Out of the blue, Apple announced a public beta of the latest fourth version of the Safari browser. Loyal to its version number the new Safari is claimed to be more than four times faster than its predecessor when it comes to JavaScript execution. It also boasts a number of sweet new features. Naturally the sesam.hu editorial office went for the upgrade at once.
All in all my experience is that the browser is quite a bit snappier. Pages just pop right in instead of assembling visibly. I tested the advertised JavaScript speedup with gmail and me.com and boy were those pages lightning fast to load. It's not all marketing Safari 4 really is zippy.
Probably the first thing that everyone will notice when looking at the new Safari is that the tab bar has changed into a Chrome-style tabbed title bar. This is definitely a shocker at first but one can get used to it pretty fast. The tabs actually look good with the fake depth added, however this comes at the cost of space: with a lot of tabs open they start to be quite narrow and exponentially harder to manage. Also one can no longer pick a tab up just by clicking anywhere on it: a new hot spot is added to the right corner that serves as a pick-up handle. Due to my old habits however I tended to start pulling the whole browser window around instead of just one tab. (Don't mind the little bug button, it is there only for the beta to report bugs. I left it on because I liked the little insect icon.)
The address bar has changed as well. Visibly, they removed the reload button. That one took me by surprise and I spent a good five minutes looking for it until I found out that it has moved to the end of the address bar as an icon rather than a button. Even knowing this I'm still reflexively going to the left for the nonexistent button. Old habits die hard.
I also couldn't figure out why pages seemed to load in a different way when it hit me that the ingenious blue loading bar in the address field was gone too. Instead a very small rotating wheel indicates loading at the position of the reload icon. To be honest I liked the blue bar a lot and I hope it will make a reappearance.
Under the hood the address and google bars now offer a search in the history as well as autocompletion. I like it that they haven't gone over the top with it, Firefox style. I didn't mind the old spartan version, but the new list is useful and easy to get used to.
A spectacular new feature has also been added called Top Sites. It's a curved black panel from which the most frequently visited sites can be accessed via refreshing thumbnails. Visually it looks stunning, even though I heard the design is basically stolen from Opera - a browser I have never used. It is now an option that new tabs and browser windows would open with the Top Sites. I originally suspected this would be slow and choppy but Apple has pleasantly disappointed me there: new tabs with Top Sites pop just as fast as if it was a blank page.
Top Sites originally uses your most frequently visited pages, but there is an edit button on the lower left to customise it. (Maybe you want to change the six porn sites it originally loads up with.) You can choose how many thumbnails you'd like to have from 6 to 24. Sites can be pinned to position, preventing them from being moved or swapped to another one. You can actually select the pages you'd want there but it's a tad tricky and quite counterintuitive: bookmarks don't work but you can open another browser window and drag the site of your choice to a slot from the address bar. (Kudos to wyctim for figuring that out.)
I set my Top Sites to the six pages I most frequently open with a new tab: IMDB, Wowhead, Wikipedia, Torrent searches and Last.fm. This way a simple command+T and a click is sufficient to reach them. Very neat and speeds up browsing quite a bit.
Another eyecandy is the introduction of cover flow to the browser history. It may seem frivolous but I actually found it useful. Countless times have I found that I only remembered how a site looked but not the actual address of it. Now I can just flip through the - again, surprisingly fast - thumbnails to find it.
It is also helping that the history search now indexes not only addresses but titles and site contents as well. Again, why would I remember some obscure web address, I only remember that there was a site I visited about this and that: now it's all easily searchable. Results can be presented in cover flow as well.
I suspect though that the conspiracy theorists will not rest and quite soon we will have headlines like "Apple saves a picture of every website you visit" and "Safari 4 spies on you: it remembers everything you read" and so on. Much as people cried wolf about the iPhone snapping a screenshot of webpages for the shrinking effect of the home screen.
For the visually impaired and elderly Safari offers a full-page zoom. You can choose between text-only or overall options and use the command + +/- keys to zoom in and out. Luckily this is not a feature I'd need just quite yet, but it's neatly implemented nevertheless.
Safari 3 is - I believe - the first non-development public browser to pass the Acid 3 test 100/100.
Quite awesome tools help the developers make their page faster and bug-free. I haven't used these before so I am not sure how new some of these features are, but the web inspector sure looks pretty. I am going to need more delving in the developer menu to say more.
For you MICROS~1 people out there Safari now lost its Mac-like interface and offers a native look under XP and Vista with Windows-style scroll bars and whatnot. This actually poses and interesting dilemma if the Windows version of iTunes will follow suit in a later build or not.
One bug I have found is that the new Safari - funny it may sound - breaks the GrowlMail plugin. It has to do something with reading HTML email. Every time I got a HTML email Mail silently crashed until I disabled the Growl notifications. Hopefully a new build of the plugin will address this issue. Until then there is nothing to do but keep it switched off. Uninstall is not required.
Other than that the beta never crashed on me, not once. Everything works as intended and until now it has been proven rock solid.
