digitally re-mastered, but it’s clear and as crisp as any Aussie film from 1992 might look today.

The opening shot shows this best I think:

The opening shot

You probably can’t see it very well, but there’s a slight glitch at the bottom that looks a little ugly, but probably won’t show up on a TV screen (I’m viewing it on my computer - it might even be a software problem). The film looks a bit dated now, but I think everything made then looks that way.

Really the whole thing seems to be exactly as I last saw it on VHS, the only difference is that this is captured in time, and shouldn’t get degraded with re-watching (which it will get a lot of). The audio is nothing more either. But frankly, I didn’t have this DVD yesterday, and today I’m so happy I do that I don’t really care how it looks, as long as I can show my friends this classic film.

Finally a quick mention of the “extras”. The DVD contains actor bios for the three main leads of the “real-life” part of the movie: David Argue, Mary Coustas, and Bruce Spence.

Fancy menus

Probably the saddest part of the DVD transfer is this half-hearted attempt at extras. It’s all very well and good to put these poor excuses for extras on a DVD, but the least you could do is check it before you ship it. Notice something wrong here?

Something’s wrong here…

Poor Bruce Spence gets Mary Coustas’ bio write up. Someone forgot to change what they cut-and-pasted. We weren’t expecting much here, but this looks like someone was in a hurry to get this out of their inbox. The other two actors were written up OK, but frankly I’d rather just the film without the pretend extras. To anyone with any say in future re-releases, perhaps a commentary by, oh say, anyone involved might be nice, and a big mention of the ACTUAL stars of the film - the original Double Take.

All in all this is well worth the fifteen dollars you’ll pay for it, and I really can’t complain. Atlantic DVD had seventy in stock at the beginning of December, and twenty when I got there today (Christmas), so you might need to be quick (if they haven’t gone already). They did tell me though that this is their second - bigger - shipment, and I suspect that this might be a trial to see if it is popular as I couldn’t get it anywhere but Atlantic DVD.

I never did get another message from Tim (so I don’t know if he is responsible - if you are thanks!). Double Take’s website no longer exists, so I don’t know if they had a say. I’d like to think that I might be a little bit responsible (but I know of at least one other person who contacted Beyond International to enquire as I did).

And last, I’d like to thank the guy I only know as Fanus, who alerted me via my contact page to the fact that Atlantic DVD were selling Hercules Returns. You rock.

I’ll leave you with shot from my favourite scene (with my favourite quote).

Hehe

“I’ll fight you on one condition: that you lower your nipples.”

Go. Buy. Now.

P.S. I have no idea if this is region locked, as the DVD doesn’t say. I’d say there’s probably a neato Linux hacker way of telling (or a simple way) but I don’t know it.

While zooming around my old home town of Gladstone, QLD through Google Map’s much improved interface, I came across this from above.

<a title=“Google Maps - Gladstone Reel to Reel” href=“http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=gladstone&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll=-23.870386,151.264862&spn=0.00388,0.005397”>The World’s largest reel-to-reel.

It’s gotta be in the Guinness World record books somewhere. I have my crack team of researchers standing by to find it.

To my 3 loyal readers, sorry I haven’t written in a while. To be honest, I keep up with you regularly anyway, and you know all my news. And frankly, anything I think I’d like to share with the world gets covered in other blogs very quickly by a lot of people before I can anyway.

So on to my update:

• I have a new job working in a school. I already worked in a school, but this time I get to make the big decisions.

• I have a new Mac - my dad’s mini, which is very cool, but in vital need of a stick of RAM.

• I’m at my parent’s-in-law’s place - a very nice house between two little towns outside Adelaide, where Mil and I have been trying to recharge. While my Internet credit has suffered (my father-in-law doesn’t use it as much as I), we are appreciating the chance to stretch out in a house three or for times the size of our flat (and we aren’t even using a third of the house!)

• I purchased the 1949 movie serial ‘Batman and Robin’ and have finished watching all 15 episodes. It’s really fun, and I’m gonna take the time to write something on it soon. Until then, here is a little taste of how marvellous it is.

• I’ve got a few extra plans for my site (or my ‘NunnOne Network’ as I’ve facetiously called it). One is to create a wiki, where (in a genius moment of sheer egotism) Josh Nunn’s (and only Josh Nunn’s) from all over the web can write about themselves. Hehe.
  Edit: It’s done… kinda… When I’m ready to tell other Josh’s I’ll make an official post, but check it at Josh Nunn Wiki

• One amazing discovery I’ve made is that setting a text editor to default to Unicode line breaks and then forgetting can make a whole bunch of web-site files stop working when you upload them. I’ve set it to Unix line endings - now my .htaccess files might work properly…

• I’ve got my bookmarks to follow me around now, so no matter where I am, I can find that site quickly. You can check out my setup at http://bm.nunnone.com(site no longer active) - but you’ll only see my public bookmarks.

• By the way, does anyone want to give me money? I’ll take it… I’ve been eyeing off the new Intel Macs you see…

• Nothing else. There is no third thing… (my text based ‘Spanish Inquisition’ impression needs work I know)

Update: 2006-04-06 It’s over and I lived!

I’m getting this in early, in case I forget or don’t have time on the day - April 5th has been declared the First Annual CSS Naked Day. No my web site is not broken.

This is a minor big deal in the web world. Credit to Dustin Diaz for coming up with the idea.

To those who don’t understand: CSS is a web maker’s tool for styling a web page. In the early days of the web people used all sorts of tricks just to make their pages look good, but they often only worked on one or two specific Internet browsers. So someone using Internet Explorer might see a pretty web page, but someone else using a Mac’s Safari browser might see something else entirely. Not to mention that all these crafty tricks twisted the information in the web page into nooks and crannies all over the page - making it difficult to extract the information using the ‘wrong’ browser or a web page reader such as a blind person might use.

The people who make decisions about the Internet decided it would be better for the information to be set out logically on the page, and have the pretty designs added later (this was in the original plan for the Internet, but it kinda got forgotten by a lot of designers). CSS is a way of ‘prettying’ a web page without changing the underlying information, and leaving the info accessible in a logical and sensible way. Web designers can make a basic page, and then use different CSS ‘style sheets’ to make the page look a certain way on a computer screen, a different way on a tiny mobile phone screen, even sound a certain way on a web page reader!

If you are here on the 5th of April, you can see this site sans CSS, and you should still be able to find your way around. In effect, this is how a blind person might ‘see’ my site, so it has to still be usable or I have failed to make my site fully accessible. Other sites listed at the above site are going naked too, in an effort to promote this idea of ‘usability’.

If you aren’t here before or after the 5th, you can still see what I’m talking about if you use Firefox, by selecting the View menu > then Page Style > then No Style, or in Opera: View > Style > Usermode.

Select View > Page Style > Basic Page Style in Firefox to go back, or View > Style > Authormode in Opera. It is also possible to do something like this in other browsers, but it can be more tricky.

So enjoy CSS Naked Day, and in the spirit of this nudieness, a lewd joke:
Q: How do you titillate an ocelot?
A: Oscillate his tit a lot!