Journal entries - April 2009
Having fun with maps
The subject of my “Mémoire”, the 60-page “Master Thesis” I have to write for university, is linked to European law, and I therefore use the europa.eu portal a lot (read: the EU institution websites and EUR-Lex were by far the websites I visited the most these past weeks).
The problem is, they all use text to get users to select their language. If it were a bilingual website, it would be easy. But there are 23 official languages in the EU, and so it takes time to figure out which string of text is “yours”.
The worst front page, in my opinion, is the Council’s homepage, which I find impossible to use under five seconds.
I therefore decided to try (during a small break) my hand at another system: maps.
The billionth download in the App Store
If you keep up with Apple-related news, you’re bound to know that Apple is approaching 1 billion downloads at the App Store, and will be giving 13.000 USD worth of gifts to whomever either downloads the billionth app, or sends a form right after the 999.999.999th app has been downloaded.
So, the question is: when will that be?
Turns out the counter can help us have a certain strategy.
iTunesque: Aquaffic for iTunes 8.1.1
Another day, another update of Aquaffic. Seems it’s all I do these days. At least, it means that Apple is updating iTunes regularly!
Anyway, if you use Aquaffic and don’t want to see the iTunes traffic lights, head over to the iTunesque page, or grab the Aquaffic updater directly here.
Action film music: should rap & metal be banned?
Yesterday, I braced myself to face a great intellectual challenge: I was going to watch “xXx: State of the Union”. I had read reviews, and was sure I wasn’t going to enjoy it as much as other action movies. Nevertheless, I watched it (even recorded it, as my brother wished me to do so, just in case it turned out to be good).
Well, let me spoil it, if you haven’t seen it yet: don’t watch it. Ice Cube acts really bad, and the dialogue is worse than most other action movies I’ve seen. At least, Steven Seagal would have made the lame dialogue sound philosophical.
What annoyed me the most, however, was the music: rap music pretty much all the time.
The statement was staring at me in the face: “rap music should never be used as a soundtrack”. Still, I had to be sure of my reasoning.