Deathshadow's Madness

Well, Microsoft has launched their 'new' search engine... Here's my initial impressions.

They have missed all the lessons Google has taught us about making search SIMPLE and accessable. In fact, they have done the exact same thing in terms of bloated graphics, annoying scripts and reliance on 'ain't it neat' technologies that KILLED ask.com

First load it takes forever loading some sort of background image, said image makes reading the text in the little side-bar difficult to read. Likewise the white on grey text outside their little search area is also below accessability norms in terms of contrast, the white heading texts below the image and then the menu line in the 'footer' being the worst offenders. The search box with it's akilter uneven spacing looks like a rendering error. That the results are left justified but fixed width is annoying since the width they choose is a bit too narrow.

Brand new website and the markup is malformed. This isn't the traditional validation errors you can ignore like empty alt tags, but geniune "the designer doesn't know HTML" errors like block-level elements inside inline-level ones. This extends to the filesizes where there's 31k of markup being used to deliver 400 BYTES of content, improperly linked stylesheets, and javascript that by all indications serves no good purpose - much less the lack of graceful degredation when javascript is disabled.

It also appears that in Opera the page never finishes loading from links to files that don't even exist. Since the page is overly reliant upon javascript this means onload never fires - just brilliant. I'm seeing four different broken layouts in four different browsers...

The search results? Look like every other search engine - from fifteen years ago. Reminds me of altavista back in the day. While google has upped the ante adding the ability to white-list and black-list pages from their results, it looks like M$ has simply added tracking javascripts around all links on what is little more than a overglorified half-assed rehash of what search engines have been putting online for the better part of the past decade and a half.

The site is entirely typical of what I've come to expect from Microsoft so far as web technologies are concerned, which is to say it is plainly evident the people they have writing websites have no clue how to actually DO SO!!! Much like the new hotmail this half assed broken bloated codebase should not be impressing anyone, and if anything should be resulting in people getting fired.

Color me unimpressed.

Right now I'm dealing with a dillemna, I'm on doctors orders not to work, I'm really in very little condition to be working, but the simple fact is I cannot afford NOT to work, even with the disability I'm collecting.

I'm trying to restrict myself to one contract at a time, putting all of my personal projects on the back burner (which is why the launch of EWIUSB.COM keeps slipping) ... But even just one contract that I quoted twice the time it SHOULD take me to do has slipped past it's schedule and is starting to feel like I'll never get it done. The project in this case should have taken me 30 hours of work TOPS, here I am two weeks later and I'm MAYBE a third of the way through.

I dunno... used to be when I felt like this I could take a quick nap, wake up refreshed and bang out code for eight hours. Now I take a nap, wake up feeling worse than I did when I turned in with a headache that feels like an ice-pick jabbed into my left eye-socket, and stare at the display like a zombie.

... sad part is I've also started a new side project that is VERY important, because I am documenting my own process of building a website from start to end, partly for other people, but also partly for myself. I'm having massive memory loss issues and I'm trying to get it all down on paper so I have something to follow since I appear to at least be able to still follow instructions... and even that's starting to slip.

As a saxophonist and a "poorfag" one of the constant banes is that practicing playing when you RENT is very difficult and requires a great deal of 'understanding' from the neighbors. Adding to this problem has been that my parkinsonism has made it difficult for me to press the low C and D# keys, much less the low B/Bb keys on the other hand as my pinkies increasingly lack the leverage to hit those keys.

For years to let me at least get some practice in learning songs in I've used a Casio DH-100 - a rather simple small midi wind controller from the mid 80's. My original one got destroyed horribly during a move four years ago and I've been looking for a replacement ever since. Recently I picked one up on the cheap that had the 'well documented' squealing problem, an easy fix.

But the more and more I played it, the more I remembered how much of a toy it is... but one doesn't have high expectations in a musical instrument that originally had a price tag of around $100... and it's not like I have the five hundred to thousand dollars it would take to buy a Yamaha or Akai... until now.

Recently Akai introduced a USB version of their EWI (Electronic wind instrument) that has had a street price of only $299, and by most accounts it almost as capable as the much more expensive EWI4000s... While the older EWI's in the 2000 and 3000 series required a controller box, the 4000s was an 'all in one' package including a synthesizer, in both cases you had to pay for a lot of additional hardware to get going... The EWI USB is a departure from this in that it transmits 'Midi over USB' so you can use it with any computer sequencing or softsynth that recognizes a USB midi device. Second, it includes a software synth made by 'Garritan' that includes some fairly decent sounding samples... basically all the 'work' in terms of actual synthesis is offloaded to the computer instead of relying on an external module, reducing the EWI to being little more than a USB analog controller with a few keys.

