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For US Life on Mars fans, hop over to the official page at abc.go.com/primetime/lifeonmars/index for a walk-through of the American Sam Tyler apartment set, set in the lower east side of New York City. It looks the part and has that depressing feel as the original. Another little touch that they have got right second time around.
[Cross-posted] After hearing about Google Chrome on PBS today, I decided to give it a go. Ever since Netscape messed up Navigator 4·7’s successor, I had been looking for an alternative. I switched to IE5 around that time, and haven’t really switched back from the Microsoft engines. Maxthon—the browser developed by freedom-loving Chinese on the mainland—has been my browser of choice, because it loads the IE engine without all the extra add-ons, in the same way Firefox loads the Gecko engine.
My main objection to Netscape, and Firefox, was that after 4·7, it has taken a retrograde step when it comes to Latin typography. Simple things such as quotation marks and ligatures can show up in a different typeface, depending on settings. Certainly on all three of the computers in this office, ligatures do not show properly on Firefox and if you are typosensitive like me, then it’s not really an option to see a typeface change every few lines.
Google Chrome loads up pretty much like Firefox, with the same linespacing and paragraph indents, when I go to either this blog or to Lucire. Feeding in this blog entry using Chrome, it shows the text in Courier, which Firefox does on this system. Both these things I can live with. And the good news: the ligatures work! Finally, someone invented a non-IE browser that can cope with ligatures and quotation marks, bringing us back to where Netscape was in 1999. Good on you, software boffins: it only took you nine years.
Speed-wise, it is slower than Maxthon, so that is the first black mark against Chrome—why put up with a slower browser?
The user interface is nice. I know I am using Chrome, so there is no point seeing the program name in large letters across the top. The minimalist layout is good and it’s Chrome’s strength.
There is no reassuring noise when clicking on a link, as IE has, but it’s a small change I am willing to make.
Because of Chrome’s simplicity, however, there is no way to set default fonts, so if I don’t want to see Courier, then that is too bad. It’s a second black mark as far as I am concerned.
It also allows me to copy an image’s URL without my having to browse the image properties. Excellent: it’s the only browser I know of that has this simple option.
The search function is quite good. Google has been clever enough to blend the search box and location bar into one—while others have done this before, even Firefox has maintained a separate search box to the side. Google Chrome’s designers have seen fit to eliminate the separate search box altogether.
However, every time I search, I am taken to google.co.nz. I never asked Chrome to default to the New Zealand version of its engine. Even when setting manually the search engine as google.com in its options, Chrome will not oblige. Even when I use the New Zealand version, go to the home page and click on ‘Go to google.com’ (the technique one normally uses to tell Google which search engine one prefers), future searches still go to google.co.nz.
I have always believed it should be my choice to use over which version of Google I should use and other browsers respect this. Even Google itself respects this if I were surfing as a regular person to its site using any other browser; and its toolbar, too, respects whatever choice one makes.
This is not a lack of patriotism but simple business: because most of my online publications’ readers are American, it is important for me to see what they might be seeing through Google.
The only way to stop Chrome from redirecting me to its own choice of search engine, ironically, is to use a non-Google option, e.g. feeding in Yahoo! Search as the default.
I had the same objection once upon a time to the Ford Motor Company, which forced users to the local site depending on where they were surfing from. So a New Zealand Mustang fan would be stuffed: ford.com would redirect to ford.co.nz, and you can read up on the latest Laser hatch. Ford, thankfully, abandoned this technique.
So most of Chrome’s little problems I can live with, but the speed and absence of typographic control will prevent me from fully switching for now, though I would be prepared to use it every now and then. But the biggest problem with Chrome is the way it searches Google—and that seals the deal.
How strange that the worst feature about a browser developed by a search engine company (or what used to be) is its search. In fact, it would steer one away from Google to another search engine; and in this respect its rivals are actually more supportive of Google!
Therefore, I won’t be adopting Chrome as my browser of choice, at least not till it goes out of beta.
PS.: The search bug disappears through closing Chrome and reopening it. But Chrome hasn’t won me over yet. Other issues discovered since I wrote the above include: no Autofill as the Google Toolbar has; and Chrome’s spellcheck identifying errors in words with smart apostrophes (e.g. hasn’t in this sentence; it also thinks that spellcheck and google in this paragraph are misspelt—the latter is also ironic).
