Conway's game of life is an amazingly addictive game http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/ or http://conwaylife.com/ the concept seems so simple but it creates such fascinating complexity. It's especially fun finding the patterns that actually increase indefinitely.
Watching the web browser statistics is fascinating. In one glance you can get an idea of what people are using to view the web and get an idea of what browsers to focus on for testing for the majority case. It is also interesting to see how a particular browser is being accepted by the community. The one I have been watching lately for the general case is StatCounter(http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-US-daily-20080701-20090731) which shows a nice graph that I can watch.
It is fascinating to see that IE6 is still hanging in there. IE7 held high ground for quite awhile there but it looks like it is slowly being replaced by IE8 now. I'm a little surprised to see that FireFox is starting to loose ground. And according to the chart Chrome is out of the picture so I'm guessing the latest version of Chrome is actually part of the confusingly high Other category.
Now that was by version number, which does not show the brand loyalty. Looking at StatCounter by Browser brand (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-daily-20080701-20090726) IE remains in the lead but Firefox pretty much mirrors IE across the 50% line which is a fascinating trend.
The rest look like they are staying pretty much even except for Chrome which is slowly gaining ground, however it is hard to tell but it almost looks like Chrome is getting customers from FireFox.
Anyway fascinating statistics. It will be interesting to see what happens when IE9 comes out in a couple of years.
Every once in a while I will get frustrated with a website that I try to use and I send feedback in the form of a Bug report:
Descriptive Bug Title
------------------------------------
Short description of problem.
- Repro Steps:
- First thing to do
- Second thing to do
- And so on…
Expected:
The expected behavior.
Actual:
What actually happens when the repro steps are followed.
Recommendation:
Any recommendations to correct the issue if available.
I remember back to when the Internet was still new and domain names were being registered for the first time it was fascinating to watch as word after word was being gobbled up to assign new pages to. It looked like it wouldn't take all that long before every word in the dictionary and a huge portion of short phrases would be claimed. I figured that by the time I was an Adult they would all be claimed.
Not having internet connection at that time I used to write down every web address I wanted to visit on little sticky notes which I kept inside the flap of a calculator that I used to carry around, in the hopes that I might be able to spend a little time at a library, lab or somewhere else looking at these fascinating pages. Oh how things have changed.
So it is interesting then to see the results as an Adult now when indeed a good portion of the simple addresses have been claimed but there are still words and phrases left untouched and many of the pages once claimed have been left untended abandoned or taken down. Some domains have even been let to expire.
I wonder whet the next decade will bring?
