Charming article from the New York Times on baseball organ player Lambert Bartak. I've wondered about the origin of Hammond organs at hockey games
The famous Charge fanfare played repeatedly in chromatic key increments at hockey games
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/sports/baseball/23cws.html http://www.stadiumsportsmusic.com/customers.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(fanfare)
Neat list of login form screenshots from various sites. Great inspiration!
The Guardian's normally interesting comment is free... section has really gone downhill after their redesign a couple weeks ago. Not only have they been plagued by technical difficulties, disappearing comments and the like, most contributors don't actually seem to like the new functionality at all.
I have to agree, and I think The Guardian should ask themselves the following question: why do you require Javascript to load a segment of the page that is not likely to update at all? The comments simply won't display without Javascript, and loading 2-300 reader comments on any browser through Javascript is a heavy ordeal - let alone getting the comments to display at all on my iPod Touch.
The disappointing yes-vote to the Swedish FRA-law has prompted me to finally look into encrypting my mail. The enigmail plugin for Thunderbird seems like just the ticket.
I might not have something to hide but I sure won't contribute to their data store if I can help it. I hope I can convince some of my email correspondents to follow suit.
In connection with the parliament debate on the Swedish FRA legislation Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge and a cadre of other Swedish bloggers staged a live blogging session from the parliament building yesterday. To their surprise upon arriving there, computers in hand, they were not allowed into the actual parliament hall with live connections outside, so the blogging was done while watching a tv screen in the parliament library.
This has got to be one of the most thrilling forms of civil rights activism I have ever seen. Rick Falkvinge writes (unfortunately all in Swedish) masterfully about a subject he's very passionate about and was able to give people a real sense of being there yesterday. He leaves no room for doubt as to his position on the subject of course, nor should he, and the impact the Swedish bloggers have had on the FRA-discussion is simply astounding, with several of the parliament officials mentioning the blog pressure in their speeches. There was even a little "I hear there's a rumor on the internets"-moment from politician Anders Karlsson (translated):
> ".. everyone who has blogged to us .."
The legislation is currently being slightly rewritten and might be pushed through to a vote today.
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3122/2587912633_9084fecde4.jpg?v=0" style="float:right;margin-left:10px;">As the Firefox team is well into their 24 hour download day I think it's worth commending them on the buzz this has created for their browser. There's been some bad press about their Firefox vs. Safari comparison on the download site but to me it's all done in good spirit. The Firefox team got flak for their sore loser attitude regarding the Acid 3 race, and now they deserve some credit for this drumming up of their release. I also disagree with Jack Shedd's analysis:
> The sad fact is, in most ways, WebKit/Safari is the superior browser.
I agree WebKit is a very fast browser engine with beautiful page rendering but as far as browser features is concerned I would have a very hard time managing without Firefox and its extensions in my job.
For next time I hope the download day is slightly better planned. Servers staying up is essential, as is announcing at what time, and in what time zone, the download day actually starts.
Congratulations Firefox team!
Image courtesy of robceemoz. open
Swedish Pirate-and-civil-rights-blogger (not to mention leader of the Pirate Party) Rick Falkvinge reports on a great form of protest his political party executed this weekend: Each member of the Swedish parlament was sent an opened and taped shut letter, stamped with the words "Inspected by the defense authorities".
The protest is part of a very energetic campaign on the part of Falkvinge and other prominent Swedish bloggers in response to the upcoming yes/no vote on the so called FRA-law, a law allowing any data, phone calls or -letters- (EDIT: only cable communication) passing through Sweden to be inspected by the government. The law has gotten some attention internationally too.
Speaking of MooTools, version 1.2 was released today. Most significant change from the betas that have been up is maybe the download page, MooTools is now split into two parts, Core and More, with separate download builders for the two.
The MooTools team posted a series of What's New articles on their blog along the way to this release. Well worth the read.
Yahoo! might seem like an old-skool web entity from time to time, with their portal home page and all, but their contribution to next generation web development really shouldn't be underestimated. I was reminded of this by Andy Baio's waxy.org today with a link to Yahoo!'s Design Patterns for web developers, and in particular the patterns for managing user reputations.
Yahoo! has also been a long time contributor to MooTools, and Aaron Newton's Mootorial is still the best introduction to MooTools there is.