Rick's b.log - entry 2010/04/01

An April Fools

A little thing to add, for Opal from Russia, that April Fools are supposed to make you laugh - sure - but not at the joke, at the gullible who believe it to be real. For this reason, April Fools are never simple "knock knock" jokes, but can sometimes be elaborate hoaxes. There's more info and a list of classic hoaxes on Wiki.

The original content of this page was:

This message has been created automatically and uploaded here
to keep the three visitors to the b.log informed.

As you are reading this, it means that Rick is now dead. This software
has never actually been tested, so it had better work.


Free form explanation of what happened:
  rick was up late as he is known to be and i was in bed. i heard
  a bang and there were no lights. when i finally found him, he
  was slumped over his desk with a screwdriver in his hand poking
  inside one of the many computers i wish he did not have. i
  called the samu and when they arrived they said that it was
  pointless to rescuscitate. i realize he would have been dead
  for about an hour and a half by this point, but it would have
  been nice to try.

Free form follow-up action:
  his funeral will not be held until after the eighth, when he
  is normally paid. in addition to that, his computers and all
  this electrical junk he has will be free to anybody who can get
  rid of it. except that lumpy one with the black and red keys.
  that will be burned and buried, i am certain you will
  understand why

Free form of Rick's requests:
  he wants all of his sources code to be made oss. i assume this
  means something to you?
  he also would like you to download and listen to "canon" by
  pachebel, which was his favorite piece of music.


There are no further messages.

Thank you for reading.

NOT an April Fools

...they also introduced a new style interface.

To say it is awful is something of an understatement. Remember the video description and "subscribe" link? That's under the video now. On an eeePC, and possibly a number of systems with smaller sized 16:9 aspect displays, this means scrolling is essential.
Remember the "Favourite" button? It's now two clicks away in a menu sort of thing.
Remember the five star rating? It's now a stupid thumb up "liked" and thumb down "don't like". Oh, and you can't see the ratings until you have rated.
The comments. Don't talk to me about the comments. It's a mess. In fact, the whole design is a mess.
There's some cool ideas, like when looking in your playlist, the currently playing video will be shrunken, but keep on playing. But cool ideas can't rescue the fact that the design looks to have been put together by an unimaginative child.
I, for one, would seriously appreciate a "revert to old layout" choice, and I told them as much in their survey.

I personally feel the new design is sucky beyond the telling of it. It cacks up all that was good about YouTube without introducing enough features to make it worthwhile. It is, in a phrase, bloody horrid. Putrid. Vile. Sick, twisted and messed up. Limp, lifeless and dumbed down. Easier to navigate? So that's why I'm flipping my display up and down to do what I used to do at the one time (in the picture above, I've had to switch to full screen mode to make the site usable!). They've actually managed to simplify the site so it takes more effort to get anything done. Wow, and all this took eight months.
I might look and see if DailyMotion is interesting and well laid out... but if I was NatalieTran, I'd probably be crying about now.

Oh, and if you think I'm being particularly nasty to YouTube for their efforts, you might want to read the comments on the YouTube blog (here) and the comments on the forum (here, pages of it) and you will find the overwhelming majority hate (and I mean hate) the new layout.
PARENTAL ADVISORY: The F word is frequently used, and is often directed at YouTube, along with numerous other obscenities. This has not been a popular move.

Are you a YouTube user? Try the new-look site, see what you think, then let them know on their survey ... I sure did...

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