The Ink Spot

Scott

00:00

Damn. The only Quizno's here has shut down... So.. no sub shops except Subway (which is horrid).

Matt

03:52

So it seems everyone posting there pics as avatars..

Zach Saucier

who else did?

Matt

Ryan

Noticed a weird avatar clicked on it then realized it was ryan

Zach Saucier

ooh

weird face.

the image for my vote on the election page still shows his old image while the nomination shows his new one

Matt

I think the election will come down to two members...

Zach Saucier

it has to come down to 1 ;)

@Matt can you please look at my profile and look at the "top .70% this year" and tell me if the 7 is a different height?

Matt

04:04

Screenshot what you see

I do notice the icons below your profile are off

Zach Saucier

which icons are cut off?

Matt

Looks fine to me

joojaa

I think the election is pretty cool

Matt

You're going to have to ask someone to look at it that's isn't an overlord

Joojaa you play with grep

joojaa

so nobody liked my blending anim... well i guess my color choice was bad beyter change the anim more "conservative"

@Matt sure, why

Matt

04:10

Trying to find how to set a file name pattern as a variable besides using find

joojaa

Are we getting more members because the top year precentage moves so fast?

Matt

Wanna say it's -l but can't remember... So theFile=$(grep -l foobar[0-9].jpg) doesn't seem right

I think we are getting steady traffic and its nice seeing other members close off topic questions instead of a mod doing it

joojaa

So your doing this in bash, tcsh, zsh? In other words what shell?

Zach Saucier

more exams tomorrow... g'night

Matt

Yep

Later

joojaa

04:15

@Zach exam in 3 hours, im the one who keeps the exam tough

Zach Saucier

Give someone a break tomorrow, @joojaa :P

good to see you around

Matt

Bash... Through Mac terminal

Ah.. Just might be easier to use find -name foobar[0-9].jpg

Oh... No it's -regex..

Ok that means brain fried.. Good night

joojaa

nite

Vincent

09:24

@Ryan Feels weird to say it, but I guess that's a good thing. makes things easier, I suppose. Give it some time.

Ryan

11:15

@Vincent huh?

Vincent

about your diagnosis

all patients of similar things I know have always felt putting a name to it was a relief in the long run

Ryan

@matt and @ZachSaucier I had been meaning to change my picture for a while. I had put that one up actually to use with the holiday hats and then never changed it

Vincent

so I wanted to say that I'm happy for you about the diag, although that feel weird to say :)

Ryan

@Vincent ah got ya

well just got a ping as I was waking up, getting off so I can eat and get to work. Gotta go do a photo shoot this morning too before heading in. See ya little later @Vincent

Vincent

ah good luck shootin'! See ya!

Zach Saucier

12:37

got online today and saw +160 rep. What a lovely surprise :D I don't think that's happened for me before

Vincent

13:00

@Zach nice! got a bounty?

Matt

13:12

morning

Vincent

hey Matt

what's up?

Matt

playing catch up

Vincent

feeling better?

Matt

ya but my body just hurts and it will be a couple of days till I can fully recoupe from all that

its a week killer

hows your week coming?

Vincent

ok-ish. no more sheer stress, at least :)

Zach Saucier

13:26

@Vincent I suppose I've seen it with bounties before. All the rep today was from my image question

Vincent

now I'm just trying to educate a marketing employee of one of my customers. she has the annoying habit of suggesting lots of very bad things for my designs instead of a general direction

@Zach that IS is a great Q

Zach Saucier

thanks!

Benteh

@Vincent class... everyone is a fucking critic

Vincent

@Benteh Yeah, but you can educate them into not suggesting the things you learned not to do in Design 101

it's hard, but possible

Benteh

one thing i have wondered about, is a stage between wireframes and design suggestions: grayscale

Vincent

13:34

literally grayscale?

Benteh

it is hard not to get "arrogant", saying "i know what i am doing"

yes: basically, people tend to get hung up on colours "that blue must be blue but yellow"

Vincent

@Benteh very hard

Benteh

someone once said that tell your clients "you do not hang over the shoulder of your accountant, driver, engineer: let the designer do his job"

Vincent

I know of a lot of my customers who wouldn't be able to 'see through' a b&w design

Benteh

:D

there is that...

Vincent

13:37

hm, that might be a good one

Benteh

but at least you do not get stuck on "blue must be blue but yellow"

i find people get stuck on colours, "move this one millimeter"

Vincent

yeah, micromanagement

Benteh

yes, hate that

Vincent

I hate it when they do that, makes me feel like the photoshop monkey

Benteh

yes!

you are of course familiar with oatmeal and the webdesigner hell..

but perhaps putting it into a perspective of other services they may hire might help

Vincent

13:39

errr no?

