Ian On The Red Dot

Ever since I started working, I’ve returned to wearing ‘uniforms’ – the standard is to rotate through 3 sets of G2000 shirt and pants, mixing up the combination each day. Haven’t changed the base since I started work in 2006 and I don’t really intend to.

I really have too much clothes for my dressing habit.

Over the weekend, I started taking photos and cataloging what clothes I don’t intend to keep. I really do hope to give it away to someone or some organization. The standard reply on which organization to give is ‘Salvation Army’ but I’ve heard that the Salvation Army collection boxes have become ‘rubbish bins’ so I’m not sure if that’s still the best place.

Any suggestions?

The first batch of clothes are here. The shirts are quite old but still very much wearable (by the standard that I would be more than happy to wear them out, much to the chagrin of my gf). The Quiksilver jeans, Hang Ten pants and U2 trousers are relatively new, could possibly be described as good condition and only my ballooning waistline is preventing me from using them.

I’m starting to go through my clothes, books and toys to decide what to throw away ( or hopefully either give or sell away). If you have any tips about which organizations would accept these donations, do leave a comment.

First result for the search ‘Newspaper Jargon’:

takeout

A longer story that takes a step back from daily, breaking news stories to put a running story with frequent developments into context and perspective.

slug

An internal name for a story, usually just one word. Elex might be the slug for a story on school elections.

scoop

As a noun, a story no one else has; as a verb, to do it to the competition.

Recently been caught up with work and time has become a blur. I know its November, but November means nothing. Just another month. With datelines.

My life is arranged in weeks. What code must be written today. What tests must be completed by the end of the week. What stories must be completed in this weekly iteration.

How did it come to this?

It used to be when at month came I knew what it meant. Someone close, someone I cared for was born in this month some many years ago. And it was time to prepare something, to remind that person that he or she matters, and I’m grateful for the friendship.

I’m forgetting. Something.

I can’t remember what it was.

Photos were taken without an external flash & tripod. I think it is time to invest in them.

These two links were invaluable:

Selenium and HTTPS:

Create a new Firefox profile (firefox.exe -profileManager). In this case the name of the new profile is selenium-https-profile.

java -jar selenium-server.jar -firefoxProfileTemplate

Dealing with self-signed SSL certificates when running Selenium server with Firefox:

Delete everything in the directory except for the cert_override.txt and cert8.db files.

You learn a lot just by studying the work they do and asking questions.

&

Xvfb:

In the X Window System, Xvfb or X virtual framebuffer is an X11 server that performs all graphical operations in memory, not showing any screen output. From the point of view of the client, it acts exactly like any other server, serving requests and sending events and errors as appropriate. However, no output is shown. This virtual server does not require the computer it is running on to even have a screen or any input device.

Running Selenium on a Solaris server so that can run Cucumber tests via Hudson daily after each successful build. The problem was Selenium + Firefox had no display to output to.

The solution was to use xvfb and output to it.

First learned of Troika from their SMS Guerrilla Projector project and was amazed by their work.

Singapore is host for one of their installations at Ion Orchard, a playful take on the waterfall that can sometimes be found in shopping malls.

Scafolds down – Troika’s ION Waterfall Up from chertan on Vimeo.

What’s truly inspiring about this piece of work is how old-school the tech behind this installation is. Do go down and take a look when you have the chance.

Exhibition held at Post-Museum,

an independent cultural and social space situated in Little India Singapore

Almost like a pimp warning parents about the dangers of teenage sex, well, because young boys shouldn’t be having sex with teenage girls but with the pimp’s whores, New Paper, Singapore’s paragon of journalistic endeavors devoted about 3 pages on Clicknetwork.tv’s scandalicious babes last weekend for their Sunday edition (at least I think it was Sunday).

The articles online:

Even the way they talk seems slutty: Mum of 3
Can’t figure out ‘For-bees’ (Forbes) magazine
Too smut for their own good?
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea

I have only heartfelt gratitude to TNP for sharing the assets of these ladies, brightening up my gloomy Sunday morning.

The thing that really interests me is that beyond all the faux moral & intellectual outrage about the quality and content of these shows, if you study Clicknetwork.tv as an online video network, you’ll see the company is doing a pretty good job with their site. Let’s compare their site with another favorite of mine – Razor.tv.

Warning: Long post.

