tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88954682011-10-12T04:15:11.381-07:00andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-67806995807927764422011-01-26T13:41:00.000-08:002011-01-26T13:52:26.944-08:00

Interesting post in the comments at the Sun Times about why 3D films seem to be worse than 2D ones. I think I agree with all of that, but now that I've thought about it a bit more, I think his conclusion is wrong. If you have not read the link above, go do so now. I'll wait.There has been work about making glasses that can re-focus dynamically. One of the designs has each lens made of a pair

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-14512791327643622912011-01-10T09:06:00.000-08:002011-01-10T11:25:29.684-08:00

A few years ago when Facebook announced their app api, I didn't look too closely at it but I rather assumed that it would take a few months and there would be a bunch of nasty little apps available along with a few good ones. It does not seem to me that this has happened. Instead there were lots of nasty little games, and a few every-so-slightly-less-nasty ones.Why is this?My theory is that it

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-7847779965697416752011-01-07T18:49:00.000-08:002011-01-07T18:50:45.952-08:00

See for yourself.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-74283645398454027862011-01-07T18:45:00.000-08:002011-01-07T18:49:26.493-08:00

Just now I decided to write a new post here every night.Let's see how long this lasts.Anyhow, I just finished making garlic sauce. It's pretty delicious. I minced an entire garlic, then cooked it until it was light brown and crispy in butter and olive oil. The plan is to take it to Red Robin tomorrow night and eat it on the french fries. Why?Well, Red Robin has some of the best fries around,

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-51650694113723389862009-11-19T14:41:00.000-08:002009-11-19T14:44:41.487-08:00

This video is ostensibly a spontaneous (oddly well-choreographed) dance that erupted in a Microsoft retail store.Now, I've never been in a Microsoft store, so maybe it is like that. I have been in an Apple store and I can tell you for sure this would never have happened there, at least not in the ones I've been in. For one thing, the stores are much smaller. For another, there are no where

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-61283642911198656172009-09-15T13:00:00.000-07:002009-09-15T13:05:13.817-07:00

Someone pried the door handle out of the bodywork, and stole the radio and a couple of gauges that I had installed. Probably $1500 damage, maybe more, to get about $100 worth of stuff.I just watched this video: ">Harvard Economist: End the War on Drugs. While I think he's right, I think there is a large second-order effect that he's missing. If that junkie's meth (or whatever it was he was

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-13263840594557399702008-09-12T10:55:00.000-07:002008-09-12T10:56:31.294-07:00

 Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj 

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-80891549644695524562008-09-03T22:57:00.000-07:002008-09-03T23:00:28.711-07:00

Several times now, I have tried to write this post. Each time I get myself all worked up into a lather, and end up confusing myself.Zed wrote it for me. Go read it.It turns out, that just like all the other dopes that he talks about, I had been conflating the ideas of abstraction and indirection. Abstraction is generally good whenever it actually shows up. Indirection, however, can be overused.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-44134178053519158372008-08-29T15:51:00.000-07:002008-08-29T15:57:11.487-07:00

So, there's been a bunch of other people posting stuff about Sara Palin. The little I've managed to gather so far is that she's the governor of Alaska, she has not that much experience, she is fairly conservative (not "neo-", oddly) and she's something of a hottie.Someone even made a nifty little website about her.One of the snarky losers on reddit called her a "female Dan Quayle", which is kind

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-53250699675587478352008-08-29T15:50:00.000-07:002008-08-29T15:51:52.879-07:00

By now, I suspect that both of my loyal readers had assumed that I had abandoned this blog.Well, that is just not true.I think that the problem was that I was trying to have high standards for my posts. Standards so high that I could not meet them. So, now I have a solution.No, I will not be taking a writing class. I will not be spending more time on the posts. I will, in fact just ignore

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-70089998758629322692007-09-04T09:32:00.000-07:002007-09-04T09:33:57.301-07:00

I just read a really motivating interview with Johnny Rotten. If you don't know who that is, don't bother clicking the link.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-17140902827718177472007-07-25T23:36:00.001-07:002007-07-25T23:36:46.238-07:00

