Brettia

Unnnhh….

…been doing math homework for four hours now…need to finish so that I can start on Intermediate Composition…sleep…good…teachers…bad…

…will post a real entry…after the pain…has subsided…(maybe Friday)

Look at this thing!

Never try to print a CMYK color Photoshop image in Photoshop. If it isn’t RGB, bad things happen…ugh.

Since it was only announced today, not much information has been put forth on the new features to be included in Internet Explorer 7, which is slated for betas this year and a release (hopefully) in early 2006. While this is great news, it isn’t as great as people make it out to be.

First, 2006 is not that much earlier than the original release date for the next version of Windows, Longhorn, when IE was slated to be updated anyway. However, since the IE7 update will be available to users of Windows XP SP2 as well as Longhorn users, a much larger amount of people will be affected by it. Still, this is far from enough. An IE developer hinted at an IE7 release for Windows 2000, but that seems unlikely because of the massive amount of code backporting needed to make it run correctly. Then there are those who haven’t even upgraded from Windows XP SP1 yet, citing compatibility concerns. All in all, IE7 will probably only end up being used by about half the browsing community by 2008, and this could actually boost usage of Firefox and Opera considerably for a year or so as users caught between upgrading their OS and wanting a more secure and feature-rich browser turn to the alternatives as a solution.

The second issue is a question of what the upgrade will actually provide. IE6 was nothing special compared to 5.5, and arguably the version of IE 6 that comes with Windows XP SP2 isn’t anything great either. So far, Microsoft has only announced that it will do what is necessary to make the browser secure - but the company has said nothing thus far about incorporating support for web standards such as CSS 2.1, PNG alpha transparency, and MathML that have been supported by other browsers for years. Furthermore, Microsoft is still having to catch up to the alternative browsers in terms of features, so IE7 may end up being feature-equivalent to Firefox 1.0 yet will already be out-of-date due to advances that the Mozilla Foundation will make between now and then. Internet Explorer is so far behind that the browser will need to be largely rewritten to make it a viable competitor again, and while today’s announcement is a step forward, there is nothing to say that Microsoft won’t take its usual approach and just patch the hell out of a crappy product until it works - kind of.

Personally, it is doubtful that I would ever switch back to Internet Explorer. I promote Firefox vehemently to all who will listen, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t entertain the idea of using IE again if it can prove itself worthy. I am as fed up as any with the Firefox fan boys that came about with the release of 1.0, most of whom didn’t use the browser until the 1.0 release candidate and haven’t been browsing happily with it since version 0.2 (when it was still called Phoenix) as I have. Those who practice the Firefox religion will swear that they would never switch back, but if Microsoft can come up with a superior product, even against all the odds (they’ve done it before), then I’d go back in a heartbeat. I mean it.

Right now, however, it is obvious which browser is the best of the many options out there (Firefox), and I like Opera as a second choice. Firefox’s extensibility, not its increased security, is what got me from the beginning. Even when there weren’t any themes or extensions released for Firefox yet, I could tell that the power they would give users would be awesome. In the two years that I used Internet Explorer before switching to Firefox, I had only one problem with spyware, and no viruses. I think that, while Firefox is still more secure, this is proof that the Internet’s biggest security hole lies not in the operating system or the web browser, but in the end-user. If a computer user is savvy enough to get the latest patches from Windows Update, watch carefully for strange activity on their computer (weird crashes, disappearing files, random annoyances), and run an anti-virus and anti-spyware program at least monthly, they will be fine, even if they use IE. If Microsoft would train its customers in proper computer protection and usage, sort of like how Home Depot has training workshops for do-it-yourselfers, the security problem would not be nearly as serious.

I just found a really awesome program called Konfabulator. I had heard of it before now (it was in the news when people realized that Apple was totally ripping features from it and putting them into OS X Tiger), but I never knew that there was a Windows version. That is so awesome! I have that giddy feeling that I got upon the discovery of PHP/Flash charts and the neat window shadows in KDE 3.4 beta. Get it, and start feeling widgety.

My Desktop, Confabulated

Widgets, Up Close

I apologize for not writing earlier about my reaction to my new school; how I’ve been settling in, etc. In some ways it is probably best that I waited until now because the words I would have written here a week ago would not have been pleasant.

