Visit with Kathy - After Claire went off to school, Michelle packed up the rest of the kids and took them into Nashua to spend the morning at her friend Kathy's house. Kathy has three kids but two of them are in school. Imagine Michelle's surprise as she pulled up to the house and saw a school bus parked in the driveway. Kathy's husband, Chris, is a mechanic for a nearby Ford dealer. Their family has a Winnebago that they like to use for vacation trips. Chris wanted to replace the engine on the Winnebago so he went onto eBay, yes eBay, and found a used school bus selling at a New England dealer for $1000. He's hoping to do the engine transplant soon because he's sure the neighbors aren't too thrilled about having a bus parked in the driveway. Shades of driving in parts of Terre Haute and seeing cars up on blocks in the yard, eh?
So the twins got another one of their "convict" style buzz cuts while there. Later that evening Michelle took the girls to a Milford hair stylist for their hair cuts. On Saturday afternoon Michelle has a hair appointment as well. I guess I'm the slacker. If I don't do something soon, I'll be sporting some 1970's hair. It's not exactly Shaun Cassidy, but it's getting annoying to me.
Bloody noses - Yesterday morning just before taking the kids to Kathy, Michael got a bloody nose - spontaneous as far as we can tell. He went hysterical when Michelle tried to sit him down and hold a rag to his nose while waiting for it to clot. As Abby stood nearby, her nose started to bleed. Sympathetic nosebleeds! For a short while there Michelle was at her wits end and was about to call off the visit to Kathy's house. Luckily things settled down and none of the blood hit any carpets. Meanwhile I fired up a vaporizer in the kitchen to try and boost the inside humidity, although it might have been cheaper to just open a few windows for a few minutes as the outside humidity was around 85%.
Bill Joy - This week there was an interview with Bill Joy - 49-year-old software god, hero programmer, cofounder of Sun Microsystems and, until he quit in September, its chief scientist. In the software world almost everyone over the age of 30 knows who he is. I was a bit heartened by some of the following quotes:
"Thirty years ago a supercomputer was 80 megahertz. Now a personal computer is 2 gigahertz, and yet the software isn't 25 times better. I just got a new Mac with two 2-gigahertz processors, 8 gigabytