ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • 48 hours with Apple Music

    48 hours with Apple Music

    in ,

    I’ve been a subscriber to rdio for a couple of years, streaming music isn’t anything new to me. So I was very interested to check out Apple’s implementation.

    Here’s my take after using it for the last couple of days.

    The Good

    Playlists:
    The curated playlists are feature I didn’t expect to use much, but I’ve spent more time listening to these than anything else. Apple is doing a great job of both selecting playlists I’d be interested in based on my music preferences and selecting tracks.

    The only weird thing is that the playlist seem to skew heavily towards older music. I’m not sure why this might be, I don’t typically listen to a lot of old music.

    Library:
    The selection of available artist and albums is comparable to rdio. I have yet to look for something I couldn’t find.

    Streaming Tech:
    Apple is doing a much better job of varying the stream based on available bandwidth. We have a few mobile internet dead zones near our place that always trip up rdio, Apple Music has not had any problems in these zones.

    Apple Music also seems to be doing a good job of buffering. There is no delay in switching to the next track.

    The Bad

    Desktop Client Does Not Work: 
    I can’t get Apple Music to work in iTunes, period.

    App UI:
    Rdio has a really great mobile app. Apple, not so much. I find it really confusing and hard to use. More on this in a future post (maybe).

    Beats 1:
    Beats1 plays the ultra poppy music you’d expect a beats wearing teenager to eat up. It’s not for me.

  • How To: Tweak Disqus CSS for Twenty Fifteen Theme

    in , ,

    After installing the twenty fifteen theme I found that disqus’ comments were butting up against the edges of the layout.

    You can fix this by adding the following Custom CSS

     

    @media screen and (min-width: 59.6875em) {
	#disqus_thread {
		margin-top: 8.333%;
		margin-left: 8.333%;
		margin-right: 8.333%;
	}
}

@media screen and (min-width: 38.75em) {
	#disqus_thread {
		margin-top: 7.6923%;
		margin-left: 7.6923%;
		margin-right: 7.6923%;
	}
}
  • Is Wil Wheaton’s Table Top just a reality show for board game geeks?

    Is Wil Wheaton’s Table Top just a reality show for board game geeks?

    in

    Yesterday Wil Wheaton wrote a blog post (and corresponding reddit post) in which he apologized for “completely screwing up the rules” in at least half (10 out of 21) of the episode of Table Top Season 3. IMHO his apology is a text book example of how not to apologize. He spends the majority of the post singling out and publicly shaming a specific producer on the show – the “rules guy.” The way he’s handling this has made me lose a lot of respect for the guy, but Reddit thread covers that ground pretty well, that’s not what this blog post is about…

    By placing so much blame on this producer and taking very little responsibility himself, he has revealed a lot about how the show works and I’m beginning to think it’s more reality show than documentary.

    Ostensibly, Table Top is a show were Wil Wheaton plays his favourite board games with his friends. He presents each and every game with such passion, knowledge and excitement that it is not a much of a logical leap to assume that he’s played the game a few time and is at least familiar with the basic rules. In fact, he’ll often throw in a pro-tip, a specific strategy that he likes to employ during a certain point in the game or a funny antidote.

    I no longer believe this to be the case. In light of his blog post, I now feel like Table Top is more like a reality show where Wil Wheaton the actor, plays the character of Wil Wheaton the board game geek.

    If Table Top was authentic, if Wheaton was actually into the games, if he knew the rules; then he wouldn’t be blaming a producer so heavily. Sure the gamers might make little mistakes here and there, but anyone familiar with the rules should be able to catch the bigger mistakes. If not on the first or second round, then maybe a few rounds in and definitely when reviewing the episode.

    The fact that they employee an expert to review the rules really demonstrates the “show-ness” of the show. I don’t think someone outside of the Hollywood film & television industry would even think to hire someone like this. They would rely on the combined expertise of the team.

    Not only that, but throughout the series Wheaton really strongly presents himself as the expert. If this was actually the case, having another expert on the team should be completely redundant. But the huge amounts of blame levelled on this one producer implies an opposite and equally huge amount of distance between Wheaton, the games and the production process.

    I would not be surprised if the games instruction consisted of hand-holding Wil and friends through game between takes. “Roll the dice, then draw a card and … action.”

    Phewf.

    That said, I think the show is still a great introduction to the world of modern gaming. It’s certainly much more accessible than something like The Dice Tower or Shut Up & Sit Down. But I don’t think I’ll be watching the series again…