A couple of days ago, I didn't know this one. But in this New Yorker piece on David Simon, it comes up.Sipping a vodka-and-cranberry, Simon explained, “I’m listening now for how they use a phrase or tell a story. Like, I’ve asked musicians, What do you say when you hit a bad note? They said they call it a ‘clam.’ I was, like, Really? I called it that in my high-school jazz band thirty years ago.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 5:01 AM on July 25, 2008

Not an answer, but a data point.

I can't seem to find the link right now, but I read a very interesting story in the last few weeks which had a lead which went something like "Macs have 60% of the market -- if you start counting at $1,000".

That was the story in a nutshell. Macs have a market share around ten per cent of all computer purchases, yes, but around sixty per cent of computers costing more than US$1,000.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 3:05 PM on July 22, 2008

Found a link.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 3:07 PM on July 22, 2008

Thanks everyone for your replies. I might update the Wikipedia entry to reflect some of this information.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 2:56 PM on July 22, 2008

I agree with malevolent. Go from specific to general, not general to specific. It works better in bookmarks and browser histories.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:04 PM on July 16, 2008

drjimmy11 >Actionscript is not an "open" language I guess but then neither is java or HTML.

Silliest thing I've read all week.

Going back to the original post, I think the question comes down to this:

"A richly interactive UI is considered essential."

What does that mean? Maybe if you explain it, it will come down to "something... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:00 PM on July 16, 2008

Not that long ago a lottery in Australia, because the major prize wasn't won for so long, accumulated a jackpot that was significantly larger than the cost of playing every single combination.

A syndicate invested a huge amount of money in covering all the combinations, and, of course, they won. I think they doubled or tripled their money at least.

But you've got to remember, this was still a gamble, because they didn't have... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:00 PM on July 15, 2008

Previously asked by me.

I think geography is a particular Achilles Heel. From some of the comments in that thread, it appears that geography isn't really taught in high school at all as a subject. People talk about learning the states and their capitals in elementary school and nothing after that. Add in the fact that educational standards are set locally, not federally, add a bit of xenophobia and the belief that the USA is the only country which matters, you have your... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:14 PM on July 8, 2008

I think most of the songs on sdrawkcab's list suffer from the same problem as stubby phillips had and corrected.

The first three chords (not literally, but assuming a key of C) are C G Am, but the fourth is F. That's not the same chord sequence we're looking for: C G Am Em F C F G.

On the other hand if we're including anything with those first three chords, the world's your oyster. "No Woman No Cry" qualifies, "Another Girl,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:33 PM on July 2, 2008

For the record, there is a company called TNT which is similar to Fedex etc., I can see their headquarters a mile away if I look out of the window.

But there's no evidence they operate any kind of online payment/escrow system. They just deliver stuff as far as I know.

So I'd be interested to know what that link is which is mentioned in your post, and which website it actually goes to. It seems like someone's banking, no pun intended, on the use... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 7:51 PM on June 30, 2008

And it seems TNT is aware of this issue: TNT is aware that fraudsters use TNT's identity on websites and email messages to mislead internet shoppers.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 7:53 PM on June 30, 2008

I've just validated your CSS and there are hundreds of errors and warnings. Also the code refers to background images which don't exist, like http://blog.dividedframe.com/emptyBGblog.jpg, and background image URLs which don't make sense, like url(/). Hard to know where to start!
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:19 PM on June 22, 2008

I find your question a little confusing. Do the images show up OK when looked at on the web server? That's not clear to me.

What do the URLs of the images look like, in the CSS file?

Is your local copy of this site actually defined as a Site in Dreamweaver, or just a bunch of files?

One possible explanation, if you can see the images on the website but not in Drewmweaver's WYSIWYG view, is that your urls are... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:12 PM on June 22, 2008 marked best answer

I can tell you from personal experience that the telegram ceased to exist in the UK long before the internet became popular. They were already obsolete when I worked for the Post Office in 1986.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:33 PM on June 22, 2008

Follow-up to this question -- it turns out that there is an Act governing the conduct of people in this particular industry, the NSW Property, Stock and Business Agents Act 2002, and Section 52 of that act says that it's an offence to induce someone to enter into a contract or arrangement:
by any statement, representation or promise that is false, misleading or deceptive or by any concealment of a material factWhich is what I would say is happening here. It's not a new contract, but... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:27 PM on June 19, 2008

I think you'll find a number of people with strong objections to the word "cleanly" used to describe table layout, ook...

Nthing the idea that it's not possible to even do the count.

Devil's-Advocate-Filter: It might be possible to guess at the use of tables for layout as opposed to their use for, well, tables, by algorithms like "is there a <table> tag directly after the body tag?" or "what... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:25 PM on June 12, 2008

I've come late to this, but I like the idea that events on the calendar remind you to do certain things with your computer: "when the clocks go back, that's the date to burn your family photos to a DVD and send it offsite", or maybe "Halloween is the day we all make sure we've got secure passwords", stuff like that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:06 PM on June 12, 2008

I was in very much the same position as you a while back and I got a lot out of Robyn Williams' books: The Non-Designer's Design Book and The Non-Designer's Web Book.

