Confusability

Backward Compatibility?

A system is backward compatible if it is compatible with earlier versions of itself, or sometimes other earlier systems, particularly systems it intends to supplant. That is, other systems or objects that interoperate with the old version of the system should continue to interoperate with the new version.

Happy Day of Birth

Name: Gabriel Francis McEvoy
Date of Birth: 17 September 2004
Time of Birth: 08:56 am
Weight at Birth: 8lbs
Place of Birth: Bristol UK

Baby, Mother (and Father) all doing well.

Harry Potter is a Chalet-School Girl

When the Middle Class ruled the Earth

"Statistics show that you're most likely to get your own story in a girls' comic if you're a sporty, disabled, artistic Victorian orphan who lives with a violent aunt or uncle, having a hurt sister/brother/pet who you need to earn money for, but don't realise that your best friend secretly resents you, the snobs are plotting against you, and an evil mastermind is attempting to take over your school and you're the only one who can resist her powers. However, this will count for nothing if your name doesn't lend itself to a clever titular pun."

What really happens at the BBC?

BBC Work Experience

The Origins of Pattern Theory, the Future of the Theory, And The Generation of a Living World by Christopher Alexander

Keynote address at OOPSLA 1996.

My comment on this? Please forgive me, I'm going to be very direct and blunt for a horrible second. It could be thought that the technical way in which you currently look at programming is almost as if you were willing to be “guns for hire.” In other words, you are the technicians. You know how to make the programs work. “Tell us what to do daddy, and we'll do it.” That is the worm in the apple.

What I am proposing here is something a little bit different from that. It is a view of programming as the natural genetic infrastructure of a living world which you/we are capable of creating, managing, making available, and which could then have the result that a living structure in our towns, houses, work places, cities, becomes an attainable thing. That would be remarkable. It would turn the world around, and make living structure the norm once again, throughout society, and make the world worth living in again.

This is an extraordinary vision of the future, in which computers play a fundamental role in making the world -- and above all the built structure of the world -- alive, humane, ecologically profound, and with a deep living structure. I realize that you may be surprised by my conclusion. This is not what I am, technically, supposed to have been talking about to you. Or you may say, Well, great idea, but we're not interested. I hope that is not your reaction. I hope that all of you, as members of a great profession of the future, will decide to help me, and to help yourselves, by taking part in this enormous world-wide effort. I do think you are capable of it. And I do not think any other professional body has quite the ability, or the natural opportunity for influence, to do this job as it must be done.

Finally, Revenge is Mine

On 21 September 2004 I will get my revenge on the little creatures that ruined Star Wars.

Yes I will be able to take on the role of a Stormtrooper with a sniper rifle.

Ewoks, be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Star Wars Battlefront

The Perils and Pitfalls of Photoshop Designs

Some time ago the Woman's Hour on the BBC Radio 4 website was re-designed. I visit the Listen Again page on a regular basis to check if there are any items I want to add to my Radio 4 A to Z listing.

I am guessing thet this site was not designed on a Wednesday, the designer must have put Monday or Tuesday into their Photoshop text layer without remembering that Wednesday would take up the most space.

Oops!

Now the sad thing is that no-one has fixed this minor problem. The designer obviously never looked at the finished page on a Wednesday and the person who maintains this site just doesn't care enough to do anything about the problem.

The BBC Guidelines state that "Fonts MUST be resizable in all supported browsers."

Well they have made the font resizable, but the design certainly isn't.

I think that Photoshop (or similar app) should be banned from the design process.

When a designer uses Photoshop they can spend a lot of effort making a screen mockup look elegant and beautiful. It can be printed out and passed around at meetings where it becomes the design itself because people can see it as a thing of beauty and quality.

Give the designers plenty of paper and lot of quality pens so they can spend their time designing rather than embellishing a snapshot of a static design that can never exist as a living breathing entity.

When I am building an application the code is already written in my head before I touch my keybpard. Designers should have all aspects of their designs in their heads before they can be seen as perfect looking images by others.

Would we ever have seen Snow White if the animators had used Photoshop instead of pen and paper?

Animators know that they have to design animated characters as fully formed beings. They don't spend hours working on the nostril hairs. Instead they use character model sheets to produce something that describes the essence of the character.

