Please let me know if you notice any problems, particularly any warnings like "secure page loaded insecure content".
Attention staff and promoters: check your bookmarks. Change any occurrences of "cart" or "cerebrum" to "www".
DNA Lounge: Wherein SSL is reconfigured.
It was time to renew our SSL certificate, so we took this opportunity to move the store from cart.dnalounge.com to www.dnalounge.com. (A decade ago, they were different machines, but they've been hosted on the same server for quite some time now.) A side-effect of this is that the whole web site is accessible via HTTPS now. You know, if you're paranoid about people snooping you as you browse our calendar or something.
Apple: Dicks.
Oh look, they rejected it for the same reason but under a different heading:
10.4: Apps that create alternate desktop/home screen environments or simulate multi-app widget experiences will be rejectedWe found that your app, and/or its metadata, contains content that could be misleading to users, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
It would be appropriate to remove or revise any content referring to "screensaver" screen saver functionalities are not possible on iOS devices.
Do I seriously know nobody who has any inside pull with these asshats?
Update: For those of you who keep suggesting "just change the name" and then showing how clever you think you are with your dumb-assed suggestions, I have two things to say: A: How does it feel being a surrender-monkey? And B: changing the name does not solve the problem that people searching for "xscreensaver" in the app store will not find it if it is released under something-that-is-not-its-name. And, make that three things, C: really, your suggestions suck, and there's a good reason for that: naming it anything else at all makes no goddamned sense, which is why all you can come up with are lame jokes.
Update 2: RESOLVED FIXED!
Tags: corporations, doomed, firstperson, lazyweb, mac, phones, xscreensaver
XScreenSaver-iOS runaround continues
If any of you Apple folks have influence on the app-review process please lend me a hand here...
They rejected it again. The stupid, it burns:
22.2: Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected
We found that your app, and/or its metadata, contains content that could be misleading to users, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
It would be appropriate to remove or revise any content referring to "screensaver" screen saver functionalities are not possible on iOS devices.
I have submitted an appeal, but it sure would be nice to have some inside help to make them reach a "yes" decision than to have it summarily re-rejected by some flunky who doesn't know anything about the long history of this package, or open source, or me.
I am a strong believer in nepotism in cases like this. Please help.
I wrote:
You have rejected my app, XScreenSaver, because you say that including the word "screen saver" will confuse people.
I very strongly believe that naming this app anything else will confuse people far more.
The XScreenSaver package has existed since 1991. It has been the default screen saver package on Linux for most of that time, and as such has literally millions of users who are familiar with it. Though it originally ran on X Windows, when I ported it to Mac OS X, I kept the name "XScreenSaver" in order to avoid confusion. It is extremely popular on Mac OS X as well.
As this is a straightforward port to iOS of the 200+ display modes included in XScreenSaver, naming it something else on iOS would create far more confusion than it eliminates.
Again, this package has had the name "XScreenSaver" for literally twenty-one years. There are millons of users who are familiar with it under that name, and many of them want to run these demos on their iPhones and iPads.
Please don't make it harder for them to find it by making me name it something confusing.
I love the implication that my application is "fraudulent". Nice.
And my prediction of the date on which they would next reject it was spot on! Ten days, again. (June 22, July 3, July 13, July 30.)
Previously, previously, previously.
Update: RESOLVED FIXED!
Tags: corporations, doomed, firstperson, lazyweb, mac, phones, xscreensaver
jwz mixtape 119
It's been a while! Almost two months. I didn't realize how far I had fallen behind on the mixtapery. Well, let's fix that. Please enjoy jwz mixtape 119. Building a ship in a bottle
I haven't colorized anything yet, and there are still a lot of details missing, but it's kind of ridiculously detailed already.
Suggestions from SketchUp experts welcome...
Tags: dnalounge, firstperson, maps, toys
Current Music: Garbage -- Automatic Systematic Habit ♬
"Robot Restaurant"
Tags: mpegs, perversions, robots
Current Music: The Dogbones -- The Whole World Is Weird ♬
Non-bouncy layouts
Dear Lazyweb, what's the done thing for making your text not bounce around in dynamic layouts?
I want my images to be dynamically sized to a percentage of the width of the window, not have hardcoded pixel sizes. And yet, I do not want this to force me into a 1994-style reflowing layout where the text moves around as the images load.
In other words, if the final layout looks like this:
All work and no play
img
makes Jack a dull boy then before the image loads, I want it to look
like this:
All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy
instead of like this:
All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy
makes Jack a dull boy
In the Bad Old Days, you fixed the bouncy-layout problem by specifying the image's width and height in pixels, but that doesn't work if you want the image to scale. In This Modern World, you have to specify "width:100%; height:auto" to accomplish that, and the "auto" means that the image shows up as zero-height until it has begun loading and its native size (and thus its aspect ratio) is known.
This sucks.
Basically I want some way to tell layout, "the intrinsic size of this image you're about to load is 1000px × 400px", or "the intrinsic aspect ratio of this image you're about to load is 10:4".
Is there any sane way to accomplish this? I guess it could be done in JavaScript, but I think you might end up needing to walk up the tree and basically duplicate the entire layout engine to make it work...
Update:
Wow. Well, based on the comments here, and based on what I see out in the world, I think the answer is:
No. There's no sane way to fix it.
Every web site must choose between hardcoded image sizes; and having the text thrash around as the images load.
It's 1994 all over again.
Tags: firstperson, lazyweb, www
XScreenSaver 5.19
XScreenSaver 5.19 is out now. This version works on MacOS 10.8.
I really didn't want to upgrade yet (only suckers pay for .0 releases) but the new version broke XScreenSaver so I needed to test it. ("Screen savers must not use garbage collection! No wait, screen savers must use garbage collection! No wait, screen savers must not use garbage collection!")
The iOS version is still "awaiting review", but if those of you who are able could build and try that version yourselves, I'd appreciate it. I think I've fixed the performance problem on Retina iPads.
A decade later, and still nobody at Apple knows how to estimate completion times:
(And that was after the "about 20 minutes" timer starting over from scratch once. Total actual time, about an hour and a half.)
Also, isn't it about time that upgrading MacPorts after having upgraded the OS wasn't a colossal pain in the ass that takes fully half a day of fucking around? Jesus.
Anyone know how to delete all the slideshow screensavers from the list in preferences ("Floating" and "Flip-up" and whatnot)? The others you can just delete from /System/Library/Screen Savers/ but I can't tell where these live.
Tags: computers, corporations, firstperson, mac, phones, xscreensaver
Today in Torture Phallus news:
Phallostethus cuulong
The backwards-facing priapium has both reproductive and digestive functions, with the opening of the anus set in one end and a genital pore set in the other. It has two conspicuous externalised bones -- the curved toxactinium, which juts out from under the mouth, runs down the throat and connects under the skin to the rest of the priapium structure, and the short, serrated ctenactinium, which looks like a tiny, toothy lower jaw bone. Scientists have suggested that the reason this bone is lined with seven hook-like serrae is for the purpose of grasping onto a female's head during copulation. Because her oviduct is convenienrly located at her throat.
Besides the clasping component of this organ, there is also what's known as the papillary component, which is responsible for transferring sperm bundles into the female. Once the female's oviduct is filled with sperm, she is able to lay eggs that were internally fertilised. [...] No one knows exactly why P. cuulong and priapiumfish evolved to have their genitals on their heads, but one thing's for sure, she said, "There's not much going on at the back of these fish".
Tags: doomed, mutants, parts, perversions
Current Music: Front 242 -- Religion (Lovelace a Go-Go Mix) ♬