It also fails to refresh the page, despite the Refresh button at the top of the browser. Even holding it down with the Control key makes no difference.
Now that the google.com matter has been fixed, I’ll give it a few more days to see if I change my mind. I am still tempted to wait till it goes out of beta.—JY
Dear friends, we cordially invite you to join in into the opening venue of the exhibition housing in Vienna. Curated by Wolfgang Förster, Gabriele Kaiser, Dietmar Steiner and Alexandra the show was commissioned by the Az W (the Architecture center Vienna) and designed by SPAN, Matias del Campo and Sandra Manninger. The show encompasses the famous era of the red Vienna in the 20ies, the craddle of the high qualitz subsidized living in Vienna, ultimatelz focising on the projects of the last decade. The exhibition system consists of 32 Pods that can be arranged in various ways in order to enhance the flexibility of this travelling exhibition.
Some words for the opening by: Dr. Michael Ludwig & Prof. Liliana Padovani.
Opening Venue: Friday, 12.9.2008, 2.30 pm
Hours: Mo – Fr 9.00 am – 07.00 pm
Finissage: Friday, 03.10.2008, 07.00 pm
Facoltà di Pianificazione del territorio and Dipartimento di Pianificazione (Fakultät für Raumplanung und Abteilung für Planung)
Università di Venezia, IUAV
Ca’ Tron
S. Croce 1957
30135 Venice, Italy
Here is a little sneak preview....
If you want to know more about the design concept and the fabrication, click here or here
This was a nice surprise as I came up the escalator at the (former) BNZ Centre: a near-new Lotus Elise, very rare in these parts. As you can see, Nissan Cefiros (sold as the Maxima here) and Opel Astra Gs (Holden here) are on our streets and are more commonplace.
And as New Zealand does not salt its roads in the winter, there are some surprising survivors, such as this reminder that Britain once had a great, indigenous motor industry:
I remember my father had a colleague, Colin MacKintosh, who owned a blue Wolseley 1300. On a trip to Palmerston North I threw up in it. Ah, childhood memories. This ADO16 is a mere 1100. I was six at the time and that was the story about how I got my yellow tracksuit … in another city, needing new clothes that didn’t smell of vomit.
It was the usual carsickness, but I feel sure that the smell of heated British vinyl had a part to play in triggering it. Despite these cars’ popularity, I don’t think I ever sat in the back of an ADO16 ever since!
When I was a kid, those predicting the future in sci-fi would say we would drive around in tiny cars resembling boxes and they would run on electricity come 2000. The former was right, the latter was not.
The Mercedes-Benz A-Klasse was the first sign the 21st century was unfolding. Then we had the Smart. Neither are uncommon here, but there are way more of them in Europe. Another car we see a bit of is the Mitsubishi I, which is kind of a Japanese version of the Mini Spiritual show car from the 1990s.
It all feels a bit spooky to me some days, like I’m on the set of Thunderbirds or something.
The last time they made a car called the Chevrolet Cruze, it was a rebodied Suzuki Wagon R:
This time, it seems Chevrolet Cruze will be the export name for the Daewoo Lacetti replacement in Europe and the US. It doesn’t look very American at all—as usual, it looks Korean, which it is. The good news is that the platform is shared with the next Opel Astra and engineered in Rüsselsheim.
Speaking of dodgy Daewoos, I saw, in the metal, the new Holden Barina—Daewoo Gentra X in its country of origin—and the transformation is not very pleasant. The grille does not have a centralized Holden lion badge: it’s placed higher within the grille. Here’s the original Korean model as on Autocade for reference:
I imagine that New Zealand is not going to be far behind Australia, given that the news reports of the facelifted Barina only appeared in the Aussie press earlier this week. Admittedly, I thought I was looking at a Škoda Fabia at first glance, then I had the misfortune of seeing the rest of it. I just hope, for buyers’ sake, this car is safer than the old Kalos.
The new Ford Ka, based on the Fiat 500 platform, looks good, but the other débutante, the Renault Symbol, looks like a Clio that swallowed a Nissan Tiida. I imagine the looks are down to the fact that in some countries, it will be sold as a Nissan, replacing the Platina.