My start was - rough. I met with a counselor on the 19th to figure out which classes I should be enrolled in, and I left the meeting feeling disappointed and slightly cheated. For the current quarter, my four classes are: Algebra II Honors, Health, Intermediate Composition, and Spanish IV Honors. The counselor did a pretty good job of picking classes that are the right academic level for me, but one major element, a chunk of me that took up as much as one-third of my school day in Arizona, is missing completely: technology. No programming, no web development, no network maintenance, no nothing.

The only thing that even comes close is the school’s robotics club, which sounds interesting, but I am still reluctant to look into it because they are already most of the way through their season and because robotics deals mainly with hardware, and I’d rather learn about software. (Though I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.) I asked the counselor for a technology-related class (OHS does have a programming class, but it’s Visual Basic), but to no avail. Later on I talked to the school’s main technology administrator and asked about the possibility of working on the school network or website, but I was politely turned down.

I think that part of the problem is that I can’t prove to people that my work is better than that of the average geek and that I can do more than publish a simple site in FrontPage. I suppose some kind of portfolio that I could keep with me might help, but if they really don’t have anything for me to do and they are content with letting an untapped resource collect dust in a corner, then there’s nothing I can do about it. It is nice to actually have some free time each day, but unfortunately it isn’t used to accomplish anything productive (unless playing Counter-Strike: Source is productive).

Not only am I deprived of technology; I’ve also lost that warm feeling of being with intelligent people that I had at CSHS. Though two of my classes are classified as honors classes, neither really feels like it. The kids that were in my honors and AP classes last semester were truly the cream of the crop, the best of the class of 2007 at CSHS. This was not because they were the most academically talented, but because they were a driving force behind the school’s success - they were involved in every sport, participated in every club, and spoke out and discussed their opinions on every issue. They were extraordinary, to say the least.

And now they’re gone. My new school is full of spirited conformists: kids who simply want to go to school, fit in, and leave. CSHS had so many unique cliques that blended into and out of each other that it is almost shocking to me that there is a school where kids are so…plain. Here, people have relinquished their individuality in order to be normal. So even my honors classes lack that yummy honors feel. And kids here actually have some semblance of school spirit, unlike CSHS, which could only be described as some kind of anti-spirit black hole.

Part of this could be because kids who went to CSHS were so rich (or at least comfortably well-off) that they really weren’t all that worried about going to school or getting an education. There were some exceptions, namely myself and the aforementioned cream of the crop. But the majority of CSHS students just don’t care all that much, and so they don’t care that much about school pride either. Here, there is a good number of kids who are depending on getting a good education so that they can escape the boredom of Oconomowoc and move on to a more exciting life somewhere else. So school is taken seriously, and student patriotism runs high. Weird.

In other news, I have pretty much decided to go for an IB Diploma next year. Not only will it look great when I apply to colleges, but it will provide a much-needed escape from the boredom of my current classes as well. Which reminds me…I haven’t said a whole lot about my classes yet. But their true nature shall now be revealed:

Algebra II Honors

Because of the block-scheduling here, I couldn’t take the second half of Algebra 3-4. Instead I’m in an equivalent class, but I have to retake and relearn everything I learned last semester in Algebra. Not fun, not exciting, and (in my opinion) not worth my time. But the administration here isn’t nearly as flexible as it was at CSHS, so I can’t do anything to change it. I’ll have to be content with writing blog entries while I should be taking notes.

Health

Though I took a quarter of health already back in my freshman year, I have to do it again because of OHS requirements. This class is much more in-depth, and the teacher, Mrs. Graewin, is quite knowledgable. I thought at first that I would hate it, but after Algebra it is a welcome respite.

Intermediate Composition

I suppose this is my favorite class. I am the only sophomore in a group of thirty-odd seniors and one junior. However, most of them mistook me for one of their kind, and even the teacher didn’t realize how young I am until Thursday. At first I was afraid that it would be too easy (we went over paragraph structure on the first day, something I learned in 5th grade), but now that we’ve gotten started I think it will challenge those who want to be challenged by it. The main goal of the class is to prepare students for writing in college, and I guess extra practice never hurt anyone (but extra practice in math is heresy).

