We’re Back!
(Suprnova)

Suprnova has been down for some years due to some heavy pressure from the copyright lobby. The former owner sloncek donated suprnova to The Pirate Bay – and as you know, we like to kick ass and bow for noone!

We were going to keep this site a secret until we had finished it, but of course it leaked, that’s how internet works. So now that the word is out, we’re releasing it!

Please consider these first weeks/months as a beta test. Since we love all you guys and gals so much we decided to keep it an open beta test. That means, please behave, don’t complaint to much and if you discover any weird bugs or problems, let us know.

Some of you have also already discovered our new forum, Suprbay! Which is a joint forum for both Suprnova and The Pirate Bay. Discuss movies, music, love and whatever with your fellow pirates.

Finally, some words for non-internet loving companies: This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future.

y’arr!

(via Digg)

Every once in awhile, probably once or twice a year, I decide to give a shot at doing my daily website reading via some sort of RSS feed reading system rather than going to the actual websites themselves. It seems like a great idea, and one that would add huge amounts of efficiency.

Every time I’ve done it though, I’ve ended up only doing it for a few days, then giving up. What has happened in the past that stopped me? Well, lets see…

#1) I would subscribe to just too much crap, and end up overwhlemed and unable to keep up. When I go to the websites by hand, I of course miss even more, because I forget to go certain places, etc, etc. And I don’t care. But when I have a feed, and a little number showing how many items I have, I suddenly start caring more.

#2) I get frustrated by feeds which constantly are pushing out stuff I’ve seen before. Either because there are updates, or it is just glitchy, or whatever. When I see something again that I saw before, I get all frustrated. Of course, this also happens going to the websites, just in a different way.

#3) I always end up like I am missing context from the websites themselves. That somehow the rest of the site around the article I am looking for adds something that I just miss by just looking at a feed (and perhaps clicking through on some specific items). Of course, there are some sites where the design is just so awful I don’t go there any more even though I might like the content, so this might be a solution to that.

Anyway, I’m giving it a try again. This all started because I had decided to give Growl another shot on my Mac (plus a number of other little utilities, I sort of went nuts last night) and one of the supported programs was NetNewsWire so I downloaded it and started trying it out. I subscribed to the feeds for all the sites I keep on my blogroll at the left of my website and a few others I’ve been checking out but I haven’t bothered to put there yet. Then I started checking out their synchronization with NewsGator Online since of course ideally when I red my feeds from different places it would all be syncronized. Then I got a little frustrated with that and then I exported the OPML and then pulled it all into Google Reader.

That’s what I’m using at this very moment. I know there are a number of other options, both in terms of desktop clients and web based solutions. I like desktop clients, but syncing between locations is a little tricker in that case usually, especially if you have Mac, Windows and a Treo all in the mix and want it to work in all three places. So web based may be the way to go.

Anybody got any additional suggestions I should try? Or should I stick with Google Reader for a bit. It seems to do a decent job.

A couple of days ago Brandy’s Dell laptop crashed and crashed hard. When it tried to boot just a blank black screen. All the diagnostics you could get to from the BIOS said everything was fine though. But when you tried to boot into Windows… nothing at all. And because it was a budget Dell laptop, no Windows restore/install disks either.

And of course there was no recent backup of her stuff. So the fear was the drive was completely dead and all her stuff would be gone.

This of course happened to Brandy in the middle of the night and she woke me up because she was distraught. After the usual things failed, I decided to try booting from an Ubuntu Live CD. I spent the next three hours or so downloading the ISO image and then burning it to CD.

Then I pop it in the drive, hit F12 while booting to get the menu letting me boot from the CD, and zoom… the disk whirs a bit and up comes Ubuntu just fine. Not only did it pop up right away into a desktop where I could easily find all the things I was looking for, but it automatically mounted the hard drive… which turned out to appear to be completely perfect… all of Brandy’s data was there. Then I easily found in a couple clicks that I could mount the drive in my iMac through ssh right there in the GUI and have it pop up nice and easily. (I of course immediately started copying all the relevant data files “just in case”.)

