Troy was complaining that his sync wasn't working with .Mac today, I suggested that it was a clog, as the internets is just a series of tubes, after all. Wim stepped in and recommended dietary supplements to unclog said tubes, such as fiber to the home.
Bill's correct: The proper pronunciation of ZOMG is “twenty milligrams”.
Graffletopia rocks. A great interface for browsing and getting OmniGraffle stencils, and Patrick says he'd definitely like to add other extras down the road.
Check it out.
As some of you may have read, I like me some coffee.
Imagine my dismay when I saw this:
Thankfully, due to my last post on the subject, Omni user Ralph was kind enough to send us some coffee from New Orleans:
But what to make it in, if the machine is broken? Why, what's this? A small brewer!
Almost there…
Omni enjoys some freshly brewed coffee in the face of adversity!
Thanks, Ralph!
Bill has now received his fifth Sega Dreamcast.
He claims that his third one (bought for parts) smells bad. The second one was pink. The pink one had some sort of mechanical error, so there's reason for number three. The smelly Dreamcast had its GD-ROM drive transplanted to the pink one (the GD-ROM did not smell bad). The fourth one was given to him by Brian, however it sits still underneath Bill's desk, unopened.
The first one (it was a limited edition Dreamcast, replete with the project manager's picture on the box and a cellphone trinket) was sold after acquiring the pink one.
His new one is also pink. He also has a large number of pink controllers and one pink keyboard (never used).
Smelly Dreamcast is currently encased in ziploc (minus GD-ROM drive).
Bill's Dreamcast wishlist:
- Broadband adapter (preferably in pink)
- Shenmue 3
Man, do I like coffee—it's total go-juice, like it's like airplane fuel for grown-ups, nothing gets me up and running like a piping hot cup o' joe, and I don't go for that whole latte/mocha/whatever-o-chino that the hoity-toity coffeeshops sell, I just like a good strong cuppa joe (preferably percolated) with maybe even a shot of espresso dropped in it, like it was some sort of coffee boilermaker, man, that would be so totally awesome that all the tea in China would have to bow down before it and energy drinks would hang their heads in shame, I don't even like to put sugar or creamer in my coffee but James showed me this trick where just a little unrefined sugar in an americano can make it taste exactly like really good drip, and that makes me wonder, how can espresso be so darn fast, even if you use a french press you have to wait for the coffee to steep but if you're using an espresso machine it's practically instant without tasting like yucky instant coffee, I gotta figure out how that all works out and then make a miniature version and patent it and I'll be super-rich, or maybe I could sell the idea or we could make some really cool app for controlling coffee makers over the internet, anyways I gotta go now, need to make another cup of coffee.
1. Tried to get a dog to bark on command; failed.
2. Attempted to order a gorilla mask; succeeded.
Caveat: The above is in no way a red herring or misdirection, it is all completely true.
You know, after something like 22 years of working on Macintoshes, I have found that I care little about the actual “look” of an application's interface, instead focusing on the “feel”.
This in no way makes me a “touchy-feely” sort of person.
Take, for instance, the current controversy (I like the way some British-English speakers pronounce that word, con-TRAHV-er-sy) surrounding the “under construction” title bar for the latest OmniWeb 5.5 Sneaky Peeks. Quite polarizing, it turns out. Kind of like a Quentin Tarentino movie. Yep, that's it—The OmniWeb 5.5 SP title bar is EXACTLY like a Tarentino movie. Jackie Brown, as a matter of fact.
Anyway, myself, I don't even notice the SP title bar. I, unlike some folks, am able to peer INSIDE the window of pretty much any application,be it an Omni one or no, and direct my focus on the content of said window instead of its framing. I don't know why or how I can do this, perhaps it's due to being from another planet altogether, or that can of spinach I just consumed, but I can do it just the same.
And while I can easily dismiss a series of diagonal stripes from my visual acumen (not to mention red, yellow, and green buttons therein), I would be horribly upset if that for some reason the addition of said stripes were to disable the dragging of a window around on my display, or if it broke double-clicking to minimize to the Dock, or simply displayed the wrong window title completely.
I'm like that. Pretty easygoing so far as the colors/styling quotient lies. Wasn't always this way, I distinctly recall working on the inspector icons for OmniGraffle 4 and getting pretty worked up on getting a good consensus as to what they should look like, what colors to use, etc. Debates such as that one have led to the UI team taking a much more proactive role in application development.
I'm not on that team for good reason: I'm at that point where an application icon is something I poke to switch to an application, nothing more. Of course I'd like it to look all sorts of swell, but in the end I don't even notice it anymore. It's a click target for me to get something done. A title bar is a thingy that has a title in it. A toolbar button has to advertise its function, and little more.
Now, on the other hand, those folks ON the UI team? They have to think about this stuff. Rather constantly, to boot. Not only due to the Omni Group as a whole being pretty vociferous about personal preferences concerning user interface and experience (yours truly excepted only a little bit), but because our users are pretty darn discerning as well.
If they weren't, they wouldn't be using our software, I should think.
Oh, I try to add my feedback, however obliquely, to the UI effort, but in the end it's only a couple of pennies at a time. But really, I'm glad that I'm not on the UI team here at Omni—Not only is it work cut out for them that's horribly involved, we also have the good sense not to include content (as in the opposite of discontent) users of OS X such as myself on such teams, which is what helps considerably in pushing open the envelope of overall user experience with our applications.
“Redonkulous”
“Bananaphone”
“I just lost the game”
“Oh, [insert application name here]”
“OMG I'M IN UR BASE KILLING UR DOODZ”
“Hey mans”
“What?”
“zOMG”
“Boot!”
“Jamba?”
“Dr Pepper”
“mmmm….coffee”
“There's a new Strong Bad email”
Boy howdy, performing a union shape combination on 3,810 tiny little circle shapes in OmniGraffle Professional takes a looooooonnnnnggggg time.
By the time I finish Apple will have introduced an entirely new tower to replace the Cheese Grater.