Some background: The laptop runs Windows XP, and Windows XP fails advanced (yet clumsy) users in a spectacular way. Here's the subtle way in which it does so:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Windows+e | Open File Explorer Window |
| Windows, e | Undock the laptop |
(Note: Windows+e means, "Hold down the Windows key while hitting 'e'," while Windows, e means, "Hit the Windows key (and release it), then hit the 'e' key.)
I am one of those advanced and clumsy users, and use Windows+e frequently every day. I have strong muscle memory for that left-handed pinky-finger and middle-finger action.
The problem wasn't that they shortcut keys could be confused for each other. Remarkably, that never happened. In almost 10 years of use, I never made the mistake of undocking my computer when I meant to open an explorer window, or vice-versa.
Remember, the problem was that when I was coding or composing documents, the computer would spontaneously undock itself. It turns out that when I was writing words like zed or xerces (anything with an e after a z or x), I might just overshoot the bottom-row letter and nudge the Windows key. The next letter, "e", would then be interpreted as the command to undock.
When this happens, there's no warning. Just a millisecond flash of the Start menu between key presses and then blammo! No computer for you.
There's a work around:
If you have a file in the start menu that starts with "e", then "Windows, e" will cause that file to be selected instead of undocking the computer. So I added a file, "e is not undock.txt" to my start menu. Now, the next time I clumsily nudge the Windows key before typing "e", I won't be unintentionally and irrevocably undocking the computer.
We all stand on either side of life experiences that are thresholds. Once you've crossed the threshold, you can't go back, and you may see the world differently or be seen differently.
- bicycle fall
- lice
- prison
- divorce
- incurable progressive disease
- necrotizing fasciitis
- death
- insatiable hunger for human brains
That list is in no particular order. When it comes to certain negative experiences, the view from the inexperienced side can differ greatly from the view on the experienced side. The fear and stigma of the experience can actually far outweigh the actual cost of the experience. It's a sad thing for those that have crossed that threshold, realized that they've been through it, and have emerged affected, but basically the same person. We can serve as mentors and guides for others who see what path they're on, but are afraid to step through.
Time and time again, I've seen people on the inexperienced side invest far too much energy into anticipating and dreading crossing their threshold. It's tiring being on the other side, being able to walk them through it and to be analytical about it, only to be shunned. I'm still the same me. Yes, I went through it. That only means I've had the experience and can be more objective about it. I can be helpful. I have stories to share. Oh, the stories.
So please think twice next time you act like a vivist, all "Oh, I'm still alive, look at me, that makes me better than you: I don't have to shamble everywhere. La de da. I'm gonna kill zombies without getting to know them just because they're different and want to eat my brains."
Brains.
Brains.
I called it "Prettiest Little QR Code Ever." Well, that reflects my initial hopes for the project more than the actual outcome. Live and learn.
Here's what I've got on the phone:
The "Home" Screen
A link to Google Calendar replaced the native Apple Calendar app. I'm not interested in paying for Mobile Me, and Google Calendar now has a Windows native app for syncing with Outlook.I've added Tiltshift Generator to the front page so that it'll be next to the camera.
Convert made it to this screen, just because it's cool. It's in danger of getting dropped for a more useful application.
Tripit is here because the service is just so insanely useful. I've also added my Tripit calendar feed to my Google Calendar. So reservation confirmations automatically get updated to my calendar. How cool is that?
Rounding out the list are Movie Genie (terrible icon), an awesome IMDB app, and Wikipanion. As awesome as Movie Genie is, it's not better for me than my own custom movie ratings page. We'll get to my awesomeness later.
Notably missing from this page is Camera Genius. I desperately need to be able to crop photos before I share them directly from the phone. But I really don't know if that's the right app for me.
Also notably missing is IDriveLite, which I do have, for backing up my contacts. If I weren't already using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for another email account, I'd use that to sync my contacts with GMail's contacts. But as things are, I need IDriveLite.
The "Auxiliary" Screen
I don't think that this screen has changed too much from the previous screenshot. A welcome addition is the Flickr app.If we were to see a heat map of my usage of this screen, Plurk would be red hot, and everything else very cool. I've got local friends who are way into facebook. I'm trying to maintain an interest in it, but, meh.
