I always thought the best preparation for any computer-based activity, such as web development, was a thorough knowledge of English poetry. Who knew that Steve Jobs agreed with me?
When asked if he was a "computer nerd", he replied: "I wasn’t completely in any one world for too long. There was so much else going on. Between my sophomore and junior years, I got stoned for the first time; I discovered Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas and all that classic stuff." (Playboy Interview with Steve Jobs, 1985)
Happy Blue Beanie Day! As Ethan Marcotte says, "...[C]ould you imagine anything like responsive web design without web standards?". #bbd14
What with all the talk of the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I recalled an episode that happened to me a bit earlier while visiting East Berlin.
The way it worked is you got to spend a day there but had to be back by midnight or they'd make you pay a fine. Normally we'd go there, visit the sites (such as they were), head to a couple of bars to spend the practically worthless East-German marks, and then head back to Checkpoint Charlie.
One night as we were racing back, we got stopped by an East-German policeman or border guard or I don't know what -- on the final street right before Checkpoint Charlie. "Why", I asked the guard.
"Because you crossed the street against the light," he explained. The fine for this trespass was 20 marks (West German of course). Naturally I grumbled as I handed over the ransom money.
"But," he said by way of defense, "we have our laws, you have your laws. It would be the same in Chicago."
I looked at the deserted street I had just crossed and then the huge forbidding Wall stretched left and right with watch-towers, spotlights and men armed with machine guns -- all to keep their own people trapped inside.
"No," I assured the guard, "this is nothing like Chicago."
People, could you please refrain from sticking pencils in dictionaries!
Current Cites for August 2014 is out! You can find the issue here...
My pick this month was an article on modeling library instruction as 'performance art' -- from a librarian whose background not surprisingly is in theater. The focus was on instruction sessions but there's no reason why such an approach can't be incorporated, at least to a certain extent, in face-to-face interactions at the Reference Desk.
Mystery website at MPOW. I inherited the thing. It was put together maybe 6 years ago or more. What system does it run on? Nobody knows -- not even the original developers. On the other hand, many of the pages end in 'aspx'.
Some links on the main navigation end in '#' (i.e. empty hashtag). "#"? You click on that link and you'll go absolutely nowhere. It's the web equivalent of a dead-end. What'd they do? Launch the site without bothering to develop those particular pages?
I guess you could call this the equivalent of walking into a house with a bag over your head. I think I'd prefer an actual bag.
Results from the PewResearch Library User Quiz. Of course, I took the thing while sitting in the library (Depaul) so you could call me biased.
The lunar landing in 1969 -- I remember it well. We were kids hanging out at Camp McCormick in Eagle River, Wisc. There in the darkness, under a star-lit sky, sitting on a hill overlooking the pine forests and lakes and streams of northern Wisconsin's 'Land O'Lakes', we listened on our portable radio -- TV not being allowed in summer camp -- as the Apollo 11 astronauts made their landing. When it happened and Armstrong said those famous words, we jumped up and cheered.
Suggested alternatives to 'UICNursing' courtesy of YouTube (i.e. Google).
"They didn't want to lose control of their local library."
"Few people try to or want to use tablets like laptops, save for when they feel like they have to justify the cost and get every last inch of mileage out of it."
"I don’t want a laptop. I don’t want a tablet. I want a tablet-shaped laptop-looking thing with a snap-on keyboard and a kickstand and a 3:2 screen and an Intel Core processor and a stylus and it has to run full Windows. Bueno?"
(Discussion precipitated by Microsoft's recent release of the Surface Pro 3.)
Suburbanite Economist (4/30/1958):
"United Film and Recording Studio has been awarded the production of a full length motion picture on the subject of rehabilitation of the men- tally ill, by the State of Illinois. William L. Klein, owner of the Chicago studio expects the awarding of this contract to pave the way to promote Chicago as an able film capital. He says, "Chicago has the manpower and facilities to do a supreme job and does not have to take a back seat as far as New York or Hollywood is concerned." Hear! Hear! Hear! (Suburbanite Economist, 4/30/1958, p20.)
Current Cites for March 2014 is out! You can find the issue here...
I wrote about an article that looked at the various iterations of the library home page at UNLV down through the ages (i.e. 1996-2012): "Tracking Changes: One Library's Homepage Over Time - Findings from Usability Testing and Reflections on Staffing", Journal of Web Librarianship 8(1)(2014): 23-47.
Last snowfall of the year? One can only hope. Anyway, enjoy it while it lasts, as they say. [Link to larger photo...]
Google Analytics recently added a "Demographics and Interests" feature to its set of tools measuring website traffic. They amass this data basically by what kinds of searches you do, your Google+ account, the sites you click on, etc. To see how accurate a picture it has drawn of you, click the following link (updated):
https://myadcenter.google.com/?hl=en&sasb=true
UX Quote of the Day*:
"The designers of the Phelps farm tractor in 1901 based their interface on a metaphor with the interface for the familiar horse: farmers used reins to control the tractor. The tractor was steered by pulling on the appropriate rein, both reins were loosened to go forward and pulled back to stop, and pulling back harder on the reins caused the tractor to back up."*
The authors go on to say:
"It’s clear in hindsight that this was a dead end, and automobiles have developed their own user interfaces without metaphors based on earlier technologies."
*Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen. 1996. The Anti-Mac interface. Commun. ACM 39, 8 (August 1996), 70-82. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/232014.232032
"High speed" Internet provider AT&T tells me that my connection speed sucks but instead of trying to fix it, they're throwing in the towel and lowering my monthly rate.
"About Your AT&T High Speed Internet Service - We regularly test the speed of your AT&T High Speed Internet service to ensure you have the best Internet speeds possible. Recently we sent a letter to let you know that our testing has found that your modem speed is slower than the speed shown in the AT&T High Speed Internet Terms of Service. We're moving you to a lower-priced plan more in line with your current speed, although we cannot guarantee specific speeds."