Down the rabbit hole

Razor.tv’s main page:

The first two things you notice:

1. Latest Video or at least to me, hey, random video. Might not be relevant to me at all, but who cares!
2. Most recent videos. Again. Just pulled from the top of the pile with no relevance to me at all.

Lower down the page, you see the latest episodes from their different channels.

Here you notice how Razor.tv is stuck in a certain stone age. Or least in the age where video killed the radio star. Channels. Channels. Channels. Instead of focusing on shows. Sure, you see a horizontal line of banners promoting some of the series like ‘The Elite Challenge’ but it is clear they are still very channel-centric.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at the ‘Current Affairs’ channel:

Did you know that there are many segments for this channel? One of them is ‘Ground Zero’ which isn’t highlighted in the sidebar of the above page.

Trying to navigate around the main current affairs page to find a segment you like is almost like trying to find the mythical g-spot.

Clicknetwork.tv’s main page:

I confess. I’m bias. The whole site just looks nicer. What I also really like is how the site doesn’t just bombard me with a random video that just so happens to be the most recent one. Sure, they do emphasize the most recent videos, but at the same eye level, I can easily navigate to find the most viewed this month, the most viewed of all time (at least since the inception of the network) and the most discussed.

Above the fold

To see the most commented and most popular videos on Razor.tv, you would have to scroll down a little bit more on an average screen. Does this matter a lot? Maybe not for everyone, but it sure helps the experience to be able to see all these navigation tools for videos based on stats at the same horizontal level.

Back to channels

Clicknetwork.tv emphasis is on their shows. Sure, they do group the shows into categories (i.e. channels) but it is always about the show. On the main page, descriptions for the shows are given.

Look at Razor.tv, do you get the sense from the main page that they have any sort of regular shows? Do you get the sense which link you click will lead you to a regular show? How about what each series is about? Any descriptions?

Before talking about two series on Razor.tv, let’s compliment Clicknetwork.tv for giving the web surfer decent descriptions of each of their series on the main page.

From the main page, I know that,

Bored in Bikinis is about:

What happens when 2 bikini babes get bored? A lot of random frivolous nonsense. Featuring Sonia and Xue Sha from ‘S Factor’.

Numbnuts is about:

Hutch and Mike face-off in crazy challenges where the loser suffers a shitty penalty.

I already feel safe clicking the links. I know I won’t be entering a dark room where I’ll be clobbered on the back, stuffed into a sack and brought to a shallow grave.

How about Razor.tv? Let’s look at two series ‘The Elite Challenge’ & ‘A Starry Night’. I know that ‘A Starry Night’ is Singapore’s first subway drama. Ok. First. In. Something. Got to be good right. But what the fuck is the show about. People trapped in a subway? People who like to eat sandwiches at night?

How about ‘The Elite Challenge’? Something to do with our Civil Defense Force. But what about?

Now, let’s look at the respective pages for these two series:

The Elite Challenge:

I still don’t know what the show is about. And of all places, this is the place to emphasize the latest video, by, you know, putting a video player at the prime location. What do you get instead? Choices. Choose which video you want to watch. WTF. Seriously. I’m already here. What do you think I want to watch? Make a guess. Maybe the latest episode.

A Starry Night:

Now you tell me what this whole show is about. Instead, of you know, showing the latest episode. Think about it. How am I supposed to know I want to come to this channel if I only get information about this channel on this channel? Genius.

‘Chick versus Dick’ on Clicknetwork.tv:

We already told you what this show is all about, on the main page, so since you’re here. Let’s get down to business. Shall we? Ta-Dah! The latest episode. And the individual page for each of their shows – Classy. With the effort invested, you would have thought these shows were on prime-time TV.

Breaking Up of Episodes:

Look, quality content is quality content. If I love it, I’ll watch it. Till the end. To possibly try to inflate views and clinks, Razor.tv has broken up individual episodes in clip.1, clip.2, clip.3 … What the hell? Do they think they are releasing software? Episode 1 is Episode 1. Let me watch the whole episode on 1 page.

Clicknetwork.tv respects the viewer. Sure, who doesn’t want more clicks. More views. But there is the right way to do it, and then there is the Razor.tv way of doing it.

And you made it to the end, so, boobies for you!

Disclosure: I know someone who knows someone that works for Clicknetwork.tv. That someone I know has bought me a bottle of beer. This post was not written under the influence of that bottle of beer.