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Twitter Updates for 2008-08-06

Olaf — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:59:59 +0000

@DinoRubble If my design scores high enough in the 7 days it has to be voted on, it will get printed. #
@HamWithCam At least it wasn’t a full-blown ninja warrior assasination attempt. Those are very disruptive to a night’s sleep! #
Bleh. PHP makes me forget what I once knew in JavaScript! #
Hurray! Bike panniers have been ordered. No more loaded backpack bike trips for me! #

Internet, Spread your Wings and Fly

Olaf — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:48:44 +0000

I recently commented on Lorelle’s post about Help pages on blogs. My answer got me thinking about an excellent Internet analogy.

I maintained a “Help” page on my personal blog for a long while. It was a practice in earnest to fight the good fight. I tested browser compatibility and noted errors with specific browsers. It helped me…never my audience. I think I gave up after reading “Don’t Make Me Think.” Ultimately, that is really the mindset and the answer. If I have to provide a help page, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. Perhaps I’m not making that personal connection with people because I’m ostracizing them through some personal elitism. I remember when DHTML was really cool and working with the DOM in unique, arcane methods was more a resemblance to the occult than anything Web 2.0 represents today. We’ve all grown up on this stuff. Internet adolescence is over and it’s time to get a real job; move out of your parent’s basement (no offense to you 30-somethings living in your parent’s basement). So I don’t have a “Help” page anymore. I try to offer help in more constructive ways – ways that a “Help” page can only make excuses for. Besides – who actually takes the time to read a manual, let alone my blog manual?

In many ways, the Internet is like a beloved child which the world is rearing. Sometimes carefully, sometimes irresponsibly. This child of ours is also, at times, a bit unruly. I could dig that further into boredom, but I think you can continue the similes on your own. At any rate, it’s an apt comparison when speaking of the web development practices used on the Internet over time. I used to be one of those elitist programmers that sought out the most obscure uses of the DOM or unknown HTML tags. Hell, I used to only use VBScript, and throw out angry comparisons of my pure VBScript solution to a JavaScript one. I’ve also visited sites where you are completely stumped as to how to use it. You have to mouse over a bunch of slick graphics in order to find out where they go. So you can understand my conclusion that the Internet’s adolescence has come and gone. We all had fun, now it’s time to get serious about [Internet] life and create things that matter. Things that provide value. Things that don’t make other people feel stupid.

Starbucks: Eco-Unfriendly

Olaf — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 03:08:40 +0000

I have a sordid history with Starbucks and my mug. I can speak singularly about my mug even though years have passed because I’ve been using the same mug now for…jeez…probably 5 years or so. Before that, I had another one. And before that, I think it was the mug I used in High School. Needless to say, I’m a regular mug user and expect some respect for it.

For as many years as Starbucks has had a drive through in Atlanta, I have had difficulty getting across the understanding that I have a mug and I’d like coffee poured into it. No cream, no sugar, no flavors – just coffee. Isn’t that what Starbucks is famous for? Countless times, there is simply no understanding my simple request over the drive through speaker.

Me: “I have a mug I’d like to get filled with coffee.”
Starbucks: “You’d like a spiced tea latte and what?”

That’s just one very memorable example of my problem. This evening, I asked for a small milk and a fill-up for my mug. What I got surprised me beyond anything I could have imagined. I handed over my mug, confirming that I need a small milk too (for the boy). They handed back my mug, but no milk. Without thinking much about it, I drive forward (I’m not much of a “let me tell you how to do your job” kind of guy) realizing at the same time that they forgot the boy’s milk. Then I take a sip from my mug and realize that’s no more than a mug full of pure, white milk. I’m not against milk – I enjoy it as much as the next 4-year-old. It’s just a bit of a shock when you pay $2.00+ for 16oz. of Mayfield milk. And expect 180°F dark roasted coffee. Come on Starbucks! You totally screwed me! And damn it – I’m not the guy that bothers to fix my food order in a drive through.