It's been years since I read them and I can still remember her helpful mnemonic for the basic principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity (!) and her admonition to Not Be A Wimp.

It's not like I became a great designer, but after reading these book, at least I had a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:04 PM on June 7, 2008

Oops. You sound like you know a lot of the stuff in the web-specific book, I meant to say.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:05 PM on June 7, 2008

Eric Newby's travel books are fun.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:09 PM on June 5, 2008

I agree that the definition of genius will determine how this argument plays out, and that it will probably not end well.

Here are a couple of (half-remembered) remarks about Feynman, who a lot of people consider a genius: "Dick's method? His method is to write down the problem, think very hard, then write down the answer" and "[some other scientist] was very intelligent, but only the way you'd be intelligent, if you were ten times as... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 11:02 PM on June 4, 2008

I don't want to get all Aspergery, but it occurs to me that it's an interesting philosphical question in itself:

>Why do my eyes well up with tears when I hear something particularly moving?

In a sense, everyone's eyes well up with tears when they hear something "particularly moving"; that's a definition of "particularly moving". The question almost boils down to "why am I moved when I'm moved?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 7:09 PM on June 4, 2008

There's a computer in the room where I sleep, so I sometimes get sidetracked by it at night and stay up late when I should get to bed early.

I've developed a policy that I have to go to bed in darkness: I get everything ready so that I can go directly from the door to the bed with just the little bit of light coming through the window. I'm not allowed to turn on any lights.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:23 PM on June 4, 2008

I upgraded the memory a couple of years ago. But general RAM issues didn't even occur to me. Good point, thank you.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:28 PM on June 1, 2008

Now I'm in two minds because I've packed up the computer and it's in my car and there's a Mac repair place a few blocks away ... do I unpack it, take it home and fiddle with the RAM, then pack it all up again if that doesn't help and it is something I can't fix/diagnose, like the video card?

I guess if I do that, I lose a day, and if I'm successful, that's the end of it...

And if I take it in for repair, even if it's... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:34 PM on June 1, 2008

Thanks everyone for your help. I will take it in for repair, that seems to be the sensible thing to do.

Just on this technical note:

>the "multilingual Mac Screen Of Death"? It's called a kernel panic.

is what's happening not also a kernel panic? Only, not one which the OS can trap in time to give me the non-scary message?
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:02 PM on June 1, 2008

Follow-up filter: I took it in for repairs, it is indeed a dodgy Logic Board (capacitor), and the repair guy (who could have just said "that'll be $300") encouraged me to take it up with Apple.

It turns out I can have the repair free under the Repair Extension Program.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:35 PM on June 3, 2008

If you liked "Geek Love" I'm pretty certain you'll also like Lynda Barry's "Cruddy".
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:39 PM on May 26, 2008

Not exactly what you're looking for maybe, but my friend told me that appliance stores include the "real" price of things like fridges and washing machines in what looks like a meaningless serial number.

Say there's a fridge marked at $1,000.

The salesman talks to you about maybe offering a discount and takes a look at the "serial number" which is something like 000454-850-000054. The middle digits, 850, are the true price of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:37 PM on May 26, 2008

Copy a big file to the card then physically remove it while the write is still happening?
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:29 PM on May 26, 2008

The thing you're apparently looking for is a Color Histogram, and this PHP script says it will create one. I haven't tested it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:53 PM on May 25, 2008 marked best answer

Although region encoding was required by the DVD people, computers are allowed to shift regions -- after all, people do move countries.

What Apple (and of course other companies) did was, they restricted the total number of region changes. I think it's five, for Macs? That seems pretty low to a lot of people, and that low number wasn't specifically requested by the DVD authorities.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 10:52 PM on May 24, 2008

I'm going to come right out and say, I think you're just plain mistaken, or at least, focusing on the wrong thing.

A given person from India who can't drive doesn't need different training from a given person from American who can't drive. India has cars, and trucks and buses, and movies/TV shows/video games in which people drive cars and trucks and buses. Lack of immersion in US car culture is irrelevant.

You're right, they didn't grow up with... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 7:24 PM on May 21, 2008

Does nobody else suspect that Heather stalked the GoogleMaps car obsessively and tried to pass if off as an accident?
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:24 PM on May 21, 2008

I'm also in the "no idea what you're talking about" camp.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:56 AM on May 20, 2008

Letter printed in the local paper: "I look out of the window of my favourite Thai restaurant and see four other Thai restaurants, is this a record?".

