E vorba de dobitocii de la Elefant.ro, din cauza cărora era să fac eu apoplexie acum două săptămâni.

Care va să zică, îmi cumpăr trei cărticele ușoare, ca ePub. O citesc pe prima, și când s-o deschid pe a doua, cum ajung la pagina 5, e-reader-ul SONY PRS-350 zice „Page error!” și refuză să mai deschidă cartea! Vreau să zic, absolut nici o pagină! După care îmi face la fel și cu cea de-a treia carte!

OK, handicapații de la SONY habar n-au să scrie software. Fiecare capitol este într-un fișier (X)HTML separat, pagina aia blestemată este un fișier separat, dacă există o eroare într-un astfel de fișier, ignoră-l dracului, și treci mai departe, nu bloca întreaga carte!

După săpături, am aflat cum de Elefant.ro a început să bușească ePub-urile. Pentru blestemăția de siglă pe care o adaugă ei în cărțile de la Polirom: Read more

Kirill Bulîciov, „Fetița de pe Terra”, 1978 (descriere pe un blog, descărcare PDF), și A. Nekrasov, „Aventurile căpitanului Balivernă”, 1965 (descriere pe un blog):

alisa Nekrasov coperta

„Mănușa” (poveste populară ucrainiană), ediția 1961 (lectură online), și Arkadi & Boris Strugațki, „Țara norilor purpurii”, 1961 (descărcare ePub):

manusa tara-norilor-purpurii

Why do European books have the words on the spine the opposite way around?

On American published books, when the books are face up in a pile, you can read the spines. European books read correctly only if the book is face down. Why the difference?

The tradition to write on the spine top-to-bottom is older; its roots can be traced back to the time when books were few. The reasoning was that if a book is lying on the table (or in a small stack) face-up, reading its title should be easy.

The tradition to write on the spine bottom-to-top is younger; it’s more concerned with how easy it is for the bookshelf owner to handle the book. Reading bottom-to-top is easier, because this direction is more in keeping with the European left-to-right writing tradition, which is especially apparent when there are several lines of text on the spine (an urge to read the lines left-to-right is only natural).

The Western Europe and the US opted for the more venerable tradition, while the Eastern Europe and Russia aligned themselves with the more modern one. What the reader should remember is that both traditions are centuries old.

Bookbinding: Spine titling

In languages written horizontally, conventions differ about the direction in which the title on the spine is rotated:

  • In the United States, the Commonwealth, Scandinavia and for books in Dutch, titles are usually written top-to-bottom on the spine. This means that when the book is placed on a table with the front cover upwards, the title is correctly oriented left-to-right on the spine. This practice is reflected in the industry standards ANSI/NISO Z39.41 and ISO 6357.
  • In most of continental Europe and Latin America, titles are conventionally printed bottom-to-top on the spine so, when the books are placed vertically on shelves, the title can be read by tilting the head to the left.

Once I’ve read Supreme Court Decides Your Silence May Be Used Against You, I realized I really don’t understand not only this “anti-Miranda” thing, but even the need of a Miranda warning altogether.

I mean, it’s only fair to inform the arrested person of his or her rights, but this idiocy established in 1976 — 190 years after the establishment of the United States! — that failing to do so would not only violate the Fifth and the Sixth Amendment, but it would also void the entire evidence collected under the circumstances is unbelievable! (Yes, Ernesto Miranda was a kidnapper and a rapist, and he couldn’t be convicted because of this lawyer’s trick.) Read more

When I say that we’re living in a society where almost everything is ugly like shit — you can see this especially with cars designed in the last 10-15 years, and not only SUVs –, what I mean is that the “sense of beauty” is determined by this kind of design:

ssbad1ssbad2ssbad3ssbad4

This is what most people buy and wear — or at least this is what they see on streets –, and this is corrupting their common sense. Why don’t they buy “classic” models instead, which are still available? Say:

ssgood1ssgood2ssgood3ssgood4

While decent-looking sport shoes are still available, decent-looking cars are not. Shitty, ugly cars — this is what one can buy; but their designers must find them “beautiful”.

Houtong Cat Village is a very interesting place in Taiwan — that is, full of cats. There is actually a story of how a few dozen cats managed to save an entire community in 2008 after coal extraction ceased in the 1970s.

As a bonus to the aforementioned two articles, I’ve added a few photos taken in Houtong by copycatko:

copycatko1 Read more

■ First table: some popular phones, as reviewed and testet by notebookcheck.net – the header is self-explanatory with regards to the usage scenarios. I don’t understand the first one (if the phone is idle, the screen should be black, not at minimum brightness), but I value the 2nd one very much – surfing the web while on Wi-Fi. Read more

Why iOS7 is ugly

Categories: Idiocy
Comments: No

So this is iOS7:

ios7_1

And it’s ugly like shit.

It’s not just the icons (photo: Alex Washburn / Wired): Read more

Yes, it is. And yes, if you care about how it looks, you must add (with simple quotes, not these fancy ones):

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no”>

and no less, regardless of what some people say.

But my blog doesn’t look as expected on smartphones. This responsive theme adjust the layout, so that the top navigation menu shows as rectangular blocks for screen widths of 768px or more, and only degrades into a dropdown menu for smaller screen. However, even on smartphones having 800px or more (say, in landscape), it looks like this: Read more

Is it me, or there is indeed a trend in designing ugly car rear lights? 2013 rectangular-ish collection:

2013 VW Polo BlueGT:

2013_vw_polo_blue_gt2013_vw_polo_blue_gt_bis

2013 Dacia Logan and Sandero:

2013_logan2013_sandero

2013 Fiat 500L Trekking: Read more