The thing is this: Starbucks should support the environment a little better and have some expectation that their customers will have mugs they’d like to reuse for coffee products. Don’t fill a paper cup and hand it to me to pour into my mug. Don’t make me repeat myself like I’m an unintelligible buffoon at your drive up. For god’s sake – don’t fill my coffee mug with virgin-white milk! Surely there are other customers out there that have some secret handshake with the speaker attendant to get their request handled accurately and efficiently. What is your secret?!?

Java Log

Olaf — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:21:26 +0000

When first presented with the idea of a java log, one may summon visions of bad dietary intake resulting in compacted bowels and inevitably, the java log. That is not the case and I beg you to stick around to discover the beauty behind what you just thought might very well be a fecal fantasy.

The Java Log is actually a synthetic log manufactured from the remains of my number one habit, drinking coffee. Similarly to the process involved in making wood-manufactured burning logs – complete with paraphin wax filler – coffee grounds are pressed into a log form by which they may burn for 3 hours or so. It is said that they’re incredibly clean burners and contain no chemical residue like many pressed wood products. There is less ash, which isn’t great if you planned on putting the ash into your rose garden. But otherwise the logs are fantastically environmental – in so far as something can be when you burn it. The only set-back to the whole thing is that their more expensive than conventional synthetic log products. When you’re burning money, most people agree that they would prefer to burn less of it. Less is more, in this case. If the Java Log takes off, I can predict that the price will come down. However, I don’t know that I forsee coffee grounds surpassing wood particles in availability.

While this economics lesson works itself out, you might want to go and buy a case so you can enjoy the gentle scents of crappy coffee (it’s not necessarily Starbucks you’re burning) before the fad dissappears. I’m kidding about the smell, actually. I don’t recall smelling much of anything when I burned them last winter. I’m not kidding about the crappy coffee though. The smell of the unburned log actually smells like the kind of coffee you get in non-dotCom corporations.

Konfabulator – Yahoo! Widgets

Olaf — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 17:17:43 +0000

The Konfabulator tool was recommended to me by a coworker recently. He noticed that I used the Desktop Sidebar, a Longhorn-looking (Windows Vista) desktop component. To be honest, I was speculative of the Konfabulator’s ability to replace the Desktop Sidebar, both by its name and the source of information (he’s not a Windows guy, so I feared his aesthetics were maligned to mine). That said, I only took notice of this toy this morning when another coworker told me that Yahoo! had bought-out Konfabulator. I don’t particularly like Yahoo!, but they’re bolstering their reputation by purchasing really excellent start-up products (e.g. Flickr). Yahoo! talks a bit about the purchase on Konfabulator’s homepage for now – they point out the necessity for a name change, which I wholeheartedly agree with. The product is über-stylish with some Mac glamour adaptations and modular widgets. Not entirely dissimilar to the Desktop Sidebar, though the main concept behind the Konfabulator is zero-cohesion between modules. That is, the modules (okay, I’ll call them widgets now) come up as separate, floating objects on the desktop. You can click and position most of them with very little difficulty, and with two monitors it’s comforting to know that I can messy up both sides with arbitrary positioning. These types of software always come with the utilitarian aspects to them – system resource monitoring, weather reports, floating search boxes – as well as the fun stuff – Simpson’s quote-a-day, mosquito alert monitor, werewolf monitor, et al. So far, I’m really digging this new gadget. The SDK portion of things involves Photoshop layers and Javascript. It doesn’t get much easier than that! I’m interested in creating some needed widgets; some things that existed for the Desktop SIdebar but not for Konfabulator. Once I give it a shot, I’ll post a remark on that process. I never tried creating anything for the Desktop Sidebar (it seemed to have everything), so I can’t really compare. I can say that the Konfabulator looks a lot sweeter.

MoTD

Olaf — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:21:36 +0000

If you’re already leading a 30-person Java implementation, it’s way too late to go back to the boss and admit you picked the technology because you like coffee. – bugbash.net Related posts: Coffee Snobs, Unite! Microsoft Acquires SeaDragon: Photosynth Preview Federal Bureau of Inefficiency Related posts: