Just go to the official website, ikzoekdekking.nl, and witness the horror in the footer.

It's a fucking disgrace that the Dutch government pays tax-money for anything that uses comic fucking sans. It's not as if the Dutch government is three years old and this campaign is the equivalent of an invitation to a birthday party. (Hint: unless the invitation is actually made by a three-year-old who doesn't know better, there isn't any good excuse to use comic fucking sans.)

The website, however, does get bonus points for using web-fonts, but I'll have to deduct several points for not caring how these look—bump the font-size for the navigation two pixels up and it looks a lot better—and for not checking if the site breaks if you use an ad-blocker—hint: don't wrap images in an element with the classname "ad_block". They might not show up.

As a bonus, I hacked together a GreaseMonkey User Script that not only plays the Comic Sans game, but also swaps it with a more palatable monospace-font:

comic_saaaaaaaaaannnnns.user.js

Update Version 1.1 of the script now comes with a slightly less obtrusive alert.

To cut a long story short, I pieced together a Greasemonkey userscript called 'Youtu.be Shortlink' that (surprisingly) adds the youtu.be link to the page, in the bar just above the video:

youtube_shortlink.user.js

There are 3 options which you can set by editing the script and changing the value of the setting variable. (Since you're still reading this you probably know how this works, but just in case: right click the Greasemonkey icon > Manage User Scripts... > select 'Youtu.be Shortlink' > Edit.) These options are:

1. Just the shortlink (default);
2. A button that sends the shortlink to Twitter;
3. A button that sends the video's title and shortlink to Twitter.

If this userscript works as good for you as it does for me, you might also enjoy one of my other Greasemonkey userscripts.

Update 2010-06-24: Youtube has now added as short link switch in under the url-box in their 'share panel, rendering this userscript a tiny bit superfluous.

I don't get it. And I don't even see how anyone could get worked up about this.

The only time you get see those backgrounds is when you navigate to Google's home page. And who does that anyway? Every browser has a search feature build in, which takes you straight to the search results. And those pages remain as white as ever.

So, c'mon. Explain this 'problem' to me like I'm a six year old.

And then there was this other thing I found.

Whatever permutation of the keywords "Meat Loaf Nightline Beatles 1995" I fed to Google, numerous sites popped up showing roughly the same excerpts about Brian Wilson saying the same thing too on a 1995 Nightline Beatles tribute.

Apparently, someone likes the Beatles so much that he or she copies (roughly) the same reply over and over and over again on various websites where people confess that they don't unquestioningly adore the Beatles. (Disclaimer: I don't get the Beatles. I recognize that they were a very important band, but their music does next to nothing for me. I mean, Na na nana na, hey Jude, na na na nana? Yougottabefuckinkiddingme!)

I find this fascinating. And this, and nothing less… THIS is why I love the internet.

Still, there's one bone I have to pick with his epistle. In response to Adobe's claim that Flash is open and Apple distributes a closed system, Jobs says,

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. […] HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Anyone following what's going on with HTML5 will see the elephant in the room, and Jobs mentions it a bit further on: Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

And there you have it. First, Jobs says that Apple strongly believe[s] that all standards pertaining to the web should be open but then he won't say that the only video-format that his company's browser will support is the closed source, proprietary H.264 format. Which makes that bit about strongly believing in the open web sound a bit, well, phony.

So, ehm, mr. Jobs: either put your money where your mouth is and start supporting open video in Webkit, or just STFU, 'kay?

While Apple is being vague what "iPad-ready" really means, from the language on the page and the accompanying Technical Note one can infer that a website that uses the latest web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, javascript,etc.) and no plug-ins (most notably, Flash, as Apple refuses to allow those on their iPad en -Pods) should be ready. Which is all fine and dandy. No problem there.

Today, the leading news site of the Dutch public television announced that their website was now "iPad-ready". By which they probably mean, "In certain cases, after some browser sniffing, we serve a page with an HTML5 <video> element instead of the default Flash-player." Now that kinda, sorta worries me.

You see, I don't think that HTML5 video is quite ready for general use on the world wide web. Reason the first: so far, no version of Internet Explorer can handle it. And reason the second: at the moment, you need at least two versions of the same clip to make it work in every other browser, due to, well, a video-format war. If you can't be bothered to produced two versions of the same clip, you need to jump through all kinds of technical hoops to provide your content to the browsers that do not support the format you decided on. Not quite the 'code once, work everywhere' utopia we have been promised.

So, if you think that making your website "iPad-ready" means that you need to use the <video> element to serve MPEG-encoded video, well, you clearly have a lot to learn about the open web.

(Of course, it's quite easy to envision a scenario where Apple is using the iPad/iPod to manipulate the browser market into adopting MPEG as the de facto standard for web video because, well, everybody knows that everything Apple does has the potential to be the cure for cancer and can bring about world peace. But I'm neither a Apple fanboy nor a tinfoil hat wearing, paranoid conspiracy theorist, so I won't go there.)

• If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. Mark Twain, from a 1894 notebook.
• You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
• Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed. Bruce Springsteen, introduction to "War"
• Angst is mar veur eben, spiet is veur altied. Daniël Lohues
• Don't let your dreams get all rusty / Keep on using 'em as hard as you can Jim Steinman, "A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing To Waste"

So I hacked together a Greasemonkey user script that does three things:

1. It adds a 'go to this artists's page in your library' link to album and song pages;
2. It adds a 'go to this album's page' link to album pages; and
3. It removes the 'remove this artist from your library' option.

If this sounds too vague for you, you might not need it. Otherwise, you can install the user script by hitting the link below.

? lastfm_library_tweaks.user.js

Buma / Stemra [heeft] op 1 oktober jl. haar tarieven voor 2010 gepubliceerd voor gebruik van muziek op het internet. Onderdeel daarvan was het tarief voor niet-bedrijfsmatig muziekgebruik door middel van zgn. embedded files. Dit onderdeel van het tarief heeft tot grote commotie geleid bij een breed publiek en in de volksvertegenwoordiging.
Deze commotie heeft Buma / Stemra niet onberoerd gelaten. Buma / Stemra heeft na overleg binnen haar branche organisatie, VOICE, besloten om het tarief voor niet-bedrijfsmatig gebruik van muziek in embedded files niet ten uitvoer te brengen (zoals particuliere profielen op sociale netwerken).

Zie je wel dat stennisschoppen op het internet zin heeft: de bumatax voor particuliere webloggers is van de baan. Digitale Burgerrechten stijdfront Bits of Freedom merkt terecht op dat er op het heugelijke nieuws genoeg af te dingen valt:

Ten eerste is de vraag of voor embedden überhaupt een vergoeding kan worden gevraagd. Buma negeert deze vraag, door aan te geven dat zij bedrijfsmatig embedden wel zal belasten. Ten tweede is de vraag wat als bedrijfsmatig moet worden aangemerkt: is iemand die een blog met advertenties publiceert, ook bedrijfsmatig actief? Ook is het opvallend dat Buma in het geheel niets zegt over de belangen van de internetgebruiker en de kleine Nederlandse muzikant, en hoe aan die belangen tegemoet wordt gekomen.

Maar goed. Dit is een stap de goede kant op, en een opening om het hele systeem open te breken.