Food Court Musical by Improv Everywhere

The group that brought us the "Frozen Grand Central" is back again, this time with a food court musical.

I always love watching the people's reactions when this stuff happens.

http://improveverywhere.com/2008/03/09/food-court-musical/#more-221

Well my home town is in the news. (Elmira, NY)

"Christians ordered to pay big bucks – for praying!" - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57757

Summary: 4 christian Elmirans were fined $100 for praying at a gay fest, by getting in the way "public order".

I'm not a religious person, actually I'm a atheist, but to impede on someone's right to free speech is just ethically wrong and this seems like something the right wing conservatives would do. The thing is since it was a small group of people, they could of protest near the church which is across the street (north) from the park.

Wisner Park

Sergeant Moyer

Hilarious: Children Science Projects

Fat Man To Mars

Great, I have a chance to go to mars. At least that is what I hope he concluded.

Extreme Wood

Don't even want to know what the graph represents.

Moon Babies

Great!! more reasons why you should use more protection on the moon.

Crystal Meth Friend or Foe

I hope it's good news, can't wait to try the benefits of meth.

 

See more other experiments at the source.

-Source: http://www.photobasement.com/41-hilarious-science-fair-experiments/

Usability of Apple and Window products.

Just noticed something I could rant/discuss about. <^_^>

I always hear people, mostly Microsoft haters -- you know the ones that use the archaic M$ and think they are original and/or funny, complain about Office 2007's Ribbon and basically write the whole suite off as crap because of it.

Well, one day after my father asked me to help him with his iPhone, I finally realize I hated there usability. Maybe, Apple users have no problems finding what they are looking for in a few clicks instead of searching around, but when they use a Microsoft product, like Office, they might have the same difficulty and become frustrated with the product. (The same can probably be said about Linux)

I guess there is a certain expectation on where each type of user (Apple, Windows, Linux) expect to find what they want in different areas.

I bet this would be a cool study to do research on. Give a set of different users some simple tasks like changing the font type, using the thesaurus, etc.. and see where they instinctively go for their first few clicks. I would hypothesis that the majority of each group of users have different patterns. 

I will admit, my first use of the Ribbon, in Office 2007, was difficult in the beginning. Now it just makes more sense and I'm glad for the change. Rewriting someone's instinctively learned behavior is never easy at first but change in behavior is possible.

Now, I only wish it was that easy with Golf!

Learned from college

One of the first classes that I had in college was a communication's course on Usability. Being an avid computer and Internet user I would expect some concepts to be obvious, but as pointed out by the professor -- not everybody is familiar with the unwritten rules of conduct. How would someone new to the Internet know that a blue underlined text might be a link to more information. I hated that I had to make my class project ugly by putting information like this:

Click here to go back to the home page --> Home Page

The project, learning about rainbows, had a focus group for 4-6th graders. I would expect that they can pick up minor nuances quicker, because their behavioral learning is a blank slate.

Lesson Learned

• Designers - try to keep in mind of your main users, if not all of them. Never design based on your personal preferences and then expect everyone to like it.
• Haters - don't trash something because you feel like a 2 year old. Give it some time.

How not to ask a question

How not to ask a question

An interesting collection of post from the blog The Old New Thing in which Eric Lippert's blog summarizes into a nice set of bullet points:

• Use a difficult or meaningless subject line.
• Ask a grammatically unclear question.
• Forget to actually ask a question (this is a personal favo[u]rite of mine; back when I was working on scripting I would practically daily get an email consisting of a stack trace and a crash report, with no indication whatsoever of what the sender wanted me to do with it. Investigate it? Commiserate? Give career advice?)
• Ask an unanswerable question over and over again.
• phrasing the question in terms of the attempted solution rather than the underlying problem

I will be more careful when asking questions to follow these sets of "Do Not" rules. There have been a few customers who would give me a complex, difficult to read/understand contract that spells out their services, expectations, and rules. I would then have to decipher a set of business rules out of them.

