A Billion Suns: flightlog of the Rocketpilot

Jun 14

Angel against the sky

Angel against the sky

A peaceful spot

A peaceful spot

Angels in Toowong

Angels in Toowong

Taken with Hipstamatic. Toowong Cemetery.

Taken with Hipstamatic. Toowong Cemetery.

Jun 11

Someone help me out here

Even though Republicans seem to think

  1. The US Taxpayer should bail out BP for its financial losses after the Gulf oil spill
  2. The EPA should be gutted of any power it might have to enforce rules that might have prevented oil spills
  3. That offshore oil drilling needs to vastly increase

they’re still fairly likely to improve their standing in the upcoming US mid-term elections.

What gives?

Anti-Competitive AND Potentially Creepy -

Via Daring Fireball, a pretty smart analysis of Apple’s so-called “anti-competitive” moves in restricting third-party advertisers accessing user data for their analytics.

lachstock: benw: White 2000×1500 Please forgive me, but I’m going to be an unrelenting bitch about this Google background thing for just a moment longer: When you eventually figure out how to get a white background back on Google.com (once the background picker tool eventually loads—it will probably force you to log in again first—look under ‘Editors Picks’, and then ‘White’) you may notice a few things: On a white background, the text is still white, so you’ll be reading everything by shadow shape. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer (which has shitty support for text-shadow) are screwed (screenshot.) ‘White’—which you and I and everyone else would just consider a colour—is in fact still served up by Google as an image. That image is named ‘White-2000×1500’. Sounds large, right? Don’t panic, the actual image dimensions are 1600×1200. Which is still an extra HTTP request and 11KB over the wire. And it’s loaded as an <img> element, rather than a background image. And that <img> doesn’t have any alt text, so screen readers are going to try and infer what it might mean. Like, they’re going to read out: “http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fxkujw2mA9U/TA79kGonjWI/AAAAAAAAAO8/wgt1U7ogm0k/e365/white-2000x1500.jpg”. Where was Steve Sounders when they shit this one out? Who implements background customization with only support for images anyway? What‽ It appears that Google’s gone completely barking mental.

lachstock:

benw:

White 2000×1500

Please forgive me, but I’m going to be an unrelenting bitch about this Google background thing for just a moment longer:

When you eventually figure out how to get a white background back on Google.com (once the background picker tool eventually loads—it will probably force you to log in again first—look under ‘Editors Picks’, and then ‘White’) you may notice a few things:

  1. On a white background, the text is still white, so you’ll be reading everything by shadow shape. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer (which has shitty support for text-shadow) are screwed (screenshot.)
  2. ‘White’—which you and I and everyone else would just consider a colour—is in fact still served up by Google as an image.
  3. That image is named ‘White-2000×1500’.
  4. Sounds large, right? Don’t panic, the actual image dimensions are 1600×1200.
  5. Which is still an extra HTTP request and 11KB over the wire.
  6. And it’s loaded as an <img> element, rather than a background image.
  7. And that <img> doesn’t have any alt text, so screen readers are going to try and infer what it might mean. Like, they’re going to read out: “http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fxkujw2mA9U/TA79kGonjWI/AAAAAAAAAO8/wgt1U7ogm0k/e365/white-2000x1500.jpg”.

Where was Steve Sounders when they shit this one out?

Who implements background customization with only support for images anyway?

What‽

It appears that Google’s gone completely barking mental.

Jun 07

The Picture We Never Thought We’d See: blimey.

The Picture We Never Thought We’d See: blimey.

May 28

When online media outlets pay peanuts, they get monkeys -

In the wake of New Matilda folding, a righteous post by Mel Campbell on the value of writing.