majiksznak

Check out this advertising I received from Apple:

How to make Movies on a Mac.

1. Connect your camera.

2. Open iMovie (included in every Mac) and watch your video import automatically.

3. Drag clips, music, and photos into the timeline.

4. Take a bow. Don't forget to thank the Academy.

Hollywood-style movies.
Another great reason to own a Mac.

---

How to make movies on a PC.

1. Connect your video capture device. (What's that? A video capture device is what some software companies call your camera.) Your video capture device doesn't magically communicate with your PC. You'll need a compatible cable, compatible video card, compatible display, compatible sound card, compatible pointing device (that's PC for mouse), and compatible memory. If you don't have compatible devices, add external ones and make sure you have compatible cables and connectors for them. Great. On to the next step.

2. Open your movie-making program. Your PC didn't come with a movie-making program? Visit your local technology store or purchase a movie-making program online. The good news is that there are about 1000 third-party movie-making programs to choose from. The bad news is that there are about 1000 third-party movie-making programs to choose from. Once you've installed the program of your choice, you'll want to follow these steps for most movie-making programs.

a) With the proper capture hardware ready, download your footage. To start downloading your footage, go to File and choose Capture.

(Keep reading. Mac filmmakers are finished, but your PC movie-making experience still has a way to go. A long way.)

b) Go to the Video Capture Device menu, choose Available Devices, and choose your camera type.

c) In the Enter a File Name for Your Video box, enter a file name for your video. Then, in the Choose a Place to Save Your Video box, choose a place to save your video. If you are unsure where to save it, click Browse, and browse through the hundreds of places you can save your video.

d) If at any moment you need help, use the Device Capture wizard, the Device Connection wizard, the Device Compatibility wizard, or the Device Requirement wizard. If you can't locate the wizard you need, refer to the Help wizard.

e) If you can't access the Help wizard, call tech support, cross your fingers, and hope you get someone who actually works at the company.

3. After your movie-making program has downloaded the footage and created video clips, you can finally start to make your movie. Is your computer running a little slow now? Did you remember to make room on your PC for this massive video project? Yes, of course you have to. You can always reinstall what you remove. Make sure your PC is equipped with a 600-megahertz processor, 128 megabytes of RAM, and 2 gigabytes of space on your hard drive. However, a 1.5-gigahertz processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, and 4 gigabytes of space on your hard drive is recommended. Why didn't we say that in the first place? Well, we like to give you options. Make sure your computer is up to par, and let's move on.

a) Arrange your video clips in the order you'd like them to appear.

b) To trim video clips, open the Clip menu, choose Trim, then click on your footage and edit away.

c) You want music in your movie? You'll have to import that using a different program. Refer to your program documentation.

d) Photos? Now you're pushing it.

e) Add all the effects (available in a separate program), titles, and credits (available in a separate program) you need to complete your movie. Now you're on your way.

4. In order to play the movie you've just created, you may need special software. Refer to your program documentation for ways to play and share your movie.

5. Take a bow. Wasn't that easy?

Here's what I have to say to Apple about that:

Ugh.

Honestly: stop it with the "jealous, bad-mouthing little brother" attitude and just go for honesty. Using Mac OS X makes me want to use a Mac. Seeing Mac advertising makes me want to avoid being associated with the Mac community. This news post stretches too far in trying to demonstrate the difficulty of using a PC. The very first step says, "Connect your video capture device" instead of "Connect your camera" in order to make it seem like this action is intrinsically more complex. To me, it's perfectly obvious that those two things are exactly the same and it makes it look like Apple is trying way too hard. Trying too hard makes it look like Apple had no leg to stand on in the first place, which is wrong. In overcompensating, Apple discredits itself.

The new Mac TV ads are unfortunate as well. "The Mac" comes off sounding like a total jerk: he seems to pretend to be nice while crapping all over "the PC", who ends up looking a lot more likeable.
. I'm sure you've all run into that type of person: they attempt to cut people down such that the victim doesn't notice but observers do.

I realize I'm no match for Apple's advertising team, but I'm just confused as to who the ads are for. It appears that they target preexisting Mac-users. Why preach to the converted?

Apple: you don't have to invent things that are better about a Mac running Mac OS X than a PC running Windows. You will be able to poke fun at Windows PCs without stretching the truth. Trust me.

Tony Hale is a funny guy. His picture on Wikipedia is rad. He was in a VW commercial a while back. It was good.

Know how Marmaduke isn't funny at all? This website explains Marmaduke.

Remember Mahir? This was the weirdo whose personal home page exploded on the internet thanks to its absurd content. He was also the inspiration for Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character.

