Some nice grafitti outside Be Good
Força Barça!
Another league match, another draw for Football Club Barcelona. Anyway, they’re 11 points clear of Real Madrid and Valencia at the top. Odd they’re having trouble finding the net recently with a +43 goal difference, but the quality is still there. Which is what I wanted to mention in the first place. What really drives me mad with Barça isn’t the team, it’s the *afició*.
The biggest difference between the supporters of Barça and supporters of English clubs, is that they can’t really be called “supporters”. Support is not what they give back to the players. They just demand that Barça play a certain way and to a certain level. Even Ronaldinho, about as close to a *de facto* example of football quality as you can get, isn’t immune. Hardly anyone in the world would argue with his skill, the tricks (which actually achieve footballing aims, rather than just serve as party tricks) and level of commitment to winning. Except Barça “fans”. On the night his perfect touch isn’t perfect, or the outrageous flick over the head of a defender while looking the other way doesn’t quite come off, he’s rubbish. He’s just trying to do daft stuff when he should be playing football. Seriously: you hear what people watching Sky think of a FCB match and you agree that they were unlucky to not get several. Sitting in a bar or even to an extent inside Camp Nou, you realise how fickle the fans are.
For other reasons, you’d think a player like Gabri could get some sort of support from the Culés. Born in Barcelona, he came through the youth system and has played in various positions. A classic utility player, he’s Barça through and through, and spent 8 months recovering from a knee injury last season to get back just in time to be part of the Liga-winning side. But if he just starts warming up on the touchline, you can hear the groans of the miserable lot that come to watch Barcelona. He can’t do anything right it seems. Then people here wonder why some players lack confidence sometimes. I’d say I haven’t seen Gabri do anything particularly wrong any time in the recent past. He’s not going to keep Deco out of the side or anything, but how many players could?
I’m not asking for sycophants, but what do you want from your team? 11 points clear, in the semi-finals of the Champions League. In any case, I think I’ll have to give in and get Canal+ to watch the matches at home before I get into a *discució calenta* in the bar.
I want one!
Oh, José. Shut up.
Mourinho has to moan. It’s the law. But moaning about Del Horno’s red card is pointless. He probably shouldn’t have been on the pitch anyway, after his previous studs-in-the-knee challenge on Messi. At the very least both were worth a yellow. Ergo, he has to go.
Wooden Clock
This is a pretty nice piece: a wooden clock that looks just like a plain block of wood when switched off. But when you switch it on the digital numerals shine through… nice.
What's Up?
ultra303 [TB-303 CPU replacement project]
The title says it all… well, no, it doesn’t really, does it?
The ultra303 is an impressive mod for the Bass Line that not only completely replaces the CPU with a new one to add totally new features, but also has a very cool LCD display which looks at once out of place and comfortable on the front panel. The original sound-making part is still used and the new system completely emulates the old one. But it adds MIDI, realtime PC-based editing, a SID emulator to add new sounds, velocity and a whole load of other stuff.
MacIE no more <phew>
As a huge sigh of relief escapes most web front end developers around the world following Microsoft’s news of their dropping of IE for Mac, I’m quite looking forward to the fact that we’ll be able to test XHTML/CSS on Mac browsers that are more or less sane. It’s fairly amusing seeing MS [recommend Safari](http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/internetexplorer/internetexplorer.aspx?pid=internetexplorer) as well ;)
AJAX and all that jazz
I have to say, as a long-time non-fan of Javascript, the idea of depending on it to make things *nicer* didn’t really appeal. I think my subconcious was successfully preventing me from following those tempting links on Webreference, Sitepoint and of course Adaptive Path, promising me the ability to take my web apps to the next level, create amazing interactivity while retaining compliance and generally making my life worth living.
Of course, apps like Gmail, which I still remember being amazed by when I first got a look at the beta about a year and a half ago, drag you inexorably toward wanting to get some of the same interactivity action. My old school usability head was still in control though. Then I showed an admin app I’m building to a friend and top notch web geek and he said it’s a lot like AJAX and that was it: I was turning to the Dark Side.
So, what’s the big deal? Can you have funky load-in-the-background stuff and keep the usability? Does losing the back button damn us to interface hell? And can you get all the niceness without going insane from coding Javascript anyway?
Well, so far I think you can. Yes, you lose the back button – that’s one of the main things you can’t get around or easily build any nice alternative. You could have an in-page “back” button (or “undo”, whatever) but that could be interesting to code. In any case, can you normally trust the back button in a web app? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t trust it when I’m taking a look at my bank account. Of course, that doesn’t apply in the case of things like Google Maps, where going back is a useful feature or would be.
Something I really hate in this kind of app is that you can’t bookmark specific pages (or “views” I suppose we should call it, as there usually *is* only one page.) Google Maps gets this right by having a simple “Link to this page” to get a URL that will take you right to the same view. (Here’s where I’m sat right now…)
At the moment, I’ve tried a couple of toolkits, both of which seem pretty nice: Sajax and xajax. I like the latter’s way of working slightly more, but there’s not a lot in it. More soon, once I’ve given these a proper going over.
So, while this is a *completely* incomplete (can I say that?) look at AJAX, I’m going to be investigating further…
Canon 5D DSLR rumour mill
Ah, how I love the rumour always associated with possible new Canon cameras (especially DSLRs)… This time it’s the turn of the 5D and it certainly looks like, if true, it’ll be an interesting addition to their DSLR line-up. The usual “It’s real!”, “No, it’s fake!” is going on, but I’m hoping for true.
One of the biggest issues with this model is the name 5D is the name of Konica/Minolta’s budget DSLR, which should be fun! Then again, this is aimed at a completely different segment – I’m not sure too many shooters in the market for a full-frame Canon will be accidently purchasing the Maxxum (or vice-versa, given the price differential.)
### The supposed features:
– 13 MPX Sensor, full frame
– 3 fps to a maximum of 60 shots at high quality JPEG
– 9 point AF
– 2.5″ LCD
– Magnesium body
– DIGIC II
– USB 2.0
Cosmetically, it’s a lot like a 20D but with that nice big screen dominating the rear. Much discussion is about how it looks like a Photoshop-adapted 20D in fact, but there are enough differences that at the very least it was a nice bit of work pushing pixels! IMHO, the thing doesn’t look all that Photoshopped, but what’s the diff?
Most commenters seem to have missed the price, given in [this](http://alex.netfun.ro/Canon5D-specs.pdf) PDF: 3.459€ which sounds about right to me.
I’ll stick my neck out and say that the announcement *will* come, as purported, at the end of August, with the camera available in October.