Just got an email from my mom asking about my blog. To be honest I am not sure what happened to it. Lately I have not felt compelled writing about something here, but I have been somewhat busy too. Though frankly I always have that feeling so that cannot be the reason. Anyway, visited Oslo, did some skiing, returned home, visiting Linköping at the moment, celebrated St. Patrick's Day in a sports bar on Wednedsay and returning way too early tomorrow morning. On purpose, hoping to make the most of my Saturday. Became a fan of Questionable Content and its corresponding (sometimes disturbing) qccast twitter stream. Also of the duckstad twitter stream from Donald Duck; especially Duckstadkrant is hilarious now and then.
Speaking of that, Nico Damtoeter — Nico Dijkshoorn outside of the Donald Duck universe — wrote a funny poem for when my brother appeared in De Wereld Draait Door. Lets quote it here:
VERKEERDE INSTRUMENT
nog maar net binnen
zie ik backstage
het wonder van de
vervoering
de kracht van de
muziek
terwijl glenn helder
zijn mond
in twee minuten
34 jaar
gierende
ritmische
aanvalsdrift
over de tafel spuugt
zie ik uit mijn ooghoeken
een jongen
gepassioneerd
zijn harp strelen
ik herinner mij
terstond
de doodsangst van mijn vader
als nico maar niet op ballet gaat
en geen harp gaat spelen
pappa je zat er naast
ik heb medelijden
met de zeven mietjes met drumstokjes
hier vlak tegenover mij
die zo te horen
het verkeerde instrument
hebben gekozen
As for work, the sabotage plans were dismantled by Tim Berners-Lee and HTML5 got published at the W3C. Booyah! Also HTML Microdata, HTML Canvas 2D Context, and other things. What exactly is part of HTML5 and what is not is getting frustratingly complicated for people and requires an overview table these days. Some entities refer to this as modular, but all I see is way more boilerplate and exactly the same interdependencies. While we are on the subject, lets clear one thing up, geolocation and Web Workers have never, indeed never, been part of HTML5. Anyway, instead of focusing on that I have been working on the CSSOM and have actually been able to solve a few of the problems which were the reason for not working on it for two years. Yay for getting smarter over time.
And since this blog entry could not possibly get any longer lets discuss Internet Explorer 9, also known as IE9, a new browser from Redmond. Well, the browser looks pretty awesome, finally something from Microsoft that compares to Opera 9. It is not all perfect, they still have the silly rendering modes — oh my god they are up to five now — and are bragging about a whopping one hundred and four professional-grade tests. Wrong on so many levels, but I am only going to make a single point. Solely releasing the (non-reviewed) tests IE9 passes and then comparing the results to other browsers in some kind of colored table as if it has any kind of meaning must be some new flavor of evil. Also ludicrous, to be sure. Or sheer stupidity, but I like to think the best of people. If you actually look at the entire SVG test suite which has several hundred tests it turns out IE9 has about 30% support for SVG instead of 100% (ooooh) and Opera 9 about 90%. So maybe IE9 is not in the same ballpark after all.
I thought of putting some kind of disclaimer here about my rant, but if you need that kind of thing I rather you read something else. The interwebs is vast. Good luck!