But you have to admit that's cool.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-69308183035989836622007-06-29T11:41:00.000-07:002007-06-29T11:50:15.274-07:00

So, I find that I keep using it, even though it crashes periodically and leaks memory faster than anything I've ever seen. (Well, maybe anything that wasn't designed expressly to test memory leaking.) The fonts just look so very much better, that I keep gravitating right back to it.http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.htmlBut then, I used to use Opera, where I could easily crank up

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-68349474213271978652007-06-29T11:36:00.001-07:002007-06-29T11:36:59.049-07:00

Yep, I'm lazy that way.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-37969801538061894682007-06-25T14:57:00.000-07:002007-06-25T14:58:06.187-07:00

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-9133605309961610072007-06-25T10:50:00.000-07:002007-06-25T10:52:48.094-07:00

...is that it looks so much like Safari on OS X that when I go to minimize it, my mouse automatically heads over to the top left corner. A regular windows app puts a little menu on the useless icon that is parked at the top left corner, but since this is all smooth and shiny, there is nothing there. I guess I could back up a bit and click on the 'Window' menu, to get a minimize action, but

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-66642253900394565752007-02-24T23:30:00.000-08:002007-02-24T23:56:50.289-08:00

A while ago I switched to del.icio.us for keeping references to web pages that I might want to visit again. This works fine for remembering a reference to something. I the non-internet world, which some of us remember, this is not what is stored with a bookmark. Generally this kind of information would be recorded in a notebook, or perhaps on some 3x5" index cards, held together with the

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-69245606480530914852007-01-08T08:20:00.000-08:002007-01-08T08:24:55.767-08:00

My results:I am ApocalypseApocalypse 80%Magneto79%Dr. Doom 69%Lex Luthor 67%The Joker 65%Dark Phoenix 61%Riddler 58%Poison Ivy 58%Juggernaut 58%Kingpin 52%Green Goblin 50%Mr. Freeze 46%Catwoman 42%Mystique 38%Venom 35%Two-Face 30%I believe in survival of the fittest and I believe that I am the fittest.Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-6523202512297825502007-01-07T23:15:00.000-08:002007-01-07T23:19:46.842-08:00

I actually bothered to read the (currently) top posting on Linux Lore, and it is advertising a utility for converting LiveJournal postings to Blogger ones. Eh, whatever. Not like I need that. Being a Linux bigot enthusiast, I figured he would be distributing a Python script, or something equally unusable.No, it's better than that.Wait for it...It's a Windows executable. With an installer and

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-24065583577376534182007-01-07T23:02:00.000-08:002007-01-07T23:15:29.938-08:00

So, the thread starts with me listening to a podcast called "The Gadgettes", and they mention Ubuntu Linux. Something about the "explosive growth" of it or so. I've been using Linux on and off since late 1992, so it would be natural for you to expect that I would be an advocate of it.You'd be wrong.My current opinion is that thousands of highly motivated, yet unpaid volunteers have managed to

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-23837508208703926932007-01-07T22:58:00.000-08:002007-01-07T23:00:41.061-08:00

This time it's been such a long time that I had to switch to my google account in order to post. Well, I might not have had to, but the old one was really flakey, so I'm hoping that this new one will be flakey in less annoying ways.I've seriously lowered my quality expectations, so expect to see lots more posts in the future. Horray.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1127702387074950662005-09-25T19:39:00.000-07:002005-09-25T19:39:47.520-07:00

Del.icio.us is kind of neat.If you haven't used it, Del.icio.us is a website where you can post bookmarks. They're not much for security, what with anyone who wanders by being able to look at your bookmarks, but that's really not a big deal. It is kind of nice to look at other people's bookmarks, especially if you can find someone who has similar interests. Browsing other people's bookmarks

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1127099669714602862005-09-18T20:14:00.000-07:002005-09-18T20:18:18.333-07:00

The author of Simon of Space is writing a serialized novel, live, in his blog. The best I can manage is to very infrequently put together an incoherent rant.Ah, well. I bet I could kick his butt in unarmed combat.

