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20071122 Thursday November 22, 2007
ignore the ignorants

I have never seen anything good coming out of ui design where the designers think they are smarter than their users or that users are unable or simply not interested to learn a thing or two.

Someone smart, working in HR, said to me lately: People are by default motivated. Motivation is not the problem. Demotivating people is the problem.

I think this can be applied to ui design. If someone handles a user interface, he always starts motivated. He wants to do something, may that be reading the news or making a video or just listening to music. The demotivating starts then when the app asks for annoying confirmations, behaves incoherently and inconsistently and offers things the user just does not want to know. It then get's in the way and people wish it to get out of their faces again.

Good user interfaces are pleasing, and not entertaining. They are consistent and precise, and not surprising. They reward intelligence and do not treat everyone as a first time user.

Posted by icing ( Nov 22 2007, 04:55:26 PM CET ) Permalink
20070831 Friday August 31, 2007
simpsonizeme
Ste3-1 Yes, it's me.
Posted by icing ( Aug 31 2007, 04:46:43 PM CEST ) Permalink
20070622 Friday June 22, 2007
peace!
Now that everyone has the warm and fuzzy feeling inside, world peace and brotherly love are just around the corner.
Posted by icing ( Jun 22 2007, 09:02:02 AM CEST ) Permalink
20070614 Thursday June 14, 2007
steve is back

It's good to see that Steve Yegge is back. Alive.

I raise my beer in salute. I know where he's been. Though I personally think that vampires are the better M.

Two things have traditionally puzzled vampire researchers. One is: why do vampires have so much power? Vampires're so easy to kill, they point out. There are dozens of ways to despatch them, quite apart from the stake through the heart[...]. Yet just one can keep a whole community in a state of sullen obedience... Terry Prattchet, Carpe Jugulum

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Posted by icing ( Jun 14 2007, 08:20:14 PM CEST ) Permalink
20070531 Thursday May 31, 2007
http-bis

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Posted by icing ( May 31 2007, 10:07:03 PM CEST ) Permalink
20070314 Wednesday March 14, 2007
favourite quote
200703142209
Captain, what are your orders?
Sergeant, we have crossed a strange boundary here. The world has taken a turn for the surreal.
Clearly, but the question still stands.

Timeless.

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Posted by icing ( Mar 14 2007, 10:09:06 PM CET ) Permalink
20070131 Wednesday January 31, 2007
atom in trouble
200701312247

Well, a little at least. Here you can read a mail by Mr. Tim Bray, chair of the atom protocol working group, summing up a what must have been a very silly discussion with his Area Directors at the IETF. Interesting comments all over the mail thread.

Oh my.

Doctor, it hurts when I standardize at the IETF.
Well, then don't do it!

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Posted by icing ( Jan 31 2007, 10:45:21 PM CET ) Permalink
20070112 Friday January 12, 2007
will there be pies?
200701120939

I am still in the pondering phase of how to do my own publishing software. Since a lot of smart people use python (quack!) I am considering to start there; it seems like a neat addition to my skill set. (First, you can never know too many script languages and, second, I also need some counter balance to my latest addition of C# (which, since you ask, is an Ok language, but there is nothing exciting about it (only the HTTP stack is exciting in the hammer-to-your-head sense.))).

Where was I?

So I read some up on python during the last days, bought the cookbook, parsed some XML and had a look at feedparser by Mark Pilgrim. Seems a nice and well tested piece of code and the documentation at his site is excellent! Kudos.

And then as a warm-up task I examine the html5lib by Anne van Kesteren a bit and ponder some ideas around an API on top of it. I was thinking that something SAX-like is excellent (i did such in the past), but Anne wrote that this is not sufficient. Might see in the code what he really means.

So much code, so little time.

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Posted by icing ( Jan 12 2007, 09:36:01 AM CET ) Permalink
20061120 Monday November 20, 2006
Talk like a Mate Days
Map.Australia

As you might have heard, the world has been turned upside down and Mark is moving back to Australia (to raise his clone armies uncontaminated by valley lifestyle).

What can we do? Well, we can help Mark prepare for this change and to soften the cultural change, I hereby declare the next days to be Talk like a Mate days. Since I am no native speaker, I have to draw on external resources, but please jump in and add whatever you can to help. I might also give us a crucial advantage in still being able to understand Mark in a couple of months from now once he is true blue again!

What I have dug up so far:

  • g'day for Hello as documented by Mark himself.
  • g'day, sheila! if you don't know the name of the sheep
  • five finger discount for shoplifting
  • good on ya Mate! someone has done something right
  • laughing gear for your mouth
  • mystery bag for sausage
  • great australian salute for swatting flies
  • silly season for christmas holidays
  • he's got tickets on himself for someone who thinks he is insanely great
  • throw a yabbie on the barbie for putting a shrimp in the barbecue

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Posted by icing ( Nov 20 2006, 11:13:45 AM CET ) Permalink
20061013 Friday October 13, 2006
days of folly

When you feel like Don Quixote, it is good to learn that others have felt the same before. And so it was today for me when I found the words of wisdom:

[...]where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray

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Posted by icing ( Oct 13 2006, 07:27:15 PM CEST ) Permalink
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