technology - she's the one

category: technology

Update

Posted February 26, 2006 • Comments Off

I have, I think, five crossword puzzles to post. I just want you to know this so you don’t think I’ve abandoned them, as I really enjoy posting them, and so you don’t think I’ve gone insane when they all show up at once. Maybe tomorrow.

At work recently I was looking through the approved/standard software list on the intranet. This screenshot shows how outdated certain sections of this list are.

Nice, eh? System 8.6 became obsolete with the release of System 9. Which was in October of 1999.

OS X wish list (items: 1)

Posted January 18, 2006 • Comments Off

All I want is to have my network location show in the menu bar. Why can’t I find this? Why is this so strange an idea?

What happened at airport security

Posted December 20, 2005 • Comments Off

I pride myself on knowing how to do things like Go Through Security™ properly. I have my driver’s license and my boarding pass (which I printed at home last night) in my back pocket. My coat has been inside my checked bag since I arrived at the airport. I wear slip-on shoes, and I keep the Velcro strap over the padded computer compartment inside my carryon open so I can slide the computer out.

I put my shoes in a box.

I slide the computer out of the padding.

I hold it in the crook of my arm.

I step out of my shoes.

I bend over to pick them up.

The carryon starts to slip off my shoulder.

I forget I’m wearing a new fleece top made of frictionless acrylic, and that my hands are very, very dry.

And, as if in slow motion, right in front of me, and completely outside of my control, my computer tumbles out of my arms, tumbles to the hard, hard airport floor. It bounces on one corner, and it comes to rest flat, upside down. I, and the nice older couple behind me, and the guy in front of me, make a soft oohhh noise.

The older man looks at me reassuringly. “They’re tough,” he says. I look at the computer. It’s just lying there. I half expect it to cry or blink its lights at me or something.

I pick it up. I pick my shoes up. I pick my bag up. I put everything on the pre-belt table. I look at the computer. You know what? It looks fine. FINE. I open it, and the screen lights up, and it’s FINE. I say something idiotic to the nice couple, like “Christmas almost just got a lot more expensive.”

Half an hour later I notice the left back corner is puckered in, concave where once it was convex. I cringe, remembering the immense size of the repair estimate—and the warranty-related luck and not-afraid-to-fudge-the-date Genius Bar guy—involved in getting the bottom half of the case replaced after my mishap LAST Christmas.

I look closer. The aluminum around the pucker is displaced very slightly. But the plastic edge is undisturbed, and the plastic ring around the power input (for that is what’s in that corner) is undisturbed. I could not, had I dropped it with aim and purpose and planning, chosen a better place for it to dent.

It’s dented. It’s not perfect anymore. But it’s okay.

my menu bar

Posted November 17, 2005 • Comments Off

…is better than yours. It brings all the boys to the yard, or some such.

WOW do I remember these. Wish I’d saved some. Wonder if Jeff did.

Posted September 21, 2005 • Comments Off

Elephant Memory 5.25“ floppy art and ads:
Cory Doctorow:

Kevin has collected a lovely gallery of advertisements and protective sleeves from the sadly departed Elephant Memory line of 5.25” floppy discs, which sported great illos of mighty elephants faithfully remembering your Logo programs and saved Loderunner games.

Link

(Thanks, Kevin!)

Mac ads

Posted August 5, 2005 • Comments Off

I’m watching this tape from (I think ) 1998, the one that had the last Seinfeld on it, and I just got an ad for “the new PowerBook G3.”

These ads are jumping out at me bigtime. Is it just because I was never a Mac owner when they were on, or because I never watch commercials anymore, or what? Are there not Mac commercials on TV nowadays? I don’t think there are.

(By the way, “tonight” on ABC: “Ellen” and “Dharma and Greg.”)

Inside jokes.

Posted June 27, 2005 • Comments Off

Apple.com has a feature I really like called Pro Tips where they put in some tips that are genuinely useful. (There are lots of tips that aren’t; for instance, yes, I did in fact know I could zip files from the context menu). It’s no macosxhints.com, but it’s neat. The problem is that it’s called “Tip of the Week” but hasn’t been updated in at least a month. Bothersome.

So today I was looking at the most recent tip, and I decided to look at the source for the page, to see if it was dated, so I could whine more specifically about the delay. At the bottom of the source code for the page, I found this:

That’s just the grey copyright notice at the bottom of every Apple.com page. But the fact that the css stylesheet for it is called “sosumi” cracked me up. “Sosumi” is the name of one of the original, classic Mac system sounds, one of the few that survived the transition to OS X (unlike the wonderful Wild Eep, for instance). Sosumi sounds like this. It’s a pun on “so sue me,” and its story can be read on Wikipedia here. But the fact that they’re still using it for something as subtle as a css class for their copyright notice is just wonderful.

To me, and, like, four other people.

Braille

Posted June 21, 2005 • Comments Off

There’s this woman who rides the same train as I do sometimes. She wears nice matching outfits and tinted glasses. She usually spends the first half of the trip reading on her PDA and the second half talking on her cell phone.

Her dog, a golden retriever, usually stays curled up behind her legs.

And this is what her PDA looks like.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/PACmate_bns.asp

Hers is clearly an older model (beige, not gray; serial, not USB, though it does have a Compact Flash card reader), but this is what it is.

Obviously, the lady I see on the train is blind. I spend a good deal of time watching her when I see her; everyone does, and it’s not like she knows, and if she somehow caught me I’d readily have a hundred perfectly polite things to say, but I still feel a little guilty about it. The fact is, though, to watch her clearly doing the same things I do, down to looking up a phone number and dialing it on her cell phone, is fascinating. She works for a nonprofit, but I’m not sure which one. I’ve heard her talk in government acronyms (DOE, RFP, and so on), setting up meetings and planning to go over documents at home at night.

This eight-button PDA is one of the most beautifully apt pieces of technology I’ve ever seen, and its operation is completely opaque to me. What does its interface ‘look’ like to her, in her mind? Does she use an organizational system different from what you or I would? Does she keep the numbers in the Braille thing because there’s really no point to programming them into her phone like I do? How does the machine hook up to her computer at home? Does she have a special keyboard, or does she touch-type on a regular qwerty or Dvorak one? If so, are there Braille letters and numbers on the keys? How does a Braille display render things like windows, dialog boxes, nested menus, and so on? Is the interface completely different? If so, is there special software—above and beyond screenreaders like Jaws—to translate a graphical user interface into text? How descriptive is the text? Has she learned, or invented, or taught herself, a system of codes and abbreviations to figure these things out?

I think about these things while I watch her on the train.