Posts from December 2004.

TiVo User Experience

Matt did an awesome job Interviewing Tivo’s Director of User Exeprience, Margret Schmidt. Ever since I got my first TiVo, I have been hooked. Part of the loveliness of TiVo is the user interface, which is king. Everything is so easy, my mom could probably figure it out. It was cool to find out some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Favourites Of 2004

My top lists for the year are nearly complete. The trouble with compiling this late  (?!) in December is that I am subjected to quite a few lists that just make me want to forget the whole thing. The rub has one such list. As a point of clarification, I don’t really agree with much on the list, but I do like the writing and some of it is pretty funny.

Illiterate Emailers

There is nothing quite as annoying and completely rude as when someone sends out emails devoid of proper capitalization, punctuation and at worst of all, proper English. I’ve found that top executives are the worst. Don’t even get me started on people with Blackberrys. The good people at c|net (via The NY TImes) have a good write-up about this very thing. The examples are humorous and hideous.

IBM + Apple = Love?

O’Reilly has an interesting editorial in The Register about a possible partnership of some kind between IBM and Apple. Apple of IBM’s eye? | The Register.

So Frustrated

I am so over this weblogging thing. \Hell, it’s not like I even put much effort into any of it. Not that many people read it anyway and there’s not much that sets this apart from the rest. It’s all regurgitated information anyway. And for what? So I get comments and people like me? Whatever. For the last few hours I have been working on another site and I hate it. I hate almost everything about it. And why the fuck do I need a separate weblog for more personal matters? I’ll just post it here. There are a few things that I would like to be able to do and I can’t because I don’t know how and I don’t want to take the time to figure it out. So, this is how it’s going to look and I don’t care. It’s stupid, self-indulgent bullshit anyway. I just got finished writing this long post about how I hate the fact that I am bored so easily and change my mind about stuff at the drop of a hat. Take my web site as an example. I used to have my site hosted somewhere else and used Movable Type to publish my weblog. I switched over to TypePad so that I could focus my time, which lately I probably have too much of, on posting instead of coding. And now I want to code a little bit. Coding… that’s a laugh. I couldn’t code my way out of a box. All of the "coding" I have done is nothing more than hackery. And on some level, that’s fine with me. It’s nothing that I’ve ever poured my heart and soul into. I just wish I could look at code and simply see what needs to be changed to control something I am seeing (or not seeing). I can’t. Unless there are instructions or some nice coder person takes the time to walk me through it, it’s not gonna happen. At this point I’m just throwing my hands up in the air in complete frustration. Oh, and something I ate earlier today cut my tongue. It hurts and is so annoying. And the fact that I’m sore? That’s real fucking annoying too. Deep breaths. Good thing I’m leaving the apartment to go chant in a few minutes.

Like A Bowl Of Cilantro

Great article on Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make. I don’t really visit band or label sites very often, but when I do I’m usually pretty annoyed.

Use Flash like you would cilantro—sparingly and for a single high-impact effect. Nobody wants to eat a whole bowl of cilantro.

I hate cilantro. [via quite a few people]

100 Things To Do Before You Di

A Team of British scientists came up with their own list of 100 things to do before you die. I’m going to get started immediately by extracting my own DNA this evening by doing the following:

[S]pitting gargled salt
water into diluted washing-up liquid and slowly dribbling ice-cold gin
down the side of the glass. Spindly white clumps which form in the
mixture are, basically, you.

"Spitting," eh? So that’s what they call it in the UK. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. [via TMN]

Amazing One-Man Band!

McRorie is the man. Set aside a few minutes to watch this amazing mulleted superstar.

Note: Site requires QuickTime.

Growing Up With Wires

Kids who grew up with the internets are adults now. Wow, no way! You means to tells [sic] me that their knowledge is alienating their computer-illiterate parents? Actually, it is pretty cool how much technology is integrated into kids’ lives these days. I thought it was cool that I went to computer camp as a kid and had an email address when I was 16. Kids will probably be born with email addresses in the not-too-distant future.

Takin' It To The Booth

Cell phone booths are the best idea I’ve read about all year! [via Boing Boing]