Author: Rory

Though I only do it inconsistently, I like to retrace the trail that led to my writing about something online. I used to formalise this with a simple structure, copied from Mark Pilgrim, that listed each relevant page in order, with arrows (→) between them. This seemed a little too formal, so I gave up on it in favour of a simple explanation of where the blue ether took me today.

Slashdot featured a review of ‘User Interface Design for Programmers’, which is exactly what it sounds like, only more entertaining. One comment linked to the author’s website, which contains sample chapters from the book. Chapter one inspired the following piece.

In order to avoid the problem of lazy nettizens , a problem made obvious by the ubiquity of the comment ‘RTFA‘, I’ll give the gist of the relevant part of the chapter here. Incidentally, I always associate the word nettizens, if I can be forgiven for calling it a word at all, with denizens rather than citizens. I choose not to see this as an indictment.

The author, Joel Spolsky, describes his old job in an industrial bakery; a menial job, basically there to fill in for a machine. I believe most people can empathise with this position. It is not always pleasant to be in this sort of situation. Joel describes forgettable incidents that subtly altered his mood. Slipping a little on the wet floor would make him feel just a little bit less under control. Catching the dough from the industrial mixer at exactly the right time would make him feel correspondingly more in control. His point, and the reason that this extended anecdote apears in a book about user interface design, is that small things make a difference, in his words, "Your emotions don’t seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality."

But I’m not just going to badly re-express the same point, even though I do agree with it. I want to make a different point, that Joel has essentially written about a series of utterly forgettable occasions but has made them meaningful. I imagined Joel having a weblog at the time he held this job, belting his experiences out on a keyboard a few times a week. "Today I cut myself on a chain. I hate this place", "I was totally in control today, everything went my way." Who could have brought themselves to care? His set of experiences in the bakery, compiled as they are and used to make a valid observation of human behaviour, is compelling. Written individually, they would have been a LiveJournal.

The problem I have observed is that weblogging lends itself, however much we may try to avoid it, to spewing random trivialities at an imagined audience, where book writing allows time to combine experience into thought. I don’t know who first said it, and Google only knows it as an old saying, but "great men discuss ideas, average men discuss events, and lesser men discuss people." It seems that with the free expression allowed by the weblogging world, those of us who considered ourselves "great men" (or more distinguished than "average men", at least) can easily be diminished to average status, simply by not allowing enough time for ideas to be developed.

I’ve tried to allow time for my thoughts on this issue to consolidate, so that for now at least I won’t be a victim of my own observed phenomenon. I can only wait for feedback to know if I’ve succeeded. But for now we must decide what’s more important to us; do we want frequent brief outbursts that serve as little more than "I still exist" (encouraged by the fact that my CMS provides entries based on time, those posted within the last week, rather than on number, the last four posted for example); or are we more concerned with the content of our output, the idea that "it’ll be published when it’s ready". Essentially, and very simply, this is an issue of quality versus quantity. I can think of few occasions when I would be tempted to choose quantity as more important, but it is more motivational.

The only concrete conclusion I can provide is that I’d like to provide thoughtful and though-out material for any readers I might have, but I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t happen all that often. On the other hand, you got this essay in place of "my throat hurts and my nose hurts; I have two owies." Which is a step in the right direction.

final_fantasy_x-2_intro.mpg (51.3MB). That is all.

Did you ever want your own cool-sounding Metal Gear-style call-sign? As the introduction to this Fox Hound name generator says, "you don’t have to be Hideo Kojima to slam random nouns together like drunken virgins at an orgy." Had I found this a few days ago it would have given me a pretty comical LAN game name. But I didn’t, so I’m sticking with Zombie Jesus. Or Mother Shabubu. Or Aunty Christ. Maybe I should run a poll?

The true spirit of blogging is exemplified by two things. Commenting on the state of the internet, or parts of it; and whining about anything that crosses your mind. So in a neat fusion I present: Giving Out About Idiots And Their Email (part of an on-going series). In the last three days I’ve received a total of almost two hundred identical emails to a single address. They weigh in at a hefty (for dial-up) 150k each. That’s 30MB of virus in three days. I guess that someone is still hopeful that the two-hundred-and-first will convince me that it’s actually from Microsoft.

