April Randoms
April 25th, 2006
Some thoughts from the month of April:
- Credit where credit is due. After lampooning the idea of a five-blade razor, I actually went out and bought one just to be sure it was as ridiculous as it sounded. It was not. The Gillette Fusion is actually a pretty nice razor and I have switched to it full-time. I don’t feel like it even gives the closest shave (even among Gillette razors), but it is the most comfortable razor I’ve ever used. My problem with the Sensor was that it cut too close and was thus, very uncomfortable. The Mach 3 was a little smoother, but the Fusion is like butter. Any other opinions on this razor so far?
- Never underestimate the coolness of clean URLs: newsvine.com/humuhumunukunukuapuaa
- Mike Industries is apparently the most popular graphic design site in the world among Internet Explorer users who are willing to install marginally useful toolbars. More evidence that that Alexa kid is not to be trusted.
- I must be the last person in the country to have discovered that postage went up to 39 cents in January. I rarely send snail mail anymore but my damn tax return got returned today because I was two cents short on the postage! The irony of the government returning a $7500 check because I shorted them 2 cents is amusing to me. Thank god for return addresses. I rarely hand-write those in either but did in this case.
- If you’ve been waiting as long as I have for a way to preview things live in Movable Type with all appropriate styling rules applied, wait no longer. Go check out the great new plug-in MT Live Preview.
- I’m not a huge Gatorade fan, but the new “Rain” stuff is pretty decent. I think they are trying to tap into the whole Vitamin Water taste. The Berry and the Tangerine flavors are not bad at all. In trying to find a good link for this item, I discovered that my buddy from ESPN, Darren Rovell actually has an entire blog dedicated to Gatorade now! In other news, my Coca Cola Blak blog launches tomorrow.
- Of all the people who sent in Friend Requests after the “hacking MySpace” post, the person with the coolest name is Cock-Punch Jones.
- While on the subject of MySpace, most people understood my last post correctly, but just to be sure: I’m not saying that MySpace has recently begun inflating their page view numbers. I’m just saying they’ve been incredibly page-view-inefficent from the start and they don’t seem to be doing anything about it. It’s their choice to be this way and it’s definitely not illegal. The upside is 30 billion page views a month (which they can’t sell). The downside is a huge user experience sore spot. Only time will tell if this ends up hurting them. They are strong enough right now that it probably won’t dent them for awhile, but my argument is that strength shouldn’t cause complacency. Take where you are today and make yourself even better. Don’t be bad just because you can.
- Render Incomplete: I was going to do a whole post about IE7′s unresolved rendering peccadilloes even though the product was “render complete” (according to MS), but now it appears it wasn’t actually “render complete” at all. IE7 Beta 2 “For-Reals” Edition just shipped and it apparently includes some CSS behavior improvements. We’ll see if the problem of disappearing text when using clearing divs has gone away as well as the problem of white space between list items causing white space on screen. For the record, I’m still not sold on the browser, but the more of this stuff that gets fixed before the unwashed masses get ahold of it, the better. Hell, do a Beta 3 if you need to.
- It’s very interesting to me that Dave Hyatt is talking about high resolution web sites already and how Safari will handle them with SVG. This seems like a concept extremely far away from mainstream adoption, so I’m trying to figure out why Apple has dedicated resources here. The hint I picked up from the article is that they are talking about wildly varying screen resolutions. I can only take that to mean “something other than a traditional monitor”. A super-high resolution tablet or eBook perhaps. A handheld. A cell phone. A widescreen TV. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it would be necessary to talk about if we were just discussing a standard monitor line or standard web sites.
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“Take where you are today and make yourself even better.” “If you seek peace, prepare for war.” Reminded me of Layer Cake. Fun movie.
Clean URLs are awesome. Ask Khoi about them :)
1. I love my Fusion. Can’t f’ing wait for six blades (joking!). Seriously, the thing is great. Well worth the $13 or whatever.