Honestly, I have no use for Twitterific. That should go. I follow my friends' tweets from my custom feed.
In order to conserve swiping, I should move Plurk from here to the main screen, regardless of the fact that I think it "logically" belongs here.
The rest of this stuff? The games? I don't really play games much on the iPhone right now. Let's see how my behavior changes in a few months...
Some of you may notice that the image indicates that there's another page. Yeah, that's the garbage heap where I tossed Weather, iTunes, Messages, Compass, Voice Memos, Calendar, etc.
A female voice came over the PA system: "Attention Planet Granite members and guests. There's a climber at the front desk who's looking for a belay partner. Come by the front desk if you can help."
A slight pause. Then, "Oh, and this climber's awesome."
We looked at each other as our bullshit detectors pinged. What was that last bit for? Was this climber so terrible or repulsive that he needed that obviously insincere recommendation?
Whatever. My buddy Charles decided to toss the loser a line. I (jokingly) reminded him, "We'll decide who's awesome around here, and if he doesn't cut muster, he's out." Honestly, the three of us are no great shakes, but it's fun to cop an attitude if you can. Charles headed off to the front desk (behind the wall), and later came back alone saying, "He wasn't at the front desk anymore. They'll find him in the bouldering area and he'll come by."
A little bit later, a tall and strikingly beautiful co-ed walks up and asks, "Are you the three climbers who're available to belay another climber?"
I was the one not tied in to a rope at that particular moment, so it fell to me to pair off with her. I'll take one for the team. They can thank me later.
She allowed me to climb first, and I went up a 5.10b with no difficulty. A 5.10c would have been trouble, though. She made some appreciative comments, then decided to warm up on a 5.11d, and waltzed up that thing like it was nothing. (If you're not a climber, that essentially means I was revealed to be an amateur in the presence of a genuine athelete.)
Climbing turned out to be excellent. She was strong, graceful and fun to watch on the wall.
Aww, geeze. She was awesome, after all. The P.A. announcement was no lie. I was the one lucky to be climbing with her.
I would love to draw, but my job doesn't call for it. (Making UML diagrams is as close as it gets.)
Overview:
Sightings/Meetings: Mike Mignola, Camilla D'Errica, David Mack, The Penny Arcade Duo, Josh Howard
Far Away Sightings: Peter Jackson, Tyrese Gibson
Loot: Nothing, really. Just my sketch notes and some free junk like promotional TPB/manga.
Missed: Flynn's Arcade, Tim Burton, CommunityChannel
Missed Loot: Swallow, Sparrow, BluRay Freedom
Details:
I packed a lunch and arrived at the con by 7:00am or so. The line for single-day admissions was already about a quarter mile long and wrapped around the Convention Center to the Marina and along the Marriott.
I'd planned on going to Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman's Making-Of-Coraline panel, but once I got to the con, I realized that I hadn't alloted any time for the gargantuan exhibit hall, so instead, I used the morning to map out places-of-interest. (For me, that was usually artists' booths with interesting art books.)
Yeah, I spent the morning walking along the exhibit hall drawing circles on maps.
ComicCon '09 Map with doodles and Sketchbook
I saw a few artists, like Josh Howard at their tables, but I'd already gotten his signature on his trades (in his case), or they'd already be talking to somebody else, and I was on a timeline. I also saw a few stars like Edward James Olmos and Adam Baldwin.
I did my most fervent shopping for davidd in the morning.
I got in line for the CBDLF Mike Mignola artwork panel a half hour early, and that was plenty of time to get in. There was another line dangerously close that was very, very long. ::shudder:: It might have been Twilight-related or something.
Sometimes he'll place a word balloon first, without anything to say in it, just because the balloon looks good there. Then he'll have to think of something for Hellboy to say in it.
I stayed in the room for the life-drawing of Amanda Palmer by Terry More, Camilla D'Errico and David Mack. That was awesome, too. Go check out this flickr set.
Camilla D'Errico did all her drawing with a cheap, blue Bic pen. David Mack did his with an ink brush. It was fascinating to compare and contrast their styles.
