I have very few complaints about Apple products. Largely fitting that pattern, the iPhone 3G is the best phone I’ve ever owned and has exceeded my requirements as a digital organizer.
Similarly, Safari on OS X has consistently been a fast, stable and standards-embracing browser and while any browser lacking my Firefox extensions must come in second place, I use Safari daily on sites FF can’t handle and love my ‘view in Safari’ FF extension.
However, the only reason I ever open Safari on my iPhone is because without jailbreaking it I have no other choice.
Firstly, finding out that Apple’s so-called ‘full Internet experience’ didn’t include Flash was a little ridiculous considering Flash is as common as CSS and an absolute requirement for a huge number of sites.
Once you try actually surfing the web, though, it’s no wonder they crippled it like that. The rock solid browser on my MacBook Pro became the least stable of any app on my iPhone and some of the bugs are so serious and so obvious that the only way they could be present is for Apple to have knowingly shipped them.
1. Safari crashes constantly, often for no apparent reason. Even on basic text-focussed pages when no data activity or zooming/scrolling is even taking place, which also makes the whole web app thing a total crock. Crashing is so endemic that before they even fix the stuff that is bringing Safari down all the time, they should implement an auto-reopen option. Google Chrome-style tab isolation would be terrif too.
2. The totally ludicrous runaway backspace bug. After hitting space twice to write a period with a gap (something you can do accidentally even if you don’t ever intend to use the feature), sometimes hitting backspace to correct it will cause a runaway deletion to occur where you watch in horror as words or even lines are deleted piece by piece as if you were holding the backspace down. For a blog writer and blog user, this is equivalent to shipping an automobile that jams into reverse whenever you tap on the brakes, and makes the browser keyboard literally useless except for filling out brief forms.
3. I have the feeling this is a bad decision more than it is a bug, but… Safari suffers from a strange tendency towards the unnecessary reloading of tabs. Website data that can’t be retained in a computer’s memory is store on its hard disk in a ‘cache’ which is updated later on when the website is reloaded. The mobile version of the browser still has a cache - you can see that in the settings - yet it doesn’t seem to do anything. When you open a new Safari browsing window, use it to load a page, and then switch back to one you had open previously, most of the time it will automatically reload the entire page, even when both aren’t particularly hefty pages. It’s not like my 16 gig iPhone is lacking the ability to hold onto Google News Mobile Version for 5 seconds, the devices have plenty of storage room and proper use of a cache is a no-brainer: it would save on sluggish reloading time and keep data charges down.
I did write most of this entire entry on my iPhone, but using the Wordpress app. Even if I was painfully careful to avoid the backspace bug, I guarantee that Safari would have crashed. I’d bet money on that every time.
So what does Safari on the iPhone have going for it? The main thing that makes this whole mess any better is how painful most mobile browsing has been until now. And beyond that, it is functional to some extent - though I would never recommend that anyone do any writing within Safari beyond the length of a sentence or two, and never anything of particular importance.
Treat it like Windows 3.x and constantly expect a crash. If you don’t mind reopening the browser a few times, maybe you’ll be able to manage getting through reading the day’s news and a few blog posts before you give up.
Development of upcoming Linux-based phones should be interesting to watch, because right now the iPhone is great Apple hardware but is kind of lacking when it comes to representing Apple software.
The RSS logo, if you’re unfamiliar, is depicted on my avatar’s shirt in the sidebar and will also appear in or near the address bar of most modern web browsers. Incidentally, clicking either the sidebar or address bar RSS icon will allow you to subscribe to the new post feed for this site. [What is RSS?]
Compare that to this Ghostwriter logo:
The animated Ghostwriter character appears in the show as the dot and lines used here for the centre of the letter “o” in Ghost.
And the RSS logo:
Am I right? I’m so right.
Write a comment with your name, age, city or municipality of residence and your explanation for this mystery and you could win a trip to New York City to hang out with Spike Lee! Disclaimer: Winner must be between the ages of 6 and 16 and the current year must be 1993.
