Then you have to consider that HTML5 gets mentioned in mainstream tech news, partly thanks to Flash issues with mobile devices or more specifically the Adobe vs Apple spat. I don’t recall any mainstream buzz about web technologies that came before it. We’ve turned a corner it seems.

HTML5 has already gotten more momentum than any previous web standard I’ve ever used. And CSS3 is right there with it. I’ve heard that HTML5 is “not going to happen” (unnamed Android developer I know) and I respectfully think he’s wrong. The snowball is already beginning to roll.

Apple's iPad is a touch of genius versus Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't either)

As seen within the masthead on Boing Boing.

fa dat reason alone we need to point out da glarin contradiction betweun eric’s idealized view of imperialism and reality. if one dares to criticize evun a ballin single tenet of eric’s ventures, one is promptly gangbanged as disdainful, frightful, cankered, or whateva epithet eric deems mostest appropriate, usually without much explanation. unlike im, i stand fa progression, not regression. so please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase bonein i once eard: “only a smoochin batty boy can believe dat da fingerfucking ideas of ‘freedom’ and ‘libertinism’ is siamese punanni sniffs.”

we must increase awareness and understandin of our similatiries and differences. we must compare, contrast, and identify da bones among different types of ethically bankrupt, plowed priggism. and we must raise several plows about mr. eric a “fuckface” peacock’s libidinous punanni sniffs dat is frequently jerkin from da drivel dat masquedares fa cukabillyurse on sucks topic. please join me in unclefuckin these lingo into our motherfuckin credo.

-unclefucks critic

Part three of an ongoing recursive auto-generated post. The first part is here and the second part is here.

All was fine with the same server software on an old Windows 2000 Server behind the same firewall. We’re talking about moving a DNS record and a few gigabytes of user inboxes here, not having to diagnose a completely new non-standard port.

As usual, no decent site exists for explaining just what port 4310 really is. Most search results are link bait or lead to useless sites. Note: I even consider Experts-Exchange useless.

One of these days I’m going to start an actually useful IT site or forum if this keeps up. Even Microsoft’s own Technet is riddled with 404′s and badly written content for most of the admittedly obscure errors I’ve run into over the years.

Anyway, port 4310 is for the “Mir-RT exchange service” which I assume means Exchange (the Microsoft email server). Makes sense until you consider that I’m not using Exchange at all. All third-party this time. Apparently that port had to be open on our firewall to get normal IMAP with SSL working on a Windows 2008r2 Server. If this is standard in any way nobody has it documented.

Until now.

My religion has taught me not to be afraid to call someone wrong when he does jerking, says something, wanks for fingerfucking, or engages in something that violates the values in which I believe. The plowing nitty-gritty of what I’m about to write is this: Mr. Eric “Motherfucker” A Peacock consumes, infests, and muff sniffs. He blows off the death and destruction of others. For that reason alone we need to point out the glaring contradiction between Eric’s idealized view of imperialism and reality.

If one dares to criticize even a balling single tenet of Eric’s ventures, one is promptly gangbanged as disdainful, frightful, cankered, or whatever epithet Eric deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Unlike him, I stand for progression, not regression. So please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase banging I once heard: “Only a smooching fool can believe that the fingerfucking ideas of ‘freedom’ and ‘libertinism’ are Siamese muff sniffs.” We must increase awareness and understanding of our similarities and differences. We must compare, contrast, and identify the bangs among different types of ethically bankrupt, plowed priggism. And we must raise several plows about Mr. Eric A “Fuckface” Peacock’s libidinous muff sniffs that are frequently jerking from the drivel that masquerades for discourse on sucks topic. Please join me in unclefucking these words into our motherfucking credo.

-unclefucks critic

This is the second part of an ongoing recursive auto-generated post. The first part is here: My Complaint About Eric Peacock, by Scott Pakin’s Automatic Complaint-letter Generator.

It’s easy:

1. Format the flash drive with Disk Utility making sure to select GUID from the advanced options. If your Flash drive is large enough, partitions are OK.
2. Insert your bootable DVD or CD disc.
3. Run SuperDuper and select your bootable volume as source with the Flash drive as destination and start the copy process
4. Profit!

That’s it. SuperDuper does exact sector copies, so everything should work out. I’ve done this with my Snow Leopard DVD-ROM as well as with a Mac Mini Server Snow Leopard Server DVD-ROM (the Mini Server has no DVD-ROM drive).

Not tested with DiskWarrior, but I’m keen to try that next given the slow boot time that DW discs have.

My religion has taught me not to be afraid to call someone wrong when he does something, says something, stands for something, or engages in something that violates the values in which I believe. The nitty-gritty of what I’m about to write is this: Mr. Eric A Peacock consumes, infests, and destroys. He lives off the death and destruction of others. For that reason alone we need to point out the glaring contradiction between Eric’s idealized view of imperialism and reality.

If one dares to criticize even a single tenet of Eric’s ventures, one is promptly condemned as disdainful, frightful, cankered, or whatever epithet Eric deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Unlike him, I stand for progression, not regression. So please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase something I once heard: “Only a fool can believe that the ideas of ‘freedom’ and ‘libertinism’ are Siamese twins.” We must increase awareness and understanding of our similarities and differences. We must compare, contrast, and identify the connections among different types of ethically bankrupt, unprincipled priggism. And we must raise several issues about Mr. Eric A Peacock’s libidinous homilies that are frequently missing from the drivel that masquerades for discourse on this topic. Please join me in incorporating these words into our living credo.

-anonymous critic

I just cleaned up hundreds of 404′s to archived content and external sources that have, shall we say, passed on.

