Andrew Boon

First off, this post doesn’t grow from me being heavily invested into Apple gear. I love Adobe just as much and spend more time with Photoshop than with my family. It’s a lot more from my increasing love to standards. Anyway, I’m starting to hate Flash. Here’s why:

1. I typically use 3 browsers simultaneously, often with 20-30 tabs open in every one of them. It all works fine, alongside with Photoshop and Aperture running. But, every once in a while some kind of stupid Flash banner or video makes my computer choke or even stall and crash the browser! It’s almost always Flash. No matter what browser it is. Flash just slows everything down. And how in the world could a small web video bog down a really powerful computer (8core, 16GbRAM MacPro)?

2. It may be even more annoying when it works. I don’t like using ad-blockers or Flash blockers, since I need to see sites as they are intended to be seen (that’s my business stance anyway). So, I see Flash banners jumping over the content I read, flying into my face, or starting videos without me asking. Flash is the web’s primary annoyance facilitator!

3. Some Flash banners take over your mouse pointer when you hover over them. It may look fancy and OK, as long as they only do that when you actually DO hover your pointer over them. But, sometimes, you just happen to “touch” them on your way to something else. And they dont’ necessarily let you go immediately. Namely, I always loose my mouse pointer when E-trade banners catch it at Digg.com. I hate this! I try to find it on my second monitor, start checking mouse batteries only to realize that bloody Flash has done it again. If you want to be a part of the Web, behave like a part of the web and don’t touch my mouse!

4. After a few years of everyday browsing we get over “Explorer is the Internet”, “where’s the “any key”" and typing google.com into a yahoo search bar. That’s when we discover right-click (or command+click). We start saving, copying, selecting, translating, sending to a new tab, etc, etc. It’s like a manual gear-box for browsers, a step to loosing the “noob” cap. Bang! Flash is here to spoil the party. Right click it to… “zoom in, pause and read about Flash”… WTF!?… And what if entire site is in Flash? It’s like a DVD menu right in your browser, totally out of place. Flash is just not a part of the Web.

5. Internet is about links. All sorts of links. We are sharing links, bookmarking, shortening, twitting. Flash screwed links up. There is no standard and simple way to link to internals of a Flash site. Dear all, whatever you’re up to, please, pretty please, NEVER EVER use Flash for your entire site.

6. Flash is not for Mobile and never will be. You can’t get Flash to work on your mobile device. Even if it’s a 1Ghz smartphone. Even if it’s a light version of Flash you’d still have problems. Mobile browsing relies on compliance with standards, lightweight designs and uncluttered interfaces. All this are exact opposites to the Flash DNA. Flash was created to let web-masters to things they can’t do using standard tools. Unfortunately, it also slowed down adoption of advanced standards, too. We shouldn’t let Flash to be adopted in Mobile. If version 10+ can’t perform well on 16Gb MacPro, it would never work well on a pocket-sized, battery-powered device.

7. Flash makes your computer insecure. First, there is a history of numerous vulnerabilities of Flash, some quite nasty. Second, by design, Flash is an extra “program” that you use when browsing the web, which means one more thing to be concerned about. Just when you figured that using Firefox, Safari or Chrome instead of IE keeps you (more)secure Flash gets you back to IE-like level of protection. Do we really still need this?

All in all, I just think that it is time to kiss Flash goodbye.

Adobe needs to focus on their Photoshop and other desktop apps – that’s what they do very well. They should provide better tools for HTML5 development. There’s a lot of potential, and it’s a good fight.

I also think we should start weeding out Flash apps from BoonEx software. I’m sure we can find better solutions.

With so much in the head now it feels so difficult to write… I have thoughts, emotions, details to tell about, but also that imminent need to cut it short straight to the core. Nah… I’ll make it short:

We had one really full day today. Julia wanted to visit a guy (her guitar teacher) who now lives out of the city at what we call “dacha”. He’s just yet another beautiful human being, but he also has a rare, supposedly incurable disease (Behterev), so he’s struggling and Julia basically wanted to help him with some information she came across. Anyway… the whole point is that something happened there…

Matty and Mumunia

While Julia was talking with Kostia (the guy) Matthew and I were wandering around, entertaining ourselves. We found two calves (young cows), who were just resting on the grass. Matthew went on to cuddle one immediately and the little creature was literally HAPPY about the company. Just look at this:

Matthew gave him a name – Mumunia. He presented him a flower and tried to feed (but later reasoned that Mumunia can find food by himself). They were playing, gently and even passionately, like two friends. The calf was crying when we left, he was calling for Matty to return.

