I dislike Firefox. It's ugly, unintuitive, slow, based on the worst browser I've ever worked with, and the first browser all the bitches run to when they stop believing in IE. But the IE6 days are over! Have you tried IE8 (beta2)? I'd so prefer it above Firefox, if it wasn't for the God of browsers Opera.

Anyway, here are some interesting myths about Firefox.



"Firefox is Completely Free"

Wrong
Firefox is open source, but certain modules, the name and the artwork are propretary. One of the reasons that Firefox is cloned as IceWeasel in certain Linux distributions that concider absolutely free software really important.


"Firefox and Mozilla are Not for Profit"

Wrong
Last year, the Mozilla foundation collected $66 million in revenue. Most comes from sites that want a prominent placement on the browser. Google paid Firefox's chief executive more than $500,000 in salary and benefits.
"We are very fortunate in that the search feature in Firefox is both appreciated by our users and generates revenue in the tens of millions of dollars."


"Firefox is spelled 'FireFox' and abbreviated FF"

Wrong
It's 'Firefox', preferably abbreviated as 'Fx'.


"Firefox has lower System Requirements than Internet Explorer 6"

Wrong
Minimum Internet Explorer requirements:
486/66 MHz CPU
16 MB of RAM
11.5 MB of hard drive space

Minimum Firefox requirements:
Pentium 233 MHz CPU
64 MB of RAM
52 MB of hard drive space


"Firefox 2 uses less memory than Internet Explorer 7"

Wrong
With a few tabs open, Fx hogs more memory.


"Firefox is Stable"

Wrong
Firefox has far many more reasons to become very unstable to the point of requiring a fresh reinstall.


"Firefox is the Fastest Web Browser"

Wrong
Opera is the fastest Graphical Web Browser for Windows.
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are more often than not faster than both Firefox 1 and 2.
Ironically, even Firefox's roots, Mozilla 1.8, is faster than Fx.


"Firefox is the Most Secure Web Browser"

Wrong
Since Fx 1.x, 295 security vulnerabilities have formed threats.
Opera is currently the most Secure Graphical Web Browser.
Fx 1 had more vulnerabilities than IE6 in 2006.
Fx 2 had more vulnerabilities than IE7 in 2007.


"Firefox was the first Web Browser to include Tabbed Browsing"

Wrong
Opera invented Tabbed Browsing back in 1994.


"Firefox fully supports W3C Standards"

Wrong
Fx has incomplete support for, amongst others, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.1, CSS 3 and DOM


"Firefox 1 and 2 pass the Acid2 Browser Test"
Acid2 is an important web standards test, created 3,5 years ago.

Wrong
It still doesn't to date. Opera 9 was the first mainstream browser that supported the Acid2 test a long time ago.


"Firefox 3 passes the Acid3 Browser Test"
Acid3 is an important web standards test, created a year ago.

Wrong
Opera 9 was the first mainstream browser that supported the Acid3 test before Fx 3 even came out. Fx 3 still does not pass the test.



For sources and more details, see home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html from which I borrowed some facts.

The time has come. I am back working on the upcoming Sonic Plague music video. But before I can composite new shots, I really have to fine tune the color setting. Here's a brief history of one of the first shots:





Just so you know. Work is in progress. You will be pleased.

HDV is meant to be displayed using BT.709 conversions. But is it just me or is 601 more natural and less yellow? What do you think?

HDV meant to be 709

HDV oldskool 601

Met de nieuwe zoomfunctie van mijn mobiele telefoon kan ik mooie foto's maken!

Klik voor vergroting

Klik voor vergroting

Klik voor vergroting

Klik voor vergroting

Klik voor vergroting

Klik voor vergroting

De tijd om rekening met Netscape 4 te houden is nu toch ècht voorbij, jongens. Hoewel @import in het leven is geroepen om stylesheets in andere stylesheets te kunnen embedden, ging iedereen het massaal gebruiken om met 23 typo's verschillende browsers voor de gek te houden.Tijd om te kappen. @import's worden veelal na de complete xhtml geparst. Je site ziet er lelijk uit totdat de markup klaar is met laden. Opeens verspringt alles, en de waardevolle seconden die de bezoeker gebruikte om alvast de juiste link te zoeken zijn zojuist verspeeld.

Telkens als mijn internetsnelheid traag is, of zelfs als de buitenlandse servers door hun vele hops traag lijken, vallen ontzettend veel sites door de mand.

Wees gewoon een vent, en wordt het gebruik van <link /> gewend!

I'm not sure if this came with the update to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, but I noticed all progress bars for file transfers in Nautilus are finally handled by the same dialog box. I always hate to have many boxes messing up my alt+tab.

Still, I'm waiting for that option I dreamt of ever since I was 2 to make the OS do one file transfer at a time. Those stupid simultaneous copies from/on the same drive make the speed drop so far that it's weird waiting file transfers aren't common yet.

