Longhorn

meta info
Saturday Apr 30 2005
At last year's WinHEC, developer sources said that Microsoft was going to recommend the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market.Will Your PC Be Ready for Longhorn?


No further comments from me while I continue playing with OS X Tiger on my humble G4 1.25Ggz...
bookmarking

image to CSS

meta info
Monday Apr 25 2005
Sample

While waiting for some router problems to be fixed here at work I noticed Elliott Back's image to CSS converter. A way cool 'useless utility'. It converts any image to a HTML page showing the image in various user-defined ways. You can even download Elliott's sourcecode if you feel the need to hack around with it for a bit!

Try it out!
bookmarking

Bumpy ride - some chit-chat

meta info
Sunday Apr 24 2005
Here I am again... back from the Pareto 'Social', the yearly weekend with fun activities from work. We had a great time except for the fact that my girlfriend was launched and went airborne after driving into a gutter while we were driving quads. She broke two bones so I guess I'm gonna be a part-time nurse for quite a while. It could have been much worse though so I'm happy she's relatively ok given the circumstances.

I'll be moving to a new appartment in Utrecht in 1.5 weeks time. This combined with an immobilized girlfriend could cause updates on the site to be kinda slow for a while. I'll try to do my best though!

On the nerdry field I just read an article called Tiger's Tale in Time Magazine on Apple's new upcoming operating system Tiger. I can't wait to get my hands on this marvellous OS which is already being dubbed a 'Longhorn killer' while Longhorn won't even be out for a year or so.

Also in the quickies: Olia Liana, responsible for the excellent article on the history of the web and web page design I posted about earlier, emailed me about a $1000 dollar page contest for personal homepages. There's some cash to earn here so take a look!

Peace,

Marco

P.S: Everyone from the Pareto gang thanks for a great weekend! It was superb even though my girlfriend had to take some damage.
bookmarking

Notice

meta info
Monday Apr 18 2005
Just a short notice to let you all know that I'm not going to dedicate a posting to Adobe buying Macromedia or Fluid website layouts. Not now and not in the future.
bookmarking

Oh lord, won't you buy me...

meta info
Sunday Apr 17 2005

Sony PSP


One of these! Rargh! I need it! Must... find the ... light.... *gack* *cough* *sputter*
bookmarking

How to run an online community

meta info
Saturday Apr 16 2005

iFriends logo


Some people may know it, some others may not, but together with a friend and business partner I'm running an online & dating specifically targeted to mobile phone usage with . We've been doing it for over 1.5 years now and we're quite succesful at it too. iFriends is the number one chat & date community on KPN Mobile i-mode and BASE i-mode. Not bad for two simple developers I'd say. Now you may think that developing advanced mobile solutions for a great user experience on a small screen may be a tough challenge but keeping the community itself 'sane' has proven to be much, much harder than the most sophisticated programming efforts we've completed so far. (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Firefox, Safari style

meta info
Friday Apr 15 2005
Firefox, looking more like Safari
This nice theme for Firefox makes it look much more like a native OS X application. Very cool indeed!

DON'T use it on a PC. You've been warned!
bookmarking

The Color Clock: Done!

meta info
Thursday Apr 14 2005
I've created a brand new version of the I posted about earlier. First the clock, then the talking!
(continue reading...)
bookmarking

A working version of my clock!

meta info
Wednesday Apr 13 2005
I'm proud to present a working version of the alternative clock I posted about a while ago! First things first so without further ado, here it is, alive and kicking in !

Well, it WAS, I created a better version. Below is a screenshot of the first version.

First version of the clock



You might wanna read on because I'll reveal how I did it! (continue reading...)
bookmarking

The PNG problem finally resolved

meta info
Monday Apr 11 2005
There is no way of making PNG images that match CSS colors in all PNG-supporting browsers. This reduces the usefulness of the otherwise excellent image format. If the image colors and the colors defined in a style sheet need to match, it is safer to use GIF or JPEG.Henri Sivonen in The Sad Story of PNG gamma "correction"


Thanks to Nick on the Stylegala forum I finally got an answer to the most agonizing problem in web design I've encountered so far: my 's not behaving right in several . I've set up a little demo for you to 'enjoy' this problem. (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Some slight UI tinkering

meta info
Sunday Apr 10 2005
I've just tweaked the UI of this site slightly. Some people commented that the photo of the 'guys on an escalator' was sort of boring and unrelated to this site. I guess I agree. I changed the header and used a photo from the stock exchange which suits the topic quite well. A road to nowhere. Excellent. I hope you like it. Besides the header I changed the menu bullets, added my name to the left of the page and last but not least: I've installed a retro-style pixel art for the site. I guess the has finally settled down!

