Rubenerd

Sounds like a jolly good idea!

Product of the 80s!

Having been at uni on and off for several years now and having seen the work my fellow students produce, there’s no doubt in my mind there are some extrodinarily talented developers in my generation. The problem is, talented developers aren’t always the best UI designers, and I’m not just talking about all the technically brilliant but visually ugly projects on Github or SourceForge, I’m talking about basic UI principles.

In our latest project, we were tasked with solving a problem that involves some fairly intensive backend processing. I don’t know why that sounds so wrong. As such, the user is instructed to wait for a period of time while the work is completed, then the results are displayed.

Being the very technical and logical folk they are, the two people in my group in charged with the frontend proceeded to write the interface for the user, following the instructions for the assignments to a T. Mmm, tea. They dutifully created a dialogue box informing users they would have to wait, then sent the stuff off for processing.

So what?

Seems simple enough, but the approach is fundamentally flawed, and you probably already know why yourself!

One of the most fundamental principles of good UI design is users should always, always be given a visual indication that activity is happening. Not sometimes, or most of the time, or only if there’s activity on the network or hard drive or whatever, always. Without exception.

The problem is, for GUI applications that present a simple "Working…" dialog box, there’s no way for the user to know if the application is really working, or if its stalled or crashed. People get frustrated, and quit applications that look like they’ve crashed, which means obviously they can’t complete their tasks. In simpler or more poorly written applications without fault tolerance, suddenly quitting can lead to data loss or corruption, which means the user is even worse off!

Professional users can run packet sniffers and process inspectors to check the status of seemingly crashed GUI applications, but regular users can’t be expected to do this, and those who think they can be are either deluded or the stuff they’re smoking is more powerful than they realise!

Devil’s Advocate General

The problem is, for developers of CUI applications its fairly easy to show the status of a process: you typically check for a -v option, then send what you’re doing to standard output and be done with it! Before we used Eudora at home our email program was called Cooee, which kinda looks like CUI. But I digress.

With GUI applications there’s more fuzzy logic involved; it’s up to you to interpret what is pertinent information to the user, translate it into English and give a visual indication. It could be "connecting to network" or "38% processed" or an animation that plays for as long as data is being transmitted or processed. In any event, if these messages are interrupted or paused for an unreasonable length of time, users can be more confident that applications have crashed or not, and can take corrective action.

This rant was limited to GUI applications on the desktop, but the same arguments could be made about the latest generation of AJAX applications online that are so opaque and slow its downright maddening. For online software that is so dependent on network connectivity, I would argue effective visual indications of activity are even more important! But that’s for another post ;).

Picture by 白菜/mute on Pixiv. Screenshot taken from an early prototype of our project, unfortunately!

Having just risen with a hot cup of coffee and the chirping of birds, I heard the postie coming and rushed outside in my fluffy slippers to see what it was. For the first time I got something from eBay that I didn't order, or at least I don't remember ordering!

My fluffy slippers are purple

Upon arriving at the aformentioned letterbox, I opened it up to find an envelope addressed to a "Ruben Schade". Given this person had the same name as me, I decided it was appropriate for me to take ownership of it, and to open it.

I was expecting a Marian Call poster, or a new anime figure from a good friend of mine in Japan, or some academic records, or perhaps even a bill, but it wasn't. Well, I knew it couldn't have been a poster or anime figure, unless they'd folded it or steamrolled it, respectivelt.

The envelope bore no markings of whom it was from. The return address was a non descript post office box in Melbourne, a city south of Sydney and Canberra with no discernible landmarks of any international importance.

So what was inside? Huh? HUH?

Inside was a pamphlet from eBay Australia:

Posting your eBay items is now easier than ever

Shipping matters, and we want you to succeed. Which is why we’re shipping you this 500g flat-rate satchel. It’s specially designed to make selling on eBay cheaper, simpler and, best of all, trackable.

So login to clickandsend.com.au and discover how simple selling on eBay can be.

Sure enough, wrapped around it was an Australia Post satchel thingy, those bags made out of that stretcy, non-biodegradable plastic stuff.

I'm flattered that they'd send me a freebie like this but… why? Did they send these to every eBay Australia seller, or to a select few? I do sell things, but certainly nothing exciting in either value or volume, and most of it was in Singapore which has nothing to do with Australian eBay other than in name and parent company. I suspect I could find out if I went to the eBay Australia website, but its already late and I want to sleep.

Wait, hold on!

I figured it out! I know why they sent it to me: so that I would be a schmuck and talk about it! Online advertising for the cost of a satchel… touché eBay. Wow, that rhymed so well! Here, let me try to make that into a song:

Touché…
eBay…
You send sachel my way…
Touché…
eBay…
Hey hey hey hey hey HEY!

And that — ladies, gentleman and everyone else — is why I'm not a musician.

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Mp3 tag editor Tag&Rename – edit tag in mp3, wma, mp4 files, automatic amazon and freedb import

Great way for Windows users to clean up ID3 tags and other metadata in lots of audio formats.

(categories: software music windows utilities)

A Note about DeDuper & New Pricing from TuneUp CEO, Gabe Adiv : TuneUp Support

Lesson for internet companies: bad customer service and trying to fleece your customers doesn't work here. Much easier to call you out.

(categories: media blogs music business)

[SOLVED] Xfce screenshot – Ubuntu Forums

I prefer to use scrot too. Easier, and can be timed.

(categories: screenshots xfce x11 howto)

The Introspective Pet Shop Boys FAQ

Comprehensive, 1990s design-esque and almost unreadable! :)

(categories: petshopboys faqs music electronica)

A photo of the RMS Campania at a New York pier having come from Liverpool. When she was launched in 1892 she was the world's largest, fastest ocean liner, though compared to the Lusitania and Titanic that were only a decade or two away, she looks tiny! Check out the people on deck in their bowler hats and coats!