While at my friend Mike’s house, it struck me as unusual that his wifi network had no password on it… but by the time I finished getting the question out of my mouth, it was obvious to me that there wasn’t really any good reason for protecting it in a residential area and plenty of reasons to offer free internet access to anyone who may be passing through the very limited reception area and have need of it.
So, I just took the password off mine and would encourage you to do likewise unless you actually have some justifiable rational reason to think that people are constantly cramming onto your bandwidth to pull torrents and play games.
The feed refreshed at a faster rate than that, this was just the screenshots I could manually snag.
As of right now, the camera is still up (larger version). It’s weird that I don’t even know the country but I was able to watch someone feeding birds live over the internet.
This is an essay on post-irony that I wrote, with my peers as intended audience, in November of 2005. I was just rereading old stuff and decided to repost it since the link to the oldest archive is now gone. This predates this blog and most of what I’ve observed/understood/thought/said about post-irony, so deal with that. I may have made a few very slight changes to update it.
November 14, 2005
keep quips quiet no dissent unless commodified irony’s
Chris Orbz - [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
im getting really sick of irony
everything is a joke to everyone
including everyone else dying and themselves dying
they dismiss everything with a wisecrack with no humour value and immense horror value, and then everyone laughs and waits for the next joke
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
i think this is the point we’ve gotten to yes
a tv show
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
yeah
like i was in the king david at york today and heard half a conversation
guy: how unhealthy?
girl: pretty unhealthy
guy: compared to diet pepsi
girl: okay, not THAT unhealthy
guy: jeez, that sure doesn’t make me feel good about the diet pepsi. but i got a bottle the size of the ones in the machines for a dollar, so at least im getting a discount in exchange for my health, hahahahaha
i wanted to smack him and yell don’t you see how moronic that is? are you really that fucking stupid?
and that’s everyone’s reaction to everything
i love when people use the ‘clever’ retort of ‘well, everything gives you cancer’
i’ve gotta say i think television has outdone the nuclear bomb as the worst invention of all time
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
is it the invention itself, or the way it’s used
because the nuclear bomb can only be used for mass destruction
television could have been used for anything
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
i dont buy this crap about tv being potentially good
i guess it could’ve been used for education
but i dont know about that
a computer does everything good a tv could much better
tv is continuous and one-way
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
not anymore with rogers digital cable
now you own your tv
and you can bring it on to the subway and stuff
and in your car
i think not all irony is a negative thing
although maybe it goes beyond irony what i’m thinking of
i guess it’s a positive thing if it provokes positive change
not just tells people EVERYTHING’S FUCKED!
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
it doesnt do that any more though
people find it satisfying in itself
they go huhuhuhuhuh
and they’re done
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
sort of the fact that they know it satisfies i guess
makes people think they’re on the winning side because they get it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
liking supersize me while having the mcdeals memorized
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah that happens a lot
and now mcdonalds is putting health information on the boxes
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
ha ha ha look my lungs look like this picture
im gonna die ha ha hacking cough
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
do you believe that maybe for every 100 people who do see it even a few of them change?
because like Will quit cigarettes because of that sort of thing
and however innaffective it might be if it gets to some people it might be worthwhile. The same way as the negative is true.
For example like sprite releases an ad right and everyone talks about how crappy and gimicky the product is, and they feel they win because they haven’t bought into it. But this is missing the point of the ad. Because that one time or those one or two times that you do buy it is directly because of the ad because you now recognize the brand.
but you think you’ve won because you’re conscious of it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
thats on every cigarette package though, that doesnt work for most things
that’s an issue of 100% meme saturation
if 99 cigarette packs say MMMM DELICIOUS and 1 says cancer, no one will notice the cancer one
although the ratio when you’re dealing with issues and things is way beyond that
if you can’t afford to wrap an entire subway station in ads its barely worth it to even try to advertise
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah true i suppose
in the past, i’ve already tried to outline the post-irony bit in the following way:
- modernism is writing something clever and subversive on a billboard.
- postmodernism is writing the text “something clever and subversive” on a billboard.