All the file manipulation was just there. Firefox was just there. It was all clear and pretty simple to use out of the box with no messing around with the config. Well… one exception… I couldn’t get the built in wireless card to work out of the box, or even after searching online for instructions on how to get her specific wireless card to work with Ubuntu. So the laptop needed to be plugged into a wired connection for the networking to work. Which kind of sucks on a laptop. But still… it beat my expectations.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d probably get frustrated pretty quickly if I tried to use Ubuntu as my primary OS… it ain’t no Mac OS X. But having not tried Ubuntu before, I was impressed by how far the effort to make a usable (for a non geek) desktop Linux has come compared to all my prior Linux exposures (including regularly at work). Pretty good.

Of course, the next day when Brandy called Dell tech support they led her through a series of steps to try to fix the machine, and only resulted in making the hard drive (which had been fine before) completely unmountable from Ubuntu, while still not making it able to boot into Windows. So they mailed her a set of restore disks that will put the laptop back to the exact state it came from the factory in. (Theoretically… well, except for the missing keys on the keyboard that Roscoe broke off… a software update won’t fix that.) The disks arrived in yesterday’s mail, but she is supposed to wait until they call her to touch it… even though I’m sure she could pop the first disk in, follow the instructions and be fine… but they have to walk her through it. Whatever.

I’m just glad I backed up all her data before she called Dell tech support. Bleh.

And I was impressed with Ubuntu. I’ll have to explore it a bit more.

(And yes, I’m partially just making this post right now because I found a small bug in my email notification thingy mentioned in the last post and want to see if the tweaks I made in the last hour or so fixed it.)

I’ve noticed a trend lately that seems to be most prominent about “blogs” that get big. What would that be? Really crappy redesigns that add more crap to the page, and detract from the primary content. I could list a bunch of them, but instead I’ll just tick off some of the features that really annoy me. Now, many of these may just be me, and other folks may love it, but…

#1) “Click to read more”. Yeah yeah, you get another click and more page views, and you can fit more on your front page. But these really piss me off. I want to go to your front page, scan down for new things, and read any postings I am interested in. I shouldn’t have to go anywhere other than your front page unless I want to dig into your archives and find something old… or perhaps if I want to read the comments and discussion. But not to read the primary content. That just annoys me. But more and more places are using it more and more often. Too many to list. But I hate it everywhere. This is a big deterrent to me, but if the content is good it hasn’t yet stopped me from going to a site. But it is close. I don’t care if you right something long and I need to scroll a bit to read it… or to see the stuff below it. If I am coming to your site, it is because I like your content and want to read it. Don’t make it harder for me.

#2) More and more columns. People. No more than three columns. Come on. I’ve seen sites recently with four or more. You need one big one for your main comment. You need one for secondary navigation. (Primary should probably be up top.) And I can even buy a third one for an ad bar or some additional interesting feeds or something if there is a compelling reason. I’ve considered adding a right hand bar to this site for a few things I want to put there. But no matter what your main content column should be prominent and none of the other columns should distract from it. One of the big advantages to a blog is the clear and central chronological organization. There are several sites I go to that appear to be going for an old fashioned newspaper layout with several columns, all of which get new content through the day. Sometimes not always with the newest at the top. It makes my eyes hurt and confuses me. Stop. Talking Points Memo just did this. I think they are imitating Huffington Post. With HuffPost I just can’t stand going there the layout is so annoying, doesn’t matter if they have good content or not. TPM was one of my regular daily stops. It may not be any more. The main content column is now less than half the width. No. Just to give both sides of the political spectrum some time, Michelle Malkin did this recently too. Only three columns, but two of them are content columns. Lead story on the left, other stuff on the right. WTF? JUst give me one column with the new stuff on top please.

#3) Little side blocks with summary information about the post. Gawker just did this with all their sites. Instead of putting the little “Posted by bob at 5:15” thing at the bottom of each post, they are putting it at the side, thus creating huge blocks of wasted white space. This won’t stop me from going to engadget or lifehacker, but it is just stupid and annoying. It takes up more space this way. It wastes space. It makes the main content column narrower than it needs to be. Again, please put it back how it was.