So naturally, I got one... and dissapointment set in.

I've never owned or even held one in person, though I've seen them played live back in the 80's by the likes of Micheal Brecker and of course the endless horde of youtube videos showing them in action... My first discovery was quite a shocker - when they said 'touch sensitive' I assumed some sort of strain guage based contact pads. Instead I found myself confronted by electroconductive keys. You have to keep your thumb on a flat grounding pad, and when you so much as touch any of the keys, you complete the electrical circuit with your body. Kind of neat and means one good thing - no moving parts... so the engineer in me applauds the general idea.

But the musician in me as well as the engineer has some issues with it. You cannot even touch any of the keys unless you want to register them as being pressed - and we humans hold on to things via this evolutionary marvel called the opposable grip... On notes like C# which are usually played by pressing no keys, you can't establish any sort of grip. You end up pushing it away from you with the right thumb, and using the neckstrap and even the mouthpiece to try and hold the thing still - the net result leaves a lot to be desired.

Another thing it has are touch sensitive 'rollers' for controlling the octave... that they roll has nothing to do with the actual playback, and only the center two (of the four) actually roll. This makes switching between octaves very awkward, and frankly I think I'd have better luck with it if they were just a series of four flat pads like the grounding plate is. I don't have 'giant freakish' hands, but I'm finding it near impossible to only touch two rollers, my thumb usually making contact with three of them when you are only supposed to ever touch two at time. Because the rollers have depressions in them it's very hard to move between notes unless you use this soft barely touching them approach, which only further compounds the problems of trying to hold on to the bloody thing. In a way I feel like when I try to use one of those Saitek joysticks with the stupid 'hand guard' thing that my hand doesn't even fit into.

On a normal saxophone, I carry about 80% of the weight on the right thumbrest - EVEN when I play Baritone. I was taught the neckstrap is there for if you screw up - basically to prevent you from dropping the thing... Which made sense to me since putting that type of weight directly on the back of your neck is just begging to end up seeing a chiropracter or worse, orthopedic surgeon. All it has down there is a flat plate, though there are black 'standouts' above and below that plate which are 'pitch benders'... Because it's all flat up to the pitch benders, the whole unit keeps sliding down until I'm trying to use the top pitch bender as a thumbrest - completely screwing up the sounds being played back.

Since you end up relying on the neckstrap WAY more than I'm used to, you'd expect something special there, instead you have a large open hook that detaches from the horn in a light breeze... adjusted to where the unit is at a comfortable position the top part is too narrow around to even fit over my head, meaning most people would have to constantly adjust and re-adjust it - so pretty much it's a throwaway - time for a trip to the local music shop to see if they have a decent Soprano strap.

I can understand and accept that as an electronic instrument it's not going to be identical to an accousting one - but there are a whole slew of ergonomic design choices that just leave me scratching my head...

Issues trying to play it apart, I almost didn't get as far as figuring out the controls as the software it came bundled with is filled with headaches to even get it installed!

First off, nowhere in the packaging or advertising for the products does it say an actual minimum hardware, simply saying "XP or OSX"... If you dig into the CD it comes with or are willing to jump through a slew of hoops to download a more recent version, there's a PDF that says P4 2.8 or G5 2.0 - that's information that should be slapped up everywhere - though as I later found off those numbers appear to be WAY conservative.

A bigger problem is that it's a normal CD formatted disk, NOT a DVD - but it's been recorded to a capacity of 845 megs - that's a bit above and beyond 'overburn', and worse being a dual format disk it appears the PC version is further out on the disk than the Mac version... Net result? Half my machines with DVD combo drives BSOD when you insert the disk just from the autoplay being corrupted... and it doesn't even recognize in standard CD drives... Newfags with their bleeding edge Mac Pro might not have problems with this, but I was hoping to use this with one of my old laptops - and it even chokes on my relatively recent Pentium M based HP lappy.

Thankfully my nice fat workstation has none of those issues with a nice modern DVD/RW drive, so I was at least able to install the software there, as well as back up the disk to a flash drive so I could install it elsewhere...

Which brings us to our second problem... The interaction of the software with the system itself. My workstations specs are nothing to sneeze at even if it is two years behind bleeding edge. Q6600, 4 gigs ram, audigy 2 ZS audio card... At first I thought the problem was with the Aria software itself as trying to open up it's 'preferences' pain sent the program off into "Not responding" land for a good minute or more. First few times I killed it's task after about 30 seconds, finally I decided to let it run and it let me in...

