i subscribe to a usability mailing list from gerry mcgovern called “new thinking” which tends to have a lot of great insights into user-centric web design and management. the article i read today had a line which i’ve heard variations of before:

THE REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOGLE AND YAHOO

Yahoo’s customer is the advertiser. Google’s customer is you and
me. That’s why Google has been more successful.

gerry defends this position by saying that google’s advertising model focuses on relevance and usefulness, as opposed to yahoo’s approach, which he describes as focusing on “increasing page views and ad placements”.

i don’t think i agree with this. make no mistake about it, you and i are no more google’s customer than we are yahoo’s. google’s customers are, and always have been, the advertiser. it just happens that google offers a better product to their advertisers – by delivering focused, relevant, and targeted ads to the end-user, they are delivering a consumer who is more likely to act upon that advertisement. they are making that ad more likely to be worth the money that was paid for it.

google’s approach has a side-effect of making advertising more useful (as “useful” as advertising can be) to the end-user, to “you and me”. it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts though, it’s just a smart way of delivering a good product (you and me) to their customers (the advertisers).

just about every HTML competency test i’ve ever taken includes the question: “which of these will open a link in a new window”.

one of the answers will of course be the correct one:

target=”_blank”

but invariably one of the “incorrect” answers will be

target=”new”

and i just have to point out: if there isn’t already a window open with the name “new” (which more than likely there will NOT be) – that “incorrect” answer will also open a new window.

the question is never phrased as “which is best” or “which is correct”, but always “which of these will work”, implying that there is only one correct answer and the other options will not ever be valid, and that’s just wrong.

so, HTML test designers, stop making ambiguous questions, you jerks.

i was having some trouble upgrading my coppermine gallery, so i decided to screw it and use nextgen gallery as my image gallery. it’s good because it’s directly integrated with wordpress, and it was pretty easy to hack the search function so that the wordpress search will pull image results too.

here’s a hint: try searching for “shooting”, “sword” or “mecha”. you won’t be disappointed.

• new and improved sketchbook galleries

so zarkill.com recently fell victim to a hack that inserts linkspam into the template. i had been running an old installation and didn’t do many of the recommended steps to secure the software so i was like “oops my bad, i’ll go ahead and upgrade”. (thanks for the tip from brendan, a friendly stranger.)

so i did, and figured that was the end of it, but then BAM! the next day, there was more linkspam in the template. so i was like WTF, and started looking for some answers.

there are a lot of general guides to protecting your wordpress installation, but there was nothing specific about “wpfooterz” which appeared in the code comments before my particular linkspam. i saw a few people asking about it on forums, but no one had any real answers except “google it”, which just made me go “what do you think i’m doing, you dick”.

but i did find a few articles which suggested some things to look for – for instance, malicious code can be inserted into your theme that can make the linkspam come back even after you delete it all. so i started downloading my theme files so i could run a text search on them. lo and behold, before i was even finished downloading, my symantec antivirus actually flagged one of the files as a “hacking tool” – so i figured that must be the problem.

the file was called “locals.php” which must have been inserted into my theme folder during the time i was running an unsecure old installation. it is not a legit theme file. but since upgrading wordpress doesn’t overwrite themes, it survived the update and continued to re-insert the linkspam into my template.

i removed this file and HOPEFULLY that will take care of the problem. i hope this public service announcement will help anyone else who keeps getting the “wpfooterz” linkspam, because i couldn’t find any other specific info about it.

look for the locals.php file, which is full of malicious code, and get rid of it. then make sure you’ve got the most up-to-date version of wordpress and i guess it never hurts to go ahead and change your admin password. also i’ve learned that it’s a good idea to have an admin username other than “admin”, and make sure your wordpress tables have a prefix other than “wp_”.

hope that helps someone.

so it’s been over a year since i’ve updated, but the other day i was like “oh man i never draw anymore” so i busted out an old sketch and said “OK I AM MAKING THIS INTO SOMETHING FINISHED”

and so this dragon was born.

(click for full size)

i’m pleased with it and i hope to bring more of my old sketches (and hopefully some new ones as well) to a finished product. i’m really hoping that i can parlay this into some freelance illustration jobs, so if you want me to draw you pictures, let me know.

Ever since I was a little kid, any time I walk past an apparently empty automobile I stare at the front seat as if I’m staring right at the driver. I do this just in case there’s an invisible man sitting there, so he’ll wonder: “Oh shit, can that guy see me? Has my power of invisibility failed me?” and then he’ll spend the rest of the day paranoid and doubting the effectiveness of his powers.

