BeigeJournal

The always-interesting Boing-Boing pointed me to this PC Magazine article listing the top 100 web sites. It sounds interesting, but there is just no way I can imagine going through 100 entries, one paragraph for each, on 100 separate pages, each page roughly one-eighth content and seven-eights blinking ads and offers to send me e-mail and non-blinking ads and additional ads. Nor can I imagine anyone else doing so. If each of the twelve categories had one page with all of its entries on it this would be an interesting resource, but even with broadband Internet it is just too painful to contemplate looking at more than a randomly selected few.

I understand advertising. Advertising is OK. But this is just too much. I know that their printed magazine has lots of ads, but it does not (last time I looked) have one paragraph per two page spread, the remainder brightly colored advertisements, and yet that would be less painful to flip through than waiting for the browser to redraw the screen with different blinking ads over and over again, once per paragraph.

They do offer a “convenient” download of links to the recommended sites, but it is an EXE file, which you have to register to download, and which I wouldn’t dare run even if I was able to. An HTML file that anyone could use without fear just wouldn’t do.

What were they thinking? Other parts of their web site are readable. I’ve always hated that theory of web design that insists on breaking something that, printed on paper in the usual way, would be perhaps four or five pages long into a minimum of four or five separate web pages. Sure, if you have a book, break out the chapters into separate files, but don’t put each page in a separate file. Which is easier, hitting the space bar, or finding the link to the next page and clicking on it? Right, space bar. Even worse are the people who will rigidly follow a template and break a tiny document into separate Synopsis, Description, Author, See Also, Bugs, etc. pages, some of them one line long (“This section deliberately left blank”). This PC Magazine article is just amazing, though. It looks like a parody of bad web design.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a new Logitech Cordless optical Click“!” mouse. I’m really happy with it, finding it a much bigger improvement over my old mechanical, corded, three-button mouse than I expected.

The optical sensor works great, on almost any surface. Searching for some surface it won’t work on, I found that it is unreliable on a clean mirror. That’s about it. The range of the radio link is at least as big as the room I have my computer in. I have not yet tried it with the HF ham radio transmitting. It can connect to the computer by PS/2 port or USB. I’m currently using PS/2, though I suppose I’ll switch to USB next time I’m installing a new OS kernel.

I have gotten X11 to recognize the extra button, and imwheel will map it, but imwheel tends to die often for reasons unknown. I’ve mapped it to page down. Years ago, when I read a lot of Usenet news using nn, I had an old serial mouse connected to my multiport board and a program I hacked together (open source is wonderful, providing me with mouse driver guts to use) to map clicks to X keypress events, so I could hit space, n, and a few others from a second mouse in my lap rather than having to keep my hands up on the keyboard. People thought I was strange, but I really liked it, and a wireless mouse with a wheel and maybe a few extra buttons could do similar things, particularly an optical mouse that works on your leg. Sit back, relax, and read.

A wireless optical is also nice when the usual operating position is blocked.

I sometimes sing and play guitar with spectrum analysis software running for practice purposes, and with the music stand and mikes in the way it is rather hard to reach around to use the mouse to tweak the software. Now I can just grab the mouse and use it anywhere.

I can also toss it over to the other side of the keyboard and use it left handed to give my right hand a rest. Cordless opticals ought to be symmetrical, since it is so easy to use them on either side, and this one is.

Highly recommended.