I just noticed that when you click on the ‘your store’ tab on Amazon it takes you to a recommendations page that has a tag cloud of different product categories. My biggest tag was ‘Alternative Dance’. I’m so excited, I’m so ashamed!
I bought the Archers of Loaf album ‘All The Nations Airports’ on ITunes a couple weeks ago. I just listened to it on my stereo, and the quality is for crap. It’s one step forward for digital downloads, one step backward for audio quality. Matt covers the trend of complimentary digital downloads with vinyl purchases. Perhaps the idea should be extended to any media purchases. There is a company that would be really well positioned to offer this service, but they’ve been getting to much press from me lately.
In the Server-Side post Java Succumbing to .NET in my Organization, too much choice was cited as a major reason why .NET may be beating Java in the Web application technology space. It seems Java is too “flexible” and has too many choices for IDEs, frameworks and other ever evolving tools. In other words, there are too many ways to hang oneself.
I believe there’s a lot of truth in this. Choice creates complexity in addition to flexibility. We can look to the principles of good UI design to reason why choice many times is bad. A UI that offers two or more ways of doing one thing is seen as a detriment in the interface design world. It may lend itself to more flexible and powerful ways of doing things (although it very well may not), but it ultimately confuses the end-user, often times killing their memory of how to do the action or hurting how well they can perform the action repeatedly over time. As a caveat to the rule, it might be more reasonable to say that if you’re going to offer another more flexible (ie. powerful) way of doing something, that it stays “hidden”, out of the way from the average user or use case.
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I think the saddest part about leaving UM will be that I’m going to lose my Umich IT account, and with it, the uniquename that I got almost ten years ago as a college freshman (although for records purposes, it will probably stay with me for some time). That sounds a bit cheesy since most people that go to school at UM eventually lose theirs as well. Most all of my friends from school have long since lost theirs. But I went and got a job at UM after I graduated, so I kept it and it has grown on me.
It was my first computer account of any type, and the assigned name ‘adamjk’ was too catchy and easy to say to not use for almost every other account username (except maybe when ‘adam’ was available). Adam Just Kidding. The name stuck with some people. UM is where I started computers, now it seems to be strange leaving it. Typing a-d-a-m-j-k has been ingrained in my physical memory like riding a bike or swimming. These things stay with you because they were learned during formative years, as a kid.
I really learned to type during my freshman year. I was a blank slate when it came to personal computing. Many nights were spent hogging Jeremie’s PC keyboard when I should have been studying. Jeremie rightfully kicked me out of his dorm room a few times. That year it was mostly IRC, ICQ, Quake, HTML and CGI. And I can’t forget the Chupacabra in ‘96 presidential Web campaign. My GPA suffered, but I don’t blame Jeremie and Ben’s Room of Procrastination. In fact, I should really thank them for starting my insatiable interest in making all things electronic. I didn’t even own a PC.
I don’t know how long I’ll consider myself an Engineer. For now, I like it. I like to create things that work. But interests change. Maybe I’ll be a Planner or Scientist one day - maybe a fast-food worker. One things for sure though, I’ll always be adamjk.
Today’s WTF post sounds eerily like some of the verbiage I’ve read at work and in industry propaganda. So eery, it’s funny, eerily super-WTF funny.
In yesterday’s post (Bitten by the Enterprise Bug), we learned how vital enterprise application are for proactive organizations leveraging collective synergy to think outside the box and formulate their key objectives into a win-win game plan with a quality-driven approach that focuses on empowering key players to drive-up their core competencies and increase expectations with an all-around initiative to drive up the bottom-line.
Paul, Steve and I took the Television Studio Production class down at CTN (Ann Arbor’s Cable Access). We recently finished the course and need ideas for our show.
We’ve got a hazy sketch of a TechTV-like show that involves lots of chroma-key, drinking beer and extremely esoteric technical topics like lexers or something equally spiffy. Jeremy wants to do a variety/dance show, which sounds like it might be fun, but my heart is in dorkery at the moment. Send your ideas to one of us three dudes, we need them, and we promise to execute the best ones. Viva DorkTV!
Man! I was doing so good consistently posting here, but then real work happened. Anyway, I just made another release of the Friends RSS Aggregator.
Changes in this version include:
Happy New Year! Friends RSS Aggregator 0.3 Wordpress plugin has been released. FRA was built to enable a Wordpress installation to have a livejournal.com-like friends page.
Changes in this version include:
fra_display_feed_headlines, that displays only the headlines of one RSS/atom url.From Asbury Park Press via Mac Daily News.
DOVER TOWNSHIP — Despite impassioned pleas from her supporters, the Ocean County College board of trustees voted unanimously Monday not to reappoint Karen L. Bosley as faculty adviser to the student newspaper, a post she has held for 35 years.
The reason given to the teacher for her dismissal was that the paper contained too many mistakes and that the students weren’t being taught real world skills due to her using Apple Macintosh computers. It’s a scary thought to think that if you don’t use, the implied, Windows PC, you could lose your teaching job. God forbid she use Linux. Obviously there are rumors that her dismissal was for other reasons, like she didn’t view the president of the college in good light and the editorials reflected this. Regardless, I decided to write the president an email expressing my dissatisfaction.
Subject: Apple Macintosh Use Not The Basis For Dismissal
To: jlarson@ocean.eduDear President Larson,
I was disappointed to hear that the board of Ocean County College voted to not reappoint faculty adviser Karen L. Bosley. The decision was based on her classroom usage of Apple Macintosh computers for the purpose of teaching newspaper journalism and production. As a former reporter on my high school newspaper, I can tell you that “Macs” are used ubiquitously in the newsroom for writing and production. This is not just one reporter’s observation either, many others will tell you the same thing. Macs, just as well as PCs running Microsoft Windows will teach you the real-world techniques of making a newspaper.
Sincerely,
Adam Kramer
Ann Arbor, Michigan
I’m such a good citizen.
It’s not too often that a friend creates something that is impressive yet insanely dorky. But it happened.
Paul bought the first controller for his project this summer and completed the work less than a month ago. This work has converged into Der BrewMeister 0xF-Thousand. Yes, “0xF-Thousand.” Der BrewMeister is a beer brewing machine! No! Really! It’s a machine that brews beer. Simply put, it consists of a NetBSD PC, sensors, temp controllers, a beer fridge, wires and custom scheduling software written by Paul that orchestrates the virtual automation of the brewing process.
I’m sure Paul can do Der BrewMeister more justice, so check out his project page and be amazed at the BSD Beer Fridge.