reviews

Monday, March 10, 2003

See, i’m not nuts—Macromedia blew it big time

Revamped Macromedia site irks customers | CNET News.com

A quote:
Tony Lopez, executive producer at Macromedia, said that while the company's developers are working to improve initial load times for the home page, initial usability tests show the site is doing its job. Improved menu structures and inventive use of Web applications allow customers to complete common tasks--such as downloading software extensions or purchasing products--much faster.

"The initial download might take a little longer, but the process of going through there and finding what you want is a lot faster," Lopez said. "The total experience is much faster." [end]

Is he nuts? Using Dreamweaver extensions was one of the most painful processes I've ever had to endure on the web. There was NOTHING fast about ANY part of the entire process -- even on a cable modem.

I NEED to use DW develpment tools -- so this horrendous application is costing me money, too much money.

Not only that, I own Macromedia stock (well, so it's only a few shares), and this bad, bad design is causing so much ill will that share price is sinking -- costing me even more money. I wonder if shareholders are planning any lawsuits against Macromedia for shooting themselves in the foot with this total misapplication of their application. Talk about something not ready for prime time -- this is definitely it.

posted by lee on 03/10/03 at 10:57 PM
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Friday, March 07, 2003

Finally, low-carb chocolate that actually tastes good

Low Carb Chocolates sells Ross chocolates sweetened with maltitol. Thought I'd give them a shot. I assumed I'd be disappointed because of all the stuff I've tried made with splenda or aspartame -- all the claims about how wonderful they taste when they don't. they taste just awful, that horrible chemical aftertaste and they're just too frelling sweet. Atkins bars, for example, taste like bad versions of Little Debbies cakes only more chemically.

The other day I saw sugar-free Russell Stover turtles, made with maltitol, and got one to try. I loved it. As much as the carb-laden "real" turtles. And now the Ross chocolate! I think I like them better than regular chocolate because somehow they taste more chocolate, if that makes any sense. Finally, an antidote for pms. And stress. A reward for hard work. Or for nothing at all. Now if they would just make B&J's Phish Food with maltitol ...

posted by lee on 03/07/03 at 11:01 PM
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Thursday, March 06, 2003

crap flash application: macromedia exchange

Macromedia Exchange has never been easy to use -- always slow to load. But at least you could patiently go through the extensions and figure out if there was something you needed there. But they rebuilt Exchange as a Flash application -- and a better advertisement for NOT not not not building web applications in Flash I've yet to see. It's slower than the old exchange by a long shot -- and I'm on a very fast cable modem. It's badly organized -- very difficult to do things such as find a list of Dreamweaver only extensions to look through. Search takes forever. Once there is a list, scrolling through it is a HORRIBLE process -- I don't care what Macromedia claims, scrolls work for crap in Flash. When I searched for email extensions for Dreamweaver, I also got a bunch of Cold Fusion extensions, which made the ordeal much worse since I had to scroll through them to get to the DW extensions -- I did not want CF extensions. The login was SLOW! Everything took so long because all these crap elements had to render -- I don't NEED a pretty scrollbar, the plain old browser scrollbar is just fine. Why do I have to login to get extensions, anyway -- I've paid a fortune for several Macromedia products and I don't want to have to jump through hoops to look through what's available.

Macromedia did a HORRIBLE job on Exchange. I wish they would at least give me the option of using the new version or the old version. What a bummer. And if a client wants a website done in Flash, I'll just refer 'em to Macromedia's sites.

posted by lee on 03/06/03 at 10:24 AM
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Friday, February 21, 2003

Metacritic metacritique

A redesign over at metacritic: Film Reviews, Game Reviews, Music Reviews, DVD Reviews. It looks pretty, but it's so frelling HARD TO READ: that teeny, tiny, condensed white type on a navy blue background, and I couldn't resize the type. The designer should be taken out back and shot. He/she forgot it's the content, stupid. Too bad. Rating: 30. Is it enough to make me stop visiting the site? Yep, a lot easier and faster to type in the URLs of the reviewers I read regularly than sit there squinting at a screen trying to decipher those white blurs.

posted by lee on 02/21/03 at 04:17 PM
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Sunday, February 16, 2003

very clever!

The Flash Mind Reader is very well done! I wish I could remember the algorithm behind this, though--it's driving me nuts!

posted by lee on 02/16/03 at 04:03 PM
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Saturday, February 15, 2003

Restraint

A site that's beautiful in its simplicity, TaoTeChing is well worth a visit. "Lessons" are arranged by topic on the home page. Here's one:

Manage a great nation as you would cook a delicate fish.

To govern men in accord with nature
It is best to be restrained;
Restraint makes agreement easy to attain,
And easy agreement builds harmonious relationships;
With sufficient harmony no resistance will arise;
When no resistance arises,
then you possess the heart of the nation,
And when you possess the nation's heart,
your influence will long endure:
Deeply rooted and firmly established.
This is the method of far sight and long life.

One could only hope ...

What's interesting is that there is a webring, Wandring Daoist, which has more than 100 sites related in some way, however tenuous, to taoism. And many of these sites belong to other webrings devoted to taoism, buddishm, and on an on. One could spend days just clicking links while looking for enlightenment. Who knows? It might be there to find on any one of these links!

posted by lee on 02/15/03 at 10:14 AM
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Friday, January 24, 2003

P&T get it right & then my stream of conscious from there

We managed to remember to what the premiere of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! tonight. Loved it. Tonight's episode was debunking psychics who talk to the dead. I thought it was dead on (ouch), but then, it's kinda like preaching to the choir for me. I can't even believe there's this entity "out there" watching over us, let alone that there's anything but dust or ashes when we die.

