skeptomai

Trailer Park Boys

Thanks to my Canadian friends Todd and G. for introducing me to this stunningly humourous show. For those who haven't seen it, it is best described as "South Park with real people" crossed with "Look Ma, Canada has white trash too!"
Find more details on the Showcase website. I've seen almost all the episodes, but I'm planning to buy the DVD collection. I'm sure folks will hate me for saying this, but TPB could replace Monty Python in my mythology (catch the reference?). I find myself quoting it and laughing hysterically days after viewing an episode.
A warning to the sensitive crowd: This show carries a small payload of dialogue on a carrier wave of obscenity. Frequency analysis shows the "F" word outstripping all competitors 2 to 1.

Other TPB links include:

• Trailer Park Boys.com


• EpiGuides Title & Air Dates

Still running

Tonight I finished another 3 miles in 9:15 per mile. I realize
that's incredibly slow for real runners, but for me it's a marked improvement
from "0 to couch in 1 minute.." I also appear to have lost somewhere between
3-5 kilos. I'll do a little dance when I lose about 10 kilos more. I'll be sure to
post an mpeg movie of that as a cheap substitute for ipecac syrup.

Interaction Design

The psychology of interaction intrigues me. During my 10 years in the software industry, I've held roles in support, quality assurance, development, development management and program management. Most projects I've worked on, and helped design, suffer from bad user interfaces. Often the proper features were implemented but their discoverability and usability clearly suffered in favor of making deadlines. Also, we made the most common of mistakes: implement more features in the same time, rather than making the current set of features usable or discoverable.
That trend continues. The operating systems of today provide better common controls and with some standardization in usage, computer-savvy users acquire a shared set of skills that apply to many applications. Users must learn numerous complex input gestures and synthesize an overly large amount of unrelated information to complete tasks.

Here's my small effort to raise the standard. I'm reading the following books during my infant care leave:

• The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman
• User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel Spolsky
• About Face 2.0 - The Essentials of Interaction Design, Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann
• The Unix Hater's Handbook, Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, and Steven Strassmann

From Design of Everyday Things, describing a stylish, modern Italian washer/dryer combo:
"If the design was so bad, if the controls were so unusable, why did the couple purchase it? If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual"

Tell me this doesn't happen constantly in the software you use daily.
"Affordance" refers to what an object can accomplish. Norman uses the example of scissors. The holes are affordances clearly for fingers. Fingers fit in the holes and the blades afford ("are useful for") cutting. The sum capability is clear: scissors are used by the hand for cutting. Affordances should be obvious to the user.

Norman also discusses causality and false causality. When you press a button and something occurs, you assume your action caused the reaction. What happens when they are completely unrelated?

Here's a software example of poor affordances and false causality:
You are typing in a word processing program. It is the currently active application and all input goes there. Suddenly, something running in the background requires attention and raises a system modal dialog box, taking input precedence just as you are hitting return in the word processing app. The dialog receives this input and is dismissed. Congratulations - something interesting enough to warrant immediate attention occurs, yet can be dismissed by an errant keystroke.

"I'll be back" or how I gave up and learned to love celebrity candidates

NPR interviewed an advisor from Ahnold's campaign Tuesday morning.
The NPR host asked when we'd see Arnold on the 'real' established
political talk shows. The campaign guy said "Why? When he's on Oprah
or whatever he gets about 25% of the population of California watching
that night and these are average, smart folks. They'll see what Arnold's
about. He doesn't need the sound bites."
Let's deconstruct this from the top.

• Arnold is a celebrity, being interviewed by celebrities soft on political savvy and long on questions like "So, Arnold, what's the first thing you do when you get the key to the governor's mansion?"
• Arnold's not really a politico- maybe he can't answer serious questions, posed by political experts, even conservatives.
• Sound bites? Evening shows like Oprah, et. al. are all about sound bites. Who is this guy kidding?

This sounds like a creative dodge by an astute guy (or his advisors) playing to his strengths and deftly masking his weaknesses. Unfortunately, it sounds like he's short on real content. I hope he steps up to prove me wrong. I hear he's got real talent like Warren Buffett and George Schultz on his economic team. I originally missed (thanks G.) the comment about 25% of the average Californians being smart. Whah-hoo, what a laugh. I guess that means Arnold just might win if these 'smart' people are watching Oprah and make their political choices accordingly. Bottom Line: California is going to get what it deserves.

