Categories
bitching Web 0.1

Web 0.1: flickr still doesn’t support OS X

…as in: after 5 odd years, on OS X the official uploader still “requires” you to either lose all your data every time it stumbles, or … force-crash it. Which, paradoxically, keeps your data intact. Confused? You should be.

e.g. you get 50% through uploading a few hundred photos, and your broadband has a momentary slowdown. Ten seconds appears to be all it takes. Because the flickr app doesn’t do basic error handling, it’ll hang at this point – forever.

If you do the obvious thing and hit “cancel” (there’s no “retry” button – why would you want to retry?), it deletes your data.

If you quit, it also deletes your data. (this is the mistake I made just now. That’s 20 minutes of editing image data I now have to do all over again. Sigh)

The only options are:

1. pull out the network cable, causing it to hard-crash … and “enable” the retry button
2. force-quit the app, causing it to crash … and when you restart it, it will automatically load in all the data

So, note to self: if flickr uploader hangs, FORCE KILL the ****er. Don’t do anything sensible or sane – it won’t work.

And … note to flickr: there’s quite a lot of Mac users these days; might be a good idea to start supporting them.

Categories
amusing games design

My next game will be named: Power Battle Love Magic … III

(because sequels always look better in SEO, no?)

http://www.achilleseffect.com/2011/03/word-cloud-how-toy-ad-vocabulary-reinforces-gender-stereotypes/

I’ve always wanted to do a “mash-up” of the words used in commercials for so-called boys’ toys. I did a little bit of this in my book, but now, thanks to Wordle, I can present my findings in graphic form. This is not an exhaustive record; it’s really just a starting point, but the results certainly are interesting.

The results, while not at all surprising, put the gender bias in toy advertising in stark relief.