This is also the class in which I have made the most friends. There’s Rachael, the slightly-warped girl who wants to make a pineapple gun, Ben, her friend who seems to be torn between hating and admiring me, and Tyler, the half-wit who is remarkably similar to the Tyler I knew in Arizona (sorry, Melloparrot). I think most of them are just amazed that a sophomore could take a senior-level class and prove more than capable of excelling in it.

Spanish IV Honors

When I began this class, I feared that I would always be behind the rest of the class in terms of comprehension and writing ability. Most of them are juniors, I think, and the class is equal to Spanish 7-8 in Arizona. Recall that I was in Spanish 5-6, so I essentially skipped Spanish 6 and went right on to Spanish 7. Originally, I could barely understand the teacher (or anyone else, because speaking English isn’t allowed), but my comprehension has improved rapidly since then. Now I even start thinking in Spanish when I walk in the door. It’s almost like I’ve been going to a Spanish-speaking country for 90 minues each day for the past two weeks and had to learn the language or die.

I’ve been trying to keep an eye on things at CSHS from afar, but a lot can happen in six weeks. Jim and my other friend Travis have been to their first debate tournament sans-brettius; supposedly the competition went pretty badly and the team’s collective hatred for the coach, Mr. Glover, has been reawakened. Personally, though I like the guy as a person, I never thought much of him as a teacher or a coach. I learned nothing during an entire semester of independant study English last year, but I considered myself lucky that I could learn nothing and not waste a period doing it, unlike the students in regular Honors English 10 who spent 55 minutes with him each day. As coach of the debate team, Glover, while experienced and knowledgable, has made one mistake after another, frustrating the team members. At the first tournament, Glover was 45 minutes late in arriving at our meeting place, and the tournament itself ended up running two hours longer than scheduled because of poor management by the tournament hosts (of which Glover was one). It was a miracle that Jim and I came out of it with two wins and two losses, since we had had no real coaching or instruction except from other senior team members.

Then there was the great debacle that went down in early December, following Thanksgiving Break. Jim and I had both been swamped with work, and I had been in Los Angeles with family for a week, so neither of us had made much inroads on writing cases and material for the upcoming Winter Trophy tournament in Flagstaff. According to the senior members, this was the best tournament of the year, and the most fun. However, Glover and the assistant coach didn’t believe the team was ready to go, so we had to miss it. Though I felt bad for not doing any case work earlier, I felt I had a pretty good excuse, what with my scary workload and the announcement that I would be moving to Wisconsin that had come the night before that fateful meeting. And Jim and I had procrastinated before the last tournament as well, but we came out of it just fine. Though it didn’t really affect me, the cancellation was terrible for a select few hardworking team members who had worked day and night to prepare, and now all their work was for nothing.

Even though this wasn’t really Glover’s fault, he was blamed for it by the team members who had prepared. People began to threaten that they would leave the team, tears of frustration were wept, etc. So reorganization and reformation were proposed, and new rules and bylaws for better communication and structure were made. I wasn’t there long enough to see if this was effective, but from what Jim has said over AIM, not much has changed. He and Travis didn’t do that well at the most recent tournament, though Travis has proven to be a worthy replacement for me. I dunno if the reason that Jim didn’t do well was because I wasn’t there (though I’d like to think so) or because this was just a harder tournament and Glover hadn’t prepared them well for it.

More on International Baccalaureate

I got lucky. Beginning with the class of 2007, OHS will begin offering IB courses to advanced students. This is a really good thing. But I guess I should elaborate on why.

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) is a global network of scholars, teachers, and schools with a primary objective of allowing kids to prepare themselves for college while still in high school. Unlike AP courses, the IB program is comprehenisive, holistic, and tries to teach the whole student rather than only one subject. There are two different ways of doing the IB program: getting IB Certificates in certain subjects, or obtaining an IB Diploma.

An IB Certificate is akin to the credit a student receives for passing an AP test, but the diploma is another beast entirely. There are six subject groups that make up the IB curriculum: language, mathematics, humanities, science, the arts, and foreign language. Linking all these together are the three core IB components: theory of knowledge, extended essay, and creativity/action/service (CAS).

