Archive for March, 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Tuesday, March 30th, 2004

Sunday I went to go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. About the only way I can describe the feeling of this movie is imagine that your strolling down memory lane, only to find when ever you look behind you, everything has been erased. This movie required an extreme amount of consentration on my part, I was almost lost early on. But hang in there, it starts to make sense and then the plot hits you in the face.

Quite possibly one of the best movies I have ever seen dealing with the inner workings of human behavior, and what happens if you start to screw it up. One commentators views on the relationships expressed in the film:

He’s [Charlie Kaufman – writer] a masterful writer with a daring mind that knows no boundaries or limitations, and in this film he directs his unflinching genius at relationships – the human need for them, the over-whelming fragility of them, and most profoundly, the pain they cause when we expect another person to fulfill the parts of ourselves that cannot be filled by another person – the illusions we have about each other, the baggage we bring to any new encounter, the neurotic preconceptions that pretty much doom any relationship once it gets past the newness phase.

All-in-all a brilliant film, I deffinetly recommend it.

Lament of the User

Saturday, March 27th, 2004

Via Simian Design, I am USER, hear me roar!. The user has to long been pushed to the back seat at the hands of marketing and “the quick buck”. Sure it’s hard to pay attention to your audience, but sooner or later you won’t have an audience. These self-centric views sicken me. I have been on the giving and recieving ends of this and let just say no one benifits from it. Beyond just web interface design, I also talking about human nature as it exists today. So the next time you interface with someone, be it real or virtual, remeber that your audience is human and not a machine.

Windows XP Woes

Friday, March 26th, 2004

If I had a dollar for every time Windows shot itself in the foot, I would be richer than Bill Gates – as would many other people.

Where to begin… Wensday, I was doing some routine disk maintance. The “Disk Cleanup Wizard” presented a new option to “Remove Windows 98/ME Installation Files”, telling me that lest I should decide to go back to that version of Windows I should delete these files. So I hand Windows the meat cleaver and within 30 minutes I have 6 Windows File Protection alert boxes telling me that critical files to the operation of Windows have gone AWOL. But didn’t I tell it to delete said files? Thought so. For the record, don’t ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever (don’t think I got enough “evers” in there) delete these files. The updated OS still needs these files.

I was getting tired so I left this task till the morning. I began trying to copy these needed files from a working Windows XP in an attempt to avoid disaster. That is assuming the shell stays stable, which it didn’t. Reboot. Hal.dll is missing (for those who don’t know, this is a bad thing). Can’t even get a command prompt now. I start a new search for bootdisk solutions that have NTFS support. My goal: attempt to back up my files and wipe the slate clean.

Three hours and 8 tools later I come apon BartPE. This tool is genius. So very fleible. And most important, native NTFS support. I make my back ups and then go to finish the job that Disk Cleanup Wizrd started.

Slowly I am recovering from the loss of 4+ years of customizations. Quickly I am developing a psychosis at the hand of Microsoft.

Mac Killed My Inner Child

Sunday, March 21st, 2004

Via my brother, Mac Killed My Inner Child. Simply brilliant (and hilarious) piece about this one guys strugles with the Mac OS.

The World’s Loudest Mouse Click

Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

Via TechGnome’s World, Mindful Musings :: The World’s Loudest Mouse Click. An endevor to symbolize peace. I think this is a great idea, to see the internet unite for one moment, with a single purpose. Even one so simple as clicking a mouse button.

Close to Home

Thursday, March 11th, 2004

And I don’t mean the comic strip. I mean this thread hit close to home. To those of my friends and family whom I have aided in the past, please do not take this as a slant against you.

But I must say that at times I am truly amazed at what destructive activities some people can accomplish with their computers. Back in high school I had a class which was a position in the school’s Help Desk (cheap labor ;)). I have lived the life of a computer technician at the beck and call of a working group. Reading threads and rants and articles of this nature is relaxing and a humorous pasttime. I also like to share these with people to let them see my side of my work. I do take pride in the fact that I have a skill set that many stuggle to grasp. And with that I love to help. Us IT guys are funny people and we live in our own little world. Sometimes we must be handled with care. But we are people, just like you.

Shame On Lockergnome

Monday, March 8th, 2004

Via Simon Willison, Lockergnome reverts back to a tables based layout. Simon does a good job of reaming Lockergnome for their hideous display of back pedaling web standards.

I just love what Jason DeFillippo said in this release article:

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on our cutting edge CSS layouts and, while they are definitely fancy-schmancy, they detract quite a bit from our core efforts which are great content and easy access to it.

I’m sorry, but reverting back to this style of markup is a detraction from accessibilty. Enough said.