Giant bugs are invading! These guys talk about it some more. I, for one, welcome our new insectoid overlords.

John Hodgman, who is awesome, references his Mac vs. PC commercials in this Daily Show clip. Also, he's talking about Net Neutrality.

Have you heard about how Uwe Boll challenged internet detractors to a fistfight? And how Lowtax (from Something Awful) stepped up? Here be internet history in the making.

This music video is compelling and disturbing. I love the labels. I've not heard the music because I broke my sound drivers, but The Kirk endorses it, well by golly, I know it's good enough to post.

At times, the view outside my office is like this: bright sun on all the buildings I can see, but ominous, thick clouds overhead.

I broke the chat logs page. You can still sort of see stuff, though. I'll fix it later. That is all.

I'm clearly no expert on politics, but watching this interview, I can gather two things: that Fox interviewer has the most horrifyingly smug asshole smirk, and Bill Clinton sounds about 4000 times smarter than George W. Bush.

Ha! I started writing this post while watching the clip... Near the end, Bill Clinton says, ...you've got that little smirk on your face....

This is probably the best thing ever. Controlling an RC plane with an onboard camera using VR goggles. I don't know if I could survive that much fun.

This video is about the best thing I've ever seen. I think the image speaks for itself.

New toy! I got it from Custom Costumes (104a Street, just south of 51st Ave). They opened tonight and the parking lot and store were both totally full of eager Halloween costume shoppers. It's heartening to see that slutty girl costumes are in this year. Anyway, now I have an ultrasonic water mister, which I've always wanted.

So, SpaceAdmiral just posted a link to this personality test on his site. I clicked on the link and saw the pictured list... Whoa now! All of those people are taking it right now? Talk about invasion of privacy...

Yet another mini helicopter: now tinier!

Jesse created and sent me this picture (slightly tweaked by me, and I put the original next to it). Laughed my ass off.

Michael Jackson wants to open a leprechaun-themed amusement park. I'm not even kidding.

Digital Rights Management continues to suck.

Guys: never forget an anniversary again. This special ring burns your finger to remind you. Wait: what?

In a prime example of 21st century bartering, this creepozoid is offering computer services in exchange for boob grabs.

These guys have got real ultimate power.

Damn. I'm trying to make a new logo for the top of the page and it's coming out... Well, you can see it on the first style and the last two. I sort of like the old one, but I want it to be bigger.

Yes! Technology from Futurama is starting to come to reality.

Microsoft is releasing an Uberkeyboard. Backlit, rechargeable (wireless), user-sensing...

This computer case lets your PC loose on the world: R2-D2 style.

USBCells are a new rechargable battery that recharges itself on your computer's USB ports. Very sweet.

The original Star Trek TV show is getting remastered and so far it looks pretty cool. Anyone got any more links?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 is coming out in comic book form.

Are you, like millions of lonely dorks jerkin' the gherkin to online pr0n, looking forward to doin' the deed with robots? If so, things are looking up thanks to a synthetic skin that is supposed to feel like the real thing. That's nice and creepy...

It was supposedly developed for the cosmetics industry. Right: and Napster wasn't made to steal music.

The kids are buying records.

the tactile joy of owning a physical object that represents your attachment to a band is infinitely more enjoyable than entering a credit card number into iTunes.

An article about the non-connection between violence and violent video games.

Arr. In case ye hadn't noticed, today be Talk Like a Pirate Day. No doubt TheSpaceAdmiral be creamin' his breeches over 't.

Ali G asks the tough questions: Do you fink all women should try feminism?

Drunk bitch vs. nerdy guy on the TV show Blind Date.

Is it too early to laugh about Steve Irwin's death? Norm Macdonald doesn't seem to think so. Norm talking to Jon Stewart about the Crocodile Hunter and other stuff.

What kind of helicopter? Methinks this newscaster has got the jungle fever...

Professor breaks some asshole's cell phone.

Weird Al hasn't lost it. Here's his new video for White and Nerdy.

... fluent in both JavaScript and Klingon.

Awesome.

Interview with a cheater. It's funny because he's an idiot!

More Stephen Colbert lightsaber madness!

• Colbert vs. the Press
• Colbert-based take on the "Crazy" video by Gnarls Barkley. (Original)
• Sort of boring
• In Episode II
• Formidable opponent
• Colbert vs. a bear
• Colbert carves a place in history
• Colbert fights multiple bears
• Stephen vs. Droideka

That's enough of that.

What do you do if your SUV rolls over? No problem: ask this guy.