I grew up in a time where I learnt John Rambo was the ultimate superhero. I think part 4 is really a matured nostagic product and I have yet to see it. I just watched the HD trailer though, and there's all this weird stuff going on like high contrast shots that make no sense (to the (visual) story), muzzle flashes that cast no light (or only on Rambo's hand), paint-on explosions that cast no light and poor greenscreening... is this movie gonna be so full of cheap effects that don't sell the shot to the point where Rambo actually looks like an actor in stead of a superhero? What did you think (when you saw the movie)?

Paint-on explosives that casts no light

Footage

Paint-on, no light reflection

Footage

10 foot muzzle, too little poorly drawn light

Bad greenscreening

I know today not even gunfire is real no more. But at least compositors should do an efford to sell the shot in order to keep a great hero real!

-update- 2008-06-12

I finally came to see the movie and I loved it. Felt a lot shorter than oldschool Rambo's though. I didn't even notice all the vfx problems I noticed in the trailer. I guess I was in cinema mode.

Trapcode Particular is a very popular After Effects plugin for, well duh, particle effects. You can see it's extensively used in all kinds of programs from MTV such as Cribs, Sweet 16, etc.

I was trying something at school the other day which involved custom particles, and I noticed that there is a bug where Particular decides not to render the bottom-most and right-most pixels. I've never heard anyone mention that before.

Here's a comparison. First particular with built-in sphere particles:


Now, something similar with a custom particle:


It's odd; at version 1.5, you'd think a popular plugin wouldn't have such an obvious bug. It's like no one ever used custom particles. Luckily, similar effects can be created with After Effect's built-in effects.

Voor de grap ging ik eens uit zonder vertrouwde Alpine Musical Earplug oordopjes.

Weet je hoe ik wakker werd? Met een keutel in mijn ene oor en een beeldbuis in de andere. Awesome! Ik snap nu waarom niemand aan oordopjes doet. Volgende keer misschien een babylijkje in mijn oor. Spannend!

For the upcoming Sonic Plague video we've done some shots in a greenscreen studio, but I'm having a hard time pulling a matte from the footage since the drumset is so darn shiny!

Shiny drumset

See what I mean?

Right now I'm resorting to rotoscoping, but do I really have to? I hate rotoscoping!

The guys at Lucasarts must have the solution. Look at C-3PO in their studio:

Shiny drumset

C-3PO

Is C-3PO rotoscoped?

What's up with al this new software having open/save dialogs without the ability to copy/pase a fucking pathname?

Instead of ctrl+v, they 'improve' their software by having users to do a mandatory 10+ fucking clicks, not including the need to look, think and scroll everytime. The possibility to use shortcuts for often used paths is also pissed away by authors of this new 'feature'.

If I wanted to do unnecescary shit, I'd piss on my keyboard and clean it up with a cotton swab!

What's next? You gonna discard directories altogether? Stop treating computer users as fucking morons.

Fuck you.

Foto's van een tripje naar Frankrijk (2007) staan online.

60 feet bra.

Dat je beste vriend zijn pik niet in mijn aars wil steken blijkt wel weer uit het feit dat ze zich beledigt voelen wanneer ze zich van ver weg met de uitspraak "homo's!" in hun ware aard betrapt voelen.

Om een hard-to-get date te scoren werden we (waaronder mijn huisgenoot die misschien niet met zijn naam genoemd wil worden) met zijn 3en door 4 kaalkopjes gearresteerd om onder machtsvertoon van wat sommige mensen een naam geven geforceerd te worden tot de onderdanige rol.

> "Ik vroeg niet OF je HOMO'S riep, ik vroeg WAAROM je het riep."
< "Als jij niet in God gelooft, ga ik je toch niet ook vragen WAAROM je in God gelooft? Da's onzin."

Jehova's houden niet van buitenechtelijke seks, dus het feit dat deze zich met loonsverhoging koning voelende strak gebroekte organismen in ambtenaarsvorm ons na een kwartier voorspel met rust lieten doet ons afvragen of we nu met Jehova's of Coppers te maken hadden, maar in beide gevallen was het waarschijnlijk de meest spraakmakende poging tot een onchristelijke relatie die ik deze maand heb mogen meemaken.

(*) True story

Nadat ik mezelf een aartige tocht door de Nexus Hub had geschoten kwam ik bij een grote kerel met een leipe stem. Telkens was ik mijn laatste ammo op hem aan het knallen terwijl ik nokkie ging.

Héél veel quick loads lang.



Tot ik balend van mijn nederlaag eens niet op quick load drukte.

Ik was helemaal niet dood!

Ik kreeg een plekje in een lopendeband-ziekenhuis waar ik onvrijwillig werd omgebouwd. Door de dude in een karretje voor mij kon ik steeds zien wat me te wachten stond alvorens ik zelf onder het mes moest.

Mijn dokter

Medepatiënt

Zonder verdoving

Kijk ma, zonder benen!

Hier gebeuren ingrijpende dingen

Een kijkje in de spiegel

Bezorgde blikken van collega's

Deed me denken aan Bioforge, mijn favo game back in 1995.

Ook cosmetische chirurgie

Toen was decor nog prerendered

1995 MS-DOS graphics

Nostalgie 1
Nostalgie 2
Nostalgie 3