VerseLogic

Browser History ABCs

Alan J Castonguay — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:46:29 +0000

Here’s a silly waste of time I thought of while looking at my browser history. I found myself bringing up certain websites by clicking in the address/awesome bar, pressing a single letter, and hitting enter. Things need to be checked pretty consistently to get that sort of emergent behavior. So, I wondered, what’s the top entry in the history for each letter of the alphabet?

What’s in your awesome bar?

Safari forgets to be an Application?

Alan J Castonguay — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:13:07 +0000

Safari 4.0.2 (4530.19) is getting weirder. This is running on Tiger (10.4.11). The New Tab, New Window, and Quit Safari menu items are all greyed out or disabled. The hotkeys for new window or new tab do nothing. The Safari window disappears when I invoke Expose’s All Windows or Application Windows. Attempting to close the window fails too. Quit works though.

Google: This Site May Harm Your Computer?

Alan J Castonguay — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:17:56 +0000

Google’s search results normally flag suspicious websites, and direct their urls to a Google-powered “Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!” page.

Today, January 31st, this is broken. It appears that ALL search results on google.ca are being flagged as such, and thus no search results directly link to the given websites.

Observe also that http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic throws a status 502 error, Server Error, Bad Gateway.

Update: Same story broke at Slashdot, appears to not be localized.

Frontrow Filename Truncated

Alan J Castonguay — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:24:37 +0000

Apple’s Frontrow provides for ability to select and play arbitrary video files, usually from the ~/Movies/ directory. I take issue with the file browser user interface.

Given a series of Movies, the interface works quite well. It obvious that this was the experience it was polished for.

However, given a directory with a series of TV Episodes, the browser borders on useless. Especially if the TV show in question has a rather long title. Like Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. This filename cuts off well before the episode number, around 26 characters in. This leaves the displayed list lacking critical information, such as the episode number.

What episode is this? I’m on episode #14.. where’s that? I’ve got 23 episodes in this directory. Sure I can wait ~6 excruciating seconds for the title to scroll by, and then count down the screen to the correct episode. But that’s just bad UX.

There are several solutions to this user experience problem that I can see:

Reducing the font size, either statically or dynamically, would show more text on the screen at one time, but sacrifice readability overall.
Rename the files with shorter titles, which would be a pain for organization, but permit easier browsing.
Replace redundant information with ellipses rather than the trailing information, thus showing what’s unique.

My personal favorite is the third of these, which could yield lines such as “Yamato Nadeshiko Shic … 14.avi”.

Bookshelf Design

Alan J Castonguay — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:26:12 +0000

Shannon and I are running out¹ of space on our primary bookshelf. It contains 160 volumes, mostly science fiction.

We are engaging a non-profit² to make a few more bookshelves. I whipped up a few diagrams in Google SketchUp describing what we wanted. See figures 1-3 below. Not shown are the flushed wooden pegs used to hold shelves in place, augmented with wood glue.

Or have run out a long time ago, it could be argued, considering the number of books stacked sideways on top of it, or on the floor. ↩
Which made the first, full, bookshelf. ↩

Who Will Prepare Our Kids for the Realities of The Internet?

Alan J Castonguay — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:46:50 +0000

Children are taught very little with respect to their approach to the internet, which is probably the crux of another problem. One, I argue, that is more significant.

First and foremost, if they are taught anything at all, it’s a very shallow “don’t tell anyone anything personal about yourself” mentality. If this terrible message succeeds, the child will approach the internet with a perspective of anonymity. If extensive resources are spent preaching the glory of anonymity in a society, than the child will never be given an oppertunity or reason to develop accountability, responsibility, or respect. Meaningful relationships cannot be formed when two parties cannot or will not be certain of the other’s identity.

Conversely, if the child is forced to walk this line between using social networking websites (whose primary goal is to disseminate information) and the privacy-paranoid edicts of their parents, it is not unreasonable to simply lie about the scope and nature of their interactions.

If you’re alone, you are prey. If you build self-confidence and a web of trusted¹ individuals, you will not succumb to predators.

I argue that the opposite needs to be taught. An aspiring entity in our global web should forge their way, and make a name for themselves. They should reach out and interact with other people, creating a web of reputation that preceeds them. They should meet and interact with these people offline, possibly in the safety of convention space.

