Month: July 2006
Truth and the Net
Truth and the Net. Wikipedia gets it wrong all the time. So do bloggers. But then, so do newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. The interesting thing about systems isn’t how they perform when they’re working to specification, it’s what happens when they fail.
Pimp out the Newsfire dock icon
NewsFire has a slick, stripped-down interface — it’s one of the best looking mac apps out there. Too bad that the dock icon pales in comparison. That said, the internet always provides for your most whimsical fancies.
Enter Denis Radenkovic, who recognized the problem long ago and created a beautiful replacement icon that helps the program stand out in the dock. Visit his site to download the icon package.
There was also a comment offering a new badge colour — something more subtle than the bright green. I grabbed the four pngs out of the package and changed it to the blue. If you don’t feel like doing it yourself, download them from me. To install, just throw them into the package resource directory along with the replacement icon.
Beyond the program’s visual identity, it would be nice to have the ability to rename feeds after you add them. I’m also not a big fan of the floating sidebar behaviour, moving targets are bad. Everyone knows that the dock is a UI nightmare, we don’t need copycats. Other than that, I’ve been quite happy with Newsfire. It’s the first software RSS reader that I’ve stuck with for more than a day or two.
The Odd G8 Logo
National Film Board archives
The Pig and the Box
The Pig and the Box is a cute children’s story that explores copy protection issues. It’s available for download under a Creative Commons license. Lollipop Jones!
The Viele map
Beneath the streets of London
The hunt for the killer hairballs explores the lives of flushers that work the sewers of London. Not a pretty job, but someone needs to break up our fat icebergs.
Italian soccer training video
An Italian soccer training video. I’m really not surprised that Zidane’s headbutt knocked Materazzi off his ass.
Wake-up Call
Wake-up Call describes how the US needed to cheat at war games in 2002 to win the Iraq invasion. Shock and awe baby, shock and awe.
Star Wars: An Islamic Perspective
Star Wars: An Islamic Perspective. The article mostly draws parallels between the Jedi order and some Muslim sects.
The Tool Pack
The time has come for another pack release (grab the last one if you missed it). And what are these packs exactly? For the most part, they’re a bunch of photoshop templates and a semi-functional WordPress theme. It won’t work out of the box — I call it a learning experience, you might call it lazy.
The Goods
This theme was featured on CSS Import, and people seemed to like it. I liked the graphics but had issues with the structure and bailed on it after a month.
Download the Tool Pack 2.2mb
Notes
I set the backgrounds up oddly, the movement is kind of weird at times. It always bothered me.
The sidebar on the main page is setup to use my asides category, you’ll need to change that number. There are also a number of function calls for plugins that will make it fail.
Both the stylesheet and the screenshot portray the layout with “Lucida Grande” as the body font, that wasn’t always the case. It was originally designed for Arial, and I kind of liked it better that way. I was experimenting towards the end, to each his own.
The Fine Print
Just so we’re clear… there is no support for this package, take it or leave it. There is also no license per se, but that doesn’t mean you can use it for anything. I haven’t made any money off the pack, it wouldn’t be fair if you did. Use it for your personal sites… if you need something professionally, you can do better. The forum might offer some help.