Ranting Kenya

This is just one of those things I run across that I just don’t know what to do with.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland’s conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.

Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children’s show promoted homosexuality.

She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.In comments reminiscent of criticism by the late U.S. evangelist Jerry Falwell, she was quoted as saying: “I noticed (Tinky Winky) has a lady’s purse, but I didn’t realize he’s a boy.”

“At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby… Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone.”

Entertainment News | TVGuide.com

It’s more like creatively lazy.

Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide

Just a list of things that bugs me about the current Xbox. Some of these things obviously wouldn’t even be possible until the next generation, some would however.

1. Bigger hard drive.
   I know this has been said a million times, but it is necessary for the rest of the post. Put a real hard drive in the console. And don’t make it optional (like the core version of the X360). If your justification for a $200 removable external 120GB drive for the Elite console is “that’s how much those drive cost”, then why on earth would you just that form factor. Go internal like the original Xbox. I was in Costco last night and saw a 500Gb Western Digital for $179. That’s Canadian Dollars too. By the time the next Xbox console comes, if that thing doesn’t have a 2 terabyte internal drive, something is seriously wrong.
2. I don’t want to get up to change game discs.
   Wireless controllers are one of the best advances console gaming made this generation. It’s nice to be a few feet away from the tv. And since I have a dog, to cable is a life saver.
   However, I still have to get up to change game discs. I play so many arcade titles just so I don’t have to get up. The next-gen console should not require game discs all the time. Imagine this scenario. You go to the store, buy Halo 5. Go home, put the disc in the new Xbox, and start playing the game. Meanwhile in the background, the game is also installing onto the hard drive of the console. Next time you go to play Halo 5, you just select it from your dashboard like an arcade title. That would be ideal. In the meantime, I’m going to hire a circus midget to pop out of my couch and change the discs for me.
3. Stream everything from my computer.
   This is another one of those no brainers. Let me stream DivX files from my computer. Yes I know pirated movies come in DivX format, but so do sweet, crazy Halo 2 jump videos created by users.
4. User section of Marketplace
   And how can you distribute those crazy Halo 2 jump videos? Why can’t we have a user section of Marketplace. Even Halo 3 has some form of video playback after a game, why not upload those. If you really want to build a community and empower users, then let users create and share their homebrew content.
5. How about that sweet TV episode downloading and IPTV options in Canada
   I know there are different deals to be made, and different content owners, and different rules and restrictions etc. Point is, I would pay for those features. You want my money or not?
6. Better UI
   I think the dashboard is pretty good. But I really think it could be better. Some stuff is still just too deep in the menu structure. The new marketplace blade was a good change. To me this means that blades are faster and better than menus. I can click the right and left shoulder buttons so much faster than manipulating the focus on a page with an analog stick (and have two columns of choices on one page is really really really laborious). What if once you were on the marketplace blade, you then basically had sub-blades (they could be Games, Game videos, Other Videos, Themes etc…). I could totally get there faster than with those than going up and down all the time.
   Also, the new “Y” button functionality in the marketplace is sweet. No matter how deep in the menu I go, hit Y and I’m back at the top level. That’s smart. Use it elsewhere if possible.
   In fact, breakdown the other blades too. I want a marketplace blade, friends/community, game demos, arcade games, video, music etc. I feel like I’m getting carried away.
   And those slideouts for approving deleting/downloading content need to speed up big time.

Well, this spun out of control. Anybody else with some ideas?

An excellent read from Andy Rutledge:

Few things are as compelling or as fruitful as a rivalry. Any landscape, no matter how vibrant or contentious, is merely tepid without the conspicuous presence of two, and only two, powerful and clearly defined antagonists.

Design View / Andy Rutledge - Versus

Thinking about all the decisions I’ve tried to make over the years (movies at the movie store, type of beer to drink, what kind of sub to buy, what movie to go see, where to walk the dog etc…) this totally makes sense. I have literally spent hours in stores trying to pick between like 5 possible items. Even deciding what to eat for dinner with my girlfriend is frequently a difficult decision.

Thinking now about my work, as much as I’d love to only present two possible designs for a website, I feel that a only two different designs might not represent the best options. I look at web design sometimes more like problem solving. What is the best way to display this information? What is the best method of navigation for this content? There is frequently more than two solutions. In fact, if I haven’t even thought about a thrid option, I probably haven’t thought long and hard enough. How can you reduce possibly hundreds of ideas into only two sets of choices for a client?
Maybe I should just try harder.

I’ve never even heard of this ability/technique in CSS. So super handy.

You can use adjacent sibling selectors. An adjacent sibling selector is made up of two simple selectors separated by a plus sign, “+”. Whitespace is allowed around the adjacent sibling combinator. The selector matches an element which is the next sibling to the first element. The elements must have the same parent and the first element must immediately precede the second element.

70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding | Smashing Magazine

This is going to be sweet. I particularily like the enhanced sound for orb hunting (hopefully the sound radius gets MUCH larger), and the ability to just drop explosive containers all over the place and create crazy explosive chain reactions. Huge update, Major Nelson has the whole deal: Xbox Live’s Major Nelson : Crackdown Title Update and DLC (with video)

Being the CSS junkie that I am, I’m always on the lookout for great CSS tips. Well I’ve found an excellent one. Instead of creating a fancy javascript to generate a common navigation bar that shows the user their current location in the site, how about a simple id and class selector. Genius!

You can use the same navigation (X)HTML-code on every page. “Most websites highlight the navigation item of the user’s location in the website. But it can be a pain as you’ll need to tweak the HTML code behind the navigation for each and every page. So can we have the best of both worlds?” [Ten More CSS Tricks you may not know]

70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding | Smashing Magazine