I didn’t do well in High School, 2.2 grade point average. In fact, I fell asleep (often) in Math class. I started well, trying to pay attention. However, that didn’t last long. The droning of the teacher saying mindless facts, asking us to rote memorize them so we can parrot…
I hate iTunes 11. Did I get to the point too quickly? OK, I’ll try again. I use iTunes specifically because I use iPods. We have 3-4 iPods, more if you count the ones we have lost. We use them mainly for music, especially in the car. I use iTunes…
No clicking of mouse, no typing of keyboard = not working. You are probably spacing out, not there or reading a blog article. Lots of typing = Not working. You are writing an email or instant messaging or typing a blog. (This is what I sound like now) Talking in a friendly…
I recently gave my Samsung Series 9 to my wife as a hand-me-down present. This left me without a new laptop. I obviously couldn’t live with that, so I had a choice. Either buy a new laptop or get one through work. The one I lusted after was the Acer…
Flashes of inspiration are a critical ingredient for great design. However, they really are brief moments in the life of a project. The real work of making something great is time consuming. It is iterating and polishing and re-ordering and re-conceptualizing and backtracking and focusing relentlessly for long periods of…
Last week a 20-year old took hundreds of rounds of ammunition in high density clips and a semi-automatic machine gun into an elementary school in Connecticut. He shot 26 people, mostly 6 year old kids. It’s senseless. It’s insane. It’s an act of mental illness, evil or both. The thing that…
Verizon just upgraded my phone to Android Jelly Bean 4.1.1. It has some minor improvements, but generally speaking it isn’t much of a change. The icons look different and the email clients look newer. There is more color in the built-in apps like Calendar and Email. They have a new…
Making a decision in a bad headspace is a bad idea. Frustrated Anxious Guilty Sad Angry Frantic / Hurried Fearful Distracted Passionate Hungry Ecstatic These emotions make your brain run hot. They take away valuable CPU power in decision-making. You want to be calm and collected when you make decisions.…
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/biweekly Happening every two weeks. Happening twice a week; semiweekly. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biweekly occurring twice a week occurring every two weeks fortnightly http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/biweekly Occurring once every two weeks. Occurring twice a week Here is the bottom line: The prefix bi- applies to the week rather than to the events that occur, therefore giving…
I am a pretty avid reader. I used to read on the train when I used public transportation every day. These days, I drive 10 minutes to work, so my reading has been fewer minutes per day. For this reason, it REALLY sucks when a book is bad. Specifically, I…
Microsoft has had a pretty rough time the last few years. Steve Jobs innovated like a mad genius and came up with the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. That’s alot of ground to cover and Microsoft has not been able to keep up. At best, they tread water. However, Steve…
A huge portion of User Interface design is finding the right levels of abstractions. What I mean by this is that you have to decide what the information hierarchy is and how they map to mental models. Example System : WordPress Blog (Good)You have posts and pages. Those are objects within…
Iconography is a specialized talent. Working in such small confines making images that convey specific meanings. Previously, I have heavily endorsed using IconExperience. Over 2,500 icons in lots of sizes, with and without shadows. It’s a cornucopia of excellent images. They are very easy to mashup to create a nearly…
One day, if I have a hundred million dollars, I am going to fund the following initiative: The Do Your Job Proposition From now on, all California propositions, initiatives and ballot measures will have an additional choice besides Yes and No called “I Don’t Know”. If the measure does not…