DRM - Daniel’s Random Mutterings

No, not needs. Want. I *want* one

I don’t know, why. I don’t really like Macintoshes. In fact, I sneer at Macs and their puny one-button mice. Rationally, I think I’d be much better off getting a decent PC and installing Linux on that. At least for application availability, as well as interoperability with my other machines, I’m pretty sure that would be the better approach. I don’t really need a third operating system. Also, the Laptop PC I’d get for the dough a MacBook Pro costs would simply blow me away.
But still — I want one. It just looks so sleek and well-designed. And it holds the promise of all the pieces being made for each other (as opposed to the hassle of getting a Linux WiFi driver to work on the laptop which has a WiFi interface chip you don’t know, as well as an unsupported video card).

Help me. Please.

Technorati Tags: Tech

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading through Web sites, documentation, and programming examples, looking for a decent Web Content Management framework which I can use for my pet project. In so doing, I’ve become more and more annoyed, hence this rant.

Why is it that Web site designers, Web publishers, what-have-you, spend so much time making their site look cool, but pay no attention at all to the way it looks when it’s printed? I refuse to read more than one continuous browser page on screen. Any more than that — especially if it’s something I need to concentrate on, such as the documentation of a complex programming framework — and I print it and read the printed version. Even more so, when it’s a programming documentation or framework example which I need to have next to my keyboard in order to follow the example.

This approach is sometimes (often) almost totally prevented by the Web design, CSS magic, etc., that people use to spiff up their site. Something (say, an article in a Blog) looks pretty neat on the screen. But when you print it, you end up with a very thin strip of almost intelligible print, about a quarter of the width of the page, which runs over twenty pages. Or the programming examples are in neat “overflow” DIVs, which end up cutting off the content when printed. Or the font size of the singlespaced font is set such that the examples run off the page to the right. Then you think you’ve found the link to a printable version (after all, it’s a little printer icon), which in fact is simple linked via JavaScript to “print this page”, which ends up printing the exact crap you have on screen, without any formatting, etc.

I’ve been using a couple of days off from my current project to concentrate on working out a new idea I recently had. I’m writing a concept document, thinking about the right development platform and am generally enjoying myself.

It feels so good to be doing something creative, taking your own idea and running with it. I realize that ultimately maybe nothing much will come of this — but it’s a good experience for me, knowing I haven’t “lost it”.

Maybe I’ll write some more about the idea here as soon as it has matured a bit more or I have something new to announce.

Things that make you go “hmmm….”. Or, in some cases, simply ‘WTF?????‘ According to http://www.turbogears.com/, the Python programming language is “agile, mature, cross-platform, well-documented, easy and fun”.

Agile? Python is an ‘agile’ programming language?? Why’s that then? And, more importantly, what’s that? Are we trying to get as many buzzwords into our Web page as we can manage?

This reminds me of one of my favourite Limericks:

There was a young man from Japan
Whose Limericks never would scan
When asked WHY this was so,
He said ‘Yes, I know.
But it’s because I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.’

OK, OK. After ranting about the stupid “random” button on my Creative Player, I actually discovered the “lock player” switch, which disables all button input and perfectly solves my vacuuming problem. I admit I should perhaps have researched a little more thoroughly before ranting about stupid designers and so on.

The thing is, though - I have what I think is a legitimate excuse for this stupidity. The “lock player” lever has a little lock icon next to it. It’s not that I hadn’t seen the button. I had just assumed that it was a write-protect switch, preventing me from overwriting or erasing files on my player. You know? Like on USB sticks. In my mind, I had drawn an analogy between the USB sticks which I hook up to my PC’s USB port to put stuff onto them and the Creative MP3 player, which I hook up to my USB port in order to put stuff onto it. The USB sticks have a shiftable button thingy with a lock icon which write-protects the USB stick. Now the new player comes along and has a slidy button thingy with a lock icon next to it. Logically (cough), I assumed this shifty button thingy was for write-protecting the player, preventing me from accidentally wiping out 20 GB of MP3s I payed for.

So, I guess this just goes to show, again, that different people develop different mental models of things and when faced with a new issue tend to apply — with as little adaptation as possible — models they’ve previously developed to the new problem.

I was amazed to learn (through the TV) a couple of weeks ago that fretting and worrying and thinking about unfinished business and cash problems and responsibilities and all that stuff is actually triggered by a chemical process in the brain. The upshot of it was that it’s OK to worry and fret at night, and that it’s totally counterproductive to start worrying about the fact that you’re worrying about something (you get the idea, right?). This can be a vicious circle.

Funny as it seems, this knowledge has helped me sleep better. Knowing that it’s just some ol’ chemical kicking in at three in the morning, rather than legitimate worries and problems, is a really comforting thought. Once my brain’s woken up enough to perform this process of reflection, I can easily get back to sleep.

Now I hope I don’t start worrying about wether this whole information was just a placebo PSA to help worrying insomniacs like myself.

[Update] Oh yeah, I heard that exercise and a healthy diet are also supposed to help. But who would really want to do that?

It appears — OK, we’ve all probably known this for a long time — that it’s not just us software folk who come up with incredibly bad designs now and then. Sometimes you come across a design “feature” that makes you wonder “Don’t these guys have even the smallest iota of common sense? And even if they don’t (some people just don’t) - don’t they do ANY usability testing?”

I recently received a nice, shiny, new Creative Zen Touch 20GB MP3 player. Yes — long after the iPod craze took hold, and aeons after everybody around me was already on their second or third device, I finally bought an MP3 player. The reason for this could go into another rant — I’ll just say that it has to do with open office doors and groups of inconsiderate fools who have to have hallway discussions about absolutely inane issues, seemingly at the tops of their voices, right outside my current office. Anyway — let’s not get sidetracked here.

The Creative Zen thingamybob is a great piece of hardware. With 20 GB of hard drive capacity it holds about three times as much music as I can ever think of carrying around at one time. It’s light enough to carry around with you, yet it’s hefty enough to appear sturdy and durable. It has great sound quality, built-in equalizer settings that actually do something and it has a very slick means of navigating through the menu via a touch-pad area recessed into the case. Neato!

Writing the first post into a newly installed blog is a bit like speaking your first message onto your very first telephone answering machine. You feel a bit stupid, as you’re talking to yourself. You don’t really know who’s going to hear your message. You have a vague idea of what you want to say - but once you’ve said it, it sounds strange.

“Hi! This is Daniel’s blog. Daniel is not in at the moment. But if you want to know more about him, you can read this blog. If you really care, you can leave a message after you’ve read it. If you leave your email address, maybe he’ll even mail you back.”

I guess at the moment I’m writing this more for myself than for anybody else. Why am I starting this? Well, in the course of the day, I come across stuff that I find interesting, funny, enlightening or just odd. I need a place to store this, and to add my comments. A blog seems a better place for that than an old shoe-box.