2. Interesting points about the screen res/SVG/Apple/WebKit/Hyatt thing. Hrm….
Whoa what? It went up to 39 cents. The last batch of stamps I bought (about a month ago (I only send mail for bills and don’t have to pay taxes because of being in college and lack of employment)) were 37 cents.
I haven’t gotten any bills back (or phone calls about bills)….is that a bad thing or a good thing?
Replacement blades are about $4 a piece. But I love the Fusion as well, definitely the most comfortable shave I have found.
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/12/december-randoms
So I’m curious. Did you actually use TurboTax this year? I mean, there was a 100% chance. And if so, why the heck did you mail your return if just “enter a code…and your card gets charged” appeals to you? E-file, baby!
And in case anyone missed it, you clearly did not “do [your] taxes early” if the returned mail came back to you in the last week. Sounds like an April 15 mailer to me, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say April 10. *The Look*
Don’t sweat it, I believe I mailed my return on the final Thursday. *Wink*
But I’m not going to even get into the razor conversation. Needless to say, after the entry on shaving with an old-fashioned razor and whatnot, I thought I really knew you, Mike.
Seriously.
You’re my hero, Mike. How could you say those things, those horrible things? I hate you Ron Burgundy, I hate you!!!!
[Edit:] Whoa. Sorry, talk about a Parnell moment. That really got out of hand! I mean, that really escalated fast…
I’m calling you out, Davidson!
(Actually, I’m just curious, as stated immediately after the quote.)
I must admit I have become way too lazy for a manual shave – I don’t know where I would be without my electric razor, but I know wherever it is, I would be unshaven.
For future reference, if you are going to send in your tax return via USPS (rather than electronically),it is a good idea to send it certified mail so that you have proof that you sent it and that they received it.
Also, how did you squeeze a whole tax return into a regular envelope? I would think that no matter what a tax return would require more than one stamp?
I never thought I would go in for a five blade razor either, but after trying it… smooth. I like the 6th blade on the back for precision work as well.
Totally agree about the high DPI design. That came from no where.
MySpace User Experience = Booty.
I was a bit doubtful about the Fusion, especially that +1 blade. But now I’m sold. The additional trimming blade is great, and overall it’s a great upgrade to the Mach3.
It doesn’t seem like it would be necessary to talk about if we were just discussing a standard monitor line or standard web sites.
Technology is at the point that manufacturers can double the dpi on monitors without difficulty. The problem is that when you double the resolution, the size of everything halves and software is not ready for this, so the resolution remains fairly stable. I’m pretty sure you can get 150dpi laptops today despite the small text size problems, but I haven’t shopped for a laptop in a while.
This didn’t come out of the blue, Apple did a lot of work on resolution independent drawing during the 10.4 development — it was available in X-code and people were playing with it but it didn’t make it into the release.
Hyatt and the Gecko folks at Mozilla have been thinking about device resolution for at least two years (there’s a bug in bugzilla but I’m too lazy to find it). The mozilla folks in particular have been looking to rework their layout engine, the current move to a cairo based backend is part of this work. Last I read, they were talking about defining px in gecko as 1/72 or 1/100 of an inch in order to keep sites working at higher resolution. The layout people have to make decisions now on how devices will work in the future so that when such devices arrive — I think Apple will do it sooner rather than later — the projects they work on will be ready.
PS: I wish the IE team would take the programmer week to hack in a <canvas> implementation.
Mike,
I think you’re being a little short-sighted on the pixel dilemma Dave Hyatt is talking about. This *is* already a problem for many web sites. People with high-resolution monitors or widescreen monitors are already finding websites to look ridiculously small on their screen when they visit the page. Sites designed for an 800×600 monitor look like a business card on an Apple 23″ LCD, let alone the Apple 30″ LCD.
And why wait until it’s a global problem? Start planning now.
I rekon I’m going to be using 25 bladed razors by the time I’m 50 …. its getting nuts. how many bits of metal can they fit into one razor head.
Mike, if it makes you feel any better, my Montana taxes were returned to me for a postage shortage of 9 cents. This is after I added an extra stamp “to be sure.” Color me livid. Hopefully they go by the first postmarked date.