I then come to a situation where I would ask a large set of questions via email and never hear a response. Like I sent the question to a large festering black hole, expecting never to hear anything about it. One of these bullet points might have been the problem, or they just like ignoring the difficult to answer questions. Anyway, what I usually end up doing after complaining to my managers is just guess what they were hoping for. If they have a problem with it later:

1) I already asked, so don't blame me for overages in the estimates hours and

2) It would only take a few seconds to fix in the code (hopefully). 

Call Jockey - funny fake call emulator

This is just too good but very sad and pathetic. We are, so cell phone dependent that there is now a tool that can be used to make a fake phone call from anyone at anytime. Most likely use for this is to make an excuse to leave a party/meeting or seem more important.

 

Free until March 1, but I'm guessing the price of the software will be $6.95 to buy afterward. Take a look: http://www.connectivetools.com/calljockey.html

Zune

So, I finally bought myself a new MP3 player. As you can guess it's a Zune. I bought the small 8gb red, thinking I can buy a arm band and use it during my workouts later.

Moving to the Zune has many benefits.

1. Don't need to worry about batteries, at least not for the next 2 years.
2. Podcasts - the Zune software is really nice when it comes to podcasts. Just subscribe to huge list of podcasts and tell it to download the newest content when it becomes available. The next time I connect my Zune to my computer it deletes already watched podcasts and uploads new ones.
3. You can also view videos, listen to the radio, and save pictures onto it. There is also a wifi feature but need to find someone else with a Zune to see how "social" works.

What I miss a little:

1. There is no current time and date. Not really a big deal as long as I have my cell phone.
2. Equalizer.  I can live without, but they should add one.

What would be cool:

• Visualization: if they added a visualization for the screen when listening to music or the radio. This should also include the possibility to download others so we can customize.
• Streaming: if a wifi connection is available, maybe the option to listen to a streaming site like an online radio station or television. 

 

I am so far having fun playing with my new toy. I keep subscribing to new podcasts. <^_^> Visit my Zune profile to see what I'm listening too: http://social.zune.net/member/avgbody

 

Technorati Tags: microsoft,mp3,music,pictures,player,podcast,video,zune

Evolution of Tech Companies Logos and their meaning. Plus a look at my university's logo.

Logo changes

An interesting read on how and when some of the current tech companies got started and the transition of their logo throughout the years.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/07/the-evolution-of-tech-companies-logos/

Concept behind the logos

So what is the meaning behind of these famous logos?http://www.tmsgraphics.ca/tmsgraphics/pages/logo.html , shows where and what the ideas behind them are. The thought behind Apple's logo for example is now obvious:

Apple Based on its company name, they selected an apple as its main form of branding. Initially, the very first logo depicted a small apple shape sitting under a tree with Apple Computer Co set into the frame of the picture. It is this apple that has continued to be used. This initial logo design was perceived to be a bit too complex and hard to view, so Regis McKenna worked on the logo some years later and added a “bite mark" into the apple to symbolize the concept of seduction of the customers and the marketplace in general. Next, the monochrome version was replaced with the rainbow–colored logo as a reference to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in which the apple represents the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It brings to mind that people must pursue their dreams. While this was not initially a deliberate goal, it did encourage business and consumers to consider the Apple brand for the first time and was successful in generating increased profits.

My University Logo

Around 2002 my college, SUNY-IT, was going through another logo change (3rd or 4th change). They went to some company to do "research studies" and "focus groups" to find a logo that would work for our school. The logo they came up with was:

Not bad, unfortunately, I and some others didn't care for the Nike like swoop. The old logo, which resembled a bikini

actually had some meaning behind it and it was sad to see the history erased. If you look closely you will see that the old logo consisted of three letters U, D and C ;which stood for Upper Division College (until 2003, the college was upper division only, consisting of junior, seniors and grad students since 1966)* ** ***.  

