Webthoughts

Disturbing? Yes...slightly...

With the upcoming Star Trek movie on the horizon, I thought this cartoon was very well done and humorous.

So...this is exciting only because of my acknowledged lack of woodworking skills, but I spent a good portion of this past weekend building this:

We had previously had a pre-fab cedar bench sitting in front of our house that we had purchased at Menards a few years ago. However, a few weeks ago, several of the supports split and that was the end of that bench. My wife and I had looked around for a replacement in various stores but found nothing that we really liked.

So, on Saturday, I decided that I'd just throw caution to the window and build a cedar bench, rather than just buying one. I had found plans (links to a PDF file) for the bench in an issue of Family Handyman from 2003 and it didn't look too difficult, so that's the direction I went.

I purchased the lumber and supplies at a local Menards (lumber and supplies cost about half of what a good prefab bench would cost) and spent most of the afternoon and evening on Saturday cutting the wood and assembling the pieces. A few hours on Sunday were spent putting the finishing touches on (adding the trim pieces and rounding the corners). The article claims three hours to build this bench, and I believe them. But it took me about seven hours, all said and done.

I had a lot of fun doing this and had the opportunity to use some power-tools that don't get used all that often. I definitely have a good sense of accomplishment with this!

Plus, the bench is very comfortable to sit on!

I have been working an another update to Print Window. This new update will be more substantial than the previous two updates (the 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 updates were primarily bug fixes) as it will include some new features.

As part of implementing some of the new features, I've been considering some GUI modifications. I really like the current Print Window Print Options window as seen here:

It is compact, but not squished. It makes efficient use of the space available and logically lays things out. I believe, and users have told me, that things are generally where they would expect to find them (not universally true, but good enough).

The problem with the design of this window, however, is that it really doesn't allow for future "expansion" of the product—i.e. adding more functions (features). Although, for the most part, I wouldn't say that the GUI is crowded, there definitely isn't more room for more interface elements. This traces back to some design decisions made a long time ago that I am now having to figure out how to solve now.

This problem can be solved in a couple different ways:

• The window could be made bigger to provide more space for additional interface elements.
  
• Existing interface elements could be eliminated to make room for newer elements.
  
• The window design could be completely redone to reorganize elements and add new elements.

Although admittedly not the perfect analogy (as the products are completely different), I liken it somewhat to what Microsoft did with Office 2007 on the Windows side of things. Word, for example, had used the same basic interface design since Word 6.0 back in the early 90s. Through the next decade and more, the Office applications looked basically the same. Sure, there were updates and slight tweaks, but the toolbars, dialogs and menus maintained the same basic layout. Users were used to finding certain controls in certain places. Then, when Office 2007 came along, everything was different. Gone were the familiar toolbars and menus, replaced with a brand new thing called the Ribbon that didn't look anything like what came before. Users were confused and felt lost.

That's similar, although on a much larger scale, to what I don't want to see happen with Print Window. I'm not saying that Microsoft was wrong to do what it did with Office, but such a jarring transition caused a lot of confusion. I don't want a lot of confusion with Print Window.

So, that leads me back to the three options as I see them. Once single solution probably isn't the best answer, so instead, it will have to be a combination of two or possibly all three of those options. The only certain thing is that some sort of change is going to have to be made. I am taking the time to reexamine each grouping of controls in the Print Options window to consider how they could be redesigned to allow what needs to be done, and yet still maintain the familiarity that I'd like to maintain.

For example, consider the Icons group on the "Headers & Icons" tab:

There will be a new feature in the next version of Print Window that will affect this grouping of controls in that an additional checkbox control will need to be added along with the "Size:" slider and "Name Placement:" popup menu. I won't go into what the new feature will be just yet other than it is a simple toggle option (either on or off), so the most likely control to be used is a checkbox.

The box you see in the picture above is really all the space available for that grouping because of the size of the window and the group of controls that are on the same tab panel. There is obviously no more room to add another control, and yet one must be added.

Right now, I'm leaning toward separating the "Headers" and "Icons" functions of that particular tab panel into two separate panels. This will give me a lot more space to work with, but adds a bit of complexity to the window design and also messes with the familiarity aspect. But, I think it might not be too bad a tradeoff.

Anyone have any suggestions of how they would handle this situation? Do you think it's okay for a wholesale redesign? Is the "familiarity" concept important to you? I'd love to hear how you think this should be handled!

Have you ever had one of those days where everything that could go wrong did? It seems that Mr. Murphy did not smile down upon me today.

Although I can't go into everything that went wrong today, I can say that it won't be stopping for at least another twelve hours. One of the things that went wrong is that both people that work the overnight shift called out sick today. That means that I get to help fill in the gaps. I'll be into work by 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. That'll make for a long day, mostly because I'll be dead tired most of the day. Joy.

Mr. Murphy, if you are listening, please just leave me alone tomorrow? It would be greatly appreciated.

My wonderful wife gave me an iPod Touch for Christmas (the 8 GB variety—good enough for my needs). I've had a great time playing around with it for the last few weeks and have finally decided to start looking into a few accessories for it.

First up is a case. The Touch is a wonderful piece of equipment, but it has a few drawbacks in its industrial design.

The first drawback is that the thing is slick to the touch (er...no pun intended). That metal back looks cool and feels nice, but it is very hard to hold onto. I've dropped the Touch a few times because of this (thankfully, always onto something padded like the carpet or the couch).