#4) Too many links to yourself. There are places that in a post make some words links. For instance they mention President Bush or the Whitehouse or the iPhone or something. When I see links like that, I expect to be sent to the actual website of the thing being mentioned. Or perhaps a wikipedia entry or some such. If you link these words to a listing of your own posts that you tagged with that word it pisses me off. If such a thing is really useful to the post, have a feature with a list of tags that people can click on that is clearly marked as such. Don’t use inline links for this.

#5) Inline Ads: Yeah, yeah, I know, you want to make money and these are more effective that ads in the sidebar or whatever. But they are annoying as hell. Keep your content bar where your content bar goes. Keep the ads somewhere else.

OK, I could probably pick more things to rant about, but I need to finish up a few things and then get to work. So I’m done.

I’d actually considered not posting about the WWDC keynote because it was definitely not as much as hoped for. No new hardware. The “top secret features” turned out to be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and most of the features that were shown were actually ones that had been shown before.

Having said that, it is worth looking at all the Demo videos at the link above. There *is* some pretty cool stuff in there. And I’ll have it installed on my Mac the day it comes out.

I will do a couple quick notes on Leopard (and stuff) in the wake of the keynote:

• Desktop: Some of this looks like it could be good. But it is in the class of the kind of thing I can’ really give a good opinion on until I get to try it.
• Finder: This should be good. I like some of these enhancements. And while I have not yet even one single time used cover flow in iTunes (other than to check it out when it first came out) I could see myself using it in the finder.
• Quick Look: This should be very good. It seems like one of those, of course it should do that, sorts of things.
• Time Machine: By far the feature I want the most. I live in perpetual fear of losing my data. I run automated backup software every night. This should take it to the next level. They also noted that you will be able to hook up a large drive on the network and then have multiple Macs back up to it. As we are likely to have a second Mac in the house later this year, I’ll have to decide if I want a separate backup drive on each, or a big one for the house. I’m guessing network speeds will still be prohibitive to do remote backup over the internet to a drive at my mom’s house or something… but maybe in a few years.
• Spaces: I can certainly see the appeal in theory, but I’m not sure how much I’d actually use it.
• Mail: Graphical stationary templates? Oh no, please no. I really don’t need that. Notes and To Do lists? Hmmm… I use other things for that right now. But I admit I often email myself to do’s and use my inbox to keep track of them. Perhaps I’ll give it a shot. RSS feeds in mail? Maybe. I’ll check it out. I’ve never gotten into the habit of reading my favorite sites by RSS rather than actually going there. I actually LIKE going to the websites themselves. But one again, I’ll try it.
• iChat: Most of the new features are aimed at doing the “fun” sort of things. I really can’t see myself doing them more than once. Amy? I could see her doing them… except all her friends use Skype for IM, not AIM, and as far as I know none have video capability yet. But we shall see. The Demo made me want to slap the guy who was showing the features. Bleh. There are some other features that will be potentially usable though, the document sharing and such. But those are more business useful, and Macs still are not very strong in that market.
• Other: I will use the web clipping dashboard thing a LOT. Safari on Windows? We’ll see how that goes. Parental Controls? We’ll check it out. Boot Camp: I’m unlikely to ever use it. And if I have that need, I see myself going the Parallels route instead. iPhone Apps as Web 2.0 apps? That is lame. You can do a lot that way, but I don’t believe it covers all cases. If the iPhone really is OS X under the hood, you can’t fully exploit it unless you let people develop for it. And for that matter, I want terminal and the ability to get at the internals just like I can on my Mac if I want to. It will be interesting to see what happens after launch. Do I still want an iPhone? Yeah. But I’ll almost certainly be waiting for Rev 2 in a year or so. (Of course, in all honesty, it is because of being locked into my Sprint contract for awhile and the cost of switching… not the thing with the apps. :-)

OK. That’s if for WWDC.

Oh yeah, you can watch the whole keynote here. Or at least you will be able to after every geek on the internet stops trying to watch it at the same time. It was unwatchable when I tried about an hour ago.