I’ve supported HTML5 video on this site for something like a year now. I don’t think I have commented yet on just how much of a pain it is. This post isn’t a tutorial; other people have already written very good tutorials on HTML5 video. Don’t get me wrong—HTML5 video is a nice thing to have. The videos on this site can play on Flash-less devices like iPhone, iPad, and Android. For current versions of every desktop browser, the video plays nicely without the overhead of loading a Flash container. (And let’s face it, everyone hates Flash.1.) And the syntax is backward-compatible, allowing older browsers to see a flash video player that newer browser will ignore. All-in-all, it’s pretty nice.

Except for the fact that I’m required to convert my video to 4.1 different formats! To play properly everywhere, the video has to be served in:

• MP4 - for Safari, iPhone/iPad, and Android

• OGV - for Firefox, Chrome, and Opera

• WebM - For IE9

• FLV - For flash player fallback in older browsers (IE 6/7/8 mainly)

• JPG - Okay, so this isn’t a video format, and it’s not required. But if you don’t pre-load your videos, you need a jpeg to use as the background letting the user know there is a video there they need to click on. (When I said I need 4.1 formats, this was the point one.)

This is pretty ridiculous. If the img tag didn’t already exist, and it were to be added as a new HTML5 element, the syntax would probably look something like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6

<img>
  <source src="/images/whatever/whatever.jpg" type="image/jpeg" /> <!— for Chrome/Safari —>
  <source src="/images/whatever/whatever.gif" type="image/gif" /> <!— for Opera —>
  <source src="/images/whatever/whatever.png" type="image/png" /> <!— for Firefox —>
  <srouce src="/images/whatever/whatever.bmp" type="image/x-ms-bmp" /> <!— for IE —>
</img>

I have devised a very simple scale for evaluating Mexican restaurants. There are only two points of evaluation:

1. Are the fajitas sizzling when they are brought to your table? If so, the restaurant gets 25 points.

2. Are the tortillas there as soon as the fajitas are brought to the table? If so, the restaurant gets 75 points. (Score no points if you have to sit there and watch your fajitas sizzle out (assuming they were sizzling in the first place) waiting on the waiter to bring out the tortillas.)

For those of you who aren’t mathematically inclined, the only scores possible are 0, 25, 75, and 100.  0 and 25 are equivalent to an F-.  75 is a C. 100 is an A+.

Please if you make web pages or web apps you really need to know this please
A haiku by Kip Robinson

It is so easy
to make forms much friendlier
with the label tag

How to tell if Kip will hate a television program: ask yourself, “does this show feature amateurs doing some kind of performance, after which they are critiqued by three judges, one of whom is foreign and mean?”

If the answer is yes, then Kip will hate the show.

CharlotteGigs.net is a mostly worthless spam machine that masquerades as a local job board.  I signed up for their site when I was looking for a job, and now I can’t seem to get their junk mail to stop coming.  I have clicked the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of their spam several times.  I continue to get this message upon doing so:

Your request to update your email options has been received and is being processed. Please note that it may take up to 10 days for the changes to take effect as there may be email messages already in progress.

Protip:  If you have to show a message like this to your users, you are doing something wrong.  Come on guys, ten days??  What are you doing, writing the request on a notarized letter and mailing it to Nigeria?

Shortly after Christmas I applied some Best Buy gift cards toward Prince of Persia (the new one that for some reason has no subtitle).  The series has been riding on the goodwill created by 2003’s masterpiece The Sands Of Time.  And I have to take a moment to state again just how much I loved that game.  Since then, they released two sequels that didn’t even come close to living up to SoT.

Apparently someone at Ubisoft Montreal has decreed that their games must end with obnoxious cliffhangers.  There was at least kind of an ending to Prince of Persia.  Part of the ending was interactive, and I simply did not want the Prince to do what I had to make him do to complete the game.  So I will give them credit, as this means they did a good job of making me identify with the Prince to some extent.  Of course, after you do this, you get an ending that might as well say “please insert a credit card to buy the next sequel.”

Last week Ubisoft released “Epilogue”, a downloadable episode that takes place immediately after the ending.  Since it was only ten bucks, I bought it (the first time I’ve purchased any DLC, actually).  Well it didn’t really clear up anything, and actually ended more abruptly than Assassin’s Creed’s abortion of an ending.  I didn’t think that was possible.

I don’t understand this decision.  I’m sure someone at Ubisoft thinks “if we make a cliffhanger ending, then more people will come back for a sequel.”  I’m not sure this is a valid line of reasoning.  What they’ve put at the end of their games are essentially a mechanism to make the player very angry, not to generate sales of the sequel.  I don’t think that decent endings prevent anyone from playing the sequel.  Sands Of Time had one of the best endings of any video game that I’ve ever played, and I have come back for three sequels now (four even, if you consider Assassin’s Creed to be a “spiritual sequel”).  If a game is good enough, people will come back for more because they like the game that much.

All that said, I really enjoyed this game.  But can’t I expect the reward of a decent ending after having put twenty hours into playing your game?

Sometimes I wish that I had a really crappy car.  ‘Why?’ you ask?  Because then when someone is tailgating me, particularly when I am already going 5-9 mph over the speed limit and there is a perfectly good lane to my left not being used, I could just slam on the brakes so that they would hit me.  After all, it would be their fault (who’s to say I didn’t see a deer about to run out onto the highway?).  They would learn the hard way not to tailgate, their insurance would go up, and they’d get a ticket.  Maybe they’d even be over the legal blood-alcohol limit and spend the night in jail.  Jackpot.  As for me, I’d just be out a crappy car that I didn’t care about to begin with.  I guess if I did it too many times the police or insurance companies might catch on.  Oh well, it’s not like I’d actually do that.  I’d probably react much more passive-aggressively.  Perhaps by writing a blog post about the tailgating incident.

No, and I don’t care.

Last night Stephanie, Emma, Stephanie’s dad, and myself were traveling to Florida to visit Stephanie’s sister.  Along the way, we stopped for gas twice: once in South Carolina and once in Georgia.  Both times, it took far too long for no good reason.  At the first gas station, for some reason, you have to go inside and prepay for gas, even if you are paying at the pump.  This makes no sense.  The only reason to require someone to go inside and prepay is if they are paying cash, because you are afraid they will drive away.  When you pay at the pump, the gas station has already ensured that you have enough funds on your credit card to cover the gas.  The second time we stopped, an attendant walked up to us after we pulled up beside a pump and said they were changing shifts inside and the pumps were going to be off for about ten-to-fifteen minutes.  (Also, he was smoking at the time.)  Really?  It takes fifteen minutes to balance the books when you change shifts??  And again, we were paying at the pump, which means we didn’t need to pay the guy at the register anything, so why couldn’t they at least leave the pumps open for people paying there?

Anyway, I just thought I’d share.  Enjoy your Independence Day everyone!

While scanning through my junk mail folder in Gmail, I noticed a new spam tactic: directly insulting the reader.

I’m curious if this is effective.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would ever read mail that is obviously spam nowadays, but these people must be making money somehow or they’d stop sending this stuff.  My guess is that anything which stands out is likely to be effective in piquing readers’ curiosity, much like the “I love you” e-mail virus from several years ago.  But only if other spammers don’t copy the tactic.