Monthly Archives: February 2006

Pet Peeve: Version Transparency

Idiots, Software

I have a possibly odd habit: I like to keep an up-to-date archive of the software I normally install on my Windows boxen. I maintain an SMB volume on my file server, exported to my home network via Samba, into which I file various installers and updaters. This makes bringing up a new machine — which I’ve been known to do from time to time — a minor rather than a major annoyance. Almost everything I want has already been fetched, and is available for retrieval at gigabit speeds.

This brings us to the second-most-retarded thing on the internet: software downloads without versions in the filename. (What’s the first-most-retarded thing on the internet, you ask? Why, e-commerce forms that require you to enter credit-card numbers “without dashes or spaces”, but Steve Friedl‘s got that one covered.)

When I’m looking at your web site, contemplating a set of download links, I should be able to tell at a glance whether or not the software bundle you’re offering me is newer than the one I’ve got. If you had the foresight to embed the bundle’s version number into its filename, this is a trivial determination for me to make. If you haven’t, then I may wind up downloading another copy only to determine that it’s no different from the one I have. This is waste of time for me, a waste of bandwidth for you, and a pointless annoyance to us both.

Names like “iTunesInstaller.exe”, “stable.tar.gz”, and “autoruns.zip” tell me nothing about the vintage of the software whose acquisition I’m contemplating. I am baffled that outfits which are by any other measure under the operation of the extremely smart — Apple, the folks behind perl.com, and Sysinternals, to name but three — haven’t figured this out yet. It makes me wonder whether I’m not in truth the one who’s missing something. But until someone offers me definitive proof that this the case, though, I’m going to continue waving my fist at the sky and acting cranky over this one.

Tabs Open Relative

Software

Tabs Open Relative is a nifty and fairly-new Firefox extension that causes new tabs to appear adjacent to the tab from which they were opened, rather than after the last opened tab. There’s slightly more to it than that: it’s more accurate, although perhaps not more enlightening, to say that it makes the tab bar feel like a nested collection of queues, rather than a single large queue.

It’s actually harder to describe than it is to simply start using. Once you see the subtle-yet-intuitive way it alters tab-spawning behavior, you’ll get it immediately, and wonder why Firefox didn’t always work this way. The low version number of the current release, 0.1, belies the extension’s polish: I’ve yet to see it behave other than I’d expect it to in the course of its operation.

Another of its virtues, in my estimation, is a conspicuous absence of anything to configure. There’s nothing to do after installation, no new Options pane serving up a dizzying array of checkboxes, or any other kind of flimflammery to impress upon you what a sophisticated new piece of software you’ve just wired into the guts of your browser. It does its job, and dispenses with any flashy attempts to dazzle you. More software should be like that.

If I’m going to praise a Firefox extension, I also have to deliver a big, fat raspberry to the Firefox Extensions area of the Mozilla site, whose search functionality places second only to Penny Arcade‘s in the race for “worst ever”. Don’t believe me? Try searching for an extension whose name you already know. C’mon — I dare you!

Octavia Butler, RIP and dammit

Books

The enigmatic Octavia E. Butler has left us, and before her time.

Science fiction was her home turf, but she’d have done any field she chose proud. She inhabited the uncanny valley: she had a knack for coming up with premises that could make your skin crawl, and then spinning them, credibly, into something ultimately life-affirming. Her work often had the quality of dreams about it, and by that I mean that it could be both wondrous and disturbing, sometimes in the same breath. But then, that stands to reason: she never flinched, and she never cheated, when it came to following where the story led. The world could use more like her.

She will be missed, and I will now read the recently-published Fledgling, the first new work of hers to appear in seven years, with a slightly heavier heart, knowing that it will — barring the discovery of some lost manuscript — be the last new thing to appear under her name.

Ave adque vale, Octavia. Dream well, as you always did.

Be My (Dick) Valentine

Humor, Music

After nearly a year in which it was available only abroad, Electric Six‘s sophomore effort, Señor Smoke, has finally been released domestically. Those of you already familiar with Electric Six who didn’t feel like ponying up $30 for the import will know this is a time for rejoicing, and an album purchase.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with Electric Six will have to be convinced, and this will take a certain measure of doing, because while Electric Six are a hoot and a half, they defy categorization. (I suspect that a causal relationship between these two facts exists, but I’m not sure in which direction.) It might help to imagine a band that does for a certain variety of pompous, chest-puffing, late-70s rock what Elvis impersonators do for Elvis — poking fun and showing a certain kind of backhanded respect all at once, through a sort of exagerrated homage. There’s a definite degree of ridicule directed toward the most egregious excesses, but there’s an undeniable measure of affection, too. I’ve always thought that you can’t really parody something effectively unless you secretly love it, just a little, and I think Electric Six offfers proof.

In any case, they’re going to be playing at The Independent in March. I’m going. I’ve never seen them live before. I cannot wait.

Yes!

Books, Humor

Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! my favorite NPR program, has added a podcast; not just of selected highlights, but of the entire show. Now I can take Peter, Carl, Charlie, Paula, and the rest of the gang on the road without being tethered to a PC running RealPlayer. This is a fabulous thing.
In addition, my favorite of the regular panelists, Adam Felber, is apparently in the process of publishing his first novel, Schroedinger’s Ball. Fortunately, since it appears that it won’t actually appear in print until August, I have a little time between now and then to wear down the rest of my queued reading so as to make room for it.