After that panel was over, I made a bee-line for the line for Hall H. I got in line for the Focus Features panel (with Tim Burton) about 20 minutes early. That wasn't nearly enough. I stayed in that line, outside, for the whole panel. I didn't get in until the next panel (which I also wanted to see), the Sony Pictures panel for Legion and District 9, with Peter Jackson.
After that it was back to the exhibit hall to revisit the places I made note of in the morning. I went from Hall H to the very opposite end of the exhibit hall. Phew, that place it big. After I'd had my fill, I headed back to the hotel, where my family was waiting for me.
It was another great con, but there's far too much to see and do for a one-day pass. Going alone was a mixed blessing. I missed being with friends, but I liked not making any compromises and doing exactly what I wanted. If I wanted to camp out at IDW or Slave Labor, I could. I think the one time I really paid the price for going alone was with regard to the line for Hall H. I shoulda had a friend waiting for the Focus panel for me.
Here's my tentative plan. The lines with boxes drawn around them are my first choices, my backup plans are the ones that have the circled two in front of them.
Hope to see you there! (Yeah, I know, some of you won't be there on Friday. Oh, well.)
Remember that I made a list of things I thought I'd want with the iPhone before I actually got it? I went back to that list, and added to it the list of apps that I really got. (Complete with screenshots.) Let's go see how close to reality I was: Go check it out.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11
You may split $10.00 with an anonymous stranger if he accepts your one-time offer of a split. If he accepts your one-time offer, you both get your cut. If he doesn't, neither of you get any money. What do you offer?
View Answers
I keep $10.00. He gets nothing.
0 (0.0%)
I keep $9.00. He gets $1.00. 1 (10.0%)
I keep $8.00. He gets $2.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep $7.00. He gets $3.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep $6.00. He gets $4.00. 2 (20.0%)
I keep $5.00. He gets $5.00. 7 (70.0%)
I keep $4.00. He gets $6.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep $3.00. He gets $7.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep $2.00. He gets $8.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep $1.00. He gets $9.00. 0 (0.0%)
I keep nothing. He gets $10.00. 0 (0.0%)
An anonymous stranger is told he could split $10.00 with you. If you accept his one-time offer, you both get your cut. If you don't, neither of you get any money. He offered you $2.00, and wants to keep $8.00. Do you accept?
The source of this poll comes from a study in Sway. Highly recommended.
In a few days, I'll have an iPhone. I think it'll be fun to post what I currently think I'll need to download, and then revisit this post in a few weeks and update it when reality hits and admit to what I really downloaded and what I actually use.
What I Think I'll Download [Original post on June 15th]
- SplashID : This is the most critical application I currently have on my Treo.
- Some battery saving utilities. Hopefully something that turns on BlueTooth only when it's time for me to drive.
- An awesome Google application that removes a little of the chrome from GMail, Maps, etc.
- Maybe a Plurk / Twitter / Micro-blogging-and-geolocating-service client.
- Some organizational utility that hides things I don't use and presents things I do with fewer swipes.
- Maybe some silly tech-demo to show off the accelerometer or a game. I dunno.
What I really Downloaded [Edited later on July 4th]
I'm back, and I've had the iPhone for a few weeks now. How did I live without the it? Let's accompany this with screen captures.First, the "Main Page with Utilities"
I removed some standard apps from the main page, and replaced them with ones I deem worthy of being on the Main Utilities page.I added TripIt, which I'd already fallen in love with, simply because if its webpage. The iPhone app was just icing on the cake. If you travel and you're not using TripIt, go check it out.
I added SpashID. I was already using it on my Treo, so it was a no-brainer to continue using it on the iPhone. There may be better alternatives, but I'd already paid for mine.
I also added Sketches, because a man needs to doodle.
Finally, and this is tentative, Pandora made the cut. I haven't been able to make all the Pandora stations I really need, but I'm willing to give it some time. If iTunes can finally come around and offer a good JPop selection, then hopefully Pandora can too. Here's hoping for a Namie Amuro station.
Second, the "Social Apps and Games page."