The second drawback is that the back is easy to scratch and scuff. It's got fingerprints all over it and a scratch that came from who-knows-where. So, although the front is still in pristine shape, the back doesn't look new anymore after on a few weeks.

I've been looking around for a case but am having a surprisingly hard time finding one. Right after Christmas, none of the stores had any cases, which is understandable, considering the fact that everyone was probably buying those things for Christmas. But, now even as stores are getting cases back in stock, I'm still finding it hard to find a case I like. I don't want a sleeve-style case (which seem incredibly useless and cumbersome to me) and I don't want some wild looking thing (my iPod does not need Zebra stripes). Plus, I want something that will protect the screen when it's in my pocket.

I've only found one case that matches my criteria, the Belkin Leather Folio Case. It has a wraparound front cover and it is has subdued, professional styling. The problem is, the clasp is apparently velcro (and cheap velcro at that) and, according to reviews, the bottom portion of the face is not well designed in that it's too easy to accidently cause the home button to be pushed.

Other than this one case though, I've not been able to find anything else. Is it really so hard to find something like this? Does anyone have any suggestions?

The other "accessory" I've been thinking of is to replace my older clock-radio in my bedroom with one that will work my my Touch. This realm of accessories is even worse than the cases. All I want is a system that has a nice LED display with lit numbers on black, simply conservative styling, ability to charge the iPod, and a decent sounding speaker system.

Apparently such a critter does not exist.

The big name out there in iPod-compatible clock radios is iHome. Problem number one: most of their radios do not have backlit LED displays. Instead, it's the type of display with black LED numbers and the surrounding display is lit. Ugh. But, they do still have some backlit LED models as well. Some of them are very wild looking.

But they DO seem to have the perfect product....that is until you read some of the reviews on Amazon where people talk about this radio just suddenly stops working. In fact, a lot of reviews on Amazon about a lot of iHome products have the same problems: poor quality and mysterious failures.

Looking at other name brands, like Sony, this one again stretches the design aspect a little more than I'm comfortable with and it is apparently a behemoth in size. But it gets great reviews.

I guess I'm just being a little too picky. Wouldn't be the first time. Anyone have any suggestions?

The Omaha area is currently experiencing a Thundersnow storm. Not quite rare, but not common, Thundersnow is an interesting experience. It's currently sleeting and snowing at the same time as lightening is flashing across the sky and thunder is rumbling in the distance.

Thundersnow usually causes heavier amounts of snow. The forecast calls for 4-6 inches of snow, possibly more. Oh. Goodie.

I'm saying Goodbye to an old friend tomorrow: I've sold my old PowerBook G3/400 Pismo. It's actually a little sad to see it go.

I bought that computer new in 2000. It was my first "real" laptop (I had previously owned a used PowerBook 1400/166 for about a year). It blew away my desktop computer of the time (a PowerMac G3/266) in terms of performance.

It was my first foray into the world of WiFi. I remember sitting out on the deck of my apartment of the time one summer evening browsing different websites for whatever information I could find about the then just announced Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. All without wires. It was truly astounding to me.

It became, over time, my primary computer as I learned the convenience of being able to compute anywhere without any wires. It was the first computer that I ever installed the released Mac OS X on (I installed the Mac OS X Preview on my desktop G3). I still mostly used Mac OS 8.6/9, but more and more I began to use Mac OS X, especially once Mac OS X 10.1 came out.

I've since owned two other laptops (a PowerBook G4/1.2 GHz and my current 1st Gen black MacBook 2.0 GHz). But the Pismo still found uses. When my wife used it for the final time--just today in fact--to connect to an LCD projector to show a PowerPoint presentation at work, it was running Mac OS X 10.4.11 and Office 2004. Sure, it has a few scratches, the battery barely holds a charge and the screen has long since developed the slightly pinkish hue that was endemic of that model PowerBook, but it still runs reliably and reasonably fast for what we asked of it.

However, the last few years did find it sitting in a closet more and more. It seemed a waste to have this perfectly good computer sitting around not doing anything most of the time. Surely, someone else could get something out of it. An acquaintance of mine approached me a few weeks ago asking if I knew where she could get a cheap laptop that she could run Word on so she could write a novel she's working on without having to sit at a desk. I immediately thought of the Pismo.

I hand it over to her tomorrow. It's currently packed up (in the original packaging!) and sitting there waiting for me to take it to her. As I said, it's slightly sad to see it go, but I'm glad it will still get used.

It was a great computer and I hope it will continue to be for at least a few more years to come!

I'm still undecided as to whether or not this Star Trek prequel is a good thing, especially with J.J. Abrams at the helm...uh...so to speak. They claim it takes place in established Star Trek continuity, but just from what I've seen so far, it's hard for me to accept that. I guess I'll know for sure come May, 2009.

And yes, even though I've seen the trailer online, I still want to see it in the theatre.

I just got back from the Sing Around Nebraska concert at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska. I had a niece performing in the concert as part of the Children's Honor Choir and my wife and I decided to go to the concert to support the family.

To be honest, I didn't really want to go to the concert, but I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed some of the pieces by the uNL University Singers and the Nebraska Wesleyan University Choir. The York College Concert Choir did a decent job (although none of their pieces were anything that really appealed to me) and the UNL Varsity Men's Chorus sang a song that I sang back in my college days as part of a Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia concert.

Good job to everyone that participated in the concert!