Jan Karlsbjerg
Rants and raves about politics and technology
| Photography field trip to Granville Island |
In the digital photography course I'm taking, we had a field trip today. We went to Granville Island which has numerous colorful buildings, tiny little ferries running by it all the time, there's the Granville bridge overhead, etc.
My favorite subject of the day though, was this brilliant advertisement in front of an ice cream store.
| Prophetic note on old business card |
Going through some old notes and bits of paper, I stumbled upon my stack of business cards from Hong Kong. I used to write little notes to myself on the business cards of people I met.
One example is on the business card of Carlie Ip, Assistant Manager Business Development, Internet Access H.K. Limited. Their website now displays a default Apache test page, and I don't remember which business exactly they were in; I did talk to a lot of people in Internet companies including a range of ASP companies (this was 2000-2001).
My notes on his business card:
"Started saying 'thank you' and 'goodbye' when I asked about their profitability status."
| Getting a label thrust upon you |
"I'm extremely reluctant to use the word 'atheist'. Not because I'm ashamed of it, but because I would never use a special term to describe my disbelief in witches or fairies. The notion of atheism is something which is actually being thrust on those who actually have never entertained a thought for God. It's a badge, it's a label which I now have to lay claim to, simply because it would be shameful to deny it."
[Opera Director Jonathan Miller, on a BBC2 show about religion when he was asked about his opinion on some poll numbers "as an atheist".]
Sounds like The Brights is a perfect match for his spiritual worldview. As I understand it, The Brights movement was formed in part exactly to rid people from the atheism label religious people thrust on non-religious people. From the Brights principles:
"A Bright is an individual whose worldview is naturalistic (free from supernatural and mystical elements)."
[the-brights.net]
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
After some false starts there's finally going to be a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie (IMDB, official site - reload the latter for new Earth demolition effects). The graphics/effects in the trailer for the movie remind me very much of the Lost in Space movie, and I think that's a good thing.
Douglas Adams was a man who "got" computers and the Internet in a big way, and somehow it's nice to see that the people who are doing the movie are on the same team. The movie has an official movie blog, which is to be commended because its subject isn't after-the-fact "look at how well the movie is doing in the box office", but rather the development of the movie itself, Q&A with the director, etc. Looking forward to seeing this one next summer.
| Bush thinking about new ways to hurt America and Americans |
Lots of media mention Bush's latest fight with the English language yesterday, where he stated in plain language that his administration works hard to find new ways of hurting USA and its citizens:
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
[Washington Post, today]
When it comes to speaking English very goodly, yesterday, Mr. Bush was even more better than she usually are.
| Vancouver Pride picture service |
A couple of groups that had entries in the Vancouver Pride have emailed me inquiring about more pictures, and luckily I was able to help them: Vancouver Men's Chorus (pictured right) and the Chicago ROTC.
Since I took a lot of pictures and only missed about 15 minutes somewhere in the middle, if your group had an entry, I may very well have pictures. And unlike the professional photographers of which there were quite a few down there, I don't charge for my photos. So just ping me. For example I have pictures of these groups:
Dykes on Bikes (these pictures are a bit blurry though, because the gals were racing back and forth on their excessively loud mopeds)
City of Vancouver
Crime stoppers
The Firefighters (and the guy with the big water gun dueling with the fire marshall)
The "people of Asian descent can be gay and lesbian too" group (not their actual name). These guys had the most unexpected message of the day: "I wasn't born queer, Bollywood made me"
Denman Fitness
English Bay Swim Club
Vancouver Gay Volleyball Association: "25 years of playing with balls"
The "I love my vagina" girl
The "Dolly Llama" man/woman/llama person
The RE/MAX beefcake guys
Air Canada
Etc. etc.
Hey, I spotted my first Vancouver location in an American TV/movie: In an episode from Dead Like Me some of the scenes were shot on the wide, slow streets down by the water in Yaletown. I've only been there a couple of times when biking on the Seawall which has been temporarily redirected inland because of frantic building activity by the water, but it was cool to recognize a piece of home in an unexpected place.
But in the promotional material they paste the cast onto a US city landscape. Like in this one above that must be an early one from before they made Daisy a blond.
This is actually my second spotting, but the first one (in April 2003) was so easy it doesn't really count: The use of Simon Fraser University's mountain campus on Stargate. Now, if I could just find that darn bridge they've used so many times on Smallville.
| Who do you trust to write a weblog? |
The Onion has a brilliant story about how George W. Bush is having problems (again or still, depending how you look at it). This time with the CIA and the Secret Service who want him to discontinue his weblog where he is revealing military secrets and personal travel information etc.
An enterprising soul called Andy has set up a weblog at the address mentioned in the article: prezgeorgew.typepad.com. Andy doesn't want to write the weblog, but he has offered to pay for the service for as long as George W. is in office if some satirically talented person will write the weblog.
The satire of the Onion piece goes to people's ability -- or lack thereof -- to understand the term confidentiality. Yes, it's good PR to share honest information about yourself, but it's often bad to share secrets, whether they are national secrets, personal secrets or corporate secrets. And it just takes a little intelligence on the part of the writer to choose what to post and what not to post.
"[...] Bush maintained that he's doing nothing wrong.
"I know so many people, but I'm way too busy to keep in touch with all of them," Bush said. "Whether I'm talking about our strategies in Gitmo or my dogs down in Crawford, the blog is an easy way to let everyone know what's been up with me. If I've just had a really good lunch at a new restaurant, or something funny happens in a briefing from the NSA, I want to let my friends and family know about it."
