Kireatic

Or is it Miku Append. I really hope not.

As anyone who knows me will be aware, I have a certain fondness for Miku Hatsune, the virtual singer. For those that don’t know, Miku is a synthesized singer made using the Vocaloid software. She looks like this:

And she sounds like a person singing through a robotic filter. It’s a very unique voice, and some of the songs (and videos) are lovely. I’ve posted one on here before.

Recently, the company who makes the Vocaloid software updated Miku’s vocal libraries, in a release called Miku Append. Miku now looks like this:And she sounds…well, getting close to human. Not quite, but it’s close.

The problem is, she doesn’t sound like herself any more. I’m yet to listen to the full range of Append songs, as people are still only slowly making new ones (thus why this post is a few months after they updated her libraries, I can’t talk about things I haven’t seen or heard), but what I have heard is…while they are good songs, they aren’t all recognizable as Miku singing anymore. And that’s actually really sad.

I hope people continue to make songs with her original library, or one of the Append libraries can be used to sound closer to her original voice.

That and I pray that’s not actually her new look. Seriously. Let it just be a one off for this expansion. Let the internet and the company forget about it. Miku, you look trashy. Put your skirt back on, and cover up your navel. You are in public.

And please still be Miku Hatsune. Miku Append may as well actually be a different singer entirely.

/end

So, the Apple iPad has been announced, as expected. They really can’t keep a secret, can they, but I suppose that’s the point.

Thing is, Apple, I’m just going to say this. This is starting to look like you guys are running out of ideas. The iPod was brilliant, albeit technically a hard drive with a screen, and the majority of its subsequent incarnations pretty good as well. Your iMac’s are good computers, although the non-upgradable nature of them is a pain. The iPhone, took a few tries (and got you a ton of money in the process), and while not actually very good in comparison to other phones, especially not now Android is out there, the sheer hype of the iPhone opened up the industry to the power of mobile computing.

The iPad, however, is pointless. Before I go any further, I’m just going to show you all two things.
First of all, Wozinak’s statement that for actual working tasks, the iPhone is better than the iPad. The iPad is apparantly a ‘media portal’. So…an e-reader that does colour video. Well, so’s the iPhone, just a smaller screen.
Second of all, this is a graphic tablet. A graphic tablet is a screen you can touch for your computer. There are lots of models, most use stylus’ for drawing, for design work, but many can also just use standard fingers. All Apple has REALLY done is pack the computer into the screen, which is hardly ground-breaking. After all, Microsoft did it first. And they did it years ago.

I’ve been perusing the specifications and features of the iPad, and, ignoring the hype and marketing in the features section of the Apple website went to their Tech Specs page. Where I had to again ignore all the hype and marketing, so I went over to Wikipedia, and watched the Keynote.

A 25 cm display is pretty small. Get a standard ruler. Now lose 5 cm. That’s the display diagonally. But that’s okay, it’s all about the interface in the end, right? The screen itself is pretty good, the technology allows for a wide viewing angle. So all the bloody showoffs can show off.

A 1 GHz processor? Uh…right. Less said about this the better, but…this isn’t a computer, it’s a netbook. It’s not even a decent netbook, it doesn’t have a keyboard – I know you can purchase one for extra, but…you shouldn’t have to. And I read this hilarious comment about how keyboards were out and how you had to adapt to touch-screens, and how your grand-kids would be laughing that we used keyboards, but to these people I say: Tactile feedback, and the ability to type with my eyes shut even if someone bumps into my computer. Until we get touchscreens that change how they feel beneath our fingers, there’s no excuse for a computer larger than the palm of my hand to not have a full QWERTY keyboard. But back to the processing power – that’s a wee bit low for a ‘media portal’.

1024×768 resolution. Hang on a tic, did Apple say this could play HD?

The large, high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching any kind of video: from HD movies and TV shows to podcasts and music videos.

That’s interesting. High-res screen can play High-def movies. Technically true, but they aren’t really HD any more now, are they? 720i doesn’t count. Oh, and it outputs to TV’s at the standard 576i/p and 480i/p. If you count that as HD, you have a Wii and a composite cable to go with it. Wait, I have a Wii and it’s composite cable. Nonetheless.

There are three choices of storage, 16, 32 or 64 GB. All flash storage. Again with the flash? Well, there will be no annoying buzzing, and fast load times, but OH MAN will that be pushing Apple’s already high price tagging up higher. Let’s check this, shaalll weee?

Model	16 GB	32 GB	64 GB
iPad Wi-Fi	$499	$599	$699
iPad Wi-Fi + 3G	$629	$729	$829

Ouch. Oh, yes the Wi-Fi. Essential. The 3G? Useful, but…another tie in to AT&T? On silly-expensive rates? What is this, a large version of the iPhone? Oh, wait…

Oh, yes and where’s the camera apple? Going to release it as a new model next year? Bastards.

