Flutterby™! From 2012-02-01 to 2012-02-03

Packetizer OpenID Provider Server Software is a Perl/MySQL/Apache OpenID provider system. I'm not sure if OpenID has been completely run into the ground yet, but if it does become useful at some point I wanted this as a resource to look at.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Software Engineering Databases hubris ]

Last night, as Asha called me up to help her with a common task in Gmail, I realized a major flaw in Google's Continuous Delivery software development model. Some people, especially computer programmers, are used to a constantly changing environment. They know they that software A should have feature X and that it may be hidden inside UI element Q (despite the fact that it was in UI element P just the day before). It doesn't bother us that our software is changing all the time.

For people like my wife who just gave up her Windows XP laptop and Internet Explorer only because I enticed her away with a Macbook, this change causes constant reinforcement of their distrust of software. In my house, I hear "The Internet is broke again" multiple times a day. Asha is always befuddled because all that is needed for "the Internet to work again" is my physically standing next to her or touching her computer. This, of course, one of the basic tenants of Quantum Bogodynamics. I am a bogon sink. When I step near her computer, I absorb the bogons that are causing her computer to malfunction.

I get annoyed when people ask me "How do you know much about computers?" or "How did you learn to do XYZ?" I really know very little. What I do know is that if I click a button on a computer, it probably won't blow up. So I just start clicking buttons until I get the results I want. Nowadays we have this wonderful thing called "undo" that lets me fix things when I get bad results. It's not like you have to type your computer job on punch cards, submit them to the system operators, and hope you get a print out in the morning that matches your expectations. Click the button already!

Why am I able to format Asha's documents in Apple Pages? I've never touched the software before she did. But I know that there ought to be buttons somewhere to make it work and I just need to find them and click them. It's not like the DOS or Unix shell days when you needed to know these arcane incantations to do simple things like navigate a folder hierarchy. Just start clicking buttons already!

And here's a secret that the geek intelligentsia will string me up for sharing: If you can't figure out how to do something, just type a description of what you want to do into Google. Want to know how to change a lightbulb? Want to know how to change a light switch? Want to know how to format a table in Apple Pages?

And this continues just as complex as you want. Rocket Science, Brain Surgery, and even super complex subjects like downloading pictures from email, are just a Google search away. You can even click the "I'm feeling lucky button" if you don't want to decide which search result to try first.

So please, please, just start clicking buttons. Observe what the computer does. If you don't like the results. Try another button. Eventually, you'll know what the buttons do and not too long after, you'll be able to predict whether or not the button should exist. And if the button doesn't exist, then notify the software developers and we'll add the button you need. Unless, of course, all of our time isn't spent helping our wives download photos in email attachments for the ten thousandth time!

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama User Interface Photography Microsoft Health Nature and environment Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Pyrotechnics Marriage Real Estate Furniture ]

Software which is expected to be a part of a complex system and run indefinitely is very different from needing to ship for Christmas...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Machinery ]

iPad users: DD vision impaired adult needs note pad app that can be configured to use large text. Recommendations?

[ related topics: Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Dear All Things Considered. I haven't listened to you in a long while. I haven't been driving anywhere, and when I have, podcasts are generally much better quality than radio. However, I now have a real job, with a commute, and yesterday afternoon on the drive home the podcast wasn't making it for me so I switched on the radio for some variety.

I tuned in in time to hear Billboards Slather On The Guilt With Anti-Cheese Campaign, in which the crank behind this campaign was complaining that:

DR. NEAL BARNARD: If you look at the chemical makeup of what's in cheese, it's mostly saturated fats - the kind that's linked to heart disease. It's very high in cholesterol. Ounce per ounce about the same as any steak you can find, and surprisingly high in sodium. So, how often do you want to eat such an unhealthy food? I would argue never.

You mentioned that Americans are eating 31 lbs of cheese a year. You then went on to call up the French Embassy, in which a charming cultural attaché said a few nice things but... well... It was all I could do to keep from grabbing my smart phone and fact-checking.

You could have mentioned that U.S. cheese consumption isn't all that far out of line, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Greece, and more, all consume over 40 lbs of cheese per capita per year. You could have mentioned that the evidence against dietary cholesterol is kinda thin, and the war on salt is being reconsidered.

In fact, you could have just dropped the story altogether, and filled those 5 minutes with something that made me smarter.

Back to the podcasts.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food History Sociology Heinlein ]

The headline reads Study: Multitasking hinders youth social skills:

Young girls who spend the most time multitasking between various digital devices, communicating online or watching video are the least likely to develop normal social tendencies, according to the survey of 3,461 American girls aged 8 to 12 who volunteered responses.

Now I'm not one to suggest that technology mediated interactions are necessarily a good thing, but "normal social skills" are, even by the terms of this article, normal only in a world without "...various digital devices communicating online".

[ related topics: Children and growing up Journalism and Media Video ]

From Shadow: Worn-Out, Pre-Skidded Tires for ‘Fixie’ Fashion Victims. Yep, Retired Belts is making belts out of worn out bike tires.

Insert eye roll, followed by head slap because I didn't think of it first, here.

[ related topics: Fashion Bicycling ]