McLaughlin said it's likely that Bush will eventually agree to submit his blog for review by the Secret Service. "Right now, the president insists it's his right to have it, as long as he doesn't work on it during White House work hours," McLaughlin said. "But I believe we'll be able to convince him, if we let him calm down. And even if we don't, frankly, I can't see the blog holding his interest for too long.""
At the recent webloggers' meetup here in Vancouver we were talking about the PR value of employees blogging, sharing information among themselves and with customers, when one of the people there burst out that the developers at the company where she worked won't be allowed to blog!
"They’ll only end up revealing things [...] They’ll promise features to the customers before they are ready to be released".
Apparently some people's faith in their colleagues intelligence ranks about the level of the Onion satirist's depiction of Bush. My advice to investors in such companies (and to the developers mentioned): Run away. Do not walk. Run.
| Positive feedback from ActiveWords |
This morning I dropped a hint to Buzz Bruggeman, evangelist for ActiveWords about my review of their product yesterday, and within twenty minutes I had an email back with a response to some of my criticism. It's clear that we don't agree on everything, but the dialog is probably going to benefit both of us.
Buzz also asked the perfect question for a product evangelist: "How would I make ActiveWords better?"
I've agreed to give ActiveWords another try and Buzz has offered to give me some pointers on how to get the full advantage of the application, cut my learning curve. I'm Looking forward to the adventure and the conversation.
| A long-postponed ActiveWords rant |
ActiveWords is a little automation tool for Windows users. The application is highly praised by a couple of widely read geeks/bloggers such as Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo if I remember correctly, but from what I gather, it's not a commercial hit. And it's my theory that it never will be.
ActiveWords has the fatal flaw that the program requires juuuuust the right degree of geekiness of its users in order for it to work any better than what the users are already doing. An ideal ActiveWords user doesn't mind installing and using a new productivity application, including all the training and tweaking involved in making it work well, and somehow this user hasn't already built up a range of tricks to boost his or her Windows productivity.
Most users, however, won't be found on that exact level of geekiness. Instead they're either too geeky for ActiveWords or not geeky enough. If they're too geeky, they're already doing things in a way that's about as clever as the ActiveWords model and they don't want another third party tool between them and their applications. If they're less geeky than ActiveWords' ideal user segment, they either won't (or can't) install the application in the first place, and even if they do install it, they won't use it as it was intended (including training it to do new things) and ActiveWords will become a forgotten icon in the Windows Start menu, and all of the program's pop-ups will be dismissed with an angry grunt and a soon-forgotten commitment to uninstall the damn thing on of these days.
Yes, I belong in the first category. I'm too geeky for ActiveWords. The things I do often on my computer, I do quickly. For example my most often used applications are permanently in my Start menu, and I've renamed them to get immediate access. For example WinAmp is in my start menu with the name "7. WinAmp", and starting that program requires me to press two keys, not even at the same time: Windows-Key + "7". I also know a few of the many Windows shortcuts, so I use Windows-Key + "E" (simultaneously) to start a new Windows Explorer, etc.
The example that ActiveWords themselves use to compare the ActiveWords way with "the GUI" is just plain dumb:
Navigate to the Yahoo! web site using the GUI:
Grab the mouse.
Drag the mouse pointer so that the pointer hovers over the Windows Start menu on the Task Bar.
Click the left mouse button to open the Start Menu.
Move the mouse pointer until it hovers over the listing called "Internet Explorer".
Click the left mouse button to open Internet Explorer.
Wait for Internet Explorer to be opened.
Move the mouse pointer until it hovers within the field called "Address" within the Internet Explorer tool bars.
Press the left mouse button to make the "Address" field active.
Move your hand from the mouse to the keyboard.
Type "www.yahoo.com"
Press the Enter key.
Navigate to the Yahoo! web site using ActiveWords.
Type "yahoo".
[From ActiveWords.com]
The "GUI" example is a "straw man", guiding the user through the most excruciating process possible. It does so by making a worst case assumption about the user and the computer: The user doesn't know any keyboard shortcuts (not even that pressing the Windows-Key to call up the Start menu), and the default productivity features of the Windows environment are missing in action: There's no QuickLaunch button for the user's web browser, the browser doesn't recognize the URL as it's being typed it in (even though it's implied that the URL is often used), and the user hasn't bothered to bookmark this particular web site (again despite the implication that the URL is often used).
How would I go to Yahoo? If it was a website I often used, I'd save it as a bookmark in my browser. Otherwise, I'd go: Windows-Key + R (run dialog), type in "www.yahoo.com"and press Return. A relatively minimal process for something that I don't do often. The payoff from using Windows' own tools, however, comes if I need to go to that particular website again. The screendump here shows what happened after I pressed Windows-Key + R and typed "ya". Press Return in this situation and Yahoo will load in the browser.
Now for the real reason that I don't use ActiveWords... You see, even with my keyboard shortcuts working perfectly fine I would probably still buy and use ActiveWords if I could wring any benefit from it at all... I'm that geeky. But the couple of times that I've downloaded their trial version, it has crashed and crashed and crashed on me. And it even felt like the crashes got even more frequent as I put some effort into training the program. The program would claim that the file where my shortcut commands were stored had become "invalid", so I should start over with the training. Not the way to win my confidence.
And I wasn't impressed when the program announced that it had noticed that I started "Windows Explorer" a lot, and would I like to make an ActiveWords shortcut for that program? No, because I always start the explorer with Windows-Key + E, and I don't think you can beat that.
Danny O'Brian collected user experience stories from a bunch of top level geeks asking which tools they used on their desktop (documented here by Brad Delong): Most replied that they used very simple tools, and many replied that their main tool to this day was the first tool they learned to use extremely well (either from simply using it or from creating/maintaining it themselves).
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