Are modern Formula 1 cars ill-suited to the aging circuits they drive?

(Derailed train of thought from this morning's provisional qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Thoughts?)

Monaco thrills race enthusiasts by the nature of the course (right
through the city, Loew's hairpin, Rassecasse, Sainte Devote),
but Ralf Schumacher has compared it to "flying a helicopter in your bedroom".
Despite the amazing braking power and downforce of the modern car,
the number of turns and tight hairpins make Monaco a slow circuit with
nearly zero chance of overtaking.
At Imola, Hungary, Magny-Cours, chassis and engines which endure win.
Such circuits highly favor top-funded teams qualifying P1-P4 on the grid.

These elements have combined to make recent F1 seasons less satisfying for viewers.
It's clear that Bernie Ecclestone sees that writing on the wall. Recently,
His Majesty invested substantially in financially-flagging Minardi
in an attempt to keep more teams on the grid.
Rule changes, including single-lap qualifying, for the 2003 season have juggled
qualifying grid positions and allowed teams like Renault to emerge as serious
competitors. (It must be noted that Michelin tyres seriously outclass Bridgestone
this season and Renault seems to have found magical mechanical grip from their chassis - good for them).

Still, for the future of the sport, F1 needs a visionary capable of making
much larger changes. Tracks around the world must be modernized (widened
in the apexs?) to permit and encourage aggressive overtaking. I can only
speak for myself, but I'd rather see fewer cars finish, but more of them
changing places throughout the race. Remember Gerhard Berger in the '93
Monaco race, attempting to pass Damon Hill at the Loew's hairpin? That's
what I'm talking about.

How I spent my summer vacation

I'm at home on infant care leave for a month. For most people, this is just an excuse for an extra month of vacation (to balance the next 20 years of work each child represents). I thought I'd kick around the house, do the usual guy stuff fixing the place up. Instead, I've become Mr. Mom. My wife just returned from the hospital after emergency gall bladder surgery. I'm now taking care of her, my 3 year old daughter and our 8 month old son. Never again will I question the difficulty of being an at-home Mom and never again will I question why she can't find time to indulge her own interests. Raising kids (correctly, i.e. putting time in with them) is really harder than it looks. Working Dads - try reversing rolls with your wife sometime.

Quotations, Sound Bites & USA Today

Here's my rant for the day. I'm tired of how everything has been reduced to the barest of details, pre-analysed and presented for specific effect. It's like having your mental food pre-chewed. Obviously, you should question whose interests the "digestion service" serves.

Last night, I was browsing Barnes & Noble (the brick and mortar kind, near home) and ran across "Encarta Book of Quotations." Hmm, how special - isn't that basically what the online version is, about a mile wide and 1 inch deep? Everything seems to be geared to the USA Today crowd - written for a 12 year old, with lots of flashy pictures, charts for everything and little substance. There is no emphasis on presenting background information and allowing (forcing?) readers to analyze and draw conclusions. Instead, conclusions are the presentation.
I hate myself for succumbing to its effects. I've been reading more meaty books lately like "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (great book) and finding my powers of analysis sharply lower than when I was at university. Americans are, on average, fat and weak-minded. I'm right up there with them... Sigh

Tryin' to get healthy again

I've been so lazy since the children were born. I'm probably 25 pounds heavier than I was before Isabella arrived (20 May 2000). On top of that, I'm a guy hitting 35 this year, so my basal metabolic rate is falling anyway. My new effort to counteract the force of time is to run 2-2.5 miles, 5 times a week. It's going quite well so far and last night I did 3 miles at about 9 minutes / mile (yes, I'm really that slow). I'm approaching my target goal, which is 5 miles in under 50 minutes. If my next post is actually an obituary... you'll know what happened to me.

Table Mtn, Mars, etc.

