Why 60% of Internet Users Will Not See My Site

I have made a decision. I have thought about it quite a bit. It has gone back and forth in my mind, back and forth until I begin to scream at it to shut up and please go away, I’m trying to sleep here. I’m trying to read. I’m trying to play guitar. It is a penetrating decision that could prove to be fatal to everything I want to do.

But it’s a decision I find myself needing to make.

People always find things that they simply cannot stand for. They will do whatever they can to try to demolish whatever it is that they can’t stand for. This decision is a reflection of that, of my views. It is in no way the size of decision that even echoes the magnitude of importance that other movements have. It doesn’t even echo the importance of things in my life, if you know what I mean. It isn’t as important as a boycott of Monsanto, or Coca-Cola.

You could say it’s trivial. And it may be. But it’s important to me, and I feel I can do a little bit to stop it, the same way stopping buying GMO foods made by Monsanto or Coca-Cola products would do a little bit to stop them.

This is why, starting with the next upgrade to sttimmypro.com (STPv3), I will no longer support the browser Internet Explorer, which constitutes about 60.7% of all internet users (via pingdom.com, click for article). What does this mean? It means that if you try to view this website in any version of Internet Explorer, you will get a page that asks you to upgrade to Firefox or Chrome. There will also, most likely, be a link to this post, on a blank white page with no style information. That way it will work in IE.

But why? Why would I do this?

Because Internet Explorer is a terrible browser. There is no getting around it. It crashes, it’s insecure, and the one that takes the cake — or no, the one that won’t fess up and gets the whole class stuck in the room for an extra five minutes past the bell: it doesn’t follow w3C standards.

Sure, IE8 is far, far better at standards than IE7 or IE6.

But the deal is, the developers ignore important aspects of internet standards, and try to make their own set. Due to the large number of internet users who use the browser, web developers — the people who make the websites you visit — are forced to throw dozens of workarounds into their code just so that their site will display properly in the one browser that it won’t work in.

Think of it like this.

Let’s say there’s a large group of car designers from a bunch of different companies that gets together and agrees on standards for their car designs. And they agree that the cup holders in their cars would have a diameter of two and a half inches when at their full size, at a minimum. Every company involved at this meeting adopts the policy.

So in the following years, every car on the market from companies all around the world have these cup holders that have a diameter of two and a half inches.

That is, except for one certain company. And it’s the company that has the most people who drive their cars. Their cars have cup holders with a two inch diameter.

Meanwhile, the people who make cups for fast food restaurants have to either decrease the diameter of the base of their cups a half inch to comply with the fake standard that the one company feels entitled to build into its carsl, or continue making cups that won’t fit in 60% or so of ever car ever made. While the standard-size cups fit in every other car you could possibly buy, the cupmakers still feel forced to make their cups a different size because the majority of people who drive cars drive that company’s brand of car.

Do you understand?

Internet Explorer is the asshole car company. Web developers are the cupmakers. The W3C standards are the standards the association of car designers made about cupholder size.

And so, from now on I will not make my cups a half inch smaller or whatever (don’t make a dick joke don’t make a dick joke don’t make a dick joke). From now on I will only comply with normal internet standards, not Internet Explorer standards. Because if I make my cups smaller, it is literally an act of support for a browser that doesn’t fit to standards. I don’t believe you can support internet standards and support Internet Explorer at the same time.

Which is back to the main point: starting with the next upgrade to this website and continuing until Internet Explorer is fully standards compliant, sttimmypro.com will not be visible in the browser.

So if you haven’t, upgrade to Firefox. Seriously.

Smart button (I was like, “Well that’s ironic. The button supporting Firefox works in every browser but Firefox.” But it turned out someone installed adblock on this computer. Stupid adblock.)

Also, semirelatedly, the IE Car would stop working every six seconds and the bottom would fall out every time you hit a bump.

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Meaningless Pretentious Thoughts on Storytelling

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling lately. Probably in my frantic rush to complete scripts for about fifty different videos recently, a little circuit was closed in my brain that told me to start thinking about what I was doing.

As you know if you read this blog, I happen to have a full website dedicated to storytelling. It’s called Inside The Monster’s Dollhouse: The Depravity of Innocence and I post little bits, things I write, every once in awhile. None of it is really particularly exciting. Everything short and ends before it seems to even start, which is what she said. But it’s not about that, really, honestly. It’s about a human need to tell stories. I think we all have it and just express it in different ways.

I write narratives that have allegories and subtexts that no one picks up on, and I try to force-feed them to people. Other people write things and hide them away, never wanting the world to see what they have created. Some people gossip at every turn, whenever they have a chance. Some people write poetry about how they’re feeling. Some people have their bodies tattooed to the point where you can’t tell what fleshtone they’d naturally have.

Everything we do is a form of storytelling. We sing, we dance, we sit motionless at the bottom of a pool. We tell stories. We listen to stories.

What makes a good story?

Well, the truth of the matter, just like the question “what is love” and “where do babies come from”, can never be explained. Because it changes from person to person. And that is what makes stories, and love, and fertilization so amazing. They are constants that are variable.