…what’s the next step beyond that?
it’s hard to put clearly into thoughts and words, since what has
developed of postirony is only becoming clear over time, and much of it
has not even developed yet. this is still far from the popular state of
mind at this point. do you still find ‘internet humour’ funny? or are
you one of us who think that maybe there’s only so much stuff that can
be cranked out on automatic, and that it’s getting rather boring?
i no longer find comedic pieces of culture funny - but i find the whole culture unbelievably hilarious… i can barely stand to be in the room when other people are watching television, but i could spend an hour flipping through 5 cropped seconds of everything and wish i had it recorded afterwards.
the stuff online that is intended to be funny, i don’t really find all that funny. but a google image search for any random word can have me rolling on the floor from the results.
i can maybe convey, if not explain, a facet of postirony through art. this won’t be a comprehensive philosophical outline, but perhaps this will help extend one part of your mind into it so that you can begin trying to feel your way around it that way i’m trying to do.
first and foremost, although moving away from the as-weird-as-possible, “weird for weird’s sake” nature of postmodernism must inherently be a move towards some sort of normalcy (alex shakar might not necessarily agree), this can’t simply be a reversion to previous modes of thought. it has to come out of extending postmodernism until you reach the point of breaking away from it significantly enough that it is something classifiable different.
^ i would describe this video as a piece of postirony art (in fact,
i’d apply that to much of the here’s my card records library, such as
bodybreakcore)
it seems postmodern in that it comes off as “weird for the sake of
weird,” but (and maybe this is as much perspective as it is the
subject) to me it isn’t really that. for one thing, i submerged myself
so deeply in postmodernism that this doesn’t even seem weird to me any
more, in the same way that breakcore now just sounds like drums to me.
this uses culture in a way that is both similar to and different
from the typical postmodern approach. the difference being the irony.
when postmodernism uses a piece of culture, it chooses a specific piece
of culture which, placed in a new context, creates a specific message
out of the sum total of the original piece of culture and the new
context. if you aren’t familiar with the original piece of culture, you
won’t “get it.” you are required to be familiar with it in order to
understand and appreciate it properly.
postirony use of culture, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily
require that you be familiar with it in order to appreciate it. in the
case of the get crackin’ video, it is jam-packed with snippets of
culture, however they aren’t quite cultural references. rather than
being specific references with which you must be familiar, they are
simply a collage of late 20th century mainstream culture. the impact
that it manages to pull off isn’t based on the viewer being familiar
with the specific video clips that are used and “getting” the
connection, “getting” the irony of the juxtaposition -
instead, it relies on the viewer having spent their life
being overinundated with the medium of television. not simply
the content, but the perception of the medium through life. those of us
who have at least as many hours of television memory as real-life
memory have minds that are very carefully honed to television, along
with all of its patterns and idiosyncracies. far from being a random
collage of television images, these television images are put together
based on how the specific aesthetics of each will instantly and subconsciously impact the overinundated.
do you see how that is a step beyond postmodernism, as it is based
entirely on being exposed and overexposed and hyperoverexposed to
postmodern culture? rather than using wit and irony to appeal to our
conscious minds, nwodtleM realizes that a lifetime of wit and irony
presented to us in repeated patterns have burned certain responses into
our brains, responses that are highly predictable due to the consistent
homogeny of media presentation and the overwhelming way in which it has
surrounded us our entire lives. he then simply pokes and prods at that
subconscious programming and is able to elicit consistent responses in
his viewers.
that’s why it all goes by so quickly. you’ll probably notice missy
elliott and madonna, and hey is that bruce willis? it doesn’t _matter_
if it’s bruce willis, except that when you see that image you have an
immediate reaction. there’s nothing special about madonna except that
when you see those images of madonna you react in a specific way
subconsciously, contributing to your whole reaction to the whole piece.
that’s why some things can be included for only a single frame -
it doesn’t matter if you see it long enough to know what it is, all you
have to do is see it long enough to see it and the necessary reaction
will be produced.
