From Creating Passionate Users, a tribute to the clueless…
“The clueless accomplish amazing things–not necessarily because we’re bold, brilliant innovators, but perhaps because we just don’t know any better. We see the simplicity of the forest while Those Who Know are overanalyzing the complex subtleties of the trees (and miss the point). Sometimes NOT knowing about a “problem” weakens (or eliminates) it.”
It’s a good read.
[Link)]
All of you Rails developers using the wonderful Textmate editor may want to sit down for this. Duane Johnson has been on a roll creating the greatest Textmate Bundle ever - syncPeople on Rails. Why so great, you ask? I’ll tell you. Rails enforces a rather strict MVC file hierarchy which does wonders for code consistancy. It rather sucks, however, when trying to edit related code held in 3 or 4 different directories. This bundle file creates 3 new commands… “Open Controller/View”, “Create Partial from Selection” and “Intelligent Go To File.” Check this….
“Hit the keypad enter key and youll be taken to whatever makes the most sense. For example, if youre on a line that reads render :action => list and you hit enter, youll be taken to that list action in the controller. If youre inside a view file but not on any particular render line, youll be taken to the controller. It tries to use a best-match scenario…”
Absolutely fabulous. Thanks Duane!
[Link)]
The new Adobe Lightroom beta 2) has recently been made available and it’s even better than the first. One of the “new” features, believe it or not, is the Crop tool. The interesting thing is that the new tool works completely backwards from what most of us are used to. I totally didn’t get it - at first. The way it works is if you click and drag from inside the crop rectangle, the image moves, not the crop area. Totally wrong, right? Not so fast. Using it on a half-dozen images made a believer out of me and I now can’t imagine doing it any other way. Also, if you click and drag outside the crop area, it rotates the image, again behind the crop area. This means that I don’t need to twist my head all sideways to see things “straight.” And finally, the crop area has a 3x3 grid for all you followers of the “rule of thirds.” Very nice overall.
This I think is a fine example of breaking user expectations for the greater good.
I like Seth Godin because he always makes me consider or reconsider something previously assumed. His latest piece lists a number of reasons for the way things are. Some obvious, some not. Some are funny, like this one…
The reason you have a front lawn is to demonstrate to your friends and neighbors how much time and energy you’re prepared to waste.
I must not waste any time!
[Link)]
I’d used the beta of MeasureMap) for a while, but once Google Analytics hit I started using that instead, and wondered what would become of Veen’s baby. Now I know)
Years ago, and sometimes still, I recorded my dreams in a little spiral notebook kept near the bed. The first page of the book contains, written badly using a calligraphy pen (of course), the first part of Row, Row, Row, your boat, which I must’ve thought quite clever. Most of the entries are the usual dream stuff - monsters, sex, flying, falling, biting - you know. One entry however takes the form of a poem. I don’t remember writing it, but I do remember reading it the following morning and thinking I was somehow not entirely sound. It goes like this…
It never had occured to me
The way it has to be
is never never only what it should be
Some this some that some other
kid forgets his mother
then take the wasted lives of one another
It never seemed I never saw
true light shine out and on and all
the things that come up/down before the fall
The growth the life before the rise
But once I looked into those eyes
Not knowing what could crawl out of the skies
Peaks first then ebbs it shrinks and grows
Aroma smelled not with the nose
A thorn has fallen from life’s withered rose
Once dust once ash a Phoenix came
from out of pointed angry blame
And nothing else has ever done the same
Over up and once thought dead
A voice that rang in angels’ heads
Now sings a song of loneliness instead
Not gone not here not anywhere
A madnes permeates the air
Strips all and one and thing completely bare
And spoken with a raspy breath
While looking down upon the earth
“All the meek inherit now is death.”
Whatever that means.
Oh, and I’ve put up a bunch of other fascinating poetry by yours truly at http://jackbaty.com/poems/) for your amusement.
I’ve been struggling with my reactions to the whole Danish cartoon fiasco. This is mostly because my usual reaction is that Free Speech trumps all, but in this case my usual reaction feels, well, wrong. Abbas Raza has written a well-reasoned and thoughtful piece which is very much worth the read.
[Link)]
I had no idea. Danica McKellar (you remember, Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years and more recently from West Wing) is somewhat of a math genius. Her (co-authored) paper, _Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic
AshkinTeller models on Z(2)_ is apparently quite brilliant, not that I’d know the difference. How hot is that!?
Seems everyone and their brother is trying to replace my trusty IM client. Fancy, browser-based, Ajaxified chat seems to be everywhere. There’s meebo.com) for those who want to use any of the services in one centralized place. Google just added Gtalk directly in the Gmail interface (it’s nice.) I just spent 20 minutes in a pre-release version of 37Signal’s Campfire app, which is apparently targeted at business meeting chats. All of these apps are nearly good enough for my purposes. I wonder what this will mean for the existing chat software like iChat, Trillian, Adium, etc. These “desktop” apps have more features and, being real applications, they behave like real applications. But, the “good enough” factor makes me think we’re going to see a large number of folks stop using stand-alone IM clients altogether.
Frank settled down in the Valley and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife’s forehead.
–Tom Waits