I know of Oatmeal, but that's all

Benteh

theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Vincent

oh yeah, that one. Didn't know it was oatmeal's

Benteh

"you are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program that the customer can control by email, messaging, phonecalls"

Zach Saucier

I think I'll write a post for large background videos when I get free time (maybe next week?). There are some additional points to include that are video specific

Benteh

@ZachSaucier you mean a question or an answer? or blog?

Vincent

13:44

@Benteh seriously, is there a way to handle clients like these except for firing them?

Zach Saucier

@Benteh question/answer like the image one I made yesterday

Got rep capped for today already :(

Matt

when did everyone start flagging for not an answer?

Benteh

@ZachSaucier hheheeh, i am not really paying attention to what goes on in Q&A these days - will take a look

@Vincent no idea; but at some point you might have to stand on the barricade

and say "NO, not gonna happen"

@Matt i do not know; i skip some of them, some of them lack a little wriggle-room

Zach Saucier

@Dom Thanks!

Benteh

@Matt i have not been hanging around much lately, but it seems to me the quality of questions are pretty dire

or, rather, that there are more bad ones

Vincent

13:56

^^

@Benteh hear hear hear

see here the main reason for my election goal: more 10k+ users

Zach Saucier

why?

Vincent

10k+ users are involved

involved users ask good questions and give good answers

Benteh

here is a bias i have, regarding new users; if someone has bothered to upload an avatar or even a pic of oneself, i give a little more leeway. perhaps stupidly

@Vincent true

Vincent

involved users moderate and weed out the bad Qs

Zach Saucier

@Benteh There are good reasons behind doing so

Benteh

13:57

though i started master, there is a possibility that since i lost some tools when we got out of beta might have been a part of it

Vincent

the more 10k+ users, the better the site

Benteh

@ZachSaucier good to hear - i am happy to accept some idiocy if there seems to be some interest in participating

@Vincent true indeed

just saw your q @ZachSaucier

nice!

Zach Saucier

thanks! Wait until tomorrow to upvote ;) kidding

Benteh

and as for background video: i find that unbelievably annoying

why?

Zach Saucier

rep capped for today

cockypup

14:01

morning everyone

Benteh

hahaha

hi @cockypup

Zach Saucier

Hey @pup

does ^^ ping you?

Benteh

anyone experienced with keeping track of academic stuff like articles connected to notes, screenshots etc? right now I am trying to get Zotero and Evernote to play nice :S

not that easy...

@ZachSaucier :D

bear in mind i need the referencing automatic

Vincent

@ZachSaucier no, pinging only works when the start stays intact

like I can ping you with @Zach

Zach Saucier

@Vincent Try @Saucier

Vincent

14:04

but the only way to ping 'pup is, i'm afraid, @cock

@Saucier yello?

Zach Saucier

nope :(

kk

cockypup

haha

Zach Saucier

I think 3 letters are required. Am I correct @Vi ?

@Vin

cockypup

yes, bad choice of a moniker... or is it?

Vincent

two doesn't work, three does

Zach Saucier

14:05

nice, I'm correct then

cockypup

@ZachSaucier nope

Vincent

@cockypup bad monikers force people to look beyond the book's cover

Zach Saucier

I just got awesome news

Vincent

ah, do tell?!

Benteh

wait, i can ping with @(three letters)

Zach Saucier

14:06

my Chinese oral exam (teacher asks me questions in Chinese I answer in Chinese) was cancelled! Instead I get to record me reading a story :D That means I can get a 100% whereas I'd likely get a C on the oral exam

Makes me sooo happy

Benteh

:D

Class, @ZachSaucier!

mandarin?

Vincent

ooh, nice!

Zach Saucier

@Benteh 对

cockypup

@ZachSaucier nice. I did not know you were learning Chinese. So cool!