Language

The class offered for this subject group is IB English HL, which is taken for two years. HL mean higher level, and SL means standard level. The level of an IB course is not a difficulty level, but rather a depth level.

Mathematics

There are three math classes offered: Math Studies SL, Math SL, and Math HL. I really want to do Math HL, but I am missing the prerequisite: Pre-Calculus. Because of the traditional scheduling at CSHS, I could only take one math class each year, but with block scheduling, a student could take Geometry in the first semester of their freshman year, Algebra II in the second, and Pre-Calculus in the first semester of their sophomore year. So now I have to figure out how to fulfill that requirement, either by doing independent study work or by taking Pre-Calculus over the summer (ugh!). Of all the different things about OHS in comparison to CSHS, the worst has been the block scheduling. Though I like it a lot (and I had it in middle school), I feel like I’m being screwed over because my classes aren’t carrying over to the new schedule all that well.

Humanities

The only class offered for this subject group is History of the Americas HL, which is lucky because I haven’t taken an American history course yet. Listening to the teacher talk, I noticed a lot of parallels between it and AP European History. Though HotA is much more expansive than APE, it uses many of the same historiography techniques that Mrs. Cheeseman-Meyer has taught me in APE, such as examining primary documents and analyzing their sources. I feel that I am very prepared for this class, probably more so in this one than for any other IB course.

Science/The Arts

The two science classes are Physics SL and Biology HL. I have the option of taking one along with Visual Arts SL/HL, or taking both. You know me…I hate them all. So I’ll do science all the way and avoid anything too creative.

Foreign Language

I’m actually excited about this one because the teacher says that the main goal of the IB foreign language program is to prepare a student to the point where they could go to a foreign country and speak the language and understand natives without a problem. This means the foreign language courses will be rigorous, but being fluent (or near-fluent) in Spanish has always been a goal of mine. There will be three languages offered: French SL, German SL, and Spanish SL. You can guess which one I’ll be doing, but it’s nice to know they actually acknowledge the existence of languages other than English and Spanish up here, unlike Arizona where Spanish is the only option for a student who wants to learn as much in high school as they can. French is offered as well, but you can only take Spanish middle school, therefore Spanish is the only language in which you can get ahead of everyone else (be in Spanish 3-4 when everyone else is in 1-2, etc).

Here concludes the 2,000 word uber-entry that took me several days of math classes to compose. Hope you enjoyed it.

The paper flies forth
From within the gray boulder
The desk wobbles/creaks
Alarming at first
But the amazing speed
Is a sight to see

I updated the design for my business site, BrettEpps.com today. I spent a lot of time trying to think up a good name for a business and ended up with nothing that hadn’t been taken already, so I figure selling myself would be better than using some gibberish new-age small business moniker that people can’t pronounce. It’s not really a “company”, anyway. Just me. You pay me, you buy me. All of what I have to offer. Not just one product or one service. If I can do it, you get it. Somehow I think people will like that more - a personal approach to business.

My time is limited, anyway; I don’t need hundreds of clients or to be selling myself out for months or even years in advance as some developers do. I just want to help the common (business)man create the website that he needs for a low cost. And for organizations and non-profits, I’ll volunteer my services for free, if I like their cause. If not, a discounted rate will be available. The same rate (or perhaps less) will be offered to family members and close friends, as well. So as you can see, I’m not out to make a bucketload of money. I don’t have to support myself with this yet. I just want to do it on the side. My rates will be as low as I can make them as long as I continue to break even on hosting and domain costs.

Oh, and this blog recently celebrated its fifty-millionth second of existence. Congratulations to me for writing it continuously for so long (one-and-a-half years). Other milestones include the 110,000-word mark, the 600,000-character mark, and the 300-page mark, which is rapidly approaching. I’m kind of half-considering publishing some creative writing (haikus, stories, whatever) on the blog, and the old Brettia stories might find their way here as well. Of course, I’ll be sure to cite the authors of that content as necessary and keep it out of my word count statitics.

