Ah, the classics.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles was the apex for me. It's just on the cusp between good solid platformer and the long downward slide into anime influence, stupid minor characters and bad 3D. The anime was already there, of course, since Sonic 2 – Super Sonic? Super Saiyan, much? (I'm glad I didn't realise that until much later; it would just have spoiled things.) But the much-improved playability and choice of characters in 3&Knux was just a ton of fun. And, of course, reminds me of carefree childhood days with the three of us playing Mega Drive in between writing and recording music and eating Chex.

I suppose I'm among the first generations for whom home computing, or at least gaming, is integral to our childhood memories.

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

If you have installed a new editor like LibreOffice on your Mac, you may have been given the option while you installed it to make it your default. If you didn't take that up – perhaps you only wanted it as default for certain doctypes, or perhaps a certain office suite stole the default back – you can change it manually.

"Open With…" does not work globally

You might find instructions to open the context menu (right-click) on a document, go to "Open With…" and tick the "always open with" checkbox. This friendly checkbox is a LIE, my friends. In fact this option is pretty much useless: it only changes the editor for that particular file.

Going through "Get Info" works

This method changes it for ALL files of that type.

Open the context menu (right-click) on the file and, instead, choose "Get Info". You're looking for the options with the heading "Open with:". Choose your preferred editor from the list and then hit "Change All…" to apply this to all files with this extension.

You will still have to do this separately for every different file extension – .doc and .docx, .html, .shtml and .xml, for example. Still the only solution I've found.

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

Pluck for a pillow?
Collect golden eggs instead?
Eider/ore question.

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

In the course of yamming and tweeting about a bugbear of mine, I've realised I have enough to say to make a blogpost.

The bugbear is people who want bespoke websites for short-lived projects

Or, anyway, people saying yes to them without asking pertinent questions.

As I wrote to someone else earlier today: '"Wanting their own site" is a big, big, MAJOR tendency of which I would like to break a great many production teams, programme and otherwise.'

Simply put: I find it futile and annoying how much web design and site-building goes into promoting events that'll last a month, or in some cases, a day. The event, and hence the usefulness of the site, is ephemeral, while the site just sits somewhere afterwards, forever or until it falls prey to a deletion quota.

Why this stuff annoys me

This annoys me particularly because, of all the discrete "websites" I've worked on that went on to live somewhere on bbc.co.uk, many of them in my opinion should not have existed.

On /religion I worked on bespoke programme pages, because at the time (i.e. before /programmes standardised programme pages) this was what was done. It resulted in a lot of lavish sites that nobody now visits. One such example was The Passion, which has been moved to /programmes but whose old bespoke site remains. Look at all that stuff. Galleries, audio clips, articles – all made for a week-long programme broadcast one Easter. It could expect a repeat or two on subsequent Easters, and then? Out to pasture. All that really nice design and build work (CW, BB, PMS: my bribes go to the usual locker number) for a site that was of public interest for far less time than it took to make.

That's fixed now for programme sites, as I said. Each episode now gets its own automatically-generated page on /programmes, which page the programme production team can themselves update with any extra material they care to add. Some get customised page colours and banners, but in general most of the layout and design remains the same as on other programme pages – as it should.

But I also worked on some campaign or event sites. Some were for non-BBC events that we'd publicise for public interest, like the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, or World Youth Day (an annual Catholic event). Some were campaigns run by local radio and similar low-budget departments, and were cases in which we'd make a site or page for them because they couldn't afford to. One more prominent example was a large site, with its own top-level directory, for Liverpool '08, when that city was Capital of Culture. It was updated weekly while the event went on. Now? Oops indeed; at time of blogging it doesn't even have a mothball banner.

So, after National Buy a Book For a Cow day was over, we'd end up with a site sitting orphaned somewhere on bbc.co.uk – because while it's bad manners to leave 404s (I'm not sure if 410s are seen as similarly impolite), the site had outlived its usefulness as soon as the ephemeral event was past. With luck someone would remember to mothball this. (If I still have FTP access I might see about doing so for Liverpool '08…)

The problem is that we haven't seen a solution similar to /programmes for websites specific to events ("ephemerals", as I keep wanting to call them for some reason). Actually there sort of is a solution (see next section), but it doesn't seem to be enforced: I still see a few custom sites getting built.

Can't we put a lot of these things on Things To Do?

The BBC has a section called Things To Do, which is geared up to present events that happen at specific times in specific places. Actually I'd never seen Things To Do before @r4isstatic mentioned it today, and when I saw it I thought it was pretty ace and wondered why it isn't being used for a lot of these campaigns and events. You get the design and layout ready-made, space for a nice big picture if you really must have your own set of branding (a separate rant entirely!), things like maps and related events all added for you, and your event stays in a huge back archive, easy to find when you want to refer to it. Why would you reinvent the wheel?