Security is good and bots annoy the hell out of me as well, but this is really the case of going over the top. I tried to register to the forums of the popular Mac torrent software Transmission. However, I got this captcha to make sure I was human:
I challenge you to read it. I could make out 2NVR and a T at the end... but it's supposedly six characters. I don't consider myself visually impaired - as the site suggests quite cheekily - or otherwise challenged, yet after three tries and three different but equally frustrating captchas I was told to try again later.
A pdf-dokumentumnak többnyire akkor van értelme, ha valamit nagyon szépen rendezett tipográfiai alakzatban, szép képekkel, harmonikus betűtípusokkal, ravasz sorkizárásokkal, körbeszedésekkel, egyebekkel akarunk megjeleníteni. Egyébként tökéletesen fölösleges, mert egyszerű közlésre sokkal alkalmasabb valami sima, szabvány szövegformátum, netán html.
Persze ebben az esetben nem kellene évi sokmilliós licencdíjat fizetni a pdf-formátum jogtulajdonosának, az Adobe Systems Inc.-nek.
Ebben a részben azonban - úgy gondolom - számtalan melléfogást követett el.
Először is a PDF legfontosabb formátumbeli sajátosságát felejtette el, mégpedig hogy platformfüggetlen. Minden valamit magára adó operációs rendszerre készült ingyenes PDF megtekintő alkalmazás. És itt teljesen mindegy, hogy azt akarjuk-e kiírni, hogy "Hello World", vagy egy komplex, képekkel és formázásokkal teli dokumentumot szeretnénk közzétenni: a lényeg, hogy minden olvasó minden rendszeren ugyanazt lássa. Ez talán nem mindegy egy hivatalos dokumentum esetében. És az sem utolsó szempont, hogy nem zárja ki élből azokat, akik nem Windows rendszert használnak.
A PDF fájlt kinyomtatva az író/küldő szándékával megegyező papírformátumú dokumentumhoz juthat az ügyfél. Ami azután iktatható, érkeztethető, családi irattárba elhelyezhető. Pont mintha postán kapta volna.
Vagy mégis milyen szabvány szövegformátumra gondolt itt vajon Uj Péter? Egyszerű szövegfájl (txt)? Minimális formázási lehetőség azért csak illene. A HTML pedig képernyőre készült formátum: mi történik például ha a delikvens ki szeretné nyomtatni az adott dokumentumot? A képernyőmérettől függően szerencsésen vagy szerencsétlenebbül tördelt anyaghoz jut.
Arról nem is szólva, hogy az átlag magyar ügyintéző egyetlen dokumentumformát ismer, ez pedig a Word dokumentum. Szerintem pont az lenne kirívó disznóság az állam részéről, hogy arra kényszerítsen, hogy egy többtízezer forintot kóstáló programcsomag megvétele után tudjam csak megnézni a hivatalos papírjaim.
A PDF-et dokumentumok eszköz- és felbontásfüggetlenül, különböző szoftverekkel, hardverekkel és operációs rendszerekkel olvasható módon történő terjesztésére találták ki. Az Ügyfélkapu nagyon jól választott.
Végül pedig: A PDF 2008 július 1-je óta nyílt szabvány. (ISO 32000-1) Ezáltal bárki jogdíjmentesen írhat olyan alkalmazást, amely képes PDF fájlokat írni vagy olvasni. Egy egyszerű Google keresés hasonló programok garmadáját találja. Sok ezek közül üzleti használatra is ingyenes. A magyar állam egy huncut fillért nem kell hogy fizessen Az Adobe Systemsnek.
He denies being drunk and blames cold medicine. He does look bored, very sleepy and unfocused. Knowing the Japanese I'd say he was probably drunk. Nevertheless I've seen worse: on official events there is usually someone flat out sleeping in the front row. Of course this particular individual happens to represent one of the largest economies in the world...
After leaving the whole pack of gadgets angrily on my shelf yesterday about a half an hour later I went back for a final test. And I'll be damned it worked. I guess it was a coronal mass ejection after all - my favourite excuse for malfunctioning electronics.
On a more serious note probably the new sensor didn't take me pushing its sleep/wake button like a madman too well. Or it could be that the old sensor still has some life in it and the proximity could have interfered with the recognition. One or the other.
I ran a 5k yesterday and one today in celebration.
Sadly - although the sun played hide and seek with the clouds all day - the warm weather is gone. During my run today I had to battle with headwind in the one digits (metric). My route is along a wide road for 2 kilometers then a U-turn and I follow the train tracks uphill. Between 3 and 4 kilometers there is a quite steadily continuing slope up followed by a nice relaxing descent until about 4.5k.
Surprisingly enough the wind doesn't show on the graph, just the slopes. (Each dot is a kilometer marker. The last one stands for 5.02.)
I also have to remember to buy longer socks because my ankles were practically freezing off. Ankle socks and sweatpants have an uncomfortable area where they don't overlap and let the wind blow through. However I don't want to go back to my longer socks since they are not designed for running. I wasn't a huge believer in sportswear like special socks until I found out that by using the proper socks actually made my blisters disappear.
