If you haven't watched any TikiBar TV, you should do so now, or the first opportunity you have to sit in front of a display device with a cocktail. Interestingly enough, CBC, in an attempt to create a ZeD of "the future", has hired lala (Lara Doucette) of Tiki Bar fame to host a user-generated-content-vote-tube-you-porn-com-slash-conan website and corresponding television show, of, you guessed it, user-generated shorts voted on online and aired on show.

I'm not convinced this will make great television, or a good website, but the hire of Ms. Doucette shows that the CBC is trying, and begins to prove that that all it really takes is talent, recording devices and an internet connection now.

For those who don't spend their free time reading and listening to security and open source bloggers, you might not know what OpenID is all about. At it's simplest, it's a system for a distributed identity system.

What is a distributed identity system? It's the ability to ask the proper source if this person has access to this identity. Identity doesn't proove that this is a person, group of people, my cat or a bot. All it can do is proove that some requestor should be associated with this identity.

So what's new? You already have a distributed identity. However it's not tied together at all, (unless your username is unique enough to never be taken) so nobody would ever realize that this guy on Slashdot is that guy on delicious. It's protected by 50 different passwords. And there isn't any sort of way to say if you want to know more about me then go here. OpenID has all that. One password properly protects your access to all OpenID enabled sites, and since your OpenID is tied to your own blog, there's always a reference pointing back to you. That reference is something you own or trust somebody to maintain for you, taking more control of your own identity back for yourself.

In OpenID, identities are URIs. I can be qedi.videntity.org, infornography.ca, or sad_mcemopants.livejournal.com (if I had that login, which surprisngly doesn't exist). Which makes sense from a blogger perspective. You are your URI anyway.

So once you go to some site that allows you to log in with OpenID, you can throw in your blog URI. Then, some backend magic happens and some site talks to your blog, and determines your identity provider (which could be your blogging software, something you've written youself, or some other provider you want to trust) and sends you there. You log in with your idendity provider, and determine what information you want to give or deny some site. After all, it may be useful to let some site in on one of your secrets, like your location or contact information, if you think it is useful, and this way you don't have to enter it in yet again. Your provider will then pass that on, and you'll be identified with your blog URI to some site.

It makes things a lot simpler, especially with more and more people coming on board with OpenID. AOL has made your AIM id into an OpenId for you to use if you want. Microsoft has pledged support. LiveJournal, Wordpress and a whole lot of others already provide one to use. Sites are just beginning to utilize it. Technorati, Zoomr, and Imageshack with more to follow.

At O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference this week, Cory Doctorow showed he has a good sense of humour. But you might want to refresh your memory of what a blagofaire is first. (via waxy.org)

There was a disc error. I lost a hard drive. But, no worries, most things were salvaged.

I did, however take the time to redesign some a cleaner layout. Obviously, I have more fun with the code than posting, which really was the intent of this in the first place. All of my public data clutter moved away from this blog and towards it's own page. And, if you're reading via RSS subscription, the feed link has changed.

Also, thanks to grendelkhan, for providing gimp source material that wound up as part of my imprint.

Sometimes, the little things on the net pop out to astound me.

waxy.org gave me a good laugh tonight.del.icio.us users caught in a recursive loop

The OpenID spec is an interesting thing.

Since you're already logged into say, LiveJournal, you trust and are active on the site. That means that your Livejournal authentication expires rarely. On the other hand, you post here rarely. Authentication would be a big pain in the ass to remember a separate password just to post to this blog three times a year in comments.

Enter OpenID. This will let you use your exisiting (Livejournal) authentication to also authenticate yourself here, or any OpenID enabled* site. It will transfer you to Livejournal for a moment, ask you if you want this site to know who you are on Livejournal and then tell that to this site. But none of your authentication needs to even be transmitted to this site.

Damned convienent, you might say. I agree. Some buddies may have noticed infornography.gotdns.com popping up in their LJ user list. That's me, using it in the reverse. I already have a blog, so why be anonymous or create a livejournal account just for commenting? You could even trust that user if you do a friends only page, as it's still an authenticated user.

What's possible for OpenID's future? Imagine your friends list populated not just with Livejournal friends, but my blog posts just the same. Never having to create accounts on Slashdot, kuro5hin or other forums. Tying together FOAF (Friend of a friend) data, not only with blogs, but with people you regularly communicate (via blog comments, forums, etc).