Benteh

indeed impressive

Vincent

14:08

my Chinese is nonexistent, so I am in awe :)

Zach Saucier

hah

my family lived in China for 7 years, I was there for 3

Benteh

an increasingly useful language skill

Zach Saucier

so my parents both speak it and a couple of my siblings can still beat me at it (I'm pretty bad)

Vincent

ah, that explains a bit

Benteh

i have a friend who takes various language courses for fun..

i think she is up to six fluent and working on mandarin

blows my mind

Vincent

14:10

that's a lot

I used to follow six languages in highschool, but I dropped quite a lot of them

Benteh

..met a dutch guy in indonesia who spoke nine...

of course, it is a matter of defining "fluent"

Vincent

hm, yeah. I do get by in French and German, but I'm by no means fluent

same goes for Japanese

Benteh

i can make myself understood (ish) in german

not discussing politics or philosophy..

but think my german is pretty much gone

Vincent

I even used to speak a smidgen of Danish

Benteh

but i live in a stupid country with technically four official languages, two of which is so similar to each other, hardly any can keep track of it. other than getting red lines in your school notebooks

ahaha

danish

Vincent

14:13

my parents took me there on holiday some six years straight. you tend to pick up some words then

Benteh

makes sense

danish is simple enough for me

Vincent

ah, Nynorsk and Bokmal?

Benteh

yes

stupid beyond measure

Vincent

(don't have the a circle on my keyboard)

Benteh

politics

bokmål

Vincent

14:13

politics suck

Benteh

godyes

Vincent

even though I'm in an election, I refuse to perform politics

Benteh

a massive nationalistic, romantic, political rubbish-heap of history, Nynorsk

:D

you know what THHGTTG says about that

Vincent

no?

Benteh

"anyone who wants to be president is the one you definitely do not want in power"

cockypup

14:15

I had to study Russian at school. 3 years. But I remember only one phrase, and it useless.

Benteh

nice, @cockypup - where are you from/living?

Vincent

@Benteh inversely, a country's ideal leaders should be the people who do not want the job

cockypup

I am from Cuba. Now I live in Canada.

Vincent

what's the phrase?

Benteh

makes sense, then

russian was a language available here in primary school

in some schools; you could choose between french, german, spanish, russian

cockypup

14:17

"kakaia profesia ti prijatel?"

Benteh

something "professional"? :D

job?

employment?

cockypup

yup, "what profession do you like?"

that one stuck, for some reason

Benteh

hahaha

i have a french one stuck

bataille boule de neige

for some reason i find it hilarious

Vincent

an old friend of mine used to 'collect' a single phrase is as many languages he could

@Bente snowball fight! :D

Benteh

you have heard of the silly dictionary?

Zach Saucier

14:20

Documentary addict - Over 5,000 documentaries

Vincent

when I last spoke him, he was able to say 'my shoes are wet' in about twenty different languages

Benteh

@Vincent yes, but the funny part is the direct translation "battle with balls of snow" - even funnier in norwegian

from QI, a guy can say "i have spilled coffee on my anteater" in danish

cockypup

A: kakaia profesia ti prijatel?
B: bataille boule de neige!

Benteh

@cockypup class! i did not see that coming!

Vincent

hehe

cockypup

14:23

reminds me of "The Bald Soprano" hehe

Benteh

we should do that ant-eater thing

i remember someone coming with examples from frase books; apart from the "where is the loo" etc, one had "so how come you got to loose your other leg"

cockypup

HAHAHAHAHA

very useful

Benteh

very useful

Vincent

you remind me of this My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels thing

Benteh

aaahyes!

cockypup

14:25

if you are a cockroach

Zach Saucier

Craziest and Funniest Stunt Kite Ever at Huntington Beach,

►

what the heck

cockypup

haha, I did not know that trope

@ZachSaucier I made that kid very happy : )

Benteh

QI speaking Danish: I have spilled coffee on the anteater

►

Benteh

14:40

there is an interesting thing about speaking foreign languages badly, or just getting phrases out of a phrasebook

Vincent

@Cocky unfortunately, I have to admit that I have lost many a useful hour to wiki walks on tvtropes...

Benteh

you get the phrase right, "where is the train station", but you have rarely a chance to understand the answer

Vincent

yes, but it lets you practice both speaking and listening, and one day you will :)

cockypup

@Vincent I think tropes are fascinating. My BF loves B horror movies and we make up "tropes" when watching them, like the "kitty fake" (when they go to the basement looking for the murderer and the kitty jumps out of the shadows). Mind you, that one might exist already with that name, but I Googled it and did not find it, so I am giving my BF the authorship : )

Vincent

hehe, they have a special forum for things like that, 'That Thing Where...', where you can propose new tropes

cockypup

14:51

@Benteh That happened to me in Italy. I noticed if I talked Spanish with a fake Italian accent they 90% of the time understood what I was trying to say. But then, when they answered back in perfect Italian...