It may seem like I’m beating a dead (trojan) horse, but what can convince you to run a program that you got, out of the blue ether, in an email? Hell, even if it was from Microsoft, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a pity viruses aren’t as destructive as they used to be. If all the idiots had their systems fried, clueful users wouldn’t be bombarded with ineffectual trojans, and I’d be finished that download of the Final Fantasy X-2 intro video.

Random stumbling around the web: I happened upon an old bookmarks file from a disused Mozilla profile that contained a link to philringnalda.com. This is odd because, although I have an idea who phil ringnalda is, I have no recollection of having bookmarked his site. I guess that’s what bookmarks are for though; not having to remember things.

Via philringnalda, the LJ Times. This is a congelation of all that’s bad in writing. As the headline reads, "WTF, OMG, LOL". It’s an aggregation of LiveJournal entries, layed out as a serious newspaper. The design needs a little work to make it look more newspapery. For another example, see Live Journal Washinton Post. LOL!

There is something quite terribly wrong with rising at seven and not getting home until six, when the day between consists of two lectures. I’m beginning to dislike Tuesdays.

Gamespot is featuring a preview of Final Fantasy X-2, which is aparently set for an "early December" 2003 release. This is a US release schedule, so I wouldn’t expect to see it in European shops this side of Christmas. I think we can expect an early spring release as usual, just in time to interfere with finals. Perhaps that’s why they call it Final Fantasy.

The preview doesn’t give much away, unfortunately, but what little can be gleaned from it follows. X-2 is a sequel to FFX, as we already knew. The principal protagonist is FFX‘s Yuna. Rikku is also a playable character. Other FFX characters only appear briefly as NPCs. The gameplay sounds to be less linear than the original, with the world map accessible far earlier in the game. The battle system has changed, but still features a sphere motif. Alarmingly, it seems that there are only three playable characters. I would think this is needlessly restrictive. I expect you’ll join with me in hoping that I’ve simply mis-interpreted that claim.

We’re promised improved graphics and "gorgeously detailed CG movies". The animators have redesigned any areas from the first game that are revisited. Gaming Horizon has some Screenshots, aswell as the box art. I have to say that Gun-toting Yuna in hotpants is indicative of an enthralling game.

As promised, here are the results from the Rare Entries contest that I described in an earlier entry. I came twenty-sixth out of forty-five entrants. There are no prizes for pointing out that these results were available when I posted my last blissfully content-free entry.

After the embarassment of having to admit the necessity for a placeholder entry you might be supposed to expect a little flair from me this time around. Unfortunately fate and irony together conspire against us. It is ironic that I am bound not to discuss the first somewhat interesting event after an extended period of bored coasting. My silence is to protect the innocent, and the innocent until proven guilty.

It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Well deep breath then, and on to removing all doubt. I’m going to level with you that the primary purpose of this entry is not to pass on some wonderfully entertaining bite-sized chunks of modern micro-culture, nor is it to inspire or confound you with strange new paradigms. It’s to get rid of the annoying ‘Out of Cheese’ error that appears on the front page when there have been no entries in the last week.

I’ll avoid any more than a simple mention of the release of Mozilla Thunderbird version 0.2, since becoming excited about a 0.1 revision to a mail client is reminiscent of Steve Martin shouting that "THE NEW PHONEBOOKS ARE HERE!"

As an admittedly contrived segue from the mailnews client, speaking of email and newsgroups, I recently rediscovered an old haunt of mine, rec.puzzles (Google Groups). The reason I mention this is that I want to draw attention, what little I might generate, to the Rare Entries Contest. The concept is simple and compelling. You must answer ten questions, but the aim is give correct answers that other people will not give. For each correct answer you give, you score a number of points equal to the number of other people who gave the same answer. For a wrong answer you get a penalty. The aim is to have the lowest score (ideally only ten points, corresponding to all correct answers with no-one giving the same answers as you.)

I’m particularly interested to see the answers given to the questions with limited possible correct answers. Take the Nobel Prize question ("Name one of the five original categories of Nobel Prize.") for example. This is where the second guessing comes in. The results will be posted soon so, unless I do embarrassingly badly, I’ll tell you how I got on.