So, with that in mind, I announce that I've done a bit more work on a WordPress plugin for OpenID. Try it out. Use it, break it, talk to me about it. There's no server (yet), but OpenID servers are easy to come by;

• Videntity
• MyOpenID

are two existing examples. (And linking them to your current blog is easy, if you're not a Livejournal member)

You may notice that you were redirected to http://infornography.gotdns.com. With some luck, it'll only be a temporary change.

As much as I loved my mashed Blosxom, the sheer insanity that ended up happening when I decided to use strict; was enough for me to say, maybe later. I did make those changes as part of a learning excersise with Perl, and back then I wasn't smart enough to use the strict pragma. I might come back to Blosxom, but for now I just dropped in an install of WordPress.

It also brought me to thinking about the other sections of my blog. For example, why don't I have a bit about myself on the index page? While it looks functionally the same now, you'll notice some ongoing projects happening on a few of the pages. Should I post a per-article track I'm listening to now? Or simply make my last.fm profile a little more prominent? Should the front page be for the person who reads the blog regularly, or more for the passer by? Should I provide an alternate non-dark style for people who dislike light-on-dark text (weirdos)?

It has fixed a few of my problems off the bat though. For example, to you Firefox users, this page is served as Content-type: application/xhtml+xml, instead of the mishmash of XHTML that this page is, and the Content-type: text/html that it was. (Though it still gets served as text/html tag soup to Explorer users, as Explorer doesn't like XHTML)

On Jakob Nielsen's website useit.com, he recently wrote two articles on the problems with web usability in 2005. He wrote The Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005, and Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. They're both interesting reads, as well as both being fairly applicable to this website. So out of my own interest, I ended up seeing how grepping meaning fares against these mistakes. For each, I'll summarize the problem and respond with either a rebuttal, perceived compliance or what needs to be done.

They're not long reads, and they're rather scannable, so I'd suggest reading them over. Especially if you run some sort of blog of your own. Not all of them will apply to you, but it's good to have an understanding of what makes a page an interesting and readable page.

Web Mistakes

1. Legibility Problems:
   • bad fonts
   • re-sizable text
   • contrast

   Check. Standard fonts are used, without reliance on them. Only relative sizes are displayed, so the browser can display the page as the user wishes.

2. Non-Standard Links
   • making obvious what's click-able
   • explanations of linked content
   • and not opening pages in new windows

   I'm a strong proponent of not opening links in new windows, and letting the user make his choice, and I avoid the use of using words like "click here" as the link text. Only perceived problem here: difference in visited and unvisited links aren't apparent.

3. Flash
   • Jakob's guidelines for flash

   Don't really use it here, so moving along.

4. Content That's Not Written for the Web
   • making content that's short, scannable and to the point

   I use this space for links and rambling, though I've always considered myself a concise writer. I agree with these problems, and think I'm problem free in this area. Titles could probably use some work though.

5. Bad Search
   • having a search feature that actually works

   I find this site too simple for search, so my reliance is entirely upon Google here.

6. Browser Incompatibility
   • people use other browsers than Firefox, and your page should work in them

   It's simple, and true. From a practical perspective and a 'correctness' perspective. This site displays exactly how I wish it to on the major browsers.

7. Cumbersome Forms
   • they're used to often
   • too big
   • and ask too many unnecessary questions

   I really agree with this, and would also kinda add that they're often laid out poorly, but that's more of a technological limitation, I think. The only form I use is both necessary and simple. Check.

8. No Contact Information or Other Company Info
   • phone numbers, email, physical mailing addresses

   Doesn't really apply to me, but a necessary point for corporate pages, regardless.

9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths
   • websites are either too small on big resolutions or too big on small resolutions

   Any site that assumes a specific resolution of their reader is doomed. Luckily, I think this site does fine at all resolutions, because of it's really simple layout. The only thing I think I fall short on here is text-width of the content. To improve readability, these content boxes should only be ten or so words in length per line. I'm still not sure where I stand on this one, though. Personally, I don't mind long line length. With a fluid layout, if the user finds things too wordy, showing less words per line just means having a narrower browser window (which I know a few people who run high resolutions and never maximize the width of their browser for this purpose).