If you’re not anonymous, respect is attainable. Children just need to be educated on the importance of some basic human essentials. Respect, confidence, a strong sense of self. Changes in technology should not mitigate these essentials under the guise of security through obscutity.

I consider http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don’t_be_a_dick essential reading for all folks, as a first step to protecting themselves from the inevitable backlash. Children learning their way through life stand a higher chance of being hurt by harsh critique of immature actions and unresearched publications than they do of somehow being abducted through IRC.

The internet does not expose children to any more risk than walking down the street to their friend’s house.

that’s real trust, of the reputable sort ↩

Shift-Click Behavior in Leopard’s Mail.app

Alan J Castonguay — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:26:26 +0000

I just upgraded to from Tiger (10.4.10) to Leopard (10.5.5), and found the behavior of keyboard+click combinations in Mail.app to have changed, in quite an annoying manner. I used to use the following techniques in Tiger’s Mail.app to sort large volumes of mail, usually when marking as spam.

Scenario 1

Given a set of messages, 1…..2…..3…..4

Click a mail message (1), Shift-Click another (2) to highlight everything in between. Command-Click a new mail message (3), which is added to the selection set without altering the previous list. Up until this point, the behavior of Tiger and Leopard’s Mail.app is the same.

Shift-Click a message (4) further down the list.

In Tiger, this would have messages 1….2 selected, and messages 3…..4 selected. One could continue down the inbox message list like this, adding hundreds of messages to a selection, then perform an action (move to folder, mark as Junk, delete, etc).

In Leopard, this would have messages 3….4 selected, and not the previous selection. Bad.

Scenario 2

Given a set of messages, 1…..2…..3…..4

Click a mail message (2), Shift-Click another (3) to highlight everything in between. Shift-Click a new mail message outside the list, and in the opposite direction (1).

In Tiger, this would have messages 1….3 highlighted. A subsequent shift-click on message (4) would have messages 1….4 highlighted.

In Leopard, this would have messages 1….2 highlighted, and not the messages between 2…..3. A subsequent shift-click on message (4) would leave messages 2…..4 selected, and not the messages between 1…..2. Bad.

The behavior in Tiger’s Mail.app was brilliant, and radically contributed to speedily of adding items to a selection list. I want to revert to this behavior in Leopard’s Mail.app. It is reasonable that it might be a plist option. In general, however, I want this selection behavior available across all applications, including the Finder.

Tom Smith Filk Fund Raiser

Alan J Castonguay — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:45:42 +0000

Tom Smith has torn something in his leg climbing up onto the stage at the Ark in Ann Arbor. As a result, this filker is in the hospital. Being a poor starving artist filker, he could really use a little help with the medical bills.

In return for a donation of any size, a group of filkers is providing DRM-free MP3s of their recordings. Quite of a few of the tracks are brilliant.

“A Boy and His Frog“, written by Tom Smith and recorded by Rob Balder, was worth the entire donation alone.

A lot of Tom’s other music is really good too! Check it out!

Girl had suspected ‘boyfriend’ was woman

Alan J Castonguay — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:58:10 +0000

I know this is old news, coming from April 2007, but it has been bugging me all year.

How the hell does a 30 year old woman pretend to be a 14 year old boy, move in with a 14 year old girl, be in a relationship for a year, have “the sex” with her, and not reveal her lack of male genitalia?.

Drugs of age-reduction and penis-enlargement have come a long way. Also, she kinda did look like a dude.

Hooverphonic — Eden

Alan J Castonguay — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:29:16 +0000

I’ve been looking for AMV ideas outside of drama, tending toward fun-pop-action, or romance. If I’m going to go with romance, it should be between cute girls who don’t know how to express themselves. I’m sure that Kona-chan would approve.

Did you ever think of me
As your best friend

Did I ever think of you
I’m not complaining

I never tried to feel
I never tried to feel this vibration
I never tried to reach
I never tried to reach your eden

Did I ever think of you
As my enemy

Did you ever think of me
I’m complaining

I never tried to feel
I never tried to feel this vibration
I never tried to reach
I never tried to reach your eden

Hooverphonic — Eden