In my posting of about thirty seconds ago I reported that MSN Search had been redesigned with web standards in mind. The main MSN site has been redesigned as well, except it’s not too pretty to look at. It kind of looks like somebody used the Wayback Machine to find some old edition of Brettia from back when I was first starting with CSS and ripped the layout. Then they took chunks of the old MSN layout and tried to fit them into it. And they did a horrible job. Just look at it!
All I see upon going to the site is a huge number of links, probably way too many even for a portal to have. Then there’s the lack of any centering point on the page, so my eyes don’t move naturally to any region (such as the “Today on MSN” section, which has nothing more than a blue border around it). Looking closely at the blocks that make up the page, there are design blunders there too. The darker background behind the white text links at the top of each block improves readability (somewhat), but it gives the page a rough, unfinished look at the same time. Giving a link a background color is usually reserved for when a person hovers over it with their cursor, not general display.

The Money block in particular has some issues, with the Get Quote box overlapping with the latest Dow/Nasdaq/S&P table. This is probably a Firefox-only error, but it still doesn’t reflect well on Microsoft. Another small error is the lack of a bottom border on this block, while all others have one.

Farther down the page is the Popular Searches block, which lists the top five MSN Search queries along with a lists of Bill Gates’ recent searches. While Bill Gates’ renown as a person who is too rich for his own good is unquestionable, trying to use him as if he were a celebrity of sorts is just stupid. And I couldn’t help thinking that it would be funny if “Images: Porn” came up on his recent search list (though I highly doubt it’s real).

At the bottom of the page in the left-hand (blue) column is a link to switch to the “narrowband” version of the site. The only difference between the two pages is the removal of the MSN Video block. It’s pretty sad that they can’t give broadband users any reason to visit the site other than online videos provided by MSNBC (for the most part). While MSN Video is a pretty nice service, they need more than that to make me want to use the site regularly.

Finally, there is an error in the search box at the bottom of the page where the Search button isn’t correctly set to be vertically aligned in the middle of its parent element, which is a small error but still one that should have been fixed before now. Oh, and the page colors can be changed with a style sheet switcher. Nice touch, but neither color scheme is anything special, and the general unattractiveness of the page is not helped by a palette change.

Somehow I was able to write that without slipping into Rant Mode. Yay me!

I don’t like search engines. No, not even Google. While I admire Google as a company, and I like GMail, I just don’t like searching for stuff. The problem is, unless the result is really obvious, like a search for a PHP manual page for a specific function, search engines rarely give me what I’m looking for.

When researching, I find that many websites are simply Wikipedia knock-offs. They literally must have crawled the Wikipedia site and copied every single article to their own servers just so they could pass them off as their own and put advertising all over them. How low can you go?

But going back to the search engine thing, when I’m searching for a topic my results are so cluttered with these fakes that I can’t find unique resources. I find myself turning to private databases such as World Book, EBSCO, and LexisNexis more and more often because I know that I can get a rich selection of resources from them with minimal effort. Also, much of their content can’t be found anywhere else, unless you happen to subscribe to the particular magazine or newspaper that an article is from.

Upon learning of the new MSN Search that was unveiled today (after a lackluster beta period), I decided to test it out after having not used MSN for search for several years (I’d prefer Yahoo over MSN, and Google over Yahoo). I wasn’t impressed. Apart from the cleaner look and standards-compliant design (whoa, Microsoft actually did something standards-compliant? *faint*), the new version is nothing special. My testing was by no means scientfic, but it was enough to show that there was no vast improvement algorithm-wise.

First, I did a search for my first and last name. MSN did a good job and showed my three most important websites as the top three results. Google only had Brettia in the top ten, but it was number one, so I can’t complain. Everything else is reachable from there, so it isn’t a huge deal.

For the second test I used my first name, (hence the “search for the One True Brett”). MSN placed Brettia at result number 216, after some really crappy sites such as these two. Google didn’t even have Brettia in the top 500. Ouch. But it’s not as if I’ve gone out of my way to promote myself. The motto has been “if you find it, great, if not, too bad for you”. And it’s worked fine for now. So don’t expect to see me comment-spamming other people or setting up linkfarms or anything.

I did find a pretty good blog during my experimentation: find it here. Or at least it was pretty good compared to the rest of the sites that turned up. Which I guess is not really that good at all. Sorry, Brett-imposter.