10. Inadequate Photo Enlargement
    • having a large photo size that isn't actually detailed and large

    Doesn't really apply to this site, but a valid frustration regardless.

So, ignoring things that don't apply to this site at all, I'd say I scored a 6 / 7.

Weblog Mistakes

1. No Author Biographies
   • having an about me page to give yourself less anonymity

   I have a lot of personal information, the music I listen to, the blogs I read, the friends I have, my location and even my latest nethack death. My about me page, however, sucks. I'd denote this as a failure.

2. No Author Photo
   • to give a personable impression of the author
   • it connects the meatspace you to the virtual you

   I have an image of me, but it's a caricature of myself (as drawn by KEv). It's a personable impression, but no connection to the meatspace Qed. Another failure.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles Already touched upon.
4. Bad Linkage Already touched upon.
5. Classic Hits are Buried
   • not hiding your better written pieces in the archives, rather displaying them on the home page

   I really don't consider any of my writing to be notable in this regard, so I could technically say that I pass this one, but that's a cop out. I could mention my interest in usability and thus this article, for instance.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
   • timelines are good, but so are categories
   • and not going overboard with categories is also a good thing

   I think my directory structure works well for the grouping and separation of what I write here. There's a large amount in my random folder, but that's because I post a lot of links. Overall, success.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
   • having a schedule, and sticking to it

   I'm not even going to touch this one. MacHall has been doing better than me recently. Failure.

8. Mixing Topics
   • specialized sites rule the web

   This site has a specific topic, mainly being a personal blog for myself and friends. So in that regard it succeeds. Otherwise, it's not really applicable. I know my readership, but I doubt I really stick to any topics.

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
   • how will this look to a hiring manager in ten years?

   In ten years I'll have changed a lot more. I mean, I'll be ten years older. But I don't think a personal blog should be too concerned with looking nice in ten years. A reasonably intelligent hiring manager will realize that this is mainly a personal blog, and this was ten years ago. A lot of change can happen in that time. It does give a good snapshot of who I was then though, which is information, and looking on it, it's information I'm happy with.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
    • letting somebody else own your name means they own your destiny, adding any sort of obtrusive advertising and possibility of closure

    Everything's fine on this regard. Sure I don't have an QQQ.com address, but I do have absolute control over this page. Eventually I'll probably move to my own hosting situation, but that's for someone who isn't constantly broke.

This one gets a 5 / 10. Overall, I now see a few places I could really improve this page. And this time it's not actually from a code perspective. So, feel free to add your ideas and opinions in the comments section, regarding this list or your usability problems with this website.

So Dean launched Oh Two. Unconventional Conformity is no more.

He also has a whole new system for playing around with the page with JavaScript. It's a cool hack to do, though not very....useful. As I really actually hate using the site. And since he didn't create one for it, I whipped up an rss feed in PERL. So feel free to use that link if you too use RSS. It scrapes the contents too, so it contains the full text. Now you can be get the Dean updates with less Dean annoyance, and an interface of your choosing.

Dean-esque end of post Link.

Early morning, sleep evades me. My last final is in five hours. This blog may see whole new code soon, and with it a new look. I think I might set up a linkdump-type thing that's sticky, and that I'd try and keep a rhythm for (like the one that was seen on the old Uncontained Angle website, only more important). This would let me write more emo crap. Which is the only thing. I think I'd start to write too much emo. Maybe if I separated the two feeds, it would be helpful then.
Often times I'll sit here, and notice that I've got a few nifty links I want to share. Then one of them will have content I want to write a post about, but I hate posting twice within a few minutes (considering that I have periods of days where nothing new comes), therefore I keep thinking that I'll do it in a few days, once I collect my thoughts about the matter, and because nothing's left to remind me, the point of the post goes by the wayside.
So this would mean that there'd be both more emo on this thing, and more things like last Sunday's "definition of blog" post.
One question I'm still wrestling with, is should I tag all emo posts with a noindex entry in the robots.txt? Initially I thought that would be the 'polite' way to do it, such that the blog entry won't clutter up a search for ambidextrous scallywags in my post ranting about jackasses who like to say "aboot" in textual conversations. Not tagging like so would imply that this really is a problem with the search engine, not the content.
Well, it's something to think about over the next while, anyway.