Tonight they debunked Rosemary Altea--a total bullshit artist surpassed only by John Edward, with hits at James Von Praagh as well.

Too bad it's only a 30-minute show because I would've loved to have seen them go after Sonya Fitzpatrick, Pet Psychotic, I mena Psychic. What a bullshit artist she is.

Penn & Teller have a new website, SinCity.com, which some day I'd love to see but it keeps crashing my browser. At any rate, next week they go after alternative medicine quackology, like magnets and healing touch and, I think, reflexology. If you don't want to wait for the show, check out Quackwatch. In fact, you should check out Quackwatch any time you're thinking about trying some alternative therapy--might save you a lot of grief and/or dollars, or you might find out what you're thinking about is actually okay. Not that Stephen Barrett is always right--he blows it big time in some respects mainly because he's so medical establishmentarian (if that isn't a word, it ought to be) it narrows his vision too much. But at least you'll get the non-infomercial view to lend some balance. Then you can do join the elite by doing what so few do--yes I mean think--and draw your own conclusions.

posted by lee on 01/24/03 at 09:01 PM
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Saturday, January 18, 2003

the two towers

Stanley and I finally got around to going to see LOTR: The Two Towers Friday evening. Although I can say I liked it, the 179 minutes did not fly by--if anything, it dragged longer than the first part. Now I can see how Jackson would want to drag out the scenes of the battle and of those tree things attacking Saruman's tower since the money spent on the special effects must've been astronomical (Stanley said the movie probably employed most of, if not the entire, population of New Zealand) and I would want to milk it out as much as possible. But stuff like the looooong goodbye scene between Aragorn and Arwen and the speeches by Agent Smith, er, Elrond could've been cut or at least shortened considerably with harming the movie one bit.

The parts of the movie I liked the best were the ghosts in the Dismal Swamp, scenes where Smeagol was talking to himself, and Brego "rescuing" Aragorn. I liked the scene with Brego because the horse was behaving the same my my dog behaves, so it made me think of Ginger who by that time I longed to see since it had been sooo loooong since we'd left the house. It felt like the entire movie was going in slow motion and I couldn't believe it when the scene introducing Shadowfax really was in slo mo.

Though the battle scene was fascinating, it wasn't nearly bloody enough for what war was really like way back when, no festering wounds, no amputated limbs, such remarkable accuracy by Our Heroes. That death scene by the boss of the elves was something else again, I was thinking, "So die already!"

Did I like The Two Towers? Yes. Would I watch it again? Only at home or at the movie theater in Wilton that at least has the benefit of comfortable seats and good popcorn. We saw it at the Crown Royale 6 in Norwalk, paid $5 for a small bag of bad popcorn (significantly smaller than the last time we bought it at this theater), and endured about ten minutes of commercials before the three-hour movie even began. I don't mind previews--I even enjoy them, but please, why do I have to watch Coke ads when I've just paid $8.50 for my ticket? And the seats there must've been designed by the same idiots that designed airline seats.

I wish part three were coming out sooner, though. While watching the first 45 minutes or so of Two Towers, I was very confused since there is NO recap--you either remember it, sort of know what's going on from the book, or sorta catch up sooner or later. So I know it'll mean confusion during the first 45 minutes of the next movie since my memory for plot details isn't what it used to be. Or ever was.

posted by lee on 01/18/03 at 11:28 PM
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003

maybe they’ll add google

I checked out ZapMeta.com - All Results, One Engine just because it was named Cool Site of the Day (I don't know why I still go to CSOTD -- it has so many annoying popups, popunders, and backdoor popups that the site displayed is rarely worth the aggravation. Habit, I guess.)

At any rate, zapMeta is a pretty interesting search engine. It doesn't (yet?) include Google, but it does Yahoo. You can set your preferences, such as how many listings per page, whether you want a preview, open in new window, etc. Speaking of preview, that's a feature I kinda like as it opens up the page in an iframe (it looks like it's an iframe, anyway) very quickly, so it's faster to scan than opening it up with the hyperlink. You can also maximize the iframe to see the entire page. What else is cool is that you can click "bookmark" to add it to your favorites list right from the zapMeta -- that's a great touch. Also, ZapMeta is pretty fast.

What I'd like to see is for Google to acquire ZapMeta and incorporate these features into Google to make it even better than I think it already is.

ZapMeta has ambitions: in addition to searching for websites and mp3s, it also list the Open Directory Project directories and has currently grayed-out buttons for the following: jobs, videos, images, news, and shopping.

The one thing that bothers me, though, is there is no "about us" to be found. Nothing about the founder(s), developers, etc. The domain is registered in Stafford, Texas. I would be more inclined to follow the progress of the venture if I at least knew a little about the people behind ZapMeta. As it stands right now, it's so anonymous I just don't really care. The interface is pretty cold, too -- I would design something warmer, more welcoming and friendly. If there's no real reason to use it, the developers better think about inducing people to WANT to use it "just because."

posted by lee on 01/15/03 at 08:40 AM
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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

the shield, new season

We watched the first episode of season two tonight of The Shield. It's STILL good--Vic is losing his grip ... wonder if Television Without Pity is going to start covering it?

posted by lee on 01/07/03 at 08:30 PM
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