Corpse Bride - a puppet animation in the vein of Nightmare before Christmas.
Ohhh - very lovely. Yes yes yes!
Of course, it won’t be out here in Norway until after christmas, since they have to dub it for the kiddies… Grrrr….
Add comment January 24th, 2005
Just finished reading How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: a short history of modern delusions by Francis Wheen. Excellent stuff - he laments the falling-out-of-favor that liberal, enlightenment virtues like reason and inquiry have had since the sixties, and the foggy mysticism that has taken root in its stead.
Post-modernism’s relativist stance is skewered several times. (This part is especially entertaining, since post-modernism practically parodies itself) Modern economic “miracles” like Enron, the dot-com bubble and economic cults (like the IMF and Thatcherism) are dissected and revealed for the madnesses they are. But pleasantly, he has just as much contempt for modern feminists, leftists and “radicals” as he does for the Islamic fundamentalists, medievalists and religious conservatives.
On a related note, I see in today’s paper that Jon Stewart’s America is doing well. Stewart’s Daily Show won an award for achievement in news!? Comedy show wins news award? Truly these are strange days. (and someone in the news isn’t doing their job)
Add comment January 23rd, 2005
Unidentified compounds in non -alcoholic lager and stout (not pilsner apparently) reduces the risk of some cancers. Wonderful headline, the actual scientific results: not quite so wonderful.
Still, any excuse will do…
Add comment January 22nd, 2005
I’ve been working on re-doing the security system at SuperOffice for the past couple of months. The first step was to document the state of the existing security system using unit tests. Lots and lots of test. Mindnumbingly boring tests. But they had to be written and checked. (We discovered that the existing security system doesn’t work as well as it should 
the documentation and the implementation were not equivalent)
Today, my suite of unit tests passed.
All green. Yay!
I’m very happy. 
This means that people who upgrade from an old version of the system should not discover anything different after they upgrade. They will be able to see and edit the same things as before.
Now I just have to add all the cool new features to the security system that I wrote down in the spec (back in october), and I’ll be done. Piece of cake.
Also feeling chuffed with myself for pulling two rabbits out of thin air today: created a patch/workaround for a security bug in our web product (it’s gonna be so good to ditch that pile of VB and ASP code) that means we won’t lose a large contract, and also fixed an old bug in our current release that our danish partners were losing sleep over.
Add comment January 21st, 2005
Or rather - not.
I was all set to get back in the swing of things today - spinning, weights, sweating to Christina Aguilera - but it was not to be. I’d packed the bag this morning before the brain was up to speed, and forgotten to pack the workout pants. Something I discovered in the changing-room.
whoops. Considered buying some there, but at $100 US for a pair of plain old sweats, I figured no.
So now I’m going in “cold” to the boxing session on wednesday. I’m fetching the pain…
Add comment January 18th, 2005
Intuitive User Interface design article by Jared Spool.
I’m with Jef Raskin on this - there is no such thing as “intuitive”. There is familiar and unfamiliar. Affordances can make the unfamiliar understandable, but that does not make it intuitive.
Add comment January 16th, 2005
Enemy Team Fortress - Quake engine goodness. Massive download, but with BitTorrent it’s all good.
Add comment January 16th, 2005
An evening with Googles Marissa Mayer
Excellent bullet point notes on the Google User Experience, history and other interesting tidbits of info.
- The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
- Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
- One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
- The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
The idea of a comfort button is something I’ve always suspected, but never seen actively discussed.
I have a similar theory about the SuperOffice User Interface: certain buttons are useful, even though they aren’t used, becuase their presence bolsters the meaning of the remaining buttons, making it easier for the user to intuit what they do.
Add comment January 16th, 2005
I sent a spur-of-the-moment mail to Lise, the creator of Nemi (a comic strip featuring a goth girl who has a penchant for dragons, Legolas, and bad behavior) when I saw this: http://www.boltcity.com/garage/dragon_900.jpg and I got an answer back. Glee!!!
Add comment January 16th, 2005
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