Oh, and:

• No USB/Firewire ports
• No multitasking ability (bet you it’ll kill the battery)
• No Flash support

And my personal favourite; the iPad is locked down the same way the iPhone and iPod Touches are – you can’t just install applications, they have to go via the App Store. That means no Skype, by the way. And no GUI customization.

By the way, if you were thinking of getting one, have a look at the Dell Latitude XT2, or the Eee T91. Hell, just type “Touchscreen Laptop” into Google.

Better luck next time, Apple?

As some of you may well know, I am a web-based coder, as I style my job description. Translated, this entails both the functional bit of websites, the stuff that makes it work, and the pretty bit, the templates, as well as databases and a smattering of other technologies to compliment the two.

This blog isn’t using one of my designs – I rather like this one, and I’m too lazy to code one for myself, where I neither get paid nor recognized for my efforts – but my most recent piece of WordPress templating is the new website for Welcome to Flavour Country, a gaming clan. I’ve been coding the site as if it was being constructed from the ground up, then inserting WordPress functions to give it functionality. When I design a website from scratch in this fashion, I create a mockup in Photoshop first before coding the CSS to match it pixel to pixel. However, it is at this stage you reach the bane of any web designers life. What happens on the users browser.

The main browsers currently in use are:

What I call IE-Current, the semi-autoupdating version of Internet Explorer which is basically IE7+. Saves me remembering it’s version number.

Firefox

Safari

Chrome

Opera

and IE6.

Each of these browsers, for the most part, has it’s own quirks in the way they render CSS, which is to be expected, and for many things, fine. For example, all of the above render text – standard text, fully defined using CSS with as many parameters as possible – slightly differently. So, you don’t expect text to be an exact science, fine. But what about containers?

Now this is where it gets annoying. WtFC, for example, is 1280px wide, this being the resolution of the majority of the sites visitors, with a minority with higher resolutions, and less than 1% of traffic with smaller – and that’s mobile browsers mostly, and will get it’s own design later on. So, the container needs to be set to “width: 1280px”. Technically yes, so any browser which is sitting in a window of 1280px or wider will not have horizonal scrollers.
IE-Current, Firefox and Opera all do. I can tell you why, it involves the sidebars and their positioning and padding (no, margins aren’t an option). With the containers overflow hidden however, this should be ignored…and yet the scrollers persist. Currently there’s a temporary fix involving max-width, but this shouldn’t be the case. Width is an ABSOLUTE, especially when defined in pixels and applied to a DIV element. The quirks of a browser shouldn’t cause that. Now, it’s caused by what is an overlap of CSS rules, but the container should override all underlying rules with the correct overflow setting. However, only Chrome and Safari do this correctly. Inexcusable, the rest of you. This leads to much browser jumping just to get the basics right – and I haven’t started on the next issue yet.

Say hello to @font-face. Most CSS coding applications won’t recognize this tag – and with fair reason, it’s a CSS3 tag. So, I didn’t expect many browsers to support it. What it does is downloads a custom font to the user, allowing you to use any font you can legally distribute on your website, a long desired feature of the web. Much to my surprise, all current browsers supported custom fonts, even IE-6! However, here’s the rub. While Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera supported font-face, IE in all it’s incarnations wanted a custom browser only tag, and for the font to be in a propretery Microsoft format. Hahahahano, Microsoft. This was annoying, so I opted to set Veranda, the closest web-font to what the other browsers would be seeing, as IE’s font. Annoying.

But IE wasn’t the only one doing this ‘custom tag’. Another CSS3 feature is border-radius. It’s wonderful, it allows for rounded corners without images. But it only works in Chrome when tested. A further 3 additional tags gave functionality to most of the other browsers, except IE-Current and 6, who don’t “do” rounded corners.

This repeats itself a number of times, including numerous instances of CSS2 tags (supposedly the current standard). I appreciate the need to create tags when the don’t exist, guys. But firstly, some inter-browser cooperation would be good. Designers won’t use a tag that only works in ONE browser. Secondly, when the tag DOES appear in CSS, support it. Don’t ignore it because you have your own.

And IE-Current users, change browser. It’s still got a few security holes, and it doesn’t render right SO often. Far to many hacks required, I’m just not supporting IE on a few of my sites, WtFC included.

IE6 users, get off the Internet, now.

Well done Google for Chrome. Almost there. Just sort out extensions, and keep on keeping up with CSS3.

Same to you Apple for Safari, but less ninja’ing it onto PC’s please.

Mozilla, you need to fix your tags. Firefox is a great browser, but it needs a clean out. Getting some depreciated tags in there now (hint rounded corners hint).

Opera, advertise some more.

Microsoft. Bugger off!