I think an invisible man has so much going for him, he needs to have his day ruined like that every once in a while just to keep him in his place.

in spite of her mother’s questionable taste in music, my little girl can still fall asleep to the soothing sounds of the final fantasy and dragon warrior soundtracks.

note: this is a repost of something i wrote in november 2003. i thought it was still interesting so i’m reposting it

you know the old cliché that illustrates the way old people exaggerate stories: “OH YEAH I HAD TO WALK 10 MILES IN THE SNOW UPHILL BOTH WAYS” … well, it occurred to me that story itself is probably an example of the concept it attempts to describe. i mean, have you ever actually heard anyone claim to have walked 10 miles in the snow to school? uphill both ways? i know i haven’t. what i’ve heard is old people telling me that someone told THEM that. all we’re left with is some unlikely hearsay that in effect becomes the new cliché for illustrating the way old people exaggerate things.

hmm.

another thing that occurred to me: you know how when someone says something that you don’t want to dignify with a response, you say “i won’t dignify that with a response”… when in fact, that IS a response, and a message has been communicated on both sides. it’s a sad irony that a truly unresponded-to comment never knows that it hasn’t been responded to because it’s not worth it.

i’m reminded of a quote from sun tzu that i took from an article on sirlin.net which reads as follows:

“His victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom, nor credit for courage. For inasmuch as they are gained over circumstances that have not come to light, the world at large knows nothing of them, and he therefore wins no reputation for wisdom; and inasmuch as the hostile state submits before there has been any bloodshed, he receives no credit for courage.”

there’s a story by Robert Louis Stevenson called The Bottle Imp that contains an interesting paradox. the main gist of it is this: you get a magical bottle with an imp who lives in it. the imp will grant your wishes, but there are conditions: you have to sell the bottle to someone else. you’re not allowed to give away or throw away the bottle, and you must sell it for less than you bought it for. you are also obliged to explain these rules to the buyer, so they are aware of what they’re getting into. if you fail to uphold these rules, you will be damned to hell for eternity.

the paradox then is something like this: would it be possible to ever sell this bottle to anyone?

if we start at the bottom of the pricing scale (assuming US currency, of course), no one would ever buy the bottle for 1 cent. they wouldn’t be able to sell it for less, as the rules demand, and so they’d be stuck with it and sent to hell. since no one would want to buy it for 1 cent, no one would ever buy it for 2 cents, either. if they did, their only option would be to find someone willing to buy it for 1 cent, while being fully aware of the rules. since this would be impossible, they’d be foolish to buy it for 2 cents.

working your way upwards, you could make the same argument for any given asking price. logically, no one would want to buy it at any price, because they’d be certain that no one would want to buy it at a lower price, and they’d be stuck with it.

but it seems that if you start high enough, there’s no reason why someone wouldn’t agree to buy it. for 50 or 100 dollars, it seems reasonable that they’d be able to sell it again for a slightly lower price.

so i got to thinking, and what occurred to me is that this paradox sounds very much like the paradox of a person’s last conscious thought.

when someone dies, people will always throw around words like “the last thing that crossed their mind” or “the last thing they see”. but by the nature of being the “last” thought that occurs before death, as soon as it happens, it is gone. no one will ever know the last thought you have. you will never know the last thought you have. or the thought immediately before that, because that thought will also be gone almost instantly after it comes to exist. and it follows that all thoughts that you have ever had will simultaneously be gone, much like any chance for selling the imp in the bottle.

but here we all are, alive and well, and certainly aware of our own thoughts. so where are we in the paradox? how high in price is our own bottle imp? and what happens when we finally reach 1 cent?

i guess if we were able to make sense of that, we’d be closer to unraveling one of life’s most ancient mysteries.

I recently read an article in which sci-fi author Ray Bradbury seems irritated that his book Fahrenheit 451 has been “misinterpreted” all these years.

Rather than a warning against Totalitarian oppression, he intended it to be a statement about the dumbing down of society by television.

That’s all well and good, and it certainly makes sense, but I can’t help but feel that in spite of the author’s intentions, Fahrenheit 451 is certainly “about” a Totalitarian government oppressing its people through the censorship of books.

The article attempts to contrast with 1984 by stating:

He says the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate.

But that statement seems to miss the point… the culprit is always the people. That’s why warnings against Fascism and Totalitarianism exist; the target for these messages isn’t the State that seeks to oppress, they are targeted towards the People to make them aware, so better to prevent themselves from being oppressed.

The statement from the Declaration of Independence is always true:

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

The State cannot oppress its people without their consent, either explicitly or implicitly (through a lack of rebellion). This is true in 1984, it’s true in Fahrenheit 451, and it’s true in all real-life examples of totalitarian states. There is always something that the State uses as a premise to unify the population and gain their support: a common enemy, a common fear; in 1984 it was the enemies of Oceana, in Fahrenheit 451 it was the unpleasant ideas that books would instill in their readers. Real world examples of racial and political enemies used to solidify the support for repressive regimes are easy to come by.

So while I’ve been a fan of Ray Bradbury’s, I can’t help but wonder about an author who claims irritation about his work being so grossly misinterpreted for so long a period of time. Is that really the fault of the audience, or was there a failure to properly communicate the message?

Either way, I think the “intended” message regarding TV and the incidental one regarding Fascism and censorship are both valid and I’m certainly glad Fahrenheit 451 makes both of those statements whether Mr. Bradbury intended it or not.