Monthly Archives: January 2010

More “Things That Drive Me Nuts”

January 30, 2010
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I don’t know what “genius” figured having corporate parties after business hours or on weekends was in any way a good idea. How is it a good idea to ask your employees to take an evening out of their lives to spend even more time with the coworkers in some enforced “fun” filled venture? It’s even worse when they provide you with a “prize” which amounts to spending a week elsewhere with those self-same co-workers. It’s like a booby prize or form of punishment. I  have even heard of one firm that offered “dinner for one” as a “prize”. I guess they figure anyone stupid enough to spend enough of their spare time attempting to win said prize would no longer have a spouse or significant other willing to actually go out to dinner with them. I know some will claim I’m just being a party pooper, but how many normal people actually want to spend an entire evening — and we’re talking 5 – 6 hours of your own time — with your coworkers? You’re not getting paid to go to this function. The music will be lame. The food will be passable if you’re lucky, you will have

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The iPad

January 28, 2010
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First off, hate the name. iSlate would have been better, especially as this is truly a clean slate for many applications and how people will interact with a computer. Now, I’ve been reading all kinds of rants from folks on the web about the iPad. I think they’re all full of it. The iPad represents a proper computational device for the masses. Why? Simple. Most people just want something that works, that does not require endless dicking around with, that does what it claims to do, is light and functional and attractive. They don’t want to program it and they want the applications all to behave in standardized ways. The attitude from some people is that it’s closed and makes you use the iPhone/iPod Touch touch interface. Well, duh. Most people can figure out using something based on touch, but the mouse, keyboard, etc. aggravate people. What Jobs and crew have done is create a device that replaces paper in a number of instances: notebook calendar contact list books etc. Thus, you suddenly have a single device that does all those things. And does them elegantly and consistently. I look upon the reaction of some kids I know. They quickly

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Convenience

January 26, 2010
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How I wish the media firms would come to their senses and realize that the consumer isn’t their enemy and that what the consumer wants is convenience. I really would love to rid my house of DVDs, CDs, magazines, etc. and have most of that stuff digital. Books, at least for me, are the sole exception. I like having a physical book. But even there, in some cases, I’d take a digital volume. One case that comes immediately to mind is technical books that I use for reference. They’re huge, usually go out of date quickly, and weigh a ton. I’d prefer those puppies in digital form. So, here’s to hoping the media firms come to the realization that they have to come up with a utility-style structure wherein we can get what we want and the folks generating what we want get compensated. It’s not as if the Internet and computers can’t do this, it just requires a certain amount of collective will to build a new distribution solution as opposed to suing folks or making it difficult to get what you want in a digital format. Aggravating the consumer is not good business sense. Besides, storing our music

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Of Mice and Keyboards

January 21, 2010
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Going on more than 30 years of dealing with keyboards I’ve gotten fairly picky. Same holds for mice. Keyboards, that major interaction device with the computer, is something a lot of people are very passionate about. I know I tend to get more than a little agitated whenever I have to go buy a new keyboard when my latest favourite dies. I’ve watched friends rant on about things such as key click sensation, noise, speed of input, flexibility, layout and ability to absorb various spills. Although I’ve never spilled anything on my keyboards, I do know that it seems that quite a number of people do spill all kinds of things onto and thus into them. In fact, there are a number of keyboards that are designed with spillage in mind. I know of one Logitech keyboard that is designed so as to allow the liquid to pour through strategically placed holes. I guess you can wash it out that way, too, supposing you use distilled water. Pretty handy if you’re a bit of a land klutz or are just to spastic from drinking way too many caffeinated drinks during your latest round of WoW. So whenever I have a

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

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