Scattered Thoughts

While visiting the Mozilla Labs blog today, I came across an article about Mozilla proposing a concept series. They are asking people to write ideas and create videos/images/prototypes xiof what they think the future of the web will be. They started by linking a few videos, and the one that really caught my attention was the Aurora concept video created by Adaptive path.
Have a look at the videos if you get a chance, 2 have been released with another 3 to come.

The first video deals with how a browser might work in the future. It does look pretty cool if you ask me, and extremely exiting!
also something to note, the device that is being used in the first video as a ‘mouse’, actually exists!
Its called a novint falcon. It’s mainly used for games at the moment, but how cool would it be if they could get it working as in the video.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

The second video deals with the web experience in a mobile device (which might be a 4th or 5th gen itouch :))

Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Finally back online! the past month has been crazy hectic, what with me moving into my own apartment, getting my basic furniture, appliances set up and finally getting my new laptop and internet connected, I have barely had time to breathe. (phew!)

Now, however, since most of the hard work is out of the way, I can get down to relaxing in my own place and setting up my things exactly how I want :).

The thing that I have been spending most of my time over the past couple of days has been the comp (naturally). I have been setting up a dual boot system that uses the pre installed Windows Vista and Linux flavour of the month, ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. (This post incidentally, has been made using Firefox 3 running on Ubuntu).

Installing Ubuntu was a breeze and this is the first time that I have installed a version of Linux and not had any (major) issues with drivers. It recognised and correctly configured most of them right out of the box (the open source ones), and its easy installer found non open source ones like for my Nvidia graphics card. I am still getting the comp set up the way I like, tweaking things here and there, but I must say that so far Ubuntu has not disappointed.
There are a LOT of sites out there with easy to follow information on how to do almost anything in Ubuntu, starting off with the Ubuntu Team Wiki. Oh well, enough of a break, back to setting up

I always wondered how other programmers pronounced ASCII characters when reading code out to other programmers. I have a habit of calling certain ASCII characters different names, like calling the exclamation mark (!) - bang, or the tilde (~) - squiggle.
I came across the ASCII Table page recently which has a pronunciation guide, which lists the ASCII characters and their more commonly used names. Have a look at the guide, there are some real interesting ones in there.

Here are a few of the more interesting ones

• + (plus) - cross, intersection
• : (colon) - chameleon
• ; (semi-colon) - hybrid, giant eel
• # (hash) - octothorpe, scratch, tictactoe

People who know me, know that I love watching television and when I cannot watch a certain show (due to timings or because it comes on pay tv), I go out and try and buy the seasons on DVD. Recently I came across a new American show called Dexter. The show is based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and revolves around the life of Dexter Morgan (played by Michael C. Hall), a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Police Department, who is actually a serial killer who tracks down and kills people “who deserve it” (mainly killers who have avoided justice).
While the show does have more than its fair share of blood, its actually quite a fascinating watch and its intriguing to see how the cast make a serial killer ‘likable’.
While the show has finished its second season in the states and has been scheduled for a third later this year, we in Australia have only received the first season on DVD, and even though I am only halfway through it, I have already put it on my ‘must keep an eye out for future seasons’ list (still working on a better name for the list though).
Check out the showtime fan wiki as well for more info.