Making a significant change to any logo is a tough job. I'm sure the transition made many people angry at the time, but the new logo is  better for marketing.

The earliest logo, which can be found on a flag at the college, consisted of the SUNY logo

   on a blue background with the name of the college on it.

*Another fun fact: The college actually started in the city of Utica, at a refurbished Mill factory.

**Even more interesting: The reason why the Donovan building   
seems so strange and confusing from the outside and definitely the inside is because it was modeled after the old Mill factory where the college originated from.

*** One of my favorite things about the college was that classes, before the change, were only Monday through Thursday. (an extra day of partying)

Technorati Tags: sunyit,suny-it,state university of new york,institute of technology,logo,nokia,ibm,apple,canon,history

David Blaine

Well, its a slow news day and couldn't find anything new and interesting. I decided to embed 3 funny clips from Funny or Die that show how scary David Blaine can be as a magician. It gets funnier on part 2 and 3.

Technorati Tags: david blaine,funny or die,comedy

Old habits never die

One of the things I could never stand was reading code that had the parenthesis on the same line as the function declaration, and couldn't understand why people even bother with this format still. I finally found why this is so.

public void MyMethod (int arg1, string arg2, bool arg3) {
      DoSomethingHere ();
} 

"Notice in above code the parenthesis is inline with the method declaration. And apparently the reason for that was that back in the days the monitors didn't have high resolutions and writing the parenthesis in the same line saved you one line on the monitor screen.




[...]

Let me end this post with a short story that could apply to the above text. I read this in Steve Maguire's book Debugging the Development Process. The story goes like this:

'A boy asked his mother how come she cuts off the edges of a pot roast when putting it into the pot. Mother told him that that's how her mother taught her to do. So, boy went to his grandmother and he got the same answer. Then he went to his grand-grandmother and ask her the same question. The answer was: Well, back then my pot was to small and the meat didn't fit inside.'" - http://blogs.msdn.com/peterj/archive/2008/02/05/on-code-formatting.aspx

One thing I do notice and find interesting are peoples habits and sayings/proverbs that were past down generations ago. Sometimes I would watch a old movie, and hear them say a phrase that will catch my attention -- thinking -- how old is that saying?




I found a web site that shows the sources of some of these weird sayings: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/sayindex.htm 

 

Some samples:

• Balls to the wall - This is not a reference to the male anatomy, as some would believe, but an expression from the world of aviation. On an aeroplane, the handles controlling the throttle and fuel mixture are often topped with ball-shaped grips, referred to by pilots as (naturally) balls. Pushing the balls forward, towards the wall of the cockpit, is to apply full throttle and the highest possible speed.
  
  



• Go off half-cocked - The hammer of 17th century flintlock muskets was often very ornate and resembled a rooster or cock. To fully cock a gun was to prepare it for firing. The half-cock position was a 'safe' position to which the hammer or cock was drawn to permit access to the priming pan to charge and load the weapon. Pulling the trigger of a flintlock musket at half-cock will not fire the weapon. The hammer, which contains the flint, will not strike the frizzen with sufficient force to produce a spark and the primer charge in the pan will not ignite. This will only happen when the hammer is fully cocked, that is, completely drawn back.
  
  



• Cut and run - An old nautical expression. In an emergency, it was sometimes necessary to cut the anchor cable, instead of going through the time-consuming business of winching up the anchor, in order to get away quickly ('run' before the wind, at full sail). The Armada was said to have done this off Calais on the approach of English fireships.
  
  



• Cold Turkey - In the state of drug withdrawal an addict's blood is directed to the internal organs, leaving the skin white and with goose bumps and thus resembling a frozen plucked turkey. This expression goes back to the 1930s.
  
  



• Give the bird - From theatrical slang; originally 'get the big bird', i.e. the goose, which hisses as people do when they make traditional sound of disapproval at a bad public performance.

Technorati Tags: sayings,proverb,tradition,habit