@Jeff Croft: Technically the Fusion is a 6-blade razor, so you may want to get excited about the upcoming Schick Siete instead. (I kid, I kid)
In regards to hi-def websites, Apple throwing money at the issue would jive with the rumors of them releasing an all-in-one Plasma TV media center. It would be super if you could actually browse a website from 10 feet away when you just dropped 4 grand on it.
An Apple eBook reader may also be in the works but I would imagine content would be provided via the iTunes route and formated precisely for the device, not rendered via Safari.
I am pretty sure the reason Apple is talking about it already is because their OS has plans for resolution-independant UI. The framework for it was released in Tiger and you can actually turn it on with the developer tools, but of course it looks awful because all the graphics in the GUI are pixel for pixel bitmaps.
I’m a little too lazy to write out an entire post, but search the internet for information on tiger and resolution independence and you’ll find quite a few interesting articles.
The obvious advantage for this is two-fold. One, as dispalys become higher resolution, it will allow users to scale up the UI to keep things readable. And two, it will allow users of low res screens, like the 12″ PowerBook, to scale down the UI and fit more in the screen than was previously possible.
I was completely unswayed by the five-blade razor until I recently saw a new commercial touting it’s comfort through blade-closeness and the sixth trimming blade.
I’m getting ready to transition from my winter growth to my warm weather goatee and my interest is piqued!
Joshua: Yeah, same here. I know I’ve sent out maybe two or three other pieces of mail since January and none have been returned. Either there’s a grace period, they never checked, or my mail never went anywhere (and it wasn’t returned because there was no return address). Oh well… at least I’m the second-to-last person to find out. :)
Bradley: Yep, I used TurboTax. I filed at the last moment though because there were still some S-corp-to-C-Corp issues we had to sort out with regards to Newsvine. Since they still aren’t fully sorted out, I actually filed for an *extension* but still had to mail in what my “estimated” taxes would be. An extension is one sheet of paper so that also explains how it fit so easily in the envelope. First time I’ve ever filed an extension… I kind of like it!
Karl, Chris, and Joshua: I think you’re missing my point about the high-resolution web site discussion. The general business of “making web sites” requires that everything you create be viewable in at least, say, 95% of browsers. Safari is 1 or 2% of this, Firefox is maybe 8 or 9% of this. IE is the other 90%. Any *real* discussion about *actually* scrapping current web sites and producing resolution-indepedent web ones with SVG and even high resolution images requires that it work in all browsers. No web developer will do this until that is the case. Furthermore, even if IE7, Firefox, and Safari came out with new versions tomorrow which fully supported what Hyatt is talking about, nobody would jump on board. Why? Because browser penetration takes time. Give it maybe 5 years after that moment, and you have a shot. Instead, what this Apple move says to me is that *they* have a device which will make this sort of concept useful immediately. An Apple-produced television/set-top box would qualify perhaps. If they let people program interfaces and experiences for it (like you can with Windows Media Center, for instance), you could put these principles to use right away. If you’ve ever designed for Windows Media Center, you know how much cooler that would make it. The second thing, perhaps, would be a cell phone (“MobileMe” initiative maybe?) WebKit is getting embedded into Nokias now and since people already have no problem designing special sites for mobile devices, an SVG-based interface might make sense. There’s just too much inertia being the standard way of developing web sites right now for the concept of a “high-resolution” or “resolution-independent” web site to get any traction in the mainstream right now (and for years to come). This is about a compelling special case device/product to me. It may be designed with understanding that this sort of thing may *eventually* make it to the mainstream, but I don’t think that’s the immediate motivation.
I was also skeptical about the Fusion back when you had posted your original thoughts, but I too have seen the light!
I used to use the latest Gillettes but never quite got the shave I wanted. It was either not close enough or I got terrible razor burn. Since I’ve switched to wet shaving with a DE razor (that’s a single blade), all is good. Seriously, I just can’t understand why people put up with, and PAY, for these Edward Scissorhands contraptions.
