Yahoo Working Hard as Hell
I was checking my viewer statistic logs and found more than 20 Yahoo Slurp search engine views for the past few days. Google has about 5, MSN Search has about 7-8. Now that MSN came out with the new toolbar, Yahoo feels it’s really falling behind? Google has been pretty quiet lately, perhaps too quiet. Everyone is expecting something from the search giant.
It just seems odd to me how Yahoo has been going down for the last few years. They have always been on the top of the list at everything — search, electronic mail, directory listing, instant messenging, news — before 2000. Now each of those subjects is taken over big-timed by something else. I’ve always thought of Yahoo as a friendly company that hasn’t done too much good or bad for the users. Microsoft’s game of monopoly gets annoying sometimes too, forcing me to use Internet Explorer and MSN passport all the time.
And even after Yahoo bought Flickr, no one is really hyped about it. Even my old Yahoo email address now redirects to my Gmail one.
I also learned something called Ajax (a combination of Javascript, XMLHttpRequest, and some server service) today. This seems like a really popular use of technology now. Gmail is using it. It’s that thing where you can get information without reloading the page. A9 also uses it for a portion of its stuff. This seems really useful — I might consider it for the future projects.
Yay for Golfing
Can I be more pissed? Yes, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
So we went golfing on Friday. Man it was so fun I can’t remember what happened at all now. Apparently certain individuals had to shake berry trees and get kicked out, ultimately giving certain teachers the impression that we being rude and belligerent. I swear, if one day I find out whoever invented golf, I’m going to fore his ass until his balls fall off.
Anyway, there was a meeting this morning with teachers about our rude behaviours. Oh man were we rude. 2 students in our year and the rest of the other year. But guess what? Our year is responsible for this whole thing and have to write apology letter, phone to appologize, help with community work, and all the other benefit that comes with being the seniors in a regarded school.
Now, let me take the teachers’ stand for a moment.
— I went camping for the weekend, including Friday. I come back Sunday night realizing that my students have gone crazy on a golf course on Friday. Apparently, certain individuals were talking back and being really rude at the managers of the course. Now they are going to get it. This is out of control. But since the juniors are going to Playland tomorrow, let’s make the seniors do all the shit, including writing an apology letter, phoning to say sorry, and cleaning golf balls. Heck, who needs to go to Playland if you can’t behave on a golf course? Good thing I didn’t go golfing, so I can go to playland tomorrow. Even though there were individuals who were being inappropriete, I will try my best to distribute the blame among everyone. That’ll be really fair. —
I was planning on going to playland tomorrow. Meeting old friends up, visiting elementary school. But noooo, this wave of shit has to hit my face before anything happens. Because of our rude behaviours, Playland is cancelled. But visiting the Vancouver Art Museum isn’t?
We were told that we, as seniors, should look out for shit like this. We should be telling the jerks to buzz off. Wow what are a bunch of 15 year olds going to do about that.
Tomorrow is a full day of community service for this — this’d better not become another one of those bad to worse things.
Blade Animated
This is for all you guys who claim not to have any sense of 3D perspective =P. It’s about 204k.
Legal Issues Regarding Graphics
I downloaded some “royalty free” icons from some site. On that site, it says these icons are completely free and I see no legal document regarding the ownership and usability of those icons. I’m pretty sure that site (really crappy design) didn’t make those icons.
Now I’m wondering, these icons, which are top-quality in my opinion, are surely created by someone. I can’t find an agreement or anything for these. Can I use them? Not to re-sell to anybody, but for personal projects etc?
What does the law say if there is no rule for these things (or none that I can see)? If I can use them, who would I give credits to?
Update.
Fixed a Few Things
Okay, I updated some style sheets. This should stop IE 5.5 from barfing and Safari from stealing cookies. Sort of.
But still, BrowserCam still gives a really awkward screenshot of this page in Explorer 5.2 for Mac OSX. The menu items seem to be block elements without width control. Click the screenshot below.
I know IE is retarded everywhere it goes, but why does this happen only for Explorer 5.2? Please feel free to browse through the CSS for this page. Hopefully there is a cure.
I haven’t yet found one user that’s using Explorer 5.2 to view this site (except myself), but the computers on the university campus seem to use that browser as the default.
Also, due to the recent MediaTemple hosting upgrade (YAY!), this site might be down and will not be updated during the following time period.
Saturday, May 14th, 2005 11:00PM PST — Sunday, May 15th, 2005 3:00AM PST
Thank you for your patience.
Physics > Playland
I swear, certain individuals in this world make this place a worse place. Ahem.
So we are all supposed to be going to playland eh. But guess what, there is physics involved. Not that I have anything against physics, the way this subject is presented to us is unbearable. Just hearing “Hey get to class, it’s physics” everyday kills a part of me, even though I don’t even take physics. I really like physics, but this voice is turning physics into some evil thing that everyone fears.
We have two lab write-ups and a quiz due on the day that we go to playland. Woot. The only reason we go to playland is because of that. And guess what, even the ones who don’t take the physics course have to do it too! Isn’t that awesome? Really interesting theory here - work is required even for those who aren’t related to it. I’m sure whoever came up with that theory is really smart and deep, cause I don’t get a single piece of that shit.
On a lighter note, for those of you not using Firefox, here is something that might make you think again.
(But I’m using Opera anyway)
3D Blade
Model of the original spin-blade that Blade in Blade carries. I’ll make some animations.
A new design with that kind of stuff will be coming soon =) Stay tuned.
I Hate
- Getting a papercut under a nail
- Taking showers after swimming
- Thinking about cleaning out my desk
- Getting haircuts
- Babies crying
I especially hate papercuts under nails. It’s like stealing your soul. You try to grab a bunch of paper and jab your finger into an edge and acidentally slide it across the surface. The pain of untouched skin under your nail bleeding is unbearable. Not only that, afterwards, you get a huge blob of red crap around your fingers. I hate cleaning out my desk because of that.
Weird & funny things happen everyday.
Blade Trinity
I saw it just now, courtesy of Tian and Tracy’s DVD burner =)
I was kind of disappointed. The first Blade movies were so much better. The cinematics and angles of action were simply stunning. Every scene and shake is packed with action.
But in Blade Trinity, Whistler just dies up front. Dude, if he’s gonna die not for some great cause, why even have him? In the first two movies, Blade falls. He then comes back alive-ish by drinking blood. In the third one, Blade is.. just blade. No change throughout the movie.
And what’s with the fruitycake boy? Some stuff was funny, but most of his lines were either pulled out of pure cheese or come up by himself.
Ack, disappointment of the third movie of a series is inevitable. Terminator 3, Matrix Revolutions, and hopefully not Star Wars III.
That, and Google was down. More info via [here].
Marvin is Awesome!
His character in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is probably the most important. He is absolutely hilarious.
Ever eat pizza that tastes like cardboard? Ever had the feeling that you aren’t sure if you are actually eating real pizza or chewing on the leftover cardboard boxes? Today at our own organized meeting with like 200 other people, the food left over was enough to feed an already dissected pig. Nothing to eat sucks.
Tomorrow there is another 6 hours of that. I hope to sleep late tonight so I’ll be dizzy tomorrow and will probably run into some truck or something and get my arm smashed off so I can go home and rest.