Later that day Julia asked Matt a question… “would you want to eat Mumunia?“. He said “No.“. Just hold your breath for a moment, and listen… it’s “no”.

This, and, quite coincidentally (or not so), the “Earthlings” film that we just watched led me to a few points:

1. We lie to our kids.

We teach them compassion, care, love. We want them to make right choices. But we give them an innocently looking beef sausage over and over, again and again, untill they get used to it so much that they would close their eyes to anything, just to get another one. The thing is that our kids don’t want to eat or kill animals. We teach them. We force them.

2.

We lie to ourselves. Who, in their sane mind can grab a live duckling and bite out it’s head? Not you, right? Now how about a juicy apple? Feels better, huh? And what about a smoked turkey…. ? We have right answers in our hearts from the very beginning, from birth, but we’ve grown to close our eyes, consciously and lie to ourselves, just to keep things easy. Dumplings are dead animals. Hot-dogs are killed calves. Shoes are animal flesh. Apples are apples. But we know it, right? We just choose not to think about it. We have our lines of defense, sophisticated and comforting… “we were meant to eat it”, “don’t tell me or you’d spoil my dinner”, “fish has no brains”, “but apples feel pain too, right?” or the worst of all “but my body needs ….”. One can tell me about research, science, books, experiments, but I’ve seen the truth today – it’s all in your heart, until you cover it, until you wrap your sin into a fancy foil, until you loose the connection. Matty said “No”. And it was the first time when we didn’t lie to him, when asking this question.

3. We are not pests, virus, aliens or “mistakes”. It’s time to stop this bullshit already. It’s when you know you’re doing something wrong (and don’t want to stop) you call yourself a “bad guy” and keep rolling. But it’s life, it’s our home – we have to take the responsibility. Humankind is a natural and integral part of planet Earth, and all the wrongs that we do are mistakes we should fix.

p.s. Julia and I are vegetarians for a few years now. We know people who’ve been vegetarian or vegan for many years. We know people who are veg from birth. They are healthy, happy and strong. The only reason why people eat animals is because they like how it tastes. The only reason why they think it tastes good is because they are forced to get used to it, by marketing, ads, misinformation, friends, and first of all – parents. Meat/fish/poultry/seafood/any-animal-protein is not tasty for men, we have to roast, boil, add spices, salt, lemon, mix it with something, etc – we go to great length to even be able to consume it. It starts from killing. Then we lie.

Watch this.

Julia was sitting at the computer and was, emmm… touching her leg … and suddenly felt slight but persistent vibration. Did you realize that laptop computers, like MacbookPro pass vibration to your body while you’re using’em. So, day after day, 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week the body is under this impact. Hm, wonder what do the little blood cells think about it.

Computer generation!

p.s. My lappy has SSDs, hence no vibration. B-)

Watched WALL-E yeasteday. Out of ten, it’s… well, at least ten. Great, great, great, great family movie – funny, emotional and what’s most important it gives that “right-way” inspiration to kids. Say, Kungfu-panda was fun, but it didn’t bring much but kicking’n'punching action. Wall-e, on the contrary, succeeds at being both visually thrilling and educational.

Speaking of Panda vs Wall-e… Pixar made it a lot better than Dreamworks actually. Panda is just way too obvious and straightforward – it’s your Pooh 2.0, if you will – nice buddy, but not the way to go (too fat, too lazy). Panda would joke, fall, bounce, fall again, etc. Wall-e, on the contrary, is a little creature that doesn’t speak much and expresses emotions with body language, he’s hard-working, romantic, determined and caring. Wall-e is a story about love and faith.

In short – stays with 5 stars in our family video-library.