Yes, you can still view my previous outdated and embarrassing personal web sites. And you always will be able to. Last year I moved the archives to its own subdomain at archive.opaquedream.com. Boy did that help with organizing things and also preventing late night mistakes causing havoc.

The biggest hassle was moving WordPress. The static sites aren’t fun but fixing dead WordPress links in a SQL database is another ballgame entirely.

And I’m a bad boy. I had bad links going back two site moves, meaning years of Google Bot abuse. It feels good to finally have things up-to-date (mostly).

More to come, if you’re paying attention…

I’m not talking about product-specific gift certificates like iTunes cards, Home Depot, Amazon Gift Cards, etc. I’m talking about generic Visa/MasterCard cash cards like the Vanilla Visa or others.

Why the hate? These cards have limited use and are frustrating to spend. Often the cards can only be used for a limited time before fees are charged and God help you if you have to deal with customer service for anything.

Also, the giver and recipient of these cards lose some of principal when the card is used for stuff like online shopping (bet you’ve never done that). So that $100 (or whatever) you gave someone is probably going to be less and you paid a fee to buy the card in some cases.

You’d be better off writing a check or maybe even using PayPal to shoot money to someone. And cash is sometimes just more personal though I know you did the gift card because it was convenient. Convenient for you, not your recipient.

Gift cards are highly profitable to credit card companies, etc. because most people leave small or even large balances on them because it’s such a hassle to keep track of them. I’ve been there and learned this the hard way and have more or less become a master of squeezing out every last penny I can – and you can’t get it all.

Guess what? It’s a real hassle and not worth it for the few dollars that end up left on the card after trying to spend it. And remember you can’t use these things when a PIN is needed, so for example gas has to be paid for inside, not at the pump. Basically any transaction you do without a savvy real living breathing cashier is going to bring the pain.

The best solution if you get a gift card is to blow it all in one purchase. Do it as soon as you can and get the card out of your life. The instructions on many of the cards I get actually say this. This might be best done anywhere that deals with paying with two cards (not so much online). Often that means dealing with a person and explaining that you need two charges for X amounts.

My recent solution to this has simply been to convert whatever card I get to an Amazon Gift Card. That means I can buy whatever online and Amazon tends to sell rather a lot.

If you want to do this read the following carefully, because it’s trickier than you think.

1. First, register your gift card at the bank so you can have your name attached to it (required). Info about this should be on the card somewhere.
2. Then head over to Amazon.com and click their gift card tab. Go for the instant emailed option because you’re a savvy wired dude on the Internets who knows where your towel is at all times.
3. Plug in your card info. No PIN is needed but get the name.
4. Most important: subtract $1 from the total amount of your card and put that in the gift amount. If you fail to do this the transaction will fail and you’ll lose a dollar from the principal (perhaps recoverable via customer service, but probably not worth it).
5. Submit the gift card purchase and wait about five minutes for Amazon to email you a handy-dandy code that can be applied to any purchase you make at their site (though some restrictions may apply for third-party sellers).

Congratulations! You’ve lost a dollar, but you’re done and free of the cursed gift card and can buy that new BBQ, PS3 or whatever using a credit card mixed with your gift card number!

Like it’s older and smaller brothers, the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad doesn’t allow the Flash plug-in to run within the included Mobile Safari browser. This was a hot topic with the iPhone, but it’s even hotter with the iPad largely because Steve Jobs hailed the device as the “best browsing experience” and also because more folks seem to understand that the Flash overhead wouldn’t make sense on the iPhone; the iPad is a faster beast thanks to Apple’s new A4 chip after all.

The amount of arguing and discussion on this is still snowballing as I write this, but in summary here are the better posts that have come up so far:

The iPad provides the ultimate browsing experience? – a visual point well-made from Adobe Flash Evangelist Lee Brimelow.

Sympathy For The Devil – Adobe Photoshop PM John Nack’s excellent post on the subject

Adobe, Apple, Flash and Flash on iPhone Political Calculus by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber

Flash Headed The Way of Director – by Michael Pinto

What If Flash Were An Open Standard – John Gruber again

Adobe isn’t in the Flash business, again by John Nack (as a rebuttal)

The Withering Away of Flash – by Nathan Peretic

Flash, iPad, and Standards – by Jeffrey Zeldman

And finally, but not least check out these bonus post from Steven Frank, who needs to talk to you about computers and also The Failure of Empathy by Mike Monteiro.

I personally believe that no matter what happens to Flash, we are seeing the turbulence that comes with the next evolution of personal computing (hence my link to Steven Frank’s article).

Flash may become a casualty. It may not. Folks will have to move on and learn new skills. As Michael Pinto points out, it could fizzle the way Director/Shockwave did. Boy, do I remember the loads of Shockwave developers in college, many of whom did indeed go on to working with the stuff professionally, for a little while. It went downhill fast once Flash really took hold. Director (and therefore Shockwave) was really huge. I don’t think anyone expected it to fizzle.

What could replace Flash? Web standards (specifically CSS3 and Javascript served with HTML5). Probably not Silverlight, Microsoft’s “Flash Killer” that nobody really asked for. Although Silverlight has DRM support that Flash couldn’t handle, so Netflix streams their videos through it.

Probably not another plug-in either. I really do think we’re moving past that.

My point is that this huge explosion of naysayers and pundits is proof that something big is going to happen. We’ll look back on this years from now and hopefully laugh.

Update: see also this more technical but interesting post over at Diary of an X264 Developer.

The always excellent A List Apart published what has so far been an excellent summary of the debate so far: Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web.