I never thought I’d see the day when I would upgrade past Windows XP, but it is here. Windows 7 RC is nice; it is almost bug free, fairly well organized, supports Direct X 10, and seems to support most of my hardware. Additionally, I felt no growing pains with my current level of RAM, and system resources. It seems to be the best of XP and Vista put together. But here’s the downside…
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Handcrafted CSS, the latest contribution of Dan Cederholm to the world of Web Design and Development is a fantastic book! To say that I’m a fan of his work is a bit of an understatement. No web designer or developer should be without these books; Bulletproof Web Design, Handcrafted CSS, as well as Designing With Web Standards, and DOM Scripting. These books are fantastic resources, and push web development out of the dark ages of table based layout, css hacks, and duplicating sites for each browser version. But there is a particular philosophy the makes Handcrafted CSS special. Continue Reading »
I’m not much different than most designers and developers, I loath Internet Explorer. But I understand why they are slow to embrace change, specifically standards.
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Every now and then the festering issue of IE as a viable browser rears it’s ugly head. This eventuality usually occurs right around the release of a new version. Microsofts latest iteration, IE8, was slated to be released without standards mode being the default rendering mode. With all the progress that the web comunity has made with standards why wouldn’t this be the default? Continue Reading »
I have participated from time to time on the DT&G forums. Mostly to get feedback on site designs, and to provide suggestions to other designers. I got this flippant comment on my design by somebody named fred. (I didn’t capitalize his name, because he didn’t) I chose to respond, by asking them to back up their claims with examples.
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Many people now rely on the web as a source for their lifestyles; research, maps, gossip, movie rentals, shopping. Now that this tool is so heavily used I thought it would be good to think about where it started, and where it is today from a design perspective. In the early days websites were pretty horrible to look at, lots of blinking, flashing things, dancing hamsters, BIG FONTS, red text on black backgrounds etc… (I could go on, but I know some of you are already getting nauseous. Thankfully most of the world wide web has moved past designs like these:
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I’ve had it! I bought Need for Speed Carbon the day it arrived in stores. I ran out after work handed over my hard earned cash and ran home to install it. It was fun, and I loved it. Sounds great. But the game crashes all the time. Random crashes, no warning, no error, straight to desktop crashes. All the time. Patch 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, none of them do anything to improve the situation. I’ve reinstalled the game, Direct X, updated drivers all the recommended support tips. No good, still crashes. I started playing again, because I love the game and I bought it, and it still crashes. Because it’s random I can sometimes get through a fair bit before it crashes, other times one race. Sometimes in the car store, other times after cut scenes, the last time, which prompted me to write this, right in the middle of a race. ARGGGGHHH!!!!
Maybe it’s my system. Could be. But why wouldn’t Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-life 2, Tomb Raider, Bioshock, or Need for Speed underground, underground 2, or Most Wanted crash then too? In fact no other game I’ve played has crashed. My system is pretty much top of the line. Core 2 6400, 2Gb RAM, ATI 1900XTX 512Mb VRAM.
Why wouldn’t a company write a patch to resolve such a widespread, common problem. This is a well documented issue:
I understand not knowing how to trace an un-reproducible bug, that doesn’t seem to be a problem here. I understand having hardware that doesn’t meet the system requirements, not an issue as far as I’ve read. I understand abandoning a project, not the case here as there have been three patches released since it launch. So what’s the problem?
More importantly I want to know why EA would think that I would actually buy the next installment of this game that comes out this week, Need for Speed Pro Street, when they haven’t even gotten the last one to work! I for one am waiting to buy this game until the user reviews come out, becasue even the game magazines didn’t report this problem with carbon. Buyer beware.
Right after I wrote this article, I found that the demo was online for Need For Speed Pro Street. I downloaded the 750 Mb file, installed it, and ran it. It trudged through the intro movies, flashy animations etc… Then I set my video setting to match my screen, this game at least supports my wide screen monitor, unlike Carbon. Setup my game pad. Then started the demo for the speed challenge. CRASH!!!!! I tried again, having to repeat all my setup procedures again. This time I quit after changing my settings, anticipating the crash and not want to set up my screen and controls again. Re-launched and tried again to start the race. CRASH!!!!!!!!! Wow, now I really want to buy this game.
Aren’t demos supposed to be the compelling, “oh my this is so amazing I have to play the full game” experience? The “this blew my mind, now I want to give them my credit card number” kind of experience? Oh well, guess I’ll save my money for the Orange Box, Crysis, or anything that doesn’t have the EA name on it. Pathetic!!!
One of the often overlooked problems with our dwindling oil future is plastic. As we continue to burn oil in our engines we are using a valuable resource that could be used for durable plastic goods. When the oil runs out, or becomes extremely rare and expensive, how will we manufacture plastics? We rely heavily on plastics for all our products; electronics, transportation, medical technologies, construction, and housing. There are few things today that do not rely on plastics and polymers.
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Getting back to design and development topics I thought it would be valuable to offer my insight on this product. Being a courseware developer over the last 11 years or so, I’ve worked with a lot of tools. For most courses developing in either HTML, or Flash or a combination of both is my preferred method. It offers a vast amount of control and creativity. These methods do require a higher level of skill in web development, animation, and scripting but the results are well worth the cost. On the other hand Adobe Captivate offers some flexibility and a relatively easy learning curve for developers, and instructional designers and can result in a very professional result. Here’s my take the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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As a follow up to the article on cheap carbon frames I wanted to make a few additional points about bicycle quality that are less specific than one frame material. To begin, I think that everyone should ride bicycles. Bicycles provide low impact healthy exercise that is fun for all ages, and even more fun to do as a group. To get started you need to have a bicycle. If you already have one, or need to get one, here are some simple rules to follow when looking for a good bike.
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