I added the following Social Network Apps: Plurk, Facebook and Twitterific. Plurk and Facebook were no-brainers. There are a million Twitter apps, and I'm not interested in assessing all of them before I commit. I might change it if another one come up and bites me on the ankle.
I'm wildly in love with Shazam, which has worked for me on multiple occasions. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have it recognize a song for me (that was playing at a restaurant), and make a note of it. What an awesome app.
Now Playing and Coffee Finder are both awesome location aware apps. Coffee Finder finds a Starbucks near you, and Now Playing tells you what's playing at the theaters near you. It allows you to choose the reviews it displays, and I've chosen Rotten Tomatoes.
Planets is handy for having at hand when I'm outside with the kids at night.
All the others are the sort of games that I like to play myself. Make of that what you will.
Third, the "Rarely used, Games for Children, and Emergency Apps Page."
This is the garbage bin, full of utilities, tech demos, and games that don't interest me, but interest my children. The following two utilites almost made it to my front page, though: Phone Flicks, for NetFlix queue management, and TouchTerm, for emergency ssh.
You can see I relegated what I consider to be nearly useless standard utilites here: Compass, Stocks, Messages, iTunes, Voice Memos and YouTube. Meh on all of 'em.
Flixter is a sanity check against Now Playing, as iSSH is being evaluated against TouchTerm.
Why my kids enjoy SmackTalk so much, I'll never know. But they do, and so I keep it for them.
Notably Missing
- I never got that BlueTooth enabling app. Shame. On the iPhone, you really have to burrow too deeply to enable and disable BlueTooth. What a pain.
- I also don't have an excellent RottenTomatos or IMDB app for strolling around in a brick-and-mortar video rental store. [Edit] I wrote one for myself.
- There's no app for efficiently browsing your LJ friends page.
- I never needed the Google app I thought I'd download. Integrating GMail with Mail on the iPhone is easy, and GMail's site itself is optimized for iPhone clients, anyway.
Your friends won't see your public replies to other friends anymore.
Or, when they can, they can't tell to which tweet you replied.
Or, when they can, they can't tell to which tweet you replied.
That's a lot like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. That's where you can't precisely know a particle's position and momentum at the same time. You can know either one with high precision, but not both.
At Twitter, you can either see your friends' replies, or know which tweet they were replying to. But not both.
It didn't used to be like that. If we wanted to see our friends' replies, they'd simply show up in our list of tweets, with a handy link to the tweet it's a reply to. You'd see your friends' replies, and you could click-through to see what they were replying to.
The Good Old Days - See replies and know what they replied to.
That was nice. Twitter changed that. Now, the only tweets that show up in your list of friends' tweets don't have that handy link. So you can see that they replied to something, but you can't know for sure which tweet they replied to.
Keep that in mind when you want to reply to a tweet. You have a choice to make. If you want your friends to see your reply (isn't that the point of Twitter?), then you'd better type "@username" instead of click the reply-button under the star. Or, if you want your reply to be linked to the tweet it's a reply to, you should click on the reply-button under the star. You can't have both.
Having to make that choice sucks. Welcome to the HeisenTwitter Uncertainty Principle. This is why I like Plurk.
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/user
You can also specify the order in which you want the videos. Note the "orderedby" parameter in the urls that follow:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/user
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/user
So far, so great. Now, suppose you want to make a lifestream, and you want to include the videos that you've favorited. They've got a feed for that, too:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/d
But it's not right. If you look at the data you get back, you see that it's not what you wanted. Those videos are going to be associated with the timestamp with which they were updated or published, not the time that you favorited them. And that's the time that matters to your lifestream! Given the way the programmatic feeds are organized, you'd think that there's a way to specify that, and that feed would be as follows, right? --
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/d
Nope. After living with a workaround in my lifestream for months, only today do I learn that YouTube did create the feed I needed, but calls it this: v=2. Yeah, like that jibes with their feed explanation.
Lifestream writers, the favorites feed (ordered by time favorited) that you want is constructed like this:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/u
(Replace "username" with your username, of course.) Now I can go delete my workaround.