To find the default settings don't even come close to being correct - as you basically have to manually point it at the correct midi ports (both input and output should be set ONLY to "USB Midi Device"), and mine must have been mucked with before shipping because I had to 'reset' it to baselines as certain things (like the breath controller) were turned off, or worse set to something strange... and the instructions for all this?

In a pdf and not in the printed materiels included in the packaging... The do include a 26 page printed booklet, that fails to mention there's a pdf to be read, the pdf is not installed as a shortcut with the software, and that little booklet? The first 20 pages are devoted to five different languages that amount to little more than giving you want each piece is called, the last few pages being the only useful part - a fingering chart.

Once getting it configured playback cut in and out a lot, and making settings changes were outright painful... I've seen that type of behavior out of ASIO so I tried directInput or MME, and those didn't cut out, but had a half second lag making it next to useless for actually playing the instrument... After having my google-fu fail me I tried a forums I had gone to looking for information on the unit before purchase. Searching that forums turned up little directly until I posted my experience, and someone mentioned ASIO4ALL.

Apparantly the M$ default ASIO drivers, as well as those from Creative and other manufacturers pretty much blow chunks being next to useless. ASIO4All was created to fill the gap left by the sleazeball rubbish drivers from most manufacturers... Interestingly this not only eliminated the 'not responding' delay getting into the preferences and got rid of the dropouts, but lowered CPU use almost 500% to the point I was even able to get the software to run just fine on my 500mhz P3 laptop, which is cool since it's a 12 pound 'presentation' model Compaq with 15 watt speakers integrated and a monster 18 cell battery - ideal for whipping this out at small gatherings.

Still, so many problems right out of the box almost had me sending it back - though I'm going to keep it, especially now that I've voided any sort of warranty by opening it up to have a look.

http://www.cutcodedown.com/projects/ewiBreakdown

In taking it apart I removed the extra weights they added to give the unit some heft, and this has made holding onto it a lot easier... so basically it's a good starting point, but to get it to the point I'll be comfortable with it I'm going to have to make some heavy duty modifications... Topping that list will likely be adding some form of curved depression to the flat grounding plate to make holding onto it easier, and a possible reworking of the octave rollers to something a bit easier to control.

I am also seriously considering building my own version from scratch around an arduino. Now that I know what type of pressure sensor goes into one of these, as well as having discovered how they made a closed system guage work in a blow-through mechanism, building such a device has become several magnatudes of difficulty simpler.

Other problems are that while you can configure it to work with other software since it's all just midi data, you can only configure it from the Aria software, which on top of being a bit heavy on memory footprint, is awkward dividing up settings someone like me would change a lot into three separate tabs under a sub window you can only open from the menu - chewing up screen real-estate for fancy graphics instead of just giving you all the controls right there up front. In the Aria software I found that the whole UI is designed in XML, meaning I could not only reskin it, but possible add the missing controls or move all the controls to a single panel! It's all XML and PNG files, meaning the application could be easily reskinned.

Second, it's all midi data, and after some sniffing I found that all the settings are sent via NRPN or SysEx data.

http://www.cutcodedown.com/projects/ewiBreakdown/ewi_sysex_part1.html

Once I finish documenting all the values in part 2, it should be easy enough to write my own stand-alone configuration application... and it also means that if I try to build my own wind controller from scratch I could even make it application compatible with the EWI USB.

So despite my dissapointment and difficulties I think I'm going to have tons of fun with this device, but I definately would NOT recommend it to the less computer-saavy. It basically has an entry level/general consumer price, but definately NOT designed for 'Joe Sixpack' to plug in and start using.

In a recent article on SitePoint the subject of browser sniffing came up - more specifically how some REALLY rubbish scripts are apparantly detecting the Opera 10 beta as Opera 1.0... One part really bothered me... and I tried to post a response that their 'spam filter' caught - though I expect it will NEVER actually get onto the site given that I'm persona non-grata and perma-banned from the forums over there, all because I used the word 'wigger' once in a post... Which of course is a cop-out for the fact that I have the habit of calling a turd a turd regardless of who it offends, and had made their mentor staff look like idiots one too many times a few years back. (They only have two people on staff I have the least respect for the opinions of, and one of them became a mentor AFTER I was banned)

In any case, back on topic, the part that bothered me was this:

Unfortunately, this reflects poorly on Opera

My response is thus:

Bullcookies. It reflects poorly on the overpaid underskilled nimrods who slap together websites using dated and faulty technologies like browser sniffing. Even hinting or blaming the browser is the wrong tack - Instead we need to start sending wakeup calls to developers, or even BETTER their bosses.