The government wants to break your TV, man! Seriously, though: apparently there is some bill working its way through the system that may lead to undesirable DRM-related laws. I don't know anything about the bill, but I'd rather shoot first and ask questions later.

An article about how the 2004 US Presidential election may have been stolen. These crop up every now and then. Michael Moore talked about this a bit in Farenheit 911. For those of you who care one way or another, what do you think?

How to not be seen: audio by John Cleese, video from Halo.

Ball Buster is apparently a family game... The narrator sounds like a sicko.

Kom-pew-tur. Yup yup yupyupyupyup. Uh huh, uh huh.

Also: Clock and Telephone (one of my personal favourites as a kid).

World's greatest hacker attacks!

Flash game: use the arrow keys to move a ragdoll stick figure around, dodging falling spikes.

The 5 Greatest Games of All Time. Dang it: I haven't played some of these. I think Blade Runner may be abandonware by now.

Awesome vintage ads.

An article about a guy who makes graffiti by cleaning off wall grime instead of spraypainting over it.

From VGCats: Tom and Jerry: the Lost Episodes.

Tasty goodness from Apple. The iPod Shuffle is now much tinier. The iPod Nano 2GB is now an iPod Mini. The Real iPod Video never came out, and instead the iPod with video got an upgrade.

More Americans have now died in Iraq than died in the 9/11 bombings. It's kind of a worthless statistic. However, it is very, very unfortunate.

Muffin, my pet spider that lives outside my window at work, is alive and well. And photogenic!

Full-size 1 | Full-size 2

Here's a glamour shot of my girlfriend's cat: Neko. Here's the full size image.

Well, now I've seen everything. A bakery for dogs.

From Something Awful, Motivational Posters for Supervillains.

The Numa Numa Kid is back! Meh: it lacks the punch and dedication of the original. In unrelated news, I need a new hairdo.

Cheating in this kind of race just somehow seems more wrong.

Thanks, Ellen DeGeneres: thanks for showing the world how much K-Fed sucks. Ok, so maybe "the world" isn't appropriate for describing her talk show's audience.

This periodic table would make a great gift for any chemistry nerd you know. (Just in case: I am not a chemistry nerd.)

Sofabots, transform and relax!

Sofa turns into bunk beds. Thanks, Sheky!

This high resolution digital cinema camcorder looks like the camera a Terminator would use on vacation.

This is so wrong, and it comes from Gregmita. Thanks! Warning: foul language. NSFW.

This webcomic has some great moments. Often, they are very nerdy moments too. I particularly like this strip.

The lamest Wikipedia edit wars. Examples:

Fossil fuel for reciprocating piston engines equipped with spark plugs

Should this substance be called gasoline or petrol? See the talk page for a debate about the total number of English speakers in the world, the relative utility of search engines and claims that UK-wikipedians are set to re-establish the British empire by moving pages to British spellings and that Americans who want "gasoline" are being their usual nationalistic/culturally imperialistic selves. Gasoline has been settled on for now, only because it was the original title, but the fallout has yet to settle.

List of Virtual Boy games

Should the list have a pink background?

And of course:

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars ever

Edit wars over which edit wars are allowed to be on this page, or over how specific entries on this page should be worded (oh, the irony). See Recursion; see also tail recursion. Examples have included William of Orange, Her Late Majesty, List of virgins, Template:User admins ignoring policy and this entry itself. These have also resulted in two attempts at VfD (now WP:MFD), which were soundly rejected.

Did you know you can get a new tab by double-clicking on a blank area of the tab bar in Firefox? How about closing a tab with a middle-click? Apparently there's tons of awesome things you can do that I wasn't aware of. Hopefully these tips and other tricks will prove useful.

DOA movie trailers. Just a reminder: DOA is a fighting game. There are scantly clad, bouncy female characters. The movie appears to be all about the latter.

Apparently, the Optimus Prime of the new Transformers movie will have Down's Syndrome.

Hey! It's more griping! Really, it's just that I'm reviewing more stuff now...

Review: Superstore Digital Photo Printing

If you plan on printing out digital photos that you care about, I would suggest you do a test print before choosing Superstore. I got a few 8x10" photos printed out from them (just under $3), and had several problems.

One photo looked all right: it was all blacks, greens, and whites. If the quality wasn't good, I didn't really notice.

The first problem was that I was expecting the pictures to be pixel perfect, edge to edge, and so I added a border to an "arty" picture that I took. The image file was formatted for the 8x10 ratio. The border was cut off entirely on the left, partially cut off on the other sides, and a bit crooked. Make sure your image doesn't require exact cropping, and don't expect it to come out perfectly straight.

