Alpinist, the best climbing magazine ever produced, has gone under. A brief statement on the website points to the current economic crisis as a factor. I’ve read elsewhere that the relcutance to publish shit is what really drove them down. Let’s be honest, Rock and Ice and Climbing are still in business because they publish the same reports of some 14 year old flashing some choss pile somewhere that no one cares about. Ok, I’ll give, that may be a bit harsh, someone, somewhere, must like that crap.
Unfortunately, the main problem for Alpinist is that the advertisers that pay the bills at magazines love pointless reports and big-breasted girls climbing in jeans, sports bras and beanies. And who has ever seen someone climbing a legitimate route in the mountains wearing a sports bra and nothing else, that’s right, you haven’t. This was the real death sentence for Alpinist, no advertisers = no money.
What about subscribers you say? Let’s take a look at the explosion of climbing in recent years. Sport, Bouldering, and to a increasing degree trad. How many people jump right into suffering in the mountains. Not many. Not too many “climbers” these days would willingly go and subject themselves to the freezing temperatures, rockfall, avalanches or having your buddy spooning you on a ledge that is smaller than the back seat of my volvo. “Why in God’s name would I go do all of those at once?”, most would ask. No, there never really was a large base to pull subscribers from for Alpinist. Especially at $12 an issue.
As a subscriber of four years, I bid you farewell Alpinist. All of us subscribers and readers will miss you dearly.
Fun color IQ test. You have to arrange the color chips into the correct order based on hue. It’s tough, I got an 8 - though I’m not really sure what that means. They say that 0 is a perfect score and it looks like it is based on a 100 point scale..maybe. Check it out here.
I’ve been using Google Chrome for a few days now and I must say, I love it. First and foremost, it is faster than anything I’ve ever used. It is also better laid out, easier to use and the whole process containment for each tab is fantastic - no browser crashes yet, even when certain tabs have crashed. But the more I use it, the more little details I find. The little details that really show that time and thought went into developing Chrome.
Take this one for example:
When you first load up a page, the space to the left of the page title in the tab shows a little animation of a spinning line. At first the line moves counter-clockwise and is colored gray.
After a second the line changes color and direction, to blue and clockwise.
Intrigued, I paid a little more attention and, I’ll be damned. The line is gray and counter-clockwise while the browser is waiting on the server to respond to the initial request, then changes to blue and clockwise while loading the actual content.
Nice touch. Not only that, it functions as a subtle visual indicator of what is going on behind the scenes without being in your face. If you look close you will also see a small dialogue box in the lower left corner that gives you the same info, but the text is so unobtrusive that I didn’t even notice it until I started looking.
Hats off to Google. Nice browser; now, please, just get us a Mac version.
Those of you long-time readers (sorry, I can’t help but poke fun at myself) will remember an image I posted from IE8 beta 1. The image, of Google Maps, showed that even in standards compliant mode the beta 1 release left much to be desired.
Well, 8 beta 2 came out today, and lo and behold, Google Maps works, it passes the Acid 2 test and even does a pretty good job of rendering most CSS 2 standards. I would like to almost say good job to the boys at the big MS. IE might finally catch up to the first release or two of Firefox 2. Seriously though, they are coming along and I’m glad that the IE boys and girls are doing their best to bring IE up to par.
For a full browser comparison check out QuirksMode.
I find it hard to fill you in, I must admit. Perhaps it is because I, as a human being, feel that my words are useless if there is not someone there to listen. Perhaps it is because you, as a faceless form field, do not have any qualities that I can identify with. You lack a face, you lack a name, you lack even the basic mechanism of response to action. You can only submit your contents into the void upon completion. Let’s face it, that’s not much; even HAL was blessed with a persona, however cold.
Maybe one day there will be a better you, perhaps one day you will evolve. You may even be given a name someday, by someone that cares for you, someone that loves you. But until that day, faceless form field, I will continue to be listless in the face of your lack thereof. And I will continue to pray to your creator that you be blessed with a face, perhaps even a name.
ArsTechnica author Peter Bright, has penned a beauty. What Microsoft could learn from Apple, is a lengthy, well thought out and pride inducing piece on the history, design decisions and development opportunities of both the MS Windows OS and the Apple Mac OSX platforms. The first three parts can be found at these three links and there, apparently, is a fourth part in the works.
While a lot of the in-depth OS structures and conventions flew a little over my head, I did immensely enjoy the parts discussing the GUI’s of each system. Basic gist, Apple eats it’s own dog food. Another way of saying that not only did they develop a core set of values and design decisions, they practice what they preach by applying those decisions across the board to their own projects. This gives a clear message to programmers of third party apps that they should follow Apples lead. And in the end, you know what? It leads to a nicer looking and more usable OS for all users!
Well done with the words good sir. Keep up the good work.
I have revamped my whole site. As you can tell from the new domain and the new look.
This also marks my first Wordpress theme. I’m happy with it, simple as it is. In fact, I like simple better than complicated. Please let me know in the comments if you come across any weird bugs in the blog or the other pages. Oh you could also let me know what you think of the design too…I’d be interested for some feedback.