Benteh

hahaha

familiar

cockypup

I am having a hard time deciding which answer to chose from my web design question : S

Zach Saucier

@cockypup that's a good thing :)

(you should totally pick me)

cockypup

haha

Vincent

@ZachSaucier (tomorrow)

Zach Saucier

15:04

accepts aren't included, so today works! :)

votes are capped at 200, bounties and accepts are still given in addition to that

Vincent

ah, I see

Zach Saucier

15:14

why are news sites so ugly and annoying?

I should make an extension to make all news sites be formatted in the same, attractive way

+1 to the "ideas/to do" list

Benteh

aah to crunch a marmoset! i found it! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke

what happens if you do not speak english, translate from italian to french to english: One eyed was laied
against a man which had
good eyes that he saw better
than him. The party was
accepted. I had gain, over
said the one eyed; why I
see you two eyes and you
not look me who one.

The stone as roll not heap
up not foam

Matt

my rant on Dreamweaver is over, lol

Vincent

hehe, I'll still use it though :)

but the last time I actually used the interface is... in the stone age

Matt

I did a lot of preaching on BBEdit but I love it, it has really increased my productivity

Vincent

will have to give it a go one of these days

Matt

15:27

I bet if I showed you what you could do when building a WP theme you'd switch, lol

cockypup

@Benteh HA! this is amazing. I love "I have mind to vomit."

sounds like my own attempt to write a blog in English (now gone for good).

@Matt I was going to answer but you heroically represented all the things I stand for with your answer. +10 at least : )

dreamweaver = countless hours spent trying to figure out why when I dragged that one column to make it wider the whole thing went nuts

Matt

@cockypup Im going to add more later but I thought Scott's answer was good but it just had no arguments.

Zach Saucier

^^ I was surprised it got so many votes

I think it was for the graphics

Vincent

@Zach gotta thank you. I tried making my own off-screen nav instead of copying one somewhere, and it turned out nice and rather easy. Your css help has had at least some influence on that achievement, so: thanks! :D

Zach Saucier

yay! Good work

I'm all for reusing code, but there's a lot of crappy code that's not worth copying out there

Vincent

15:41

I always end up having to analyse the code and tailor-make it to my case, so I decided to skip a step here :)

Zach Saucier

@DA. What do the letters stand for? Initials?

we can give explicit write access for users in chat? Cool

JohnB

yeah, helpful for new users that don't have enough rep for chat

Benteh

@cockypup lol - pretty much my experience

Vincent

@cocky @bente that's shy I quit using the point'nçlick and just use the thing as a glorified code editor

Benteh

i have not looked at it in donkeys years, perhaps it is a rolls royce now. but i am happy with my little editor

cockypup

15:54

@Matt could not resist. I hate WYSIWYG with a passion. It almost got me fired once.

Zach Saucier

WYSIWYG will be the future. It's not the now though

cockypup

@Vincent @Benteh Same here. I use Visual Studio. It has a visual editor but I code all the HTML manually. If I click the visual editor by mistake I panic. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH NOOOOOOOOOO it will add extra tables NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Vincent

lol

visual editor is safely tucked away in my Dw workspace

Matt

it be a miracle to get get more rep than our overlord, lol

Vincent

...never to be seen again

Benteh

15:57

:D

cockypup

@ZachSaucier when computers rule the earth and we just sit on floating lawn chairs getting obesse, maybe

Benteh

i use Coda

which is not technically all that "little"

Matt

@cockypup isnt that how Terminator started?

Vincent

that sounds like such an afterthought :P

cockypup

@Matt yup, it all started with somebody using a WYSIWYG editor

Zach Saucier

15:58

@cockypup what will happen in the recreational and art world once we have less work to do will be interesting

can put a ton of thought into the subject

Matt

I added some other text editors as to not appear so biased for BBEdit

lol

cockypup

WYSIWYG was supposed to be the now in Y2K... it failed horribly. all it takes is for one iteration of browser updates with one extra thing from the HTML/CSS wish list added to them for WYSIWYG editors to get stale

Vincent

@cockypup Y... 2... K?

does anyone still call it that? :P

cockypup

I have dated myself

Vincent

kinda :)

cockypup

16:13

I am from the times when the <font> tag was a cool thing to use

Matt

lol...

While I do agree that DreamWeaver is useless, I don't agree with your specific points. Integration: They recently added an Extract-mode, which generates fairly clean HTML and CSS from a .psd and embeds images in proper resolutions. GREP: On CTRL+F, you can use regular expressions. Muse: Muse and Dreamveawer have overlap in functionality, but they're seperate products. Auto-completion: I don't see why it would hurt. You still write the entire code yourself, including thinking about what to write - you just type less and thus avid typos. But that's nitpicking: Good answer. — Kjeld Schmidt 4 mins ago

DA.

