Month: April 2003

In my adolescence, I read many of Anne McCaffrey’s books, especially the Pern books, which are about a world where dragons and dragonriders are real (eventually explained as genetically bred from small lizards… whatever!). The last of the three books I picked up at the library a few weeks ago is the newest Pern book, The Skies of Pern, published in 2001. I’m maybe halfway in, and it’s familiar, but I’ve clearly missed a few books along the way. Now there are dolphins and references to a computer which no longer works but passed along various technologies to the peoples of Pern. Just writing that makes it sound pretty nutty. It is, but it’s coherent if you know the characters… which I almost do, though I’m stretching. I don’t think I’ll be going back to read the ones I missed anytime soon.

By the way, I liked the Patrick O’Brian biography, although it was very factual and dry, just following the chronology of his life in a rote manner. It did convince me to go out and buy the next one in the series, Desolation Island. That’s only #5 of 20, so I have a long way to go.

Just replied to an email from a colleague from my college days, and it made me think about getting to know people in new contexts. I use the word colleague, but he was a friend, though never very close. We knew each other at the boathouse, without spending much time together for other reasons. But he’s in San Francisco now, and I’m looking forward to seeing if a shared experience 10 (!) years in the past helps connect the dots now. In a meeting at work today, my co-worker was surprised to be introduced to someone he knew in college. This person worked for another company we’re talking to, and the context was so different (meeting under NDA vs. college frat party), it really got us talking afterwards. How much do people grow up or change? Speaking for myself, well, I don’t know. What about you?

Steve Yelvington explains why the move to Cascading Style Sheets is a business decision, not a technical/standards decision. …if all things were equal, all sites should be CSS2-compliant. But all things aren’t equal. He also describes the business needs of most news sites as ‘presentational integrity’ which he defines as knowing where content AND ads will show up. He’s spot on. He expects that Morris Digital Works, his employer, will eventually decide to leave the legacy browsers behind. We’re going to do the same over the next year or so at my employer… but it’s not a real goal, just a by-product of other projects. I stole a ‘theme’ for this site that employs CSS, but I’m not making any bones about understanding CSS at the level that I understand ‘normal’ markup (read, HTML 4.0).

The San Francisco Public Library website is oh-so-slow. I’m trying to find out if the local branch, or any branch, has a copy of Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian (I’m almost done with the biography). But in both Safari and IE 5.2.2 on MacOS X, the results are empty and slow. I haven’t used the library website for many months (a year?), but I don’t remember it being this poor. Interface looks the same, so I wasn’t expecting better or worse, necessarily. Copyright on the pages for the software is 1999, which may say it all.

The Lafayette Project is still under wraps, but MegNut and two other early bloggers are the founders, and at least in what little they say, I think they are tackling a real problem. That problem is “We want to help readers browse weblogs when they *don’t* know what they’re looking for.” (The entire admittedly vague explanation.) This problem is what I meant when I wrote

One challenge to part of Chris Anderson’s quote… “you fire the information out there, and interested people will find it.” I don’t believe it will always be found. In fact, I think that’s blogging’s greatest weakness — it’s not good at opening up to non-bloggers. (full post)

Should not be so hard to do, but I found the instructions, so we’ll see if this works.

Watched 12 hours of user tests over the last two days, typing into my work blog the entire time… more than 40 pages of single-spaced transcripts/notes, on my laptop without the ergonomic keyboard. Ouch. But also used the opportunity to make my blog more of a public item at work, to positive response. Since a real transcript costs $80 per tester (we’ll order a few of them anyway, for future use), I’m both giving my take on the tests and spreading the word far and wide… at least internally. But I need to set up the home computer, at least, with voice activation. How do software programmers, who avoid meetings, etc., keep typing 100% of the time?

Bringing in real people today to look at some new ideas at work. This is labeled ‘user testing’ — but it really means ‘assumption testing.’ Various ideas and strongly-held beliefs make their way into concrete form (in this case, web pages) based on gut instinct, log files, and compromises between internal consistuents. Now we really see what people think. I hope the folks coming in today are talkative: we should pay them by the word, because the more they explain the why behind their actions, the more we’ll learn. I’d love to do testing based on what’s been live for 2+ years almost as much as the prototype we’re showing today, but that will have to wait.

This small, new site has more machine ‘readers’ than humans. And I know how much trouble we go to at work to screen out the machines. What I haven’t done at work, because the scale is impossible, is look at the log files directly, as Tim Bray suggests. The log files are raw, unfiltered, and probably confirm that even in an active, information-seeking world — we’re all using tools to help bring us that information.

I’m not going to do it, but I can write 1,000 words a lot easier than I can find/draw/photograph a picture to tell the same story. I find it frustrating to work with people who are need visuals because I have a harder time explaining myself. But it’s not worth beating my head against the wall. I just need to find the right tools for translating verbal ideas into graphic form. I am sorely lacking in this department, one of the many reasons I was thrilled to just re-use an existing theme for this site. Any suggestions for ‘graphics for word weenies’ programs? I’ve used Visio, but feel like that’s overkill, and feels too formal. For output, I want nice web-friendly formats. I care little about resolution. This isn’t a burning issue for me, but it’s one of those areas where I know I need help. There are others, but you don’t need to hear about all of them. 😉

Tiny, tiny example. Yesterday I noted that I was trying ImageWell, which (I now know) I came across via John Robb’s blog. I had one odd crash later that day, after upgrading to MacOS X 10.2.5. I didn’t think much of it, nor connect the dots. But I later read Chris Gulker was also trying ImageWell, and having some problems since upgrading to 10.2.5. I was fortunate enough to follow in his footsteps, and it seems like the author of ImageWell helped Chris track down a solution in no time (basically, quit the application, delete the preferences file, and restart the application). One three-way dialog between parties unknown to each other which resulted in two satisfied customers, neither of whom had to pay, since ImageWell doesn’t appear to ask for/require payment. My thanks to Chris for responding to my comments on his site. Maybe it’s time for me to enable comments.

My wife doesn’t understand why I want to blog. This is one small example.