Character Model Sheets are the templates of the characters used by the animation staff. They provide the construction, structure, proportion, design, etc. for each character. Usually, several models sheets are needed for each character to show the physical and design nuances. Each animator, artist has their own style of drawing. The model sheet guides the 300 or so artists working on the production toward making all the characters look “ON MODEL”. “ON MODEL” means the model sheets have been followed to perfection as if one artist (instead of over 300 ) has drawn the character.

Designers need to put away their hi-tech tools and go back to designing rather than painting by numbers.

I'm a bleedin Genius I am

A lot of people I know are very opiniated and have strong views and ideas about many subjects. Well here's your change to share your genius with the rest of the world and take part in a Radio 4 show hosted by the infamous Dave Gorman.

If you are interested then visit the site and submit your genuis idea.

"Have you ever been struck by an idea you felt could change the world, only to later file it away in the part of the brain marked "It's never going to happen"?

Maybe you've been kept awake at night by plans for pavements with fast and slow pedestrian lanes. What about that idea you had in the pub for packets of pre-stamped envelopes or 'stampvelopes' ? Perhaps, in the fog of a hangover, you stumbled upon a solution for peace in the Middle East involving a nationwide tug-of-war competition.

If those are the kind of badly thought through concepts or logic-defying proposals which pop inside your head then 'Genius' is the forum for you.

On the show, every week, a celebrity guest and I will tackle a series of ideas; some stupid, some brilliant, some stupid and brilliant sent in by you the public. Each idea will be given a fair stress testing and after an audience vote the best wins the coveted Genius Trophy.

If you have an idea which you'd like to air on our pilot show that you think could rival the brilliance of Marmite-Rippled Butter or the sheer pointlessness of printing a broadsheet copy of The Sun then I'd love to hear it.

As well as inventions, what I'm looking for here are your policies for solving problems, both small and large, and schemes for making the world a better place. "

The Problems With Personalisation

Whilst installing the gargantuan Service Pack 2 for Windows XP I was presented with the following balloon message:

For most people this message would be fine, but I am one of the people who have taken advantage of the personalisation allowed by Microsoft and have moved my Taskbar to the top of my desktop rather than the leave it in the default position at the bottom of the screen.

I prefer to have my Taskbar at the top because it feels more natural for menus to 'drop down' rather than 'jump up'. It is also more efficient as we all know that gravity means that menus will drop down faster than they can ever jump up.

The person who designed the text that appears in the ballon message obviously doesn't know that it is possible to move the Taskbar. This is not surprising as it was made much more difficult to move the Taskbar when XP was introduced.

By default, the Windows XP taskbar is locked in position. Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from users who inadvertently move their taskbar, often causing it to become invisible or to take up to half the screen.

From Usability Improvements in Windows XP for Knowledge Workers.

I think that Microsoft should have never allowed the Taskbar to be moved by the user. They must have designed the Taskbar to work most effectively when positioned at the bottom of the screen, so why didn't they have the confidence to stand by their design and leave it at the bottom of the screen?

When Microsoft designed the Pocket PC they didn't make the position of the Taskbar user choosable and no-one complained.

If you decide to allow users to personalise aspects of the interface then make sure that everything you add to that interface works in all of the available permutations.

I would recommend that you never use persoanlisation. Instead, design the best solution you can and present that your users, they won't complain about the lack of personalisation if your design is a good one.

PS: Take a look at the movie clip from Adam Kontras entitled "Lock The Taskbar" (to the tune of 'rock the casbah').

MSN Music Club? What MSN Music Club?

After downloading Windows Media Player 10 I tried to find the MSN Music Club link, and was presented with this:

So, it looks like the current MSN Music Club provided by OD2/Loudeye is not going to be around much longer. I have been using MSN Music Club since it was launched and currently have £30.37 in credit to use up.

MSN are obviously going to launch their 'new' MSN Music Store in the UK at some point. When that happens the Online Store link in WMP10 will go there.

But in the meantime, why haven't they linked through to the 'legacy' MSN Music Store from WMP10? And I would also like to know if I will be able to carry my credit across to the new store, or get a refund from MSN?

Microsoft launched their original OD2 MSN Music Club to stake out a claim to the online music business while they worked on developing their own music store in-house. Now that their replacment store is ready to go it appears that they are getting ready to dump their existing store (hence the lack of links in WMP10).

I have had no communication from MSN about the future of their music store and I can only assume that they want to wipe the slate clean and start again.