phaistonian

Spill reviews: not the usual movie reviews

georgep — 2008-06-14T15:51:23+02:00

Though I love movies, I rarely have the time to actually go see one on cinema. Anyhow, I try to keep myself up to date with the new stuff coming up and since I had some free time today I thought I 'd look around and get some info porn on the movies theme.

While browsing around I came to Spill.

Spill is not the usual movies site you 'd expect. But what's really refreshing and fun to watch is their reviews.

If you are into movies and could use some fun, check our Spill reviews. You will luv em, I did.

ps: do check out Iron Man's review, absolutely hilarious.

I am big big phone in an i-i-iWorld

georgep — 2008-06-09T21:58:28+02:00

So, what if you are Nokia, Motorola or even worse Micorosft and just happened to attend Steve Jobs presenting on WWDC 2008.

What, I mean really, what would you do next?

Pathfinder Blogs: New additions

georgep — 2008-06-04T13:20:09+02:00

Some interesting updates have been implemented in Pathfinder Blogs and are live as of now:

Multiple file uploads
Improved image dialog
Improved "Blog this" thingy
Improved alerting
Gravatar support (for non Pathfinder.gr logged in members)
Loads of bug fixes and UX tweaks

Enjoy;)

GBC08: Our big fun G(r)eek event

georgep — 2008-06-02T20:30:00+02:00

GBC07 was fun and relaxing. GBC078 has been even better: Interesting people, loads of excitement combined with a bit of geekiness.

The main side effect of those 2 days away from work and "here" is me feeling even more tired and exhausted, a by all means expected and often side effect.

Congrats to Stefanos and to all those who contributed to the event. I am sure the next one in the series will be even better.

PS: The food could have been better but hey, that was good enough reason for me not eat too much (again).

UX details: instant Wikipedia lookup

georgep — 2008-05-13T20:19:39+02:00

In case you face a @Wikipedia link in your "Create link" dialog while working on a post at Pathfinder Blogs, just click it and you will come up with a handy little input field that will save you time and pain (it does it for me).

More reference sources will be added in the near future - but hey - this little thing is nothing much. Bigger and nicer things are coming.

Streaming in style

georgep — 2008-05-08T00:40:10+02:00

Core.stream, the latest addition to the Core family seems to be smooth and solid at last. Though it's just a tiny little thing in terms of code, getting it to work cross browser decently was a pain.

Check out a rather simple - and kind of bad - implementation here

Ps: this chat thing is using an ugly and ridiculous PHP server I made for the test case, so in case nothing happens, fear not, server will be down again.

Ps1: Some interesting implementations of core.stream are coming soon to Pathfinder.

The day .gr stood still

georgep — 2008-04-19T21:36:57+02:00

Our domain has been up and running, in terms of enterprise presense, for more than 10 years. Still, we keep treating our domain - and thus ourselves - as infants even today

This status and misery is the result of our auto catastrophic, esostrestrfic nature. We tend not to embrace what we are; we simply don't believe in us.

Since the early days, many have changed, many startups have emerged. Greeks have improved in terms of web development and projects. Interesting ideas and projects are born by the day.

This is called progress, yet we insist on ignoring it and calling it nothing.

Extending this notion - this is the devil coder inside me talking - we can easily see that this attitude is the fundamental force - or curse - that's driving us, as a nation, down from where once used to be.

In closure, quoting my dearest Morpheus we should stop THINKing that we are, we must start KNOWing that we are (can).

IE bugs of the week

georgep — 2008-04-16T22:42:49+02:00

Since being tired and busy isn't the proper status to compose a serious post, here is a list of some stupid IE bugs that kept me busy over the week (such posts require minimum effort and time).

Hopefully the time I wasted trying to figure out workarounds for those ugly bugs will be helpful for others trying to keep up with the IE phenomenon.

Never use doctype declaration when writing html to iFrame documents.
IE will mishandle some events and/or will behave wrong in certain cases (e.g when resizing iFrame.window)
Avoid adding comments before declaring a doctype to a document.
IE will make you mad when handling window related events cause of those comment nodes.
When dealing with iFrame documents, use document.body as scope (just for IE) when attaching events, rather than document itself, or you will end up wondering where have your RAM has gone soon enough (memory leaks parade).
On IE < 6SP2 referencing window and document through indirectly will RANDOMLY cause problems, so in such cases do it the direct way.
To force browser "de-cache" a .js document, make sure the appended string has a .js extension, otherwise IE < 6SP2 MAY cause problems (content type handling issues).

Those all I can recall at the moment.If I had an IE bug log running, I am sure this list would have been way more populated.

IE has been a pretty buggy buddy for many years. A great deal of hours are wasted to keep this "friendship" alive, but honestly, no matter how innovative this browser has been, I am getting to old to keep dealing with this mess.

Hopefully IE8 will have some mercy for our sanity just by following the standards (it sounds easy, does it not?)

Design != Beauty

georgep — 2008-04-08T20:38:53+02:00

At early 2000s I was present in a speech given by a very respected and experienced person regarding his new plans as CEO of a company related to ours.

I was very surprised to hear that his plans were, among others, to turn all illustrators to (web) designers.

Well those words were such a surprise for me. I keep referring to that speech almost every time I go down the usual path of explaining why (in my humble opinion) design has very little to with illustration and beauty.

To me, design is the ability to use our mind efficiently, methodically and in conjunction with solid experience to create soul driven results used in every aspect of our work and life in general. Design is all about our souls.

On those preaching sessions with my colleagues (friends) at work I emphasize that a designer's first step is to get some initial clarity and peace in their work space. Keeping your desk and closet in place is a required step t to keep your mind in place. Since design is originated from mind, you need to keep your mind healthy by removing cluttering for one thing.

Learning how to code (in any given language) is easy. Learning how to Photoshop even easier. Learning how to design is not. Design requires more than learning.

Can we all design? Yes, I firmly believe we can.I believe we all design just by thinking and experiencing.

After all, we have inherited this gift by our Father, the most perfect and infamous designer of all; God.

Ps: I don't consider myself a designer. I am just (still) trying to get there.

OpenRank

georgep — 2008-04-05T00:40:53+02:00

Last year, at Mix07's panel attending some fine folks ranting about their work and infamous projects (Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal), I had an "epiphany" - while commenting with Panos on the speakers - of an fiction concept that would at least make a difference, if ever implemented.

The idea is quite simple and relies on the single currency net life is evaluated with; Fame.

Fame = brand value = popularity = level of respect and influence. You know politics in all their glory.

So what if all those social services and networks hosting your life and you e-activities could/ would provide a rank for your based on your fame based on the presence in that that certain social block.

A number(rank) depicting your fame in the social circle formatted and maintained by each network

And say you got that, wouldn't it be extra cool and interesting to have all those ranks aggregated and merged into single one defining your global Rank, your internet "value" in other words.

I guess such a theoretical concept, combined with the fact we are born competitive animals, would make huge change on how we e-live and act and thus internet a new kind of game to be part in.

After all, quoting my beloved Al Pacino in Devil's advocate: "Vanity, my(definitely my) favorite sin ..."