Original Cin

I was posting at the Spacebattles forum, and just happened to run into this! I’m not sure what to make of these post counts.

Weird postcounts on Spacebattles

After poking around a bit after my last post to determine the current state of alternate shells for Windows, I found SharpE and gave it a spin. I think it is a great example of how software that looks beautiful can still go terribly, terribly wrong in its UI. I’ve attached a screenshot so people know what I’m talking about:

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? Large, beautiful desktop icons, a reasonable, if not great layout for UI elements…

Look at the bottom. That’s the taskbar and my Quick Launch bar. Ugh! It’s so small, it hurts my eyes! Either SharpE’s developers are running their system at a much lower resolution than I am, or they use a projector to place their desktop on a wall. It hurts my eyes to look at this, and clicking on anything in the area feels like threading a needle. This would be a forgetable and forgivable note if there were any way to change the size. Maybe there is, and I just didn’t find it with all that right clicking.

Why exactly is this a problem? First of all, I’m in my mid-20s. My vision isn’t great (I’m nearsighted in one eye, farsighed in the other, and have astigmatism to boot), but I generally don’t have trouble seeing things in detail. Like I said, SharpE literally hurt my eyes to look at it and use for a long period of time, even though it looks good. There is no way in hell the vast majority of people in 50s and older are going to be able to use those minicons on the bottom of the screen. The persistant may pull it off, but the benefits of SharpE seem too small to make such persistance worth-while.

Seth Godin recently said to avoid tiny print if possible. In the UI world, we have Fitts’ Law, (see also Coding Horror). Icons should not be that small relative to the screen. I don’t think there’s been an application where a 15px by 15px icon is a good idea for a very, very long time indeed.

Wikipedia says “The Apollo program stimulated many areas of technology. The flight computer design used in both the lunar and command modules was, along with the Minuteman Missile System, the driving force behind early research into integrated circuits. The fuel cell developed for this program was the first practical fuel cell. Computer-controlled machining (CNC) was pioneered in fabricating Apollo structural components.” – “Project Apollo”

In a nutshell, a lot of the technology that we have around today is a result of the space program. I posit that, one day, the One Laptop Per Child initiative will be viewed in the same way. Already, we have seen dramatic changes in thinking on what a user interface should be, what language should be used to write it, and how security permissions for a computer should work. Many older concepts of “What should a computer do, and how should it work?” have been swept away.

Specifically, I believe that within the next ten years, we’ll see the following:

• A dramatic improvement in user-controlled security as BitFrost style systems are introduced in traditional OSs.
  • For that matter, the introduction of BitFrost style systems that are based on the permissions that programs have, rather than system users have. By no means do I think that user-group-public-execute is going to disappear, only that it will take a back seat.
• More shells available on a cross-platform basis
  • Which will be driven by such shells being written in interpreted languages such as Python (used by OLPC), PHP, and Ruby. Also, I have kind of fond memories of EUPHORIA, but I don’t really know where it is right now, and I’m not going to predict a huge surge in its popularity.

I just ported the Quotomatic from my older site, StorySage. It’s in the place where most sane people put a description of their blog. I’ve noticed some bugs, namely that some of the quotes are too long, and hyphens aren’t appearing right in some quotes. It was mostly a matter of copying a few lines of PHP and deleting a variable that didn’t make any sense in the new context. On the other hand, this is not really robust, and, given that WP has a plugin system, not really the way things should be done.

But, it was fast.

I feel like I’ve been unwillingly tossed into one of those “Conversion analysis” things that appears on the Lunametrics blog from time to time, and I hate it.

First of all, I’m looking for a box. I have two of them already. They’re file-sized boxes about 8 to 10 inches deep with long, oval holes. I’ve found they’re great for mounting onto the wall with some 3M command hooks. I’m pretty sure that the brand on these boxes was Rubbermaid. I saw some similar items at the store made by Rubbermaid, but not the exact boxes I’m looking for. I’d like to buy some.

What would you do in this situation? There is, or at least was, such a brand as “Rubbermaid Office Solutions” but if it’s still being maintained, it’s not accounted for on the Rubbermaid site. There’s commericial solutions, laundry, kitchen, medical… but not what I’m actually looking for. Following the trail to Newell, they reveal, basically, that Rubbermaid-branded office products do exist, but fail to say anything more.

Trying a different tactic, I searched for Rubbermaid USB hubs, and found a company called Eldon. No problem there, except that they neither seems to sell USB hubs, nor file boxes. Clicking along the company’s downright bizarre description of their corporate structure (as a consumer, I really do not care one iota that Rubbermaid household products are manufactured by a sibling company to the people who make office doohickeys). Finally, I managed to get information on something that resembles what I’m looking for: Eldon sells things which are pretty similar as both “Rogers” and “Households” I suppose at this point I get to try putting part numbers in Amazon to see what pops out, since there’s no information at all on how to get any of these products anywhere in sight (they have a list of distributors and retailers off the home page of their site, but the first link I tried was broken).

This is entirely too complex for something that should just be a matter of walking to a local store and paying cash for a relatively small item.

I have a new cell phone. I’ve decided to name it Kusanagi, after the GITS character. Unlike my previous phone , it’s a clamshell, or flip-style phone. I had a telemarketer (someone doing a a so-called “Chicago Travel Survey”) forwarded to it, and I hung up after politely saying that I wasn’t taking any survey by snapping the phone shut. The person on the other end was, either by personality or managerial edict, not taking a hint, and saying “Sir, sir! Wait…” when I did so. I appreciate that surveys have to taken, but, well, no means no.

It was like slamming a door without the effort of actually moving a large, heavy object. That was fun.

Also, I figured out how to get it to play “Inner Universe” as the ring tone: “Calling… calling now… in the depths of longing…” This is so cool.

Those who curse Fate
May scorn, persecute, and hate
We who announce its coming and speed its wheels.

But ultimately,
they are powerless against Fate itself.