@ZachSaucier yep, just my initials. Holdover from the StackOverflow days.

cockypup

DA.

WYSIWYG online will never work as the entire point of online media is that WYSI not what the end user will necessarily get or even want.

JohnB

ooh font elements, how cutting edge :)

cockypup

16:18

two of them for extra control

and tables, tables are good, many of them

Benteh

@JohnB :D

DA.

And add me to the DW hater's club. It was a good product a decade ago...as were many of the Macromedia products, but they were left to rot and Adobe did little-to-nothing to refurb them and the amount of bugs in DW eventually made it unusable in the situations we needed it.

Sadly, I'm not working on a major 'replatforming' of our corporations web site and the Content Management tool business bought has WYSIWYG templating.

We're doomed.

Er, I'm NOW working...

cockypup

that is why "keep it simple" is a great business motto

many time saving gimicky solutions become a drag in the future

DA.

Yea, we had already begun designing a really lean, mobile-first responsive site. Then we're told we have to design separate templates for every viewport and...UGH

So, yes, that's exactly it! Gimicky solutions are keeping us from rolling out a truly modern solution. We're stuck with crappy workarounds. THANKS WYSIWYG.

cockypup

It happens in other areas too. I used to work for a company that developed solutions to communicate car dealerships with banks. My job was to code the calculations involved in a lease matching the way the specific bank calculates them. 90% of the time the employees of the bank did not know how to calculate them manually, so they could not help me. They were calculated by an old piece of code written in FORTRAN running in a mainframe in the basement of the bank.

so, control was given to the sparkling new mainframe in the 60's because it was the future. now they are stuck with it.

DA.

16:30

ha!

cockypup

I love machines but they are here to help us, not the other way around.

DA.

Yep. I've worked for banks too. It's amazing what holds our economy together. Some UNIX server in a basement somewhere last rebooted in 1988.

A fun story: back when I worked for a government agency I was brought into a meeting. "We need you to kick of a project to redo the system we use for X".

My reply: "System X? We're still running that one?"
Business: Yes.
Me: You mean, the one that was run by Sandy?
Business: Yes.
Me: The one that retired a year ago?

Business: Yes.
Me: Who's running it now?
Business: No one.

cockypup

HAHA

DA.

They had left a system running for a year without a single person in charge of it.

cockypup

sounds right

Matt

16:34

I think I need to be more biased in my answers.. I get on long rants and other members that give brief answers get more rep than I do...

DA.

I'm a fan of getting to the point. :)

Sometimes the right answer truly is a simple yes or no.

Then again, sometimes a long rant is the right answer, too.

Matt

oh snap its Thursday!

cockypup

@DA. Computer says no: youtube.com/watch?v=D4A18tUUb2Y&t=0m15s

Benteh

i am gonna throw something out there: i have a feeling that that "mobile first" is a bit of a buzzword...

i mean; design for mobile, yes

but how does your mental image of webdev go - from tiny screens and up?

responsive, yes, but "mobile first" sounds like so much horseshit

Matt

how is it?

mobile first causes you to mentally think of what is the main focus of content that you're trying to get across instead of a bloated desktop

cockypup

16:50

The idea is that if you do the opposite, "desktop first" you end up trying to squeeze a lot of content into small screens. But if instead of squeezing you try to identify things that are superfluous and get rid of them, then it is actually very similar to "mobile first".

Zach Saucier

> mobile-first should never be thought of as mobile-most-important, which would imply that so long as we get it working on phones and tablets we’ll be okay. Instead, think of it as smaller-first, or smaller-then-larger in temporal order of consideration. - my responsive design primer

Benteh

yes i get that

agreed, zach

i have no problem keeping a responsive model in my head

it is the "mobile first" that to me seems an idiotic buzzword, so people can say "i design mobile first"! yeah...wow...

i actually have no problem developing them simultaneously

Zach Saucier

yes, it's a buzzword

just like css3 and html5

Benteh

:D

it looks good, and for people who do not do webdesign it sounds like it is on the frontline, the sharp edge of "modern" dev

anyway

just a pet hate of mine

Zach Saucier

"pet hate" lol

Never heard that used but I like it

Benteh

16:56

hehe - i have several pet hates

joojaa

need feedback

is this image understandable (open to zoom) @ZachSaucier ?

Zach Saucier

I'd say so

the up/down arrow seems too large, wasn't sure what it was referring to at first

maybe placing it on the shaft would be better? not sure

Transcript for