A story can be fantastic to me but shitty to you, etc. Love can mean one thing to somebody but another to somebody else. Babies can come from any variety of containers and substances put together in mad scientist ways and implanted in any avian found on the beach (dead or alive! although, dead’s more likely anymore considering the gulf coast disaster).

I never really payed attention in health class.

Who knows the point I’m trying to make…

Storytelling is humans trying to share something that they can see in their mind with somebody who can’t, but hopefully will. If it’s a good story.

Stories are the most important thing in the world, and we will never stop telling them. Humans or me.

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Confessions of a Teenage Grown-up

Note from Ben: Welcome the latest contributor to St. Timmy Pro, Edward “Sora” Ortega. Is he the most talented of us all? Only time will tell. (But I think the answer’s probably yes.)

Screw permits.

Seriously.

They make those stupid tests to give you a god damn aneurysm. Its like you’re at the computer and its all “blah blah blah” and you’re like “oh, A” and it’s all “WRONG INCORRECT YOU’RE STUPID GTFO MY DMV” and you cant help but cry as you fail the test slowly yet surely. The damn test is designed specifically for the person. See, me, I get more nervous as I get things wrong. And the test was all like “WHATS THIS SIGN MEAN” and I’m like “YIELD” and it’s all “NOPE WRONG NOW YOU’RE GETTING SCARED HUH? HOW ABOUT THIS! IF YOU’RE ON A FOUR WAY INTERSECTION AND THERE’S ONE PERSON IN EACH LEFT HAND LANE AND SUPERMAN IS FLYING OVER THE CITY FIGHTING A METEOR, WHO HAS THE RIGHT OF WAY!!?!?!” AND I’M ALL “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD”

Superman, of course.

BUT NOPE ITS THAT BLIND GUY THAT THEY DON’T EVEN TELL YOU ABOUT WHO RETRACTS HIS GOD DAMN CANE AND YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT MEAN “OH I’M STUPID AND WANTED YOU TO THINK I’M CROSSING ITS OK THOUGH GO” AND YOU’RE ALL *WAITING FOR HIM TO CROSS* LIKE A JACKASS AND THE TEST IS ALL “HAHA YOU’RE STUPID NOW I’M GONNA BUST OUT SOME CALCULUS ON YOUR WHITE ASS.

I hate permit tests.

Did I mention I got my permit?

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On Black

I do not make racist comments people! I swear! “Spread the ashes of the colors” is quite clearly an Arcade Fire lyric from their song about neighborhoods and snow. You probably know the band The Arcade Fire from their hit song about narcolepsy called “The Where the Wild Things Are Trailer Song”. Or something.

Wake Up – Arcade Fire

Anyway, awhile ago I was uploading some pictuahs (as Alfred Hitchcock would say it) to my flickr, and I was like, “Dang, these would look so much better on a black background”.

And I knew I had seen a service that had done something like that, where you just connect it with your flickr account, it does some magic, and your pictures show up on a black background, giving you a pretty link to pass around.

So I packed my things — all the essentials –  and went on an expedition about the world wide web to attempt to find this service. I found one, but it refused to connect to my flickr account because my username is different than my flickr.com/skjf name (because I was an idiot awhile ago, long story). So that was out. I found another that seemed promising, but it wouldn’t load the second page.

I think I only found two things, and by this point the food I had packed before I set out was beginning to seem a rather small amount. I’d either have to begin hunting and gathering, or I’d need to begin the journey back home.

I did one last search around the area for any other options, but there were none to be found and I went on my way.

When I returned to the haven of my home, I decided hey, how hard could it be to make something like this. It’s just an image over a black background… but I didn’t to handcode a new page each time I wanted my majesties to be beheld, for the same reason I use twitpic and images hack us sometimes rather than use my gazillions of gigabytes of storage here on St. Timmy Pro: because I was lazy.

So, of course, to satisfy my laziness, I set about writing a HIGHLY COMPLEX SCRIPT to do shizz for me.

Viola. The string instrument:

ON BLACK.

You’re welcome, internet.

(oh and, here’s, some, examples of it in action.)

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Keyboards

Dear Universe,

Keyboards are awesome. Keyboards are really freaking awesome.

Have you ever used a computer keyboard before? Because if you haven’t then you really, really should. Because no matter how much you use a keyboard, all it does is get more awesome. The keyboard market operates the same way as the housing market, in that the longer you have a keyboard, the more it’s worth. Yeah, that’s right, keyboards actually appreciate in value. Crazy, huh? I bet you had no idea.

It’s also like the housing market in that people buy them, modify them to be better and then sell them for a profit. It’s called flipping. The thing is, when the housing keyboard market became a catastrophe, everyone stopped buying them, causing the people trying to flip said keyboard to suffer a devastating loss.

There’s a keyboard next door that these people have been trying nonstop for the last, like, three years to sell. They keep coming back again and again and adding to the keyboard, so there’s been, like, nonstop construction. It’s kind of annoying, really. Constant… stuff… and noise, etc etc.

I think now they’re renting it out… one of our neighbors said they were renting it in parts… so the current inhabitants get the bottom half numpad or something, and they’re trying to lease off the rest.

ANYWAY. The point I’m trying to make is that computer keyboards are awesome, and don’t even get me started on music keyboards… because they’re rad too. Or something.

I don’t even know, you guys. I think I’ve gone crazy.

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