In the end though it was all worth it. The wind, the cold, everything. Even though when I was running on the upper part of the hill I encountered some indecisively sprinkling rain just on the final hundred meters the iPod shuffled The Passenger and the sun came out to warm my back on the walk home. Must have been karma.
I have about three topics I was thinking to write about, but I gave up on being creative on the account of being quite displeased. The weather changed drastically for the weekend here: it's above 15 degrees Celsius outside with the sun shining. Perfect days to run. And the addiction is still raging, I actually long to run at times.
Yesterday however I realized my iPod no longer connects to the sensor in the shoe. Fair enough - I thought - the sensor is old as hell, has more than 1000 kilometers in it, probably its battery died. So I ordered a replacement sensor from the Apple Store. It's very neat, there's no shipping fee and items ship overnight. Only today when I got the package it became clear something else must have been wrong because the bloody receiver won't connect to the brand spanking new sensor either.
And if anything the Apple+Nike marketing took its toll on me as well for I not only long to run but long for the voice that tells me how much I ran and for the satisfaction of seeing the fruit of my labor on the website.
When I was a little boy I think I saw these animated series a million times. I can't really put a year to it, but it wasn't during the original Hungarian TV airing of the late eighties for sure, yet I am fairly certain my brother was still in kindergarten at the time. I must have been around 8-9.
We had it on a video cassette from the local library, and my brother and I just watched it over and over. (He was the really hardcore one though, as soon as he arrived home from kindergarten he sat down on the floor about 1 meter from the TV and goggled at the screen as if glued to it.)
This is the pirates' song and the enchanting intro sequence of the Hungarian version.
I remember the story was quite hard to understand at times. This is not one of those dumbed down action animations you get to see on TV nowadays. Rather a full blown sci-fi with long lost civilisations, underground cities, forbidden museums, artificial suns. And with the music of Vladimir Cosma the series were pretty scary at times. Nevertheless, I think all the boys secretly loved Arkana and wanted a hand-mounted harpoon gun like the one Spartacus had.
Someone commented on Youtube that there is going to be - or already is - a DVD with the original dubbing. And that Minimax screened the series a few times not long ago. For me the very first episode had to suffice. It's on youtube in three parts: 1, 2, 3.
Back then they knew how to make good stuff for children.
On the corner of the next block from my apartment there is a big white house. Big by Japanese standards, I suspect it's about the same size as our home in Hungary. It also has a decent enough garden. Given the positioning and the size I'd suspect the whole building worths quite a lot.
But there is something weird going on in there.
For one, there is never any life to be seen. The windows are never open, the shutters are always closed, the shaders rolled down. On one corner of the house there is a panorama window which is permanently covered by a thick curtain. I can only imagine how dark it must be inside.
Aligning with the slight slope of the hillside the house is surrounded by a mostly chest-high stone wall. Above which there is a thick though well-kept hedge. A few times I have seen a crew of gardeners working on the bushes and twigging the trees. But there is never anyone among the people of the house to be seen.
I pass this house at least two times a day, often more. It is right on the way to the grocery store, the train station and the university. However, during my two years of living here it was only twice I caught a glance at the suspected inhabitants.
Once I saw a middle aged woman talking to some people in a car. She was standing in the gate leading to the back door, slightly ajar. She was Caucasian. Another time I was doing my evening shopping when I noticed another foreigner: a balding, borderline heavyset man. He was speaking English on the phone. To my great surprise he ended up entering the eerily silent house.
The mailbox next to the gate reads "Albaker".
Lately when I pass the corner at night I sometimes wonder when a vampire would gracefully jump down on me and drag me noiselessly into the ghost house.
The things I have been dreaming about lately are quite unsettling. I blame the exams, and everything else that has been happening. Of course I haven't been this stressed out before, when tests and exams meant a lot less, when I started off from a strong base and I had confidence. Nowadays the stakes are a lot higher and everything matters considerably more and I find myself doing worse and worse.
I don't sleep too well either. I wake up at completely off times, then I get sleepy in the middle of the day. Also the little I know about dreams is that you're not supposed to remember them: only if you wake up in the middle of your sleep can you remember what they were about.
A few nights ago I was parking expensive cars and we were contemplating with my family - who weren't my real family but more like the Cullens from Twilight - how to fit the cars best in the very small place available. At least this one had a Japanese connotation: parking here usually means squeezing cars into the smallest gaps imaginable.
But then just recently I walked into a white building in my dream where the noted blogger Angelday sat at a table with the prominent Hungarian TV show host Friderikusz. I started talking to them when I realised they were doing a webcast reporting a tennis match. Then the dream shifted and they were in my home in my father's study. I thought then that it can't be any worse than dreaming about people from the freaking internet...
Finally today I was a seal. And I gave birth to a baby seal. Then we were discussing with my seal friends that this is a very bad season to have your first baby seal, because the weather's been so cold and we were lucky if we survived. I woke up realising I kicked my blanket off and my shoulder hurt. (I had my left arm squeezed under me one night and it's been hurting ever since.)
