Console-Based Electronica Coming Back

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

MSNBC has an article on console-based electronica making a comeback. These days, consoles like the X-Box and PlayStation 2 have full music capabilities, but I still remember playing my first 8-bit NES back in the 80s and its music seemed fine at the time. And even today I find it amazing what the composers of the day were able to do with such limited hardware.

This 8-bit music — or “chiptunes” as the sound is also known — may be the one video game related subculture you’ve never heard about. Built around the “bleeps” and “bloops” of video gaming’s Paleozoic era, the music has gained a following over the years among assorted hackers, gamers and musicians. It’s particularly large in Europe, where Micromusic.net sponsored music festivals have attracted upwards of 5,000 attendees. And in the United States, “the scene” also appears to be growing thanks to a number of factors including the diversity of its music, the hacker sensibility underlining the scene and nostalgia for old fashioned video gaming. […]

The Register also has an article on old hardware put to use where they mention the Dallas band TreeWave:

We were also informed about Dallas band TreeWave, which performs on two Commodore 64s, an Atari 2600, and an old Compaq luggable. The brains behind Treewave have also programmed Epson assembly language to use a dot-matrix printer as an instrument. […]

Using Commodore 64s is cool in itself, but a musical printer rates highly on the scale of geek cred. I may have to check out one of their shows sometime :). And as it turns out, they’re actually playing tonight at the Curtain Club with The Polyphonic Spree — I might otherwise be tempted to go, but I’ll be going to the DFWBlogs Cocktail Event this evening at the XPO Lounge.

Off to SXSW

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

Once again, I’m heading off to SXSW. I plan on leaving around lunchtime today (Friday) and driving back Tuesday evening (after the last panel of the day). In case you’re going also, here're some of the panels I plan on attending:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

  • I haven’t yet decided on the panels for Tuesday.

Semantically Correct Rounded Corners in CSS

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

It seems that rounded corners are making a comeback in web design (or, maybe it’s just the designers I work with). And there’s not really an easy way about it since the current versions of CSS have no native support for rounding corners (however, I believe something may be in the works for CSS3).

So, what it comes down to is using multiple background images and placing them at each corner (top-left, bottom-left, and so on). Of course, CSS only supports one background image per element, so that doesn’t make things easier. The workaround is simply to use multiple nested elements (such as nested DIVs), each with its own background image.

Nested DIVs can have their own problems, as they can quickly become semantically meaningless (that is, the HTML no longer describes the document’s structure). However, Ryan Thrash has come up with what he calls the ThrashBox — a semantically correct set of HTML & CSS to create rounded corners.

His technique still relies on nested DIVs but he structures them so that the code remains meaningful (one div for the box, one div for the box’s header and one div for the box’s content). It may not be semantically perfect, but I think it’s the best that can be achieved with current CSS. And, the next time I need to create a box with rounded corners, I’ll consider his technique.

Ultimate Safeway Shopper Card

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

Slashdot had an article a few days ago on Budweiser’s internal sales tracking network. Some expressed concern about Anheuser-Busch’s tracking down to the 6-pack, but most posters wisely concluded that you shouldn’t have anything to worry about since there’s no reason to buy Budweiser in the first place ;).

In any case, the Slashdot discussion turned to customer tracking of other kinds, such as those supermarket cards. And, switcha pointed out Rob Cockerham’s Ultimate Shopper endeavor. In short, Rob took a digital photo of his Safeway card, cropped the image and then printed a bunch of replica barcodes onto labels with his inkjet. This way, you can use one of his stickers and become Rob. More importantly, your privacy remains intact since Safeway no longer tracks your identity.

I like the tongue-in-check character of the page, but I’m still not fond of these shopper cards. Sure, you can trade them with your friends or even apply for them with fake credentials, but you still have to carry around that silly card in your wallet (or even three or four, depending on the number of supermarkets in your area). So, these days, I’ve emptied my wallet of those cards and I just go to stores that offer sale prices without any strings attached.

Tabbed Editors for OS X?

Ashley Bischoff28 Comments

Though I’m thoroughly enjoying my PowerBook, I’m not yet as productive on it as on my Windows box. It’s just a few niggling apps for which I haven’t yet found equivalents. And, at the top of the list is an editor.

I don’t need much in an editor — one with a tabbed interface along with syntax highlighting for HTML/CSS would be fine. Multiple undo/redo would be even better. But, I can’t find such an editor for OS X. Sure, on Windows, there would be several from which to choose — TextPad is probably the benchmark editor in this category and Crimson Editor (what I use) is freeware but just as good.

I’ve used tabbed editors on Windows for years and I’ve found them very handy. I often have four or five documents open at once — a couple CSS files, perhaps a JavaScript file or two, and a few HTML documents — and having a separate window for each document just feels clumsy to me. They invariably overlap and the filenames in their titlebars end up underneath each other. With tabs, I can see each filename easily and switch between files quickly.

When I first started looking for software for my PowerBook (before it even arrived, even), I penciled-in SubEthaEdit (formerly Hydra) as an interim editor. SubEthaEdit is a freeware editor with syntax highlighting and (as a bonus) Rendezvous support. But, it still didn’t have tabs for multiple documents.

Since finding SubEthaEdit, I’ve searched for other suitable editors, but I couldn’t find even one freeware editor with a tabbed interface. So, for a lack of other options, I figured that I may need to consider shareware/commercial editors as well. In that vein, I went to VersionTracker to peruse their HTML Tools section. I checked every app — shareware or otherwise — I couldn’t find even one with a tabbed interface :-/.

Some may claim that tabs are against Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, but even Safari supports tabs (however, Apple does frown upon MDI interfaces). So, are tabbed interfaces a new thing to the Mac world or is there some mystical tabbed-editor that’s just been eluding me?