The Blog that Noone Reads

Yesterday, I caught myself poking at my laptop screen three times. With the addition of NetNewsWire and OmniFocus, I find myself using my iPhone more and more even when I’m at my computer. One of the unexpected side effects is that not being able to touch my screen suddenly seems rather strange. This is especially true when moving between the iPhone and my Mac. All those delicious little app icons in my doc are just begging to be touched. The little exposed corner of my iChat window under Safari begs me to poke it.

I don’t think touch computing is going to replace the mouse just yet, and we’re certainly not ready to give up our keyboards, but hasn’t the time come for us to be able to touch our screens. If you can find somebody who’s never used or observed a computer before, sit them down in front of your machine. Ask them to click on something or move a window. I’ll bet you they don’t reach for the mouse. The most natural way to interact with the spacial metaphor of windows is to touch them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re sporting dual thirties or a svelte thirteen point three, chances are, you’re using all of the real estate and more. Far too much time is spent moving panels around to get what you want in front of you. The mouse is just not the right tool for the job. It’s too limited. You have to find the point you want to drag, find your pointer, move your pointer to the point you want to drag, then move the window. The problem is even worse for drag/resize maneuvers. Studies have shown that there is a marked productivity increase associated with having a larger display. This is because it reduces the amount of time you have to spend organizing your windows.

Styluses suck. We don’t need them. They’re not the answer. We need sexy glass surfaces that respond to our fingers in the most natural way possible. Apple has already taught us several multi-touch gestures with the iPhone. There’s no reason they can’t translate directly to the OS X windowing system. Touch and drag to move windows. Pinch to resize. Tap to click. That’s all we need to start with. From there, you can expose the stuff to the application and let apps do clever things or do nothing.

The world is ready. We have the technology. Let us have it.

There’s a new iPhone app out there for accession your worspress blog on the go. It’s pretty darn slick. I haven’t tested it against my custom engine yet, but it looks like it just uses the api. It should work with any blog that implements the metaweblog api.

This post Is from the app.

Apologies to those who have attempted to leave me a voicemail this week. I didn’t realize my voicemail needed to be setup again after activating my new phone. They should tell you this while they’re doing it. It’s fixed now.

Just as my custom blog engine is nearing completion, WordPress 2.6 has hit the streets. There are some really cool new features in there. It seems the good folks over at wordpress have really been putting out a lot of new features of late. It makes me question the value of actually migrating over to my new engine. Writing the thing has been a great experience and has given me some exposure to areas of rails where I hadn’t previously ventured. But do I really want to move from something with so much community support to something I have to manage completely on my own? Hard to say.

Here’s a little screencast demoing some of the new features in WordPress 2.6:

Yesterday, at Microsoft’s E3 media briefing, they announced a completely new interface for the XBox 360. It’s a bit disappointing to me, actually. It seems a whole lot like the kind of unoriginal, “me too” crap I’d come to expect from Microsoft, but not Microsoft Games division. First of all, they’ve dropped the “blades” interface which I rather liked. They’ve also dropped the gamer image in favor of an “avatar.” The first thing that comes to mind is “what happens to the skins and gamer pictures that users have payed real money for?”

The new “avatars” feature sure seems a whole lot like Nintendo’s Mii functionality. The major difference is that Microsoft’s version seems to be much less flexible. It looks like you’ll be buying new outfits to customize your characters. So, the gamer pictures you just purchased are now unusable, but Microsoft is generously providing new worthless content for you to buy. I never actually spent money on this content, but it’s very upsetting to see Microsoft just nuke paid content without providing the user with any options.

The one feature I’m happy to see as part of the new update is integration with Netflix. It will be nice to have an easy way to use the Netflix streaming functionality on my TV.

I recently found some cube shaped ice cube trays at the supermarket. They’re made of silicone so as to be flexible enough to get the cubes out. Even though I have an automated ice machine in my freezer, I was rather excited to snatch these trays up and take them for a spin. Being a non-straw user, I think the shape of the ice has a huge impact on the enjoyment of the beverage. There are a multitude of reasons for this.

Melt speed. These 1 inch cubes have a very low surface to mass ratio. That means they cool the drink more slowly, but also take much less time to melt, thus diluting the drink less and keeping the drink pleasant for longer. Since I am a modern american, I have a refrigerator, which pre-cools my beverages for me. With rare exception, I want the ice to keep my drink cool rather than actually cool it. This lowers the impact of the afore mentioned downside.

Drinkability. Since I don’t use a straw, this is a big one for me. Small ice cube or, worse, crushed ice make it harder to consume the drink. When sipping a beverage containing small fragments of ice, you have to be careful not to let any of the small pieces in your mouth. If you do, and you will, let some through, you have to either spit the damn thing back into the glass, or chew it up. That’s not really the purpose of the ice. I don’t want to chew on it. I want it to keep my drink cool and stay the heck out of my way.

Aesthetics. I think the large, symmetrical cubes are far nicer to look at in the glass. As is true for any food product, people consume it first with their eyes. When I serve a beverage on the rocks, I want it to be as visually appealing as possible. There’s not a whole lot you can do to spruce up the appearance of, say, bourbon and ginger, without tainting the flavor. There are only three ingredients: bourbon, ginger ale (or ginger beer), and ice. You could serve it in a fancy glass, but I think simpler is better for a drink like that.

The two trays I bought can produce 30 one inch cubes in about two hours. When they’re done, I move them into freezer bags so they don’t take on freezer funk. These cubes are reserved specifically for presentation. The machine made stuff is still more than suitable for the blender or shaker.

I’m just starting to work with FireFox 3. The new text rendering system looks quite nice, but the browser chrome is so ugly. It’s just… really bad. What happened? Did they do it in house or is another group responsible for this? I know SilverOrange did the last skin, which was much nicer.

Since Safari 3 came out, I’ve been using it as my go-to browser. I still boot up the fox when I need to use FireBug, but I don’t live in it anymore. It seems like have been going downhill for them ever since version 0.9. Word on the street is, 3 is much better than the previous couple versions. I’ll have to see if I can stomach the new chrome long enough to decide for myself.