I asked them to reprint another image from my trip to B.C. instead. It came out looking washed out and dull. The picture was taken on a sunny day, and the print made it look overcast. Skin tones in a picture probably make it easier to judge colour accuracy, and here, the skin tones were a greyish green. The bright violet flowers in the corner of the picture were disappointingly flat.

I pointed this out and asked them to redo it, thinking perhaps the photo printer was miscalibrated. I tried to exaggerate the colours in the image in order to make sure that something good came out of it. The reprint looked pretty much the same only darker.

Perhaps in my alterling the levels in the image, I lost some sort of colour profile information that could have been used by the printer to get more accurate colours. Does anybody know anything about this?

At any rate, the moral of the story is to get one or two 5x6" prints to test out the quality. You may be happy with it depending on the image, but I'd give the Superstore digital photo printing 3.5 / 10.

If you don't have a library card, shame on you: go get one and start enjoying the vast collection of the Edmonton Public Library.

However, I should point out a very "rantable" issue: the EPL website and the catalog access system.

If you've ever used it, you've probably run into a few annoyances. From a user interface standpoint, it's crap. I was a Teaching Assistant for CMPUT 301 at the U of A, and I would have probably failed a project like this (then been forced to give it a better mark because the other TAs were too soft on everyone else).

1. Independent of the catalogue system (I think), EPL.ca can set a cookie that will remember which branch you want to see information displayed for by default. The "default branch" selection cookie is set to expire a couple of days from when it is set. I'm not sure if it gets reset every time you visit the site and you still have the cookie, but this is unacceptable. I've never been back to epl.ca to see my default branch still selected. Persistence of non-personal data like that is a no-brainer.
2. The sign-in process is needlessly complex. You are offered two options, and a detailed explanation that no average user will truly understand. Any technical user will be able to point out the following problems. There is a "high security" option that asks you for your library card number and PIN repeatedly (for each request) and a "low security" option that saves your login state in a cookie. Why anybody in their right minds would prefer to use the "high security" option is beyond me. In addition to being annoying, your card number and PIN are transmitted with every request under this mode. Furthermore, you seem to be randomly dumped to the login screen or the pre-login screen while accessing different functionality. Not only that, but the "Low Security" login doesn't actually work. You are sill asked to sign in again within the same session, depending on what you do on the site. In short, the "high security" option is less secure and more annoying, and the "low security" option, which promises to let you avoid entering your login info over and over again fails to deliver on that promise.
3. The security model itself is flawed. You are assigned a default security code (PIN) that is so obvious that anybody who has gotten a library card of their own and has snatched someone else's library card number can easily log into that person's account by guessing their PIN on the first try. This is based on the recommendations they make when you get your card, so most people wouldn't know to disregard the recommendation and choose a more secure PIN. I realize this has nothing to do with the software: it's just a bad policy.
4. The search functionality is user-unfriendly. When you sign up for a card, they recommend that you ignore the default search mechanism ("Keyword Search") in favour of the "Headings Browse" feature, as the default search does not yield expected results. This is because the software designer has a vague understanding of the underlying database but not of how most people will want to access the information contained therein. Mostly, the keyword search tends to find things you don't want because it seems to search all fields rather than ones likely to generate relevant results. People usually search for the title, subject, or author of a title, and they pretty much always know which of those fields they're searching in.
5. The displayed information that results from a search is poorly presented. If you do a "Headings Browse" (the useful search), you end up with a list of what appear to be categories. Nowhere are you told what you are looking at: tables need labels. Once you've clicked on a category, you get a poorly presented results screen:
   1. The "details" link is an image where text would do just fine.
   2. Again, labels for the information displayed are missing. The CD / book / DVD title is implicit, as is the author, but sometimes other information is presented: what is it? You aren't told. There's just some extra text.
   3. You are given pointless, confusing excuses such as

      Only keyword searches with less than 500 titles can be sorted.

