akie.nl

Microsoft’s tablet: surprisingly good

akie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:04:50 +0000

This prototype of a Microsoft iPad-alternative looks surprisingly useful and well-designed. This video is dated before Apple’s announcement, so it’s not a iPad clone.

Given this video and their pretty decent IE9 preview release, can we conclude that Microsoft is not really going extinct after all?

Close to where I live

akie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:49:30 +0000

Christophe Gevrey took this picture of the Promenade, close (<200 meters) to where I live.

Still can’t believe I actually live there

“Show them to me”

akie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:19:26 +0000

As sung by Rodney Carrington

No-one thinks of fighting, when they see a topless girl
Maybe if you’d show yours too, we could…
…saaaaave the world

One man beatboxing band

akie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:24:39 +0000

Now that’s a cool iPhone app

A comedian’s take on computers

akie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:16:50 +0000

“Eddie Izzard’s encore on computers”

Hilarious!

Gangster rap/folk crossover

akie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:52:09 +0000

Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

Statistically correct love song

akie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:44:45 +0000

In honour of yesterday’s Valentine day: Tim Minchin’s “If I didn’t have you”. A cynical, statistically correct love song. The engineer in me appreciates this

(YouTube)

Lyrics:
(more…)

Web typography solved

akie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:37:03 +0000

When choosing a font for use on a website, you are restricted to one of the 15 or so “web fonts“. That sucks. The only way you can use a different font is by resorting to hacks such as Cufon, sIFR or FLIR.

But if you do that, you’ve only solved half the problem. You’re still in muddy waters regarding the licensing of the fonts you’re using, possibly opening yourself to future litigation. And, whether you choose Cufon, sIFR or FLIR, the text that’s in a different font will behave differently than ‘regular’ text. You can’t select it, copy it or edit it like ‘regular’ text. That’s because it’s not regular text. It’s a Javascript image, Flash movie, or plain image - respectively. That sucks!

Fortunately, there’s a solution for that: the CSS3 @font-face tag. It allows you to set the font of any given text on your web page. If the user does not have the font you indicated, it will be downloaded and used. It even works cross-browser.

So only the legal issue remains. Obviously, you can’t redistribute high quality commercial fonts like Minion or ITC Franklin Gothic. The companies holding the rights won’t allow it, and probably rightfully so.

So what to do? As Mark Pilgrim so eloquently stated: Fuck the foundries. If we can’t legally use their fonts on a web page, then we’ll have to look for high quality fonts that we CAN use on a web page.

And that’s when I came across Font Squirrel, and I must say: I LOVE IT! Free high quality fonts that you can use on your website. 100% free for commercial use. No licensing issues! Just what web typography needed

Link

This is not a real volcano

akie — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:21:43 +0000

Matthew Albanese creates fake photorealistic pictures by building scale models and photographing them from a specific angle.

For example, this image does not show a real volcano:

Really, it doesn’t. Proof: (more…)

Why the meltdown should have surprised no one

akie — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:58:19 +0000

Peter Schiff is the clearest thinking American economist.