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1126981180231734352005-09-17T11:19:00.000-07:002005-09-18T20:16:48.290-07:00

This is just a quick not to encourage everyone to vote in the primary. I'd also like to encourage everyone to not vote for someone that they don't know anything about. Toward that end, if there are any races on the ballot that you don't know anything about the people, don't just pick one! Look up on the internet and find out what there is to find out about them. This stuff is important!Or, if

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1117929714648560492005-06-04T15:51:00.000-07:002005-06-04T17:01:54.676-07:00

The design of X Windows includes the mantra "Mechanism, not policy." This belies the academic roots of the design. I'm using "academic" here to principly mean "isolated from reality." As a result, its interface is wildly confusing and inconsistent. Sometimes within single applications.The design of WordPerfect seems to be somewhat different. The emphasis was on editing documents. "Word

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1115953969516168082005-05-12T19:48:00.000-07:002005-05-12T20:26:15.573-07:00

So in the month since I last posted, I quit driving to work again. While walking the 1.5-ish miles to and from the bus stop, of late I've been thinking about what makes computers hard or easy to use, and the nature of options.I've mentioned before that I've switched from Linux and Windows to Mac OS X at home. Something that I've heard, and may or may not be true, is that interfaces that have

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1113070892047444622005-04-09T11:04:00.000-07:002005-04-09T11:21:32.046-07:00

I recently finished reading Stephen Baxter's Exultant. I haven't read science fiction in a long time, and this one was somewhat better than a lot of what I remember reading as a Jr. High student. One thing that set this book apart from others is that unlike a lot of other novels which happen to be set in space or something, this one seems to crib a lot of its backstory from something like

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1108339830650834102005-02-13T15:37:00.000-08:002005-02-13T16:10:43.593-08:00

I've been wondering about the "best way" to build software. Maybe this applies to building other things, but somehow I doubt it. The area I've been wondering about lately is size. Is it better to build one big thing that does everything, or is it better to build a handful of small things that work together to do a big job?Traditionally, UNIX systems came with a collection of small utilities

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1107553155405243052005-02-05T08:31:00.000-08:002005-02-05T09:54:35.170-08:00

For many years I have been an advocate of the power of a command line interface over the ease of use of a graphical interface. I think that this is especially true for file management tasks. I'd rather type "rm *" than to have to draw a box around a window full of icons and then drag them to a trashcan. I'd far rather type "rm *~" than to have to search through a window with 100 icons in it

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1107269716304938262005-02-01T06:34:00.000-08:002005-02-01T06:57:56.646-08:00

It's been a few weeks since I last posted. What went wrong this time? Well, I managed to get a case of cellulitis (bacterial infection in the skin) on my shin. The doctors I've talked to about this don't know where it came from, but with a whole lot of intravenous antibiotics, I'm back up and around. I was only in the hospital for 4 days but I've been told to keep off my feet as much as

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1105593914248327422005-01-12T20:41:00.000-08:002005-01-13T11:15:38.853-08:00

I've been reading Donald A. Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things. It is a fine book. The chapter I'm reading now talks about affordances, which seems to be a concise way of describing the hints that a thing shows us to explain how it is to be used. Being a computer guy, I immediately relate this to computer interfaces: Every mouse-based graphical user interface (GUI) I've used has a

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1104893872700757132005-01-04T18:22:00.000-08:002005-01-04T18:57:52.700-08:00

One of my collegues, let's call him Eric, pointed out that Mozilla has an option to pre-fetch the links from the page that you are on. This is the basically what I wanted when I wrote about "Agressive look-ahead." I suppose I should go download a recent Mozilla and try it out, but I've been watching the Mozilla project for a couple of years now and I've quit using it because I've determined

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1104775822081167122005-01-03T08:51:00.000-08:002005-01-03T10:10:22.080-08:00

Jacob Nielson writes about usability in his "alertbox" forum, usually talking about website usability. In a recent posting he describes some ideas he has for making web browsers more usable by extending HTML to a more complete hypertext. (Go read his description for more details.) I think that there is plenty of room for improvement just looking at the browser side of the web. If you don't