In reference to your response, I believe all Dave Hyatt is saying is that you should lay the ground work for moving in that direction. I don’t think he’s suggesting we drop everything and start using a technology that hasn’t been adopted.
But there’s nothing wrong with planning. If the IE team had planned on the future a little better, none of us would be dealing with the CSS nightmare we call IE 6.
Just because we’re talking about something that’s 5 or 10 years down the road doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye and do nothing to prepare.
Mike…I can’t resist responding to your razor comment. I’m still waiting for the Quintippio to arrive on the shelves myself (ha!). But until it arrives you can read about my “field test” with the Schick Intuition. Maybe if they’d used 5 blades… ;)
“I discovered that my buddy from ESPN, Darren Rovell actually has an entire blog dedicated to Gatorade now! I”
And a Canned Coffee dedicated blog here!
Mike: No way! I *love* canned coffee! Totally adding that to the blogroll. Good find…
Pfff… Mike didn’t accept my friend request on Myspace. We are so totally Myspace-fighting now.
I too bought a Fusion, and loved it at first, until two things happened: I noticed I was getting much worse razor burn with it (I get bad razor burn anyway, but this was nuts) and the cartridges for it cost about 24 bucks! I went back to my Mach3.
I am addicted to flavoured water now. I’m becoming something of a connoisseur of the stuff. Propel can be nice, and I like the idea of Calcium in my water (since I don’t drink milk), but some of the flavours are a bit yech. Aquafina’s FlavorSplash Citrus Blend is perfection… only lightly flavoured and the only noticable bump in the DV’s is a tiny bit of sodium. Coke’s answer to the whole thing (which I cannot recall the name of) was awful. They brag about their “better taste” on the bottle, but it’s just a lot stronger and sweeter than the others, and frankly, looking at the nutrition facts made me wonder if they just left the food colouring out of Powerade to get this “new” product (kind of like Crystal Pepsi).
Coke Blak… *shudder*… someone tell me when they make Dr Pepper mixed with Matcha Tea, please…
gb: Try re-sending your friend request. I probably didn’t recognize you by your tweeny-bopper MySpace name. :)
There’s a great podcast called American Copywriter with a hilarious take on how the Fusion came to be (with a little help from The Onion).
Download episode #33 here (or get it on iTunes). It starts around the 3:20 mark.
From what I’ve heard, when any razor company introduces a new model they use premium blades for about a year. After that, they go for the cheapest blades possible, and wipe their asses with the profits. Brilliant!
The problem with randoms is that comments aren’t threaded by item then. Just do successive posts.
I was wondering when someone would plunk down for a Fusion razor.
Myself, I need to mock it for another 6 months or so before I buy one, but that’s just me. 5 blades? you could shave, or strip paint from your house, peel potatoes, terrace your backyard, carve wood…
I always wait until someone puts it in my Christmas stocking. It’s a lot like drugs, the first few times is free. Then one day I find myself wondering why I’m paying $15 for three razor blades.
Erm…
In response to Mike’s blog:
Quintuple-Blade razors are amazing
The Humuhumunukunukuapua’a deserves the title
Everyone I know references your site for design ideas
I just discovered 39 cent stamps when I read this
Never used MT, but I will now!
Gatorade “pwns”
About Mikeindustries.com, as the most popular graphic design website on Alexa… I am just curios, (if this info is not confidential) what is the number of unique visitors per day that gave you the Alexa ranking… As of today, my website is at position 110.000, and gut just 30-40 UNUQUE visitors daily.
Thanks, DH
DH: Sure. According to Mint, I do anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 page views a day, and the reach number is probably half of that (although “uniques” is generally just an educated guess in stat programs).
For the record, I know for a fact that I’m not the most popular graphic design website in the world. I just thought it was interesting that Alexa thought so.
Funny, This is just to prove how easily (involuntarily) Alexa can be manipulated. My position for last week was 85,000, but now, a week later, after unistalling the toolbar from my computer, my position dropped under 200,000.
I wish we had something more reliable. In a perfect world, traffic info from Google, MSN and Yahoo Toolbard would be collected in just one central database. But this would probably never happen.