Following the footsteps if IE6, IE7 too is sinking into the abyss of irrelevant browsers.

Almost three years ago, after publishing the current theme for this site, I wrote about the typical headaches Internet Explorer 6 caused and wished it would go away from bothering us web designers. Imagine, that browser was still relevant only two or three years ago!

Well, years rolled on and now I hardly even test what a newly designed website might look like in IE6. With an estimated browser share of 1-2% from 14% back in 2009, it is quite safe to say the beast has finally starved to death.

As a finishing blow, Microsoft started a policy of updating IE to the latest possible version basically without asking users. This means that it won’t take long until IE7 also becomes irrelevant, if not already at an usage share of 2-3% and sharply falling. Good trend, I might say.

Unfortunately, since users of Windows XP (still firmly the second most used OS online) can’t install IE9 or later, IE8 will be the browser to hate for the next few years to come. Luckily progressive enhancement is a widely practiced method these days, so I don’t have to worry about making a site behave and look the same in every browser.

Once IE8 too has left the stage however, it will be interesting to see what browser will be hated next among web developers. It just might not be on the desktop, but on mobile devices. So headaches will likely remain. Only in smaller, different flavours.

Where was my aspirin?

The 1 gigabyte player cost me about 175 euros back then. A similar Samsung product now on sale with 2 gigabytes costs 35 euros (of which 12 euros is blank media tax for us Finns!).

As a keen listener of music, it obviously has been a valuable piece of electronics for me while on the move. Despite its age, battery life is still good enough to use even today. Interestingly enough, this device can even display Japanese characters, which is nice bonus as a learner of the Japanese language.

Thumbs up electronic devices this old that keep on going and are still relevant! Time will tell will it last even ten years.

Nearly seven years old and still a valuable partner!

There was a time when I blogged quite frequently. In recent years however, it has become more rare. Partly because I feel I have less to write about publicly and also because other services like flickr, twitter and last.fm have scattered my random updates into other parts of the Internet.

Still, I feel this site is none the less the heart of my web presence and will most likely continue to do so for some time. Funny how personal websites feel now a bit old school and maybe even troublesome in an age of social media.

Maybe I should be a bit more active this year here. I’ll think about that.

For the time being, here is another small random photo set (colour adjusted photos from my third trip to Japan 2006, all from Kyoto).

The theme this time around has been converting ordinary photos into black and white, trying to make them a bit more interesting that way. Some turned out pretty okay and they can be viewed at my Flickr account.

Here are a few extras for those who happen to follow this blog.

The merciful house is cool again with the World Wide Web.

If you tried to visit the merciful house during the past week, you have noticed it hasn’t been possible. Also, if you have tried to send e-mails directed to addresses under this domain, they have bounced back to you undelivered.

The reason behind this is that I decided to move the domain under a new webhotel and the transition didn’t go anywhere as smoothly as I hoped, resulting with a domain that was sitting on nothing for a full week. The situation was a tad irritating as there was nothing I could do about it.

Anyway, happy ending, everything is back online and running normally again. Sorry for any inconveniences during the downtime.

Sure, it is something that can be done with Photoshop and the likes, but it was somehow a refreshing change to see the results on the fly and skip the post-processing stage which can tend to get time consuming.

Below a few selected ones, straight from the camera as is (aside from rescaling them).

Perhaps I should play around with these kinds of settings more often to get even more out of my camera (and that way more refined results).

Älymystö performing @ Kuudes Linja, Helsinki (2009)

As I thought about it afterwards, I remembered I did have some old live video material I took during one of their live gigs years ago in a small live venue in Helsinki. Since I had iMovie ’09 installed on my MacBook Pro, I decided to give it a try what I could come up with it.

Overcoming technical limitations

So there was roughly 15 minutes of video from two separate live performances in the same venue (Factory, which sadly closed its doors two years ago). It was taken with a Sony DSC-717 digital camera and the resolution was a modest 320×240. Since the video was in plain mpeg-files, I immediately had the problem of getting them imported into iMovie, which didn’t support the format. Even if it did support it, I would still have the problem with the next to unusable low resolution of the raw material.

Then I got an idea. I picked up my new Canon IXUS 860 IS digital camera, start playing the original videos on my monitor full screen and re-record them into new video files sized 640×480 resolution. Basically I was already editing video for the final version by panning and zooming around the screen while making sure the focus won’t get too sharp to reveal the technique with monitor pixels.

Raw video material on iMovie.

Syncing with the music track

Once I had enough material, I imported the new material into iMovie which it accepted with no problems. Since iMovie was basically aimed for home videos and not accurate sync-editing with sound (in this case music), I picked a track from the band that didn’t have singing, as it would otherwise have been a major headache to find clips that fit with them sync-wise.

Even without vocals the process of syncing audio with video was a bit awkward with iMovie, but my enthusiasm was greater than the frustration and after two evenings I managed to come up with a something that might be called a low budget fan music video.

Rewarding project

The band wasn’t aware of my doings and were happy to find out one of their tracks got wrapped up in a video when I gave them a look. Now, after five months or so, it got put online on YouTube by the band itself.

Making the video was fun, although I will think twice about doing another one with iMovie. As simple as it is, it wasn’t meant for making music videos. Also, I’d like to use material in a much higher resolution next time.

Given the crippling limitations of source material, editing software and even the fact I rarely play with video, the result was still quite pleasing. It’s nothing professional by all means, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. Anyway, here it is:

Here are a few photos I took while taking a walk in a park a few days ago. They turned out a tad surreal I thinks.

An old Zenit SLR-camera with a helios lense.

Earlier this autumn I dug up my old soviet Zenit slr-camera and bought a roll of black and white film. I actually have two Zenit bodies, but I wasn’t sure which one of them leaked light inside, so I was pretty much snapping photos just to get them developed so that I can see the technical results.

It turned out this was the faulty one (most photos from the top were also underexposed due to the apparently badly positioned mirror), so I’ll be using the other one next time. Here are some selected (untouched) photos. Feels refreshing to play around with old-fashioned film again.