this video accomplishes two things:
one, it is interesting art in a novel contemporary way.
two, when you think as deeply about it as i do, it speaks volumes about the state of the human being at the turn of millennium.
another, much shorter way i can describe that:
i can’t stand watching any tv show whatsoever,
but i could flip channels all day long and never cease to be amused by four random seconds of everything.
it’s not the content of the subject matter, it’s simply the subject matter itself.
perhaps it’s something like this: “if there’s an explanation, i don’t want to hear it.” i’m sick of the endless whys - can we have some real whats again?
just give me the painting and keep the damn preamble to yourself.
sadly, i’m still postmodern enough to feel the need to overanalyze
and thoroughly explain all of this, to be too self-aware, but i’ve got
my reasons for doing that here and by and large it’s become something i
no longer do. i do prefer to have something accomplish whatever it will
on its own, and leave it at that. talk is cheap (and everything else is
ignored). i could comment deeply on every single advertisement (britney
spears - the perfume) but i realize that if i truly care, it’s time to
move beyond that.
if you’ve gone so far into the deep end of postmodernism that
you’ve reached the bottom and are growing disinterested, or if you’ve
even gone a little further, i hope that those ideas about postirony can
help to draw your mind forward and give you a framework within which to
begin figuring your way around a new headspace… and maybe you’ll reach that point where you can stop framing your whole life as though it takes place within your “headspace”.
the postirony mindset is what comes of having spent your whole life
watching tv, but no longer currently watching it. (that’s kind of a
metonymy for the whole of mainstream, corporate produced “culture.” )
if you’re still able to actually sit and watch tv, you’re not
really there yet. but odds are you’re deep enough that you could be.
try disconnecting from mainstream media for a while - a month, ideally
a few months, a television season would be best. i’ll bet that once
you’ve broken out of the habit of wanting to watch tv in general, you
won’t even be able to watch it. if you find or feel that you need
motivation to or assistance with pulling the plug on your set, i’ll
refer you to www.turnoffyourtv.com
doing this will be a success first in that it’ll help pull you out
of being susceptible to most marketing, which will be a very healthy
move for your subconscious mind. our media culture is like radiation,
and thoughtful exposure to hours of repeated messages will burn them
into your brain just as much as brainless exposure to them would. this
includes self-image, world view, and addiction to and reliance on an
entirely consumption-based lifestyle. they know how to get inside your
head. you can’t outwit them because they’re not relying on outwitting
you in the first place. as well, you will escape the through-a-camera-”wow-this-is-crazy-its-like-a-movie-or-something!” way of seeing life. it will be the crucial first step towards reconnecting with reality and connecting with the future.
Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology.
Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?
To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice when serious discourse dissolves into giggles?
America’s consuming love affair with television…
It serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion – and turns them into entertainment packages.
i say it’s time for a REAL, contemporary perspective on the issues
we’re faced with. the issues we’re all hyperaware of, some brand new,
some several decades old, ones modernism seriously made an attempt at,
but failed because those kind of straightforward, conventional tactics
may have accomplished something in the 60s, but that stopped being true
in progressive steps. first, it stopped being effective in creating a
solution to the problem at hand, and then second, it stopped being an
effective way of reaching people (due initially to their
disillusionment from failures and defeat, and then due to the whole
brainwashing thing i’m trying to call attention to).
so then people got cynical about that, but the truths still
remained true. unfortunately, people could only be reached through
irony… what amounts to the most successful political pieces as far as
our generation is concerned?
adbusters-style “subversion,” basically parody, wherein a marlboro cowboy may have a flaccid cigarette (the effectiveness can be noted in that health canada even copied that one) or an overhead view of an a.a. meeting is pictured with the chairs arranged to form the outline of a bottle of absolut vodka.
if you’ve picked up an adbusters recently, however, you may have
noticed that they now use real discussion about real history, real
issues, real tactics, and real modern lifestyles.
they’ve moved beyond irony. it’s time you do too.
it’s time to put an end to this mass disconnection from real life, and it must start within each one of us.
every single one of you is among the smartest and most
well-informed beings that have ever lived on this planet.
unfortunately, you were also born into a culture where you’ve been
raised by television, newspapers and advertising, no matter how good
your parents were, and the result is that your phenomenal intelligence,
your record-setting IQ, is diverted to appreciating and
producing creative humour/entertainment while setting aside the most
vital things in the world as “boring.”
it’s time for you to start taking what you know seriously and start
making serious efforts to actually apply that knowledge in everything
that you do.
