Author: admin

I’m at a different hotel spot than usual at work.  Instead of my normal HP dock and basic-but-effective Microsoft Compact Optical Mouse 500, I have an Apple chiclet keyboard and a Mighty Mouse.  Two clicks into using the thing and I’m already annoyed.   I understand the desire for a solid click _feel_, but does that have to be accompanied with a piercing click _sound_?  I’m a voracious clicker; I’m either designing something at a rate of 30+ clicks a minute or I’m web browsing and often clicking different interface elements.  I’m self-conscious using this mouse; I feel that my coworkers are annoyed by the rifle-bolt-loud clicking that is echoing off my desk at semiautomatic machine gun rates.

Regardless of annoying others, the ergonomics annoy me deeply.  The bar of soap shape fits the palm alright, if you lay your palm flat on a mouse.  No one that needs precise motion does this, though!   I normally grasp a mouse with my thumb and pinkie finger and keep my pointer and middle fingers resting on the left and right buttons.    On most mice, a quick swing of your pointer finger is all it takes to go from the left button to the scroll wheel.  On the Mighty Mouse, the scroll wheel is a little track ball set too far medially.  I need to pull my finger to the right, pull my finger back and pull it so the tip of the finger is activating the scroll ball.

On top of all that, the cord is way too short to use on any non-Mac device and it costs $70.   1/5 stars.   The mouse would have to infect me with SIDS to get a lower score.

There is so much FUD in this NYTimes article about Facebook, I had to retort.  The article is full of troll-level misstatements, I’m almost thinking it’s a parody piece:

• Facebook’s numbers are going up.  They have more users and more unique views every month.
• They said an exodus happened when they pulled Scrabulous down.   Hi, Scrabble is a copyright-protected game.  How would you like it if your work was copied and given away for free?
• “Postings that seem private can scatter and slip unpredictably into a sort of semipublic status.”    Hahaha, if you screw up and post something in a public forum, that’s your own fault.
• “One day, on another Web site, she responded to an invitation to rate a movie she saw. The next time she logged on to Facebook, there was a message acknowledging that she had made the rating.”   That would only happen if she went to the review site through Facebook.  No application can post to your profile without explicit authorization.
• The other complaints center around personal information used for advertising (Running the #3 website in the world probably requires a fantastic amount of money) and that the site seems stale (That’ll happen when you have 250 MILLION users).

There’s always a trend of  “predicting the demise” of a heavyweight.  I don’t love Facebook, I wouldn’t mind if something better came along but I’m not expecting it to disappear anytime soon.

Clean lines, decent white space, categories colorized, has a legend…  but this is still the Worst Graph in the World.

Who won?  Who lost?  Why is my head throbbing?  Is a designer crying right now, cutting himself just to watch the Pantone 186 C drip to the floor?

She’s definitely your girl;  fantastic conversationalist, compatible life goals, always makes you smile even through the worst of times.  Every day though, you can’t help but notice one flaw.   Maybe others can ignore it, but you can do nothing but notice it.  You think back to previous girlfriends, maybe even your high school sweetheart.  She never exhibited this flaw, you just can’t stop thinking about it.

Android is our girl here. The flaw?  Scrolling.  It seems so simple, such a small aspect to the huge world that is a mobile OS.  When your old flame, the iPhone, can scroll with such dramatic fluidity, you cannot help but notice.  I pulled out the fastest available Android device, the myTouch 3G, and the slowest available iPhone, the original, and did a comparison.  Android herk and jerks like a bunch of chronic masturbators predisposed to seizures.   The iPhone scrolls any and all content with immaculate smoothness, as if the content is floating on a frictionless surface.  Once you’ve experienced this smoothness, it’s hard to go back.  All of the jerkiness to the Android scrolling is extremely distracting.

Since over 90% of my phone usage is with the browser, I’m going to stick with my iPhone.  I’d love to have Android’s open market policy, notification system and reasonable number of buttons but I just can’t take her jerkiness.

The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table.

My favorites are Ninja Lincoln and Monster Platypus.

Facebook friend fail!

Windows 7 upgrade fail.   Just look at the chart!

HTML5 canvas demo:   http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/

No plugins needed, just HTML5 and JS.   I would love to see this as a visualization.

Hmm, based on this thread at Bike Forums, I’ll need the following products to sufficiently deter bike theft:

• Kryptonite KryptoFlex cable
• Kryptonite Evolution Mini u-lock
• A big-arse Mul-t-lock padlock (only from Mul-t-lock)

Weave the cable through your wheels, through the frame and around the object to which you’re securing.  Lock both ends of the cable in the padlock.  The u-lock is then locked around the frame and that same secure object (bike post, et cetera).   A double system like this will deter most theives.

• Blown suspension (front driver shock if not more)
• Drivetrain mounts (motor, diff mounts)
• AC at idle (ISC)
• Steering drifts to left
• Shifting slightly difficult randomly (broken bushing?)
• windows slow to roll up/down
• Front bumper mispainted
• Front bumper dented due to license plate frame
• Air vents sag
• Glovebox rattles
• Leather seats torn
• Tires worn and mismatched
• Clutch needs bleeding
• Brakes could use bleeding