Glimpses of the websurfing habits of a computer science professor, obsessive crafter, occasional gamer, and all around geek
I always feel as if I am betraying my sensible feminist roots when I read wedding-related websites, but horror-stories (a la Etiquette Hell) and dress-sewing and centerpiece making plans both entertain me. My latest guilty pleasure is Going Bridal, a wedding journal complete with sewing project updates and a “Cavalcade of Bad Bridal Fashion” section. [via not martha]
A fun usability article from the IBM developerWorks site: “Everything I need to know about usability, I learned at the arcade”. By necessity, repetitive tasks are streamlined in games. This isn’t always true for productivity software; with the latter, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether a particular common task will be convenient at all. Game designers try to avoid designs that will result in players complaining of pain after a couple hours of play; designers of productivity software don’t seem to consider this at all. It’s a good point – people are more willing to walk away from games which … Continue reading Usability in Games
I missed the actual anniversary, but Screenshot is now four years old, my first entry having been July 24, 1998. On the list of “one of these days” projects is to go through my archives and post at least a selection of my old pre-site relocation entries. My weblogging style has certainly changed over the years – something I think reflects both an evolution of my purposes in weblogging, and changes in myself and my “real life”. To give you a taste, I dredged up my first Screenshot entry, with odd grey background and lack of awareness of other weblogs … Continue reading Weblog Anniversary
Remember kids: always check Rotten Tomatoes before plunking down your perfectly good money for a movie. It was ignoring this advice which led me to see Full Frontal this evening. I at least enjoyed it more than the person I saw it with, but both of us left the theater shaking our heads. It was a self-aware film about film making, and tried to be all cute and clever about being not just about film making but also about making films about film making, and so on. It’s all very meta. With the tag line “Everybody needs a release” on … Continue reading Viewer Beware