I now have a mobile-browser-friendly version of this site, thanks to the WP Mobile Edition plugin by Alex King (and a bit of tweaking).
It should automatically recognize mobile platforms and display the mobile version before the standard one, but considering I had to add “iPhone” to the list, there may be some misses.
If you ever want to view the lynx mobile browser version, just click the link under my name at the top of the sidebar.
And if you’ve got an iPhone and add my blog to your home screen (visit the homepage, tap the plus sign and then tap “Add to Home Screen”) there’s even a pre-made shopping cart icon.
Although it looks bland, I actually quite like reading the site this way. I think I prefer it even, provided I’m not trying to find a specific piece of content buried deep in the site. There’s no category list or search function right now. I’m going to see about that, but I already tried and failed in terms of adding a search box.
Update! Sorted out some of what was lacking, now there’s pull-down category and monthly archive menus at the top of every page and the ability to skip backward and forward through pages of posts, either within a category or just starting from the most recent. Now the most important matter is how to best format the text. Also, this may not even work on older mobile platforms, but screw ‘em.
Images and YouTube still load on my iPhone, and having the Random Posts so visible on each page makes it really easy to just read and read through all sorts of old content that winds up getting lost behind the all-powerful front page of the blog.
The correct oldtimer joke would have been as follows: If you ever want to view the lynx^H^H^H^H mobile browser version, just click the link under my name at the top of the sidebar.
Turns out lynx can’t even reach the mobile browser site, so the joke made no sense anyway. Look, I had to recreate the damn lynx.cfg just to run it, you think I run around testing everything in lynx?
I’ll pose the question to you: What is the newspaper window accomplishing in Chris Jackson’s photo above?
Nothing, right? You can barely see the front page, and what you can see is absolutely meaningless. It may as well say “News!” or “Topic!” In short, it is irrelevant and worthless.
The Toronto Sun is usually irrelevant and worthless, but in this case it actually wasn’t their fault. They were trying to tell people about the weather and the weather happened to get itself between the front page and any potential readers.
But something that has been an increasingly common occurrence in this city is newspapers blowing off their own feet and actively working to make themselves this irrelevant and worse.
The Toronto Star started running front-page-covering adflaps a while ago, and I assumed they’d realize it was moronic and stop soon enough, but they’re actually still at it and seem to be doing it more and more frequently.
These adflaps cover the left 50% of the front page, leaving headlines (the part of the newspaper which determines whether or not a potential reader actually buys the thing) chopped down to such brilliant things as “…history” and “…factory” - headlines which would actually serve them and their readers better if they DID just say “News!”
Now, that’s stupid, but it actually doesn’t come anywhere close to being as stupid as the Globe and Mail’s website.
I mean, you don’t have to buy the ink-soaked Toronto Star print version to find out what the headline was.
You can just pop by their website - ideally with an adblocker on your browser - and find out what the writers were trying to communicate before the publishers and advertisers strangled them.
I followed a link to a back issue copy of a Globe and Mail article and was amazed to find this totally ridiculous “offer” to purchase it:
$4.95 for temporary access to a 593 word digital article? Are you shitting me? That’s one hell of a high price for a temporary digital copy of nothing, especially considering a full newspaper edition is $1 most days (such as the Wednesday this article was printed on) and $2.25 Saturdays. I can get my back copies at the library, thank you very much, or just read something up-to-date about Michel de Broin somewhere else.
Incidentally, this post is 400 words long. Pay your $3.34 up now and I’ll even let you access it for more than a month!
Phone/PDA? Mobile version!
