The Assembly demo party in Helsinki is one of the largest geek gatherings in the world, where thousands converge to watch and compete in graphic demo competitions. (View the panorama photo from last year’s event, with over 5,000 attendees.)

This year, the winner of the “Browser Demo” category was Mooncheese, written in pure Javascript and DHTML. Several classic real-time demo effects are represented, such as copper bars, tunnels, voxels, Mandelbrot zooms, and various vector effects. In Javascript!

You can view the Mooncheese demo mirrored locally on my server, or download the source locally.

It works well in Firefox 0.9 and Internet Explorer 6, but not Safari. Read the release notes for more information.

As part of my ongoing interest in Metafilter statistics, I was curious to see which sites Metafilter users link to the most.

From a complete dump of Metafilter’s front-page post database back to July 1999 (thanks, Matt!), I extracted the unique domains linked from each entry and added them all up.

The Top 50 results are below, proving that the NewsFilter moniker isn’t too far off. (Or you can view the entire list.)

Continue reading “Metafilter Sources” →

Greg Knauss doesn’t have a weblog of his own, so I asked if I could post his rebuttal to Paul Graham’s Great Hackers essay. Greg writes:

“Hello, my name is Paul Graham. I have a bunch of opinions and prejudices, and I’ll now present them as fact: Python is better than Java, Linux is better than Windows, quiet is better than noise, one big problem is better than a thousand tiny ones, hackers are better than normal people. If you disagree with me, then you are obviously not a super hacker, and are instead some sad little monkey, banging on a keyboard.”

Jesus. s/hacker/self-satisfied prima donna/g.

You know what a hacker is? It’s someone who enjoys solving problems. Great hackers do it elegantly. Good hackers do it at all. How they do it is irrelevant, and it certainly has nothing to do with what language they choose or what OS they run or if they’re politically correct or not. To claim otherwise is arrogant, narrow-minded foolishness.

The fact that I’m learning C# and Windows.Forms does not make me any less of a hacker. In fact, it makes me more of one, because I’m able to solve a problem I couldn’t with all the Python and Linux in the world. Oh, but I forgot: hackers only solve the problems that interest them, if they’re presented in the right way and in the right environment. Because hackers are special.

Joshua pointed out that while it may seem that every smart person I know is using open-source tools, it’s a product of observational bias. Open-source programmers hang out with other open-source programmers. I don’t know many Windows applications developers, so I’ve never met a Windows super-genius. But they exist, and to say they don’t is a form of technophobic racism.

At work, we’ve started using iDictate for transcribing audio. After sending them an MP3, they send back a written transcription within an hour or two for about $.01/word. (They split the audio into manageable chunks, distribute it to typists around the world, reassemble the text, and send it back.)

Phil noticed that they offered a 100-word free trial by phone, so decided to have a little fun. He called their toll-free number, started his favorite MP3, and held the phone up to the speakers. They e-mailed him the transcript below. (They couldn’t figure out the words “find emotion” and left it blank.)

Try it out! Call 1-877-DICTATE (1-877-342-8283), press “1” to dictate, then “1” to do the free trial, and start recording. If you have any good results, post them in the comments.

Update: Ryan sent them They Might Be Giants’ “Exquisite Dead Guy.” They mangled the lyrics.

Continue reading “Fun with iDictate Transcription” →

One of my favorite music-related websites is All Music Guide, the most comprehensive reference source for music online. (Think IMDB for music.)

So when I heard they were redesigning, I was excited to see if they’d fix my laundry list of complaints with the existing site: the inadequate search engine, their convoluted URL structure, inaccessible and confusing Javascript tricks (like showing/hiding biography text and blocking right-click URL copying), and the frequent server timeouts.

Their redesign launched moments ago. (The old site can still be viewed here. It’s offline now.) They not only failed to fix any of my complaints, but they made it worse. Much worse.

Most frustrating, the site only displays properly in Internet Explorer. (In Firefox, Safari, IE Mac, and Opera, you get a big banner warning that the site is IE Windows-only.) Worse, display bugs make many features of the site unreadable and unuseable in other browsers. All tables are broken, like the search results, track listings and discographies. Some pages, like the New Releases, reposition content off the screen. I can’t tell what’s a hyperlink, because the cursor doesn’t change in anything except Internet Explorer. (July 15, 2004: Almost all of these rendering bugs have been resolved now.)

The problems aren’t limited to display bugs. The URLs are worse than before, now so long that they can’t be sent by e-mail. Biographies, discographies and album reviews are no longer a single page, so you’re forced to click through to multiple pages to view the content you want. And the site’s slower than ever, and I’m periodically getting server timeouts and connection delay error messages. (Oh, and the spinning Flash navigation is a waste of space.)

What a disappointment. As an early beta tester, I sent them a long e-mail outlining my new complaints. Let’s hope they listen. Does anyone know anyone on staff at AMG? I’d love to ask their web guys a few questions.

July 13, 2004: One commenter recommends using MP3.com, which licenses a near-complete database of AMG’s content. The only problems are the missing band member and “worked with” information, individual musician/producer/contributor profiles, genre information, AMG’s Editor Picks, browsing by genre or mood, and a few other features. For most daily usage, it’s a good drop-in replacement for Allmusic.com.

July 13, 2004:: AMG responds! An AMG employee e-mailed me their response to the criticism.