Todd and I went to Table Mountain Weds. night to see Mars and whatever else wasn't washed out by the near-full moon. We had a great time and the weather was at least 20 (if not 30) degrees F. warmer than last year. The full moon did take its toll however. We goofed around quite a bit looking at Mars through various filters attempting to get some feature contrast out of it. We convinced ourselves of seeing dark bands comprised of the combination of Mare Erythraeum, Solus Lacus, Mare Acidalium, and Mare Sirenum. There was an older couple there as well, who were newcomers to astronomy. They were primarily birders and had a very small scope. Imagine their surprise at the view through our 8" telescopes. Todd and I taught them some of the simple constellations and where to expect to see planets and the Perseid shower. As a special treat, they got to see Mars through both scopes, Andromeda Galaxy through mine, and both Neptune & Uranus and a double cluster through Todd's. The only downside was the Moon's incredible light washed out any chance of seeing things like the Dumbbell Nebula or the Whirlpool Galaxy. We are considering a trip at the next new moon to get some deep-sky object viewing in.

What I'm doing with my time off..

I'm on a month of infant care leave right now. That really means taking care of all those things around the house that are neglected while the little one consumes all possible attention.

My tally to this point is:

• 2 replaced faucets in the master bathroom
• a new 20 amp electrical circuit in the garage
• and a bunch of general maintenance cleaning

Still, it's decompression time away from the job. I admit to feeling a bit brainwashed at times. At work, the folks around me (and folks above me on the food chain) are constantly reinforcing the message of what is important. Step outside that for a moment, and the perspective changes entirely. I realize there is much more going on than just the work tasks and singular end goal. On top of that, I've never been in a job that is such an assault on my self-esteem. I'm amazed at the assumptions some people make about how much they know and / or how little I know. I certainly hope I don't make that sort of assumption about others in my interactions.

Bad Service at the Apple Store

I admire Apple in many ways and enjoy their products. I looked at having an Apple Store in town as an opportunity to get my hands on new products (fetish technology) and generally soak in the Apple experience. Imagine my displeasure now. The customer service is abysmal. The staff isn't outwardly rude, but they are not knowledgable about their own special deals, or financing and show little skill or creativity at resolving difficult customer situations. Here's but one example: On July 12, I bought my wife a new iBook. At the time, unbeknownst to me, Apple was running a rebate deal in conjunction with HP. Buy a computer, get 100$ off a printer at the same time. No one told me about the program when I bought the computer, but I noticed the advertisements nearly a month later when I returned to the store. I found a sales person and said "I bought an iBook here recently, and since no one told me about this program, can I take advantage of it now?" The salesperson hemmed & hawwed, clearly not knowing what to do. She asked another salesperson "hey, what were the dates on this? Can we do a return-resale?" Salesguy #2 went in the back to check, came out and said "No" to Salesgal #1. She turned and said no to me. I replied "So, you can tell me no. Can you tell me why?" She just snickered nervously. The salesgal didn't know the dates that were clearly posted at the front of the store and wasn't at all conciliatory in telling me no. Customer satisfaction didn't seem to be a priority. This is after I purchased a new machine and the exhorbitantly expensive AppleCare plan on top.

This is only my most recent experience. My wife had a similar experience a couple weeks ago when attempting to purchase a protective carrying case for her new iBook. She couldn't seem to get anyone to pay attention to her, despite the store not being overly crowded and several salespeople not directly occupied. My friend P. recently inquired about financing (after I told him about my Apple credit line). More specifically, he wanted to know about zero-percent financing options. One of the salesfolk told him he'd have to purchase $3000 worth of stuff to get the zero-percent. P. said "ok, on the financing terms here on the website, show me the $3000 dollar thing..." The salesguy couldn't find it. Hmm... not sure what to believe there.

ETX-90, astro stuff

Tried to get out last night to take pictures, but it was the first cloudy night in weeks - such is my luck. I have two telescopes, an 8" Meade LX-200 Schmidt-Cassegrain (pre-GPS) and a Meade ETX-90RA Mak-Casse. Yesterday I finally bought a good tripod for the ETX

Now, I need the weather to cooperate. Mars is beautiful at midnight (magnitude -2.4). Other sites I plan to visit include the Whirlpool galaxy, the Dumbbell Nebula and maybe the elusive Ring Nebula one of these days. Oh, add the Andromeda Galaxy of course, but that's not much of a challenge. Check the planet roundup at Sky and Telescope