Services thrive when they grow and maintain a community around them. Otherwise, they fail, even if they're better.
Five years? Well, nearly. In a couple of months, I'll have been here five years. Wow, I've been friends with you guys for that much of my life. Practically as long as my son has been alive. In a way, you're all a significant part of my life's experience, and I care about you. I worry about you when you're troubled, I laugh with you when you joke, and I find peace with you when you share koans and zen thoughts.
I'm concerned, though. We really are plurking and tweeting more than we blog nowadays. I've long complained about twitter's damaging effect.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
halophoenix has written about the state of blogging in the age of twitter. (Even if you don't read it, scroll down to the bottom and read the first two comments, between 'Phoenix and I.)For those of you reading this: ::hug::, ::fist-bump::, Sláinte and Kanpai!
( four embedded videos after the cut... )
And for search engines and those who can't be bothered to dive into the cut, that was Sowelu's Mamoru Beki Mono, Bonnie Pink's Water Me, Ai Otsuka's Planetarium, and Namie Amuro's Can You Celebrate.
I think I just lost all my manly-man cred. Did I ever have any?
- Nothing But the Truth : Lillian rented this on a whim. When I found out, I was a little resentful because it was a standard definition DVD, but it had Kate Beckinsale in it, so I gave it a chance. I was pleasantly surprised, it kept me engaged. We both liked it. I recommend it.
- The Dead and the Dying : I just finished the third Criminal trade by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It stands up to the first two. I'm looking forward to Bad Night. Highly recommended.
- Wicked : We went to Wicked for our Anniversary date. We were pleasantly surprised to see that Patty Duke and David Garrison (the neighbor on "Married with Children") were in the cast. We didn't really know anything about the play before we saw it, and were better off for it. It had some really cute numbers that we'll be referencing for a month. (Sort of like Avenue Q, that way.)
- Roy's : San Francisco's "Roy's" rocks. We're increasingly choosing to go here for special grown-ups-only dinners. We really love it, and always gravitate to their Prix Fixe menus. Yum. I'm full now, but want to go back already.
But every once in a while, there's an exception. I found myself sitting through the opening credits of Black Lagoon for this one frame.
It's pretty compelling. The character is Remy, a broken sociopathic murderer. She is often disenfranchised, stoic or bitter. Rarely, and usually when it precedes murderous violence, she'll be happy.
That's part of the thing that gets me about the frame. She's deceptively cute in the still, because her character isn't developed to be cute at all. My attention always starts with her eyes, smile, and scrawl on her cheek. But right after that, I become aware of the clues to her menace and strength: Her two guns strapped to her shoulder harness and the tribal tattoo going down her right arm. Only then do I realize: "Wait. Is she reaching for a weapon?"
BTW, I'm done with Black Lagoon now, and am moving on to Flag.
(the new "df" search)
A couple of years ago, I'd already claimed to be a long-time fan of Dave's Quick Search Deskbar, especially because of its popup dictionary search.
Since then, though, Merriam-Webster has changed the layout of their site so much, that they made maintaining the DQSD mwd.xml prohibitively expensive. I needed to create a new search, and I did. (The definitions aren't as good as Merriam-Webster's, but at least they work.)
Here's what you do, if you already have DQSD installed:
- Download df.zip (2 kb), and extract df.xml into C:\Program Files\Quick Search Deskbar\searches.
- Modify localaliases.txt to include the following line:
:|df
And now, you can have an easy, non-intrusive, dictionary lookup available anytime again. Just type the word to lookup with a colon after it, and the definition will appear in a popup window that gets dismissed when focus changes elsewhere. (I mention a shortcut key recipe I use for looking up words.)
In case you didn't already know, DQSD excels at many other searches, too. It defaults to Google, but I use it for Wikipedia, image, maps, the imdb, and a calculator quite often, too. It's just the popup definition lookup that needed my TLC.
megami !) , so I've mentioned it here for those of you who don't follow me elsewhere.All the rock-climbing life lessons are good, and the video is short, compared to the other TED videos I've seen.
Yeah, I have this month covered already elsewhere. But why not give LJ a little Leporidae leporidae love too?