Update: I eliminated the use of tables in the comment form too.
bookmarking

Clock design

meta info
Friday Apr 8 2005
clock design example
In my posting about the ultra cool Harry Winston watch I mentioned an alternative I once did. Years ago I got an assignment to design a clock that doesn't have numbers on it or needles like a conventional clock. The above image shows what I came up with. It takes some time to get used to it but once you do it works fairly well. Do you understand how it works? And what do you think of it? I still have the working mechanical prototype but I haven't built one that actually works yet. I do plan to do so some time!

Hints:

  • Only one disc is in motion at any given time.
  • The discs perform a smooth rotation just like the needles of a clock, no discrete steps!
  • the clock has a full 24hours cycle to complete unlike the 12 we're used to
  • The clock consists of four viewports with 1/6th of a disc in view
  • The image below shows what one disc looks like


one disc



This concept: copyright 1992 by Marco van Hylckama Vlieg.
bookmarking

Why XHTML?

meta info
Thursday Apr 7 2005
I guess quite a lot of us know it. Web standards. It's cool to be part of the gang that actually cares about them. It feels great to see those blue colors of validity on the validator when you click the 'Valid XHTML' button on your site. You're a web developer that cares. Aren't you great? You're part of the "valid XHTML" community and you can proudly display whatever badge or button on your site to tell the world all about it. And as if that's not enough, you're not only using valid but valid too, and you killed all the poor tables in the process. Tables are evil. They needed to die! So here we are with our shiny valid XHTML websites with a "CSS Zen Garden-worthy" CSS layout. But why really?

<devils advocate mode="exaggerated-but-honest"> (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Why are we blogging?

meta info
Wednesday Apr 6 2005
DespairWarning: personal rant ahead...

Today I got a whopping 136 unique visitors on this . Of these 136 the majority came from people who are using Pivot templates that I've created for the public domain and a lot of Google searches. It made me reflect upon everything for a moment and wonder: Why are we ? Why are we actually bothering. Specifically: Why am I? (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Birthday present tip

meta info
Wednesday Apr 6 2005
Woooow I want it!
I've always been a sucker for cool timepieces but this one really blew me away big time. Created by and Max Busser, for Harry Winston Rare Timepieces: The Opus 5. In case you didn't know what to bring me for my birthday at June 9: now you do! (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Improving ShortStat

meta info
Tuesday Apr 5 2005
ShortStat
Tonight I played with Shaun Inman's nice stats generator named ShortStat. I immediately loved the way it looks but concluded that I couldn't use it because Pivot doesn't allow you to include external PHP code in all pages. But I wanted ! (continue reading...)
bookmarking

The Return of the Mac

meta info
Tuesday Apr 5 2005
With OS X, the hackers are back. When I walked into the Apple store in Cambridge, it was like coming home. Much was changed, but there was still that Apple coolness in the air, that feeling that the show was being run by someone who really cared, instead of random corporate deal-makers.Paul Graham in The Return of the Mac

C'mon admit it, you want one too!
c'mon admit it, you want one too...
It's the 'hackers' that don't settle for a half-assed solution. They want everything. This nice article describes quite clearly what I felt when I decided to stop the long nights of mindless tinkering with Linux desktops and buy a UNIX box that just... well, works AND looks good, both on the screen and from the outside. It had to be a . Mac OS X 10.0.0 had just come out and it's come a long way since then. I can't wait for Tiger.

Read Paul's whole article

bookmarking

Omniweb: the killer Mac browser that nobody uses

meta info
Sunday Apr 3 2005
Omniweb 5.1If you have a you're probably surfing the web with Safari or Firefox. Or, if you're really braindead when it comes to modern you might still be using Internet Explorer 5.2. Of course there's Opera offering a quite nice Mac browser as well. A lot of people however have no idea there's also , a mighty fine browser with some features not found in any other browser. Since I really think this browser deserves some more attention I decided to write a little article about it for everyone who has never heard of this fine piece of software or never took a closer look at it. Try it out, you won't regret it!

(continue reading...)
bookmarking

PHP Conference Spring 2005 Who else is going?

meta info
Sunday Apr 3 2005
PHP Conference LogoI can't wait until it's May 2! My new employer was gracious enough to allow me and some new collegues to attend all three days of the International PHP Conference being held from May 2-4 in the RAI center in Amsterdam. It sure seems like an exciting program. Any other fanatics going there? (continue reading...)
bookmarking

The winds of change

meta info
Friday Apr 1 2005
Welcome to the all new i-marco.nl! I've spent an entire week working long hours to get this new template done. I guess this means I'm cheating the May 1st CSS Reboot by launching my new site exactly one month too early. I however have my reasons for this. (continue reading...)
bookmarking

Popular Articles

     

    • Featured Links
    RockySomewhere near the Orion NebulaBookalicio.usGolden Gate BridgeThames River BankJackie and mePimpin' it