Today I heard about OEmbed, my first reaction was to implement it, of course ! The idea is to define a way of providing a page preview. Say you post a link on a microblog or something, the said microblog or something can visit the link, figure out what the resource is to obtain the preview, or OEmbed version (embeddable), and then chose to display that preview. Neat.

For it to work you need what they call an OEmbed provider, A provider is another service that will return the summary (JSON, XML or HTML). Apparently the client could specify the format they want the reply in.. To get the provider it seems there is a list of "well known providers" !! This means you take your link and ask the provider (another url) to transform your initial link into an OEmbed formatted something.... . FAIL !!11!!1.

Another thing is discovery, now this is a good thing, obviously, to put in the header a link to get the OEmbed version of the page, like RSS maybe ? The stupid part is that it requires that the link contains a url GET parameter, that supposes that instead of just providing a link to a OEmbed happy version of the page you MUST provide a "OEmbed provider link" that will take the URL of the page you are visiting, parse it and.. . BROKEN.

Why can't it just be an alternate link ?

Of course there are 3rd party providers now, and that is exactly what we don't need... It's so simple to generate a JSON or XML file that why would anyone ever think of a 3rd party web site whose role it would be to scrape your site to then provide a.. .OMG BROKEN.

As the idea is good but the implementation sucks why not simplify it, lets say we either use HEAD, like Jared Hanson and Vitorio Miliano pointed out in May 2008, or just use an alternate link a la RSS feed. If it's simple and easy for everyone to implement it will work.

Everybody loves Firefox, they are your friends, they are the "resistance", the alternative.. . the Free browser and all that crap. Yet, they somehow have started to annoy me to a point where I almost considered using Google Chrome... heck, I might just. :] (kidding!)

Here are just a couple of #$!%U*&ing things that annoyed me today..

Right Click -> New Tab: Gone

I'm not alone here, there are others annoyed by this as well. Please click on "I have this problem too" (if applicable).

Why remove such a simple ergonomically correct menu item ? People used it, they just broke it. (You can install a plugin that includes that functionality).

64bit ? But You Have to Look for it

Nowadays many computers have 64bit processors, so you can often use 64bit operating systems and enjoy 64bit programs. Cool. Some programs are not available in 64bit mode, that's fine but Firefox is available in 64bits since 4.0 .. However, you cannot easily find it. I've even found some tips on how to get the Firefox to run using ia32-libs, libraries to run 32bit programs on 64bit platforms !!

Funny thing is, while clicking through the "Need Download Help" button I found myself searching for 64 bit Firefox, the first result is "Uninstalling Firefox".

Anyway, if you still don't hate Firefox (or, like me, it's the browser you hate the least), you can get your 64 bit version from the Mozilla FTP site.. (of course this link was found somewhere on some forum or something... maybe some other rant).

This sink's design is broken in at least 2 ways.

This sink was installed only a few months ago in a high tech low spec building, yet the hot and cold water are distributed in 2 separate faucets. In the year 2011 you still have to chose between burning or freezing your hands every time you wash. Whoever designed this obviously isn't big on post-toilet hygiene.

The other issue, again if you use such a device, is the room left for you to maneuver your hands while washing.. . Actually, just trying to collect water is difficult, you find yourself constantly hitting the back of the sink with your hands.