Let's examine the code for Bank of America's main page, shall we?

Mediocre fixed width layout flush left, layout uses dynamic fonts inside extra-narrow fixed width containers making the navigation a train wreck on large font/120 dpi systems, and no graceful degredation script off or que's to make it read properly in screen readers. If this was a site in the UK, they'd be facing accessability fines. (LORD we could use those types of laws here in the Colonies)

154k in 17 external javascripts along with at LEAST 30k of internal javascript on a page that by all appearances doesn't do anything that warrants ANY scripting.

124 Validation errors in a transitional doctype - that requires a geniune level of ineptitude the likes of which you'd half suspect Bush administration was behind it, as they do not have HTML, they have gibberish.

Presentational Markup? CHECK!
Presentational images in the markup? CHECK!
Table based layout with no layout elements that warrant a table? CHECK!
Spacer.gif's? CHECK!
Major sections of page CONTENT loaded via DHTML with no graceful degredation for scripting off, CHECK!
Unquoted values on attributes? CHECK!
XHTML style closings in a HTML doctype? CHECK!

Net result? 77k in their served document, another 174k of scripting, 18k of CSS, and a grand total of 42 files all to serve less than 5k of ACTUAL PAGE CONTENT. (which by my estimates looking at the page should be 7-10k of main document, no scripting, 8-12k of CSS, 9-12 files total)

... and this level of ineptitude and stupidity is 100% typical of the majority of banking websites, and commercial websites in general. Given what total RUBBISH the code they output to the user is, one has to really question how bad what's underneath it also is. If their front-end code is any indication of the back-end, it's a miracle the entire online banking system isn't pwned daily by every script kiddie with an ATmega168 on their shoulder.

Take the credit union I use - the login for users bank accounts is served by default on their main page via HTTP, NOT HTTPS!!! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? I'd be willing to bet I could get into a local gateway somewhere with a code inject and just start sniffing people's login information. THEN of course because I'm an opera user I get the warnings about thier verisign key not only being out of date, but also only being a short key.

The new hotmail is an excellent example as well of Rubbish Code from Alleged professionals. This is a plague that infects 90%+ of major websites as developers continue to take sleazeball shortcuts, load up on 'gee ain't it neat' technologies, load up with buzzword rubbish like "web 2.0" and allowing SEO to be sleazed from a simple step of site coding into a scam based cottage industry. The most annoying part is that it gets worse year after year as new 'Gee ain't it neat' technologies like AJAX start to be ABUSED to do stuff that would be better done the old way. The problem isn't AJAX, it's the abuse of AJAX and throwing it at everything to the point you break normal page navigation and the site doesn't work without it. The problem wasn't tables for layout, it's the abuse of tables by throwing them around every damned element even if you end up with only one TD. The problem isn't FLASH, it's the abuse of flash for navigational and presentational elements instead of leaving it to what it does best, games and videos.

The only reason these inept morons are allowed to keep their jobs is the suits that write their paychecks don't know any better. You know, the types who think you can find good technology advice in Forbes, or that Dreamweaver is a professional grade tool. (As opposed to the people who use it who are the real tools - Thanks Dan!). We need to start flooding THOSE people with error lists like the one above.

Oh, but let's say it makes Opera look bad instead of coming right out and blaming the incompetant dimwits who are REALLY at fault and the rubbish code they pollute the web with.

Of course even daring to point out errors like that, bad sleazeball shortcuts taken by alleged 'experts', the incompetance of others and calling a turd a turd is usually enough to get you singled out for banning by most websites - since at the end of the day in business it always sleazes down to the brown nosing good old boys network, or in social settings the back-slapping everything is good don't you dare say anything negative dirty hippy rubbish that does nothing but perpetuate these types of problems.

History channel has this show about soldiers blogging from the frontline - and every time the subject comes up, all I can think is

WHAT THE BLOODY BLUE HELL HAPPENED TO OPSEC?!?

You know, operational security? Their snail mail still ends up like swiss cheese, but you let them BLOG?

I know we underestimate the enemy in the arabic world, but with the sheer volume of pirate sites in Iran/Iraq, worldwide availability of data services, letting soldiers blog unedited from the front is ****ING STUPID.

Loose lips sink ships ring a bell? Sweet jesus have they stopped making these kids watch Private Snafu cartoons or something? I know we're getting soft on common sense shit that keeps soldiers alive, but this is getting ridiculous.

12 to 1 this shit is getting soldiers killed... and before anyone gets thier panties in a wad about the soldiers 'rights' - remember those go away when you sign on the dotted line.