      First off, that's lame. It's better to suck it up and fix the software than to make excuses. At the very least, don't bother telling me this when there were 60 results in the search: I didn't need to know about the limitation, and now I'm confused as to why I'm being told about it. It ends up implying that perhaps your search was affected by the limit even though you were told there were only 34 results.
6. Book / CD / DVD details are displayed poorly. Visually, these screens are a shotgun blast mess of information. Worse still, an option is given for "unformatted display", which gives the user yet another unlabelled table containing item information. This time, you get meaningless unlabelled numbers, which are always fun. Sounds like this is a great option if you're debugging, but don't let the public see it. I'm sure the reasoning is that if users don't like it they won't use it, but there's no point in cluttering up an already bad interface with functionality only useful to you as a programmer. In other words, if you reason that way, you are a bad interface designer.
7. Using the site, you get miscellaneous errors that point to a shoddy underlying implementation. For instance, I waited about a minute before clicking on an item in the list of search results and got this message:

   Back reference no longer exists -- please resubmit search

   Not only should this never have happened, but they are using terminology that is meaningless to the user. What does "backreference no longer exists" mean to anybody but the person who wrote the software?
8. When viewing your checked out items, you aren't told which items can and can't be renewed. To get that information, you have to click on "See only renewable items", which is accompanied by another excuse: "WARNING: it is very slow". The interesting thing is that it isn't slow at all. When you use this option, you get a new pruned list containing only items you can renew. Why not just show all items and tell me which ones can be renewed? It would be simple enough to understand a list on which only renewable items have the "renew" checkbox.

The overall feel of the site makes it look like the whole thing was written as a High School project. I clearly remember slowly developing the judgement skills necessary to avoid writing software this bad over the course of my education. It is a common mistake for rookies to over-explain things that should never have been there to explain. Chances are good that if you have to devote a long paragraph to explaining functionality in your software, you should scrap it and redesign the functionality such that it needs no explanation. It's also a rookie mistake to supply more functionality than is needed in order to try to correct a usability problem.

I've made interface mistakes before in my own work. I've also contributed to or failed to repair implementations that led to decreased usability. I've worked for companies where this came about as a result of miscommunication, bad management, and time constraints, so I understand that these things happen. There are a lot of usability problems with MajikSznak.net that came about as a result of me just pissing around without needing to please anybody. This site is basically a sort of Frankenstein's monster of code that I tweak and torture, so it's not surprising to see display errors and usability issues that come about from wild experimentation.

Because of the types of problems I see on the EPL.ca catalog system, I assumed the site had been created for free by inexperienced volunteers. I offered my services to clean things up and perhaps upgrade the usability for free. Doing this led to a disturbing discovery: the catalog access system was paid for, and the culprit for the usability problems was not, as I suspected, an enthusiastic but inexperienced and naive programmer... I was told that volunteer work could not be accepted because the software was contracted to unionized labour.

It's a shame that nobody is allowed to fix the site, because I'm sure that many well-meaning programmers in Edmonton would give up their time to enhance the system for free. In the end, it's not a big deal: everything you need to do is possible with the existing software: it's just clunky to use.

Just for kicks, here are some links.

• Interface Hall of Shame 1
• Interface Hall of Shame 2
• The Daily WTF

There's some really interesting stuff over at Fanehenderson.com. The whole front page as of right now is full of awesome articles with the exception of the dog post. The dog posts are where TSA reveals his prancing pretty princess alter-ego.

I found the post about books on atheism an interesting contrast to the news stories I've seen recently that cover conservative Christian beliefs and their effects on North American society.

Here's my first custom-made t-shirt. It was a gift for my awesome girlfriend (it went over well, in case you wanted to know). It's not Disco Dick Tees quality, but it worked out OK and it was fun.

I learned a few things about screen printing that night. I also learned that you should read the tag on ladies' t-shirts before chucking them into the washer and drier.

<singing> Trans-formers, robots disguised as baby monkeys. </singing>
Optimus Prime has a she-crotch.

Michael Bay, you disgust me. In honour of this, I've obtained the lyrics to one of the best songs from Team America: World Police:

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark,
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more then that movie missed the point,
And that?s an awful lot girl.
And now, now you've gone away,
And all I'm trying to say,
Is Perl Harbor sucked and I miss you

I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part,
He's way better then Ben Affleck.
And now all I can think about is your smile,
And that shitty movie too,
Perl Harbor sucked and I miss you

(Interlude)

Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies.
I guess Perl Harbor sucked,
Just a little bit more then I miss you.

Man: since I took a vacation, activity has really died down on the Sznak. Even though my posts have come back up, comments haven't returned to normal volume. I blame my lack of pointless upgrades.

Check out the new comments page!

That totally sucks: Steve Irwin is dead. He caught a stingray barb to the heart.

Apparently, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. likes to shoot people with a gun in such a way that he gets hit in the face.

Damn it! I guess I'm not the first to use the name Majik Sznak. Of course, this is not true.

Lots of infographs. Pictured are a few scary bits of the Global Arms Trade infograph.

Skeletons of cartoon characters. I've posted pictures like this before, but here are actual models. Pictured: Lepus Animatus.