Aja Lapus

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  • Transformers

    Transformers
    Electrical Engineering. Devices used to transfer electric energy from one circuit to another, especially a pair of multiply-wound, inductively-coupled wire coils that effect such a transfer with a change in voltage, current, phase, or other electric characteristic.
    film. A 2007 live action film directed by Michael Bay starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox.

    Ok, ok … I won’t be talking about my past EE lessons here. I’ve just watched Transformers with my uncle and cousins yesterday. I must say it was great! The action scenes, camera angles, and effects are just astounding—thanks to Michael Bay. The realism put into the mecha CG animation was amazing as well!

    I really cannot comment about its deviations from the original animation storyline,[1] though, for I was just a little kid when I’ve watched it. Nevertheless, it really caught me with my mouth open for the mixed comedy and action it brought on the table. I really liked the scenes where Sam Witwicky was trying to catch Mikaela Banes’ attention that Bumblebee started playing on its radio songs super fit for the scene. It was a laugh trip! 😆

    BTW, Sir Abe announced about 10 hours ago that he is giving away free Transformers T-shirts! And this post serves as my entry. (email address: ajalapus at ajalapus.com)

    Aside from Bumblebee,[2] I really like Starscream. Since the F-22 Raptor is also my favorite, there isn’t really any competition. I think he was the one who got me interested in watching Transformers in the first place. Add to that Starscream’s agility being capable of transforming mid-air—being disguised as one of the allies, he then transforms jumping from one Raptor to another. Oh, the deceit! 😉

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ If there is any.
    2. ^ Who is probably the majority’s favorite.

  • Hindering Standards Advancement

    IMO, there are two ways to hinder the advancement of Web standards:

    1. To continue legacy practices, holding back on new, better ones; and
    2. To keep inconsistencies between Web developers and designers, and user agent, tool and software developers.

    Legacy Practices

    I still haven’t studied much about the endianness of character encodings, but it sure is one thing I’ve seen that exhibits a legacy practice recommended by W3C. I’ve been placing a Unicode Byte-Order Mark before the output of my WordPress themes since my text editor featured its control on UTF-8 encoded files. After subjecting it to the W3C Markup Validation Service, I encountered a warning that says:

    The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.

    I’ve actually tried placing the BOM because Google Webmaster Tools report my site to have been encoded in ASCII even though I have set the HTTP Headers to respond, and <meta/> elements to indicate otherwise. After doing so, Google Webmaster Tools reported about 50% of my site is on UTF-8 that I concluded it reads pages’ encodings using the BOM.

    The first time I’ve read that warning, an insight immediately struck me regarding legacy systems and practices. So, I just want to ask: Why are they enforcing legacy practices to be continued by Web designers and developers instead of enforcing new and current standards to be implemented by user agent, tool and software developers?

    Incomplete Implementation

    I’ve written much of the above article about a week ago, but it just came short of publication. I thought my so-called insight is very limited with regards to the current issues between Web and software development that I decided to postpone publication. It still would be on draft status if not for Molly Holzschlag saying just recently, HTML5 and XHTML 1.1+ MUST Stop for Now. I was puzzled why one of the most famous standardistas I look up to said that. The title would seem to mean she has just begun to dislike the improvements to Web standards. But after reading the whole article, I totally agreed. BTW, she meant:

    1. COMPLETE HTML 4.1 [sic], XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 in specs and browsers where applicable
    2. CALL for consistent implementation of these most basic specifications in all current browsers and devices to this point
    3. WAIT for future HTML, XHTML and CSS implementations until these implementations are complete
    4. FOCUS on JavaScript and DOM fixes and implementations as we come up to par with markup and style

    The only way new Web standards would be supported is to implement completely the current and existing ones. This would also make legacy practices be needed no more. Molly didn’t say that the progression of Web standards should be stopped forever, but the terms for now should be emphasized as long as incomplete implementations exist—and she’s talking about no specific user agent as even Mozilla, Opera and Safari have no perfect support, just better ones. So … I question no more.

  • Safari 3 Beta for Windows

    Last time when I was reviewing new releases of Windows Web browsers, I was hoping I could get my hands on a Mac—or at least the money to buy one—so I could review Safari as well. But, I don’t think I would be drooling for it any sooner. I was browsing my Live Bookmarks when I saw a post from WaSP announcing the release of Safari 3 Public Beta for Mac and Windows. Yes, you heard it right … Safari’s new public beta is made for Windows as well!

    I don’t think I’d be switching from Mozilla Firefox, though, especially now that Firefox 3 is nearing its release. Besides, common shortcuts I use with Firefox don’t work with Safari such as tab switching [Ctrl+Tab], open new tab [Double-click on Tab Bar], and maybe many more[1] that it has to have some getting used to. But, as a Web developer, it sure is very convenient to have four major browsers—Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari, and Windows Internet Explorer—on a single box for cross-browser testing.

    Contrary to what Yuga said, I think Safari is fast. It loaded my home page’s Extended Live Archives and some other DOM scripts lag-free. But, the startup isn’t as fast as Opera’s still.

    So if you will, you could download Safari 3 Public Beta from Apple.

    1. ^ I’ve only been using it for just about 30 minutes.

  • Redesign At Long Last

    I have announced a redesign more than a month ago, but since WP 2.2 has been delayed, I decided to delay it as well. It’s finished now … well, almost. The upgrading process and the redesign exhausted me. So this post will just be a placeholder. Place your comments here, but I will surely edit this entry later.

    I was just worried about some things the upgrade did to my database, it seems that some non-Latin characters was converted to something else. I will investigate on this matter after I wake up later this morning.

    *after waking up this afternoon*

    After years of having single color accents, I’ve decided to take on dual-color accents to be used on this new design. I just love having complementary orange and blue on almost anything, now they’re on my Web site as well.

    Some pages still wouldn’t work, and some are still being rewritten. The new Projects page will be used to organize all my work including Web development and WordPress plugin development pages.

    This design has been tested on Firefox 2.0.0.x, Opera 9.x and Internet Explorer 7. I may include some bug fixes for Internet Explorer 6 as I discover it, but don’t count on it.

    Credits go to Feed Icons for the standard feed icon, and to FamFamFam for the cute little Silk icons I’ve used throughout the whole site.

    Thanks to Arvin for pointing out that my comment form didn’t work. I’ve only used id attributes on the form elements that browsers handling HTML-compatible XHTML wouldn’t process as query string variable names like what they do on name attributes.

    Criticisms are welcome. 🙂

  • Musing #0011

    A lot of us hate spam, but how do you think human spammers or the people behind robot spammers react to their actions? Do spammers hate receiving spam comments, messages and mails they didn’t send themselves as much as we do?