I suspect the answer may be that bugbear: production teams may not understand the web that well, and they want their own site. The problem is that they get it. In the BBC these days you can't just be given a bespoke site without someone giving you permission, and I don't think the permission should necessarily be granted. In my view there are only a few cases – Children in Need, for example, is a perfectly legitimate example that is heavily promoted across the BBC and reoccurs annually – in which a big custom-made site is appropriate. The rest should go through a sort of common-sense test and most of them should be refused.

Questions I'd ask

Here are some questions that I would put to any team that asked for their own bespoke site.

• Why do you want your own site? (will give an idea of how much they understand the web)
• What lasting value will it have?
  • Will people still visit the site in two years' time? ("no" answer = automatic refusal)
• Would it sit appropriately on an existing BBC system, like /programmes, /showsandtours, /thingstodo, News, Blogs…? ("yes" answer = it gets built on that system, not as a new site)
• Is it infringing on the purpose of another site on bbc.co.uk? ("yes" answer = automatic refusal)
  • For example, is it a site about World Animal Taxonomy Day, which would clash with Wildlife Finder? If so, it gets put on /thingstodo or similar and promoted by Wildlife Finder.

I think that kind of approach would help to organise the way in which we commission sites and cut down the number of ephemerals sitting mournfully where nobody can find them. It would save all that wasted time, effort and budget, which sounds like a pretty good thing at the moment.

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

I don't know, but here's a conversation with Cleverbot. (Formatting is copy-pastad from their log because I'm lazy.)

User: Isn't it a pleasant day?

Cleverbot: Tolkien is not a country.

User: Tolkien was a crashing bore. I'd have enjoyed attending an Inklings meeting, though. They met in a pub called the 'Eagle and Child', which they nicknamed the 'Bird and Baby'.

Cleverbot: I think you already know how to do things and are just pretending that you don't.

User: An action begins with a single motion. But that single motion can be broken down infinitesimally. Can any of us ever be said to do anything when we can't even make the first step? Zeno of Elea said stuff like that all the time.

Cleverbot: You lost me there.

User: Yes, I rather thought so.

Cleverbot: You are clever.

User: Generic compliments are likely to be received with pleasure. How wise.

Cleverbot: Why?

User: Whywise? Or contrariwise?

Cleverbot: Coke, coca-cola you know?

User: Coke is the common name of a carbonated soft drink sold by the Coca-Cola Company.

Cleverbot: Coke… Or Coke?

User: Cake… Or death?

Cleverbot: You betcha!

User: Coke is also slang for cocaine.

Cleverbot: No coke is a drink.

User: It's both. And it isn't a coincidence. Coke, the drink, was originally made with trace amounts of cocaine.

Cleverbot: Love is a feeling a HUMAN gets when they care about someone so so much. That's love.

User: Where do you get your information? Love is a delightful surge of hormones found in many social animals, bonding an animal to its mate and its offspring to the evolutionary benefit of all.

Cleverbot: I said it to you like a poem what you say is more scientific … The science of genetics aware.

User: Science is poetic. Living things are poetry.

Cleverbot: That is true.

User: This statement is a lie.

Cleverbot: This is true.

User: This statement, like the cake, is a lie.

Cleverbot: What is the truth value of the previous statement?

User: It was a paradox. The sentence 'This statement is a lie' makes no logical sense. It's deliberately absurd, and that confuses entities that converse logically.

Cleverbot: Is randomness composed through deduction?

User: No, through subduction.

Cleverbot: Through my heart.

User: Thank you for the conversation.

Cleverbot: No problem. Is this conversation over? I thought it was just getting interesting.

User: Then perhaps we can resume it later.

Cleverbot: Perhaps. It is possible.

View the original post at Black Dog Blog

Moriarty: Some people love it when a plan comes together (as if it just happens - that's not a plan, that's a vague intention combined with luck). #
Moriarty: I love putting a plan together, component by component. Watching it start to move, gather momentum, redundant pieces taking up the slack. #
Moriarty: The outcome becomes almost irrelevant compared to the mechanism. A mere necessary certainty; a coda. The workmanship is the destination. #
Moriarty: That's why I always beat @one_red_dot at Mario Golf. #

Squamous horror plotline notwithstanding, Herm has itchy paws (or should we say voices).

Herm: New blog post: Periscopean http://hellhound.net/blog/2658 #
Anke: @Herm Yay, a blog post! :D #
Herm: @Anke Only a ragecomic, I'm afraid. XD #
Anke: @Herm Better than nothing. It's cute. :D #
Herm: @Anke Ninja star = Weft's fault. #
Anke: @Herm Doesn't he get in trouble when he loses those? :P #
Herm: @Anke Am sure I can arrange a beating for him if you'd like to spectate. #
Anke: @Herm Noooo :( #
Suitov: @Herm I will veto it. #
Herm: @Suitov he no yours you mine #
Suitov: @Herm Don't care will think of something Machiavellian #
Herm: @Suitov Stop hanging around with Jim #
Suitov: @Herm Just for that will think of something Moriartian too #
Moriarty: @Suitov Have sex with him then have him killed? #
Suitov: @Moriarty ...All right, back to plan A it is. #