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1100270928784050002004-11-12T06:39:00.000-08:002004-11-12T06:48:48.783-08:00

So a couple of people have now pointed out that my efforts to divide reliability and trustworthyness ended in confusion. To simplify: When we interact with things, we form an idea in our minds of how the things are going to behave. ➡ If the thing always behaves how we expect it to, that is trustworthy. ➡ If the thing always behaves the same, even if it is unexpectly the same, that is reliable

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099971700553532602004-11-08T18:54:00.000-08:002004-11-08T19:41:40.553-08:00

Why is it that people have such a hard time with such simple concepts? Reporters seem to get a free pass to be almost unbearably confused about subtle differences. What am I blathering about? I'm glad you asked! Reliability is the idea that something will perform consistantly. Trustable is the idea that something will perform how you expect it to. So what is the difference? Well for simple

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099594211045844072004-11-04T10:19:00.000-08:002004-11-04T10:50:11.046-08:00

Four years ago, America was introduced to the idea that using punchcards to vote might not be the very best way. It turns out that the information about the vote is not stored in the card itself, but rather in the very delicate little pre-scored edges around the "chad". The problem is that with handling the "chad" can come loose, damaging the information stored on the card. Another problem is

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099547990028993872004-11-03T21:24:00.000-08:002004-11-03T21:59:50.030-08:00

I seem to be addicted to mailing lists. I used to (back when I was in college, so it is getting to be a while now) read USENET a lot. It quickly became apparent that each newsgroup only had two or three topics, and that they cycled through them on approximately a two-month period. But that is alright. There are so many different groups that there is always something new to read. I rarely

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099415335153998522004-11-02T09:13:00.000-08:002004-11-02T10:53:34.690-08:00

Yesterday, someone at work pointed out this travesty to me. On the one hand, I applaud their desire to scratch their itch. Even in public. Scratching in public is apparently important for baseball players and voting activists. The content of their posts has a little too much of the breathless, cross-eyed, oh-my-isn't-this-exciting flavor to it for my taste, but then I think that salsa tastes

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099356624749461862004-11-01T16:47:00.000-08:002004-11-01T16:50:24.750-08:00

Sorry about the no posts for the last couple days. I don't actually know if it was this "blogger.com" site or my computer or what, but I was unable to get a post through. I plan to make up for this neglect Real Soon Now (tm).

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099117128708662842004-10-29T23:17:00.000-07:002004-10-29T23:18:48.706-07:00

It's been about a month now that I've been on a slightly heightened minimalism binge. Since I bought a house about 4 years ago, there's been no need for me to get rid of anything. My wife would disagree. But really, I don't buy that much stuff, and combined with the fact that I don't break stuff that often, I tend to end up with lots of old, slightly worn out things that I just don't use any

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1099060318259564242004-10-29T06:56:00.000-07:002004-10-29T07:31:58.260-07:00

Finally saw Van Helsing last night. Between the in-your-face overacting and the in-your-face gratuitous special effects, halfway through the movie I started thinking that I was watching some James Cameron fiasco. But then I realized that if Cameron had directed it, there would be at least one or two characters in it to sympathize with. The friend that I saw it with rather liked the Jeckyl/Hyde

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1098936466995664052004-10-27T20:53:00.000-07:002004-10-27T21:07:46.996-07:00

For the past five years, I've been working for a company that makes voting software. In that time, I've gone from thinking that American government is generally a bad idea that I wanted nothing to do with to thinking that American government is generally a bad idea but maybe I should participate somehow instead of just complaining. A few days ago, someone sent me this link. If you follow it,

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8895468.post-1098861283894576982004-10-27T00:16:00.000-07:002004-10-27T00:14:43.893-07:00

So, I expect that I'm just wasting my time here, but it seems that the time is right for me to try this "blog" thing out from the other side. One of the contributors on an email list I subscribe to has a .sig which says something like "A gentleman is someone who knows how to blog but refrains from doing so in public." Apparently I have an insecurity here, because it troubles me that I don't

andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12850104203632482200noreply@blogger.com0