Category: Uncategorized

So you know user interfaces? Tog disagrees. If you’ve never considered this stuff before, this quiz from 1999 will throw a few spanners in your works: AskTog: A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts. Things like the single common menu bar are a big reason why I’m a Mac fan; all the little things together really do make a difference. Even MS Vista seems to look prettier, but not work better. Still no infinitely high menu bar, the Flip3D Exposé-workalike just isn’t as functional, the list goes on. It’s an improvement to my eyes, but time will tell if Windows users adjust quickly or are pulled grudgingly. People hate change; there has been strong community resistance to every OS change I’ve been through.

Interestingly, the next release of Microsoft Office seems to have learnt a number of UI lessons, ditching the menu bar and all the hideous toolbars for a “ribbon”. It’s not perfect, but it’s a brave decision for Microsoft to make, and an adjustment for habitual users. Worse, apparently (hearsay alert) it makes selecting styles (Heading 1 etc.) harder.

Regardless, it’s good to see some UI innovation in the world’s de-facto standard office software. Blogs about it, even. A good experience I had at Tech·Ed was cornering Jared (A?), who works with (is responsible for?) PowerPoint, and telling him the things that suck about it. Keynote’s great, but most of the world doesn’t use Macs, and I’d love to see the quality of the world’s presentation software (and presentations) improve.

The list includes how PowerPoint loves to squish (not crop) your images, how it always knows that you want bullets (or don’t), how the display of text is just icky, how the transitions are just bad, how the templates are horrible, how transparency from Photoshop is a hassle to include through copy/paste (PNG import does work), how there’s no cross-platform video format I can include in a PowerPoint. Some of these things seem to have been fixed. Others will no doubt shit me once again.

One happy fact is that IE7 looks like it won’t suck as badly as IE6, and in a few years I won’t have to spend my time teaching web development saying “this doesn’t work in IE”.

Accursed jetlag. While sleep seductively beckons, I’m sticking to my “don’t sleep until the locals do” jetlag-beating tactics. Flying from the other side of the planet always kicks you in the head, and coming west is *easier*, eep.

Not that I’m complaining. Travel from one side of this tiny planet to the other is still, to me, an amazing feat. In the last two and a bit weeks I’ve flown past all our longitudes, all the way around the dirtball we all call home. And that’s as far as 99.9% of us have ever been able to do. Someday, breaking orbit will become normal. Maybe even in the next ten years, if Mr Branson’s latest dream is fulfilled. Someday farther off, we’ll leave properly.

Back to earth, this little trip’s been a blast. Time will surely tell just how much springs forth from the seeds laid. Many films created, people met, connections made. Maybe when my brain’s in the right timezone I can gather my thoughts, settle them in a neat pile, then finally finish the latest Tech·Ed video.

All I can manage at the moment is “eep”.

Sorry I haven’t been posting enough. The Twelve Fives “blogging every day” plan was particularly wildly optimistic. When I have a few moments to collect my thoughts, I’ll let you in on the most closely guarded secrets of the Microsoft Inner Circle!

Well, not really. But I’ll let you know what I’ve been doing this week.

Tech·Ed. It’s a big thing. Behind the scenes at the keynote, huge racks of redundant video gear controlled by a small army of techs. On the show floor, another army uses forklifts and electric carts to shift pallets and people; computers are configured and the event gets ready to open. I’m off a-wandering around the floor, capturing as much video as I can. Filming groups of trainers forming letters with their bodies. Filming secret beanbag meetings. Filming rehearsals.

It’s a big show, so I’ll try to keep you posted. Keynote today.

[written Saturday 10 June]
So, about to hit Boston after a week visiting friends and family. It’s been really good to revisit the motherland, to catch my father, sister and uncle after a year or more apart. It’s difficult living on the other side of the planet, but I wouldn’t call it the wrong side. All sides have their plusses and minuses.

Here, the ale is just what I’ve been looking for, and what I’d missed the most. Maybe it’s several months of not drinking much, but I’ve really appreciated it. This time around, I’ve watched less TV, and with the glorious exception of a grammar nerd program on BBC Four hosted by Julian Fellowes, it’s been unexciting. (That program is genius: two teams fighting it out to discover which knows where to place apostrophes accurately.)

The countryside is, of course, beautiful, helped by desperately bad weather that cleared up as I arrived. But I still wouldn’t live in London again. I think my final stance on leaving holds true: it’s a good place for the extraordinary day (or a visit) but the everyday is shit. But it’s not bad for buying mobile phones: they sell them unlocked here if you go to the right place.

So, the quick summary: great to see friends and family, great art, great beer, fun to shop, like my new mobile phone. Onward to the new world.