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Empireoflight's Journal

empireoflight
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01/15/2008 14:09 #42892

wireless woes
I just went to Spot on Elmwood for lunch and a surefire wireless signal; I mean, they ARE the biggest cafe in Buffalo, right?

Like an idiot I ordered lunch before asking the worker. His answer was "you can go up by the windows and try to piggyback on someone else's signal". Yeah... bad Karma but they were all locked up anyway.

There should be a list of local eateries/hotspot status somewhere...if not, anyone wanna help me build one?

jenks - 01/15/08 20:23
yeah i've always thought it was kind of lame that spot doesn't have free wifi.
theecarey - 01/15/08 17:45
yes, (e:jbeatty) is correct, you can find wifi at Spot downtown. I think that whole area is a hot spot though, so I gather you could add Starbucks to the list.

Not in the city, but for wifi and coffee, I hit up Panera Breads (Sheridan or N.Falls Blvd) when I need a sure thing. Nice that loafing for several hours at a time is welcome!
jbeatty - 01/15/08 14:47
Somebody told me that spot downtown has free wifi, but I have never been.
zobar - 01/15/08 14:32
Here's a start:

Cafe 59, 59 Allen St at Franklin St
Caffe Aroma, 957 Elmwood Ave at Bidwell Pkwy

Both are free I believe; Cafe 59 also has computers available to borrow.

- Z

11/06/2007 22:26 #42017

What color is the past?
I have to design a computer icon for "Undo". I'm making an arrow facing left, since in western culture (if that even exists any more), we think of things that face that way as looking backward. But what color? Red is no good; it just means stop; or alert, or something. Blue is mysterious but it doesn't signify time in any way. Green is good because it means go forward, and technically, red is the opposite of green, but as said above red is no good.
Arggh! Yellow?
metalpeter - 11/07/07 17:23
I know this sounds like a stupid answer but from what I have seen on computers most of the icons are the same color. I myself like it that way cause when different functions are different colors it makes things stand out and somethings not and I believe that makes some functions harder to find but that is just me.
empireoflight - 11/07/07 10:56
Yeah, basically "Oh shit I left my Queen hanging"
carolinian - 11/07/07 10:33
Is the undo basically a "I want to take back that move I just made" feature?
zobar - 11/07/07 10:07
I think I prefer the Gnome icons in general, but the KDE package is nice because it has a few different sets to choose from, including Locolor for limited devices. Have a look for 'kdeartwork'.

- Z
empireoflight - 11/07/07 09:54
It's for Open Chess 3.0, a free Palm OS chess application. I would imagine chess geeks will use it a lot-it gets around 100 downloads a day. I'm building it in 4 sizes (1-bit at 9x9, 8-bit at 9x9, 12x12, 18x18) along with about 20 others. The palette is atrocious. I think I'm going with a purple after much consideration. I checked those Gnome icons and the undo looks like a good reference-thanks for the link! The KDE link didn't work...
carolinian - 11/07/07 08:53
For me to give my input, I need to know more about the situation (first rule of HCI: know your terrain)

Is this an application running on a computer, or is it a web application (or something entirely different from any of these)?

Who will be the target users of said application/service using the icon?

How often will the target users use this software? Once in their lives or nine hours a day five days a week?

Are there any size restrictions? (e.g. is the icon for something on a tiny cell phone or a desktop with a 32" screen?)

If this is a computer application, will it be multi-platform or single platform?

What are the lighting conditions for the application using the icon? Will they have to see the icon in a very dark room or will they struggle to see it in extremely bright sunlight?






zobar - 11/07/07 07:41
You can download icon sets from both the Gnome and KDE projects that can save development time, whether you use Gnome/KDE or not.

:::link:::
:::link:::

Gnome uses a pale yellow arrow, flipped over itself and pointing to the left. KDE uses a blue arrow, flipped over itself and pointing to the left.

- Z
drew - 11/06/07 23:51
I would go for pink, like the eraser on a pencil.

Or white (light blue?) like soap.

And I would make it an arced arrow to the left.
empireoflight - 11/06/07 23:09
"Undo" is us reacting to the past, like we need to fix something. Grayscale is like set in stone, this is what happened, don't bother changing. Maybe I was wrong about blue; our blood cells are blue when they have given up their oxygen. Maybe blue means "fix me!!!"
paul - 11/06/07 22:41
Maybe colors are too strong for something previously discarded. Maybe grayscale. Seems like that is definitely past, ghosts are grayish, black and white photos, B&W TV.

10/13/2007 00:06 #41621

itunes madness
Remind me to never buy another song off itunes. I have an endless loop of "you must authorize this computer to play this song" and "you have auhorized on more than 5 computers".

I bought the fucking song, let me listen to it whenever and however I want.
elvis - 01/14/08 22:23
dude I am so fucking with you!
jenks - 10/20/07 14:24
apple just changed the price of their "itunes plus" (i.e. DRM free) songs to .99 cents, though. I.e. the price of normal songs. (they used to be 1.29). But apparently it's not ALL the songs... I don't really understand this move. but my point is, the "plus" songs aren't restricted, so it seems we may be moving in the right direction...
paul - 10/20/07 13:18
I agree that makes me insane, not to mention what a pain it is to transfer the music to a non apple device.

10/09/2007 19:58 #41564

Ridiculous Credit Card offer
I got this unsolicited card in the mail and am totally confused. Do I have an account or don't I? Bizarre...
image
tinypliny - 10/10/07 01:25
That is just scary. Cut it up, discard it and never use or activate it.
janelle - 10/09/07 20:50
You shouldn't have an account. If you do it's illegal. The practice of sending someone a credit card and saying if you don't want it you have to cancel it was made illegal a few years ago. It's probably just a gimmick to get you to call and then they'll have a foot in the door.

There was a spiel on credit card companies on NPR three months ago. It made me want to cut up all my credit cards and never use them again, but I don't carry a balance so they don't make much off of me. Evil, evil companies.

10/03/2007 22:03 #41483

working on a table (html that is) site
Category: web design
So I'm updating a site that was built entirely in tables a long time ago in my web design career and as much as I embrace css layout, it was nice to type in valign=top and see my content snap up to the top. Shoot me.
paul - 10/04/07 20:21
Tables are so gimped. CSS is capable of anything you need, Carolinian you just have to wield the forse. Remember this horrible table crap.

<!-- Shim row, height 1. -->
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="22" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="21" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="73" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="34" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="130" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>

<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="37" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="68" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="36" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="63" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="11" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="38" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="36" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="65" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="42" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>

<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="98" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="14" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="22" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
carolinian - 10/04/07 12:25
Shoot you? I wholehearted agree that CSS is a crappy technology.