Reply the following day: "I look out of the window of my favourite Thai restaurant and see nine other Thai restaurants. P.S. I live in Bangkok".
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:30 PM on May 19, 2008

Slighly off-topic, but I can guarantee that if you use awesometown.mycompany.com a large proportion of people will look at it and think "Hmm, they left off the www part. I'd better add it".

Then they'll try to go to www.awesometown.mycompany.com and if it doesn't work they'll think you messed up, not them.

And you don't even get to hear about it because it's a DNS error which never reaches your server.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 5:38 PM on May 17, 2008

Can you show us a page, even a mockup, of what you're trying to do?

I'm confused -- you want to serve XML directly to a web browser, and you want users to be able to edit it? And you wonder why this isn't happening all the time?

Well, because browsers don't do XML, that's why. They do HTML. And because data-editing tasks in browsers are done using forms.

Maybe there's something I'm missing about this.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:53 PM on May 15, 2008

>Like everyone else so far has said, it's a kernel panic

Actually everyone else so far has spelled it "kernal" for some reason. It may help when searching for it, etc., to know that "kernel" is correct.

Apple's page on the subject.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:39 PM on May 15, 2008

Anecdotally -- I put my hazards on last night because it was dark, I was on a fast stretch of highway, and I needed to turn off but I wasn't sure which of three streets was the right one. I needed to go slowly enough to read street signs, so I guess I thought putting on my hazards would be polite.

I was going to be annoying to any car behind me, essentially, appearing to turn off then changing my mind. Anything I could do to encourage them to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:50 PM on May 12, 2008

I want to be a dissenting opinion on the Friedl book. Everyone quotes it as the definitive text, but I honestly don't think it's a good book for most people approaching this subject for the first time. On the other hand, it's not for people approaching the subject, is it? It's for people "Mastering" the subject.

Noted PerlMonk japhy has some text from his sadly unfinished book on regexes here. Might be useful.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:45 PM on May 12, 2008

>I named my child Clementine, thinking it would be a nice old-fashioned name. However, her name is one of his top 20 names in 15 years, since a few celebrities have recently named their children the same.

Even if it was the celebrity factor, where did the celebrities get the idea?

I've long been fascinated by this. Was there one baby named Clementine which started the trend? Was there a character in a book, film or TV show... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:45 PM on May 11, 2008

Thanks peep, I'd forgotten that.

Your theory, that adults saw the film and named their children after the character, makes sense, but how did that work with "Madison" (Asparagirl's link)?

The film comes out in 1984 and the name peaks in popularity sixteen years later. Do we theorise that lots of girls around the age of ten or twelve saw the movie, resolved to name their daughter after the mermaid, and kept that resolution eight to ten... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 10:30 PM on May 11, 2008

We have a rule that we're not allowed to say "you always" or "you never".

It's surprising how much milder "you SOMETIMES leave your dirty socks on the floor!" is, compared to "you ALWAYS leave your dirty socks on the floor!".
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 5:09 PM on May 8, 2008

I think odinsdream has it. If there's something that needs Windows, you can do it on Mac, but if there's something which requires Mac, you can't do it on Windows. And web development is all about the testing: multiple browsers, multiple versions, multiple platforms.

I'd put it like this:
If they want you to do your job properly, you'll need to regularly use more than one OS ... ...which would mean buying a Mac anyway... ...so really their choice is between... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:43 PM on May 8, 2008

As it's a beta, I think you should assume it's a bug, and possibly even submit it to Bugzilla.

It's not mentioned in the Release Notes. But on the other hand, it does say "If you encounter strange problems relating to bookmarks, downloads, window placement, toolbars, history, or other settings, it is recommended that you try creating a new profile and attempting to reproduce the problem before filing bugs." Emphasis mine.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 4:38 AM on May 8, 2008

Does text-messaging count? A quick google for "SMS bullying suicide" shows a few (believed) cases, in Norway, New Zealand and the UK.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 10:02 PM on May 7, 2008

>if the comment is something like `install Apache!' without any further explanation, I will be more confused!

If TiddlyWiki doesn't work out for you, then ... 'install Apache!'.

No seriously. It's very simple these days to install Apache, and PHP, on a Windows computer, using things like XAMPP. It certainly won't be as simple as "install nothing except Tiddly" but it's easier than you think. And then you'd be... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 9:56 PM on May 7, 2008

I think you should tell us more about the "makes my head hurt" part. What exactly is it about web programming that you don't get, or you've found hard to follow?

It's a very general question, and web programming involves a combination of up to four different technologies: HTML, and, optionally, any combination of CSS, JavaScript and a server-side language.

The syntax of JavaScript and the server-side language wouldn't be hugely... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 8:23 PM on May 7, 2008

If you play it back in VLC you can change the audio sync to compensate in the Advanced settings. Doesn't solve your general problem, I know.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AmbroseChapel at 6:38 PM on May 7, 2008