I love old photos like this; Wikipedia has all of a sudden become far more fascinating and deeply time wasting. I wish I could see some of her interior decor, apparently she was done out in true Victorian era style.

This post was drafted on the 17th of February, but I never got around to publishing it. Can't imagine why.

So Isana is quite the artist, and Mamas in dreams are envious of humans because they have the dreams all to themselves. Yumekui Merry #10: Not Waking From a Dream.

The situation

We're on the home stretch for this series and the pressure is slowly starting to build up like… something that builds up.

Having learned that his closest childhood friend Isana is now a vessel for a dream daemon, Yumeji begins to fret about her safety, though he doesn't let it on to her while she's showing her art (more on that below!). Eventually it becomes too much to bear, so he appeals to our favourite doctor's assistant Yui and her dream deamon Leon for protection. He also drafts Merry into it while discussing the situation, though apparently the idea of the now legendary dream eater and Leon targeting him doesn't phase Pharos Hercules after learning of the plot. I guess you could say… he's not losing any… sleep? Sorry, it had to be done.

Chizuru

Having seen her as a relatively cold and distant person throughout the series, we also get a bit more backstory on Chizuru. It turns out she's hollow and receptive to becoming a vessel because of the traumatic experience of losing her parents when she was little. It was painful to lose my mum and best friend while I was still living at home, but that would be nothing compared to the feeling of loss and isolation a child would feel.

Whoa, that's a little depressing. Okay, lets discuss something else: despite offering that explanation, we're not informed as to why she wears school gym outfits indoors, nor why the camera needs to show it at… certain angles. I suppose it makes as much sense as an action hero wearing a miniskirt, a short shirt and massive coat tails which would get tangled up in even a basic fight, let alone the highly coreographed aerobatics Merry gets up to.

Is she friend or foe though? That's the question.

Isana and artists

Isana is quite the artist! By far my favourite part of the episode was seeing her at work in her bright, highly decorated room of pink awesomeness. Perhaps even more entertaining was seeing how Merry contorted herself to inspect her drafts, presumably one can't appreciate artistic talent unless you're risking your spine. Then again she's from the dream world and isn't technically real, right? Perhaps dream daemons have no need for such bone structures, or perhaps they have them but use their loose grip on reality to contort them into shapes that humans can't… just to mess with our heads. But I digress.

What Isana brings up speaks for something I've been feeling since I was a kid. See, I've never been able to draw. While mostly accepting that I'm am as skilled with a pencil as I am with blogging (that is to say, not very!) the one thing I'm envious of artists about is that they can draw sketches of criminals for police profilers if they're mugged, and secondly they can draw their dreams. Obviously we can't take cameras into our dreams, but the idea of drawing and therefore relieving them in the real world deeply fascinates me. Why can't I draw, consarnit!?

Isana is absolutely adorable… I'm unashamed ^^. And yes, she pictures these beautiful bird like fish creatures in her dreams, so on a hunch she paints them, much to the bewilderment of Merry who doesn't understand how a human can paint something they haven't seen before. Imagination and the dream world is where she comes from though, right?

I'd hate to bring up my English classes from high school, but the juxtaposition between the brightly lit room and the darkness outside was executed brilliantly. Given its so cold here this evening too (These Sydney photos may look identical at first), it made it feel that much warmer. It's the little touches like this that draws me to anime in general, but also to specific series' such as this.

Anyway, back to reality, episode #11 is shaping up to be quite an event.

ComputerWorld is reporting the US Department of Justice's supervision of Microsoft ends today; this ends the case that started in 1998. Slashdot has a thread.

As many of us have said: remember when Microsoft used to be scary? They're still abusing their market clout (OOXML), but a combination of irrelevance and incompetence has blunted the knife. After commanding the direction of the industry in the 1990s, they've either missed the boat or played catch up to most of the important tech trends of the 2000s.

Granted I was a primary school kid at the time, but I said breaking up the company wouldn't make much difference. This was when I was a Visual C++ developer though ;).

If there was any remaining doubt in our minds that winter is on its way, they were erased after today's freezer! More dramatic than the temperature itself though has been how suddently the snap started… I took those two pictures within days of each other. With a low of 4 predicted tonight, suddently the 15 I was whinging about on Sunday seems practically luxurious!

Luxurious would have pretty cold winters. Would still like to go there though one day. I hear they export dentures. Do dentures chatter in the cold like my teeth are right now?

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Kokido Kombine :: Home

They host some great anime and tech blogs.

(categories: anime blogs)

GnomeKeyring/RunningDaemon – GNOME Live!

Starting and stopping the Gnome Keyring Daemon, and technical details.

(categories: gnome howto guide opensource)

GnomeGames – GNOME Live!

There's a certain charm to these games, just like the old Windows Entertainment Packs of yesteryear :)

(categories: gnome opensource games fun)

ColorMeSubbed

Looks like the best fansub group doing The World God Only Knows.

(categories: fansub anime)

archlinux.de – Mirror-Status

Useful for tracking how long you can expect an update to reach you.

(categories: linux archlinux mirrors)

8.5 billion USD (about 1.2 million AUD) seems excessive, especially when one considers the vast majority of its customers that defenders of the deal so readily bring up… don't pay a cent. Still, we'll wait and see how Windows Internet Phone Messenger and its seven new editions fare under new ownership.

My two questions are: Microsoft learned from eBay's mistake and bought the Skype protocol as well as the company right? And secondly, is SIP finally up to the task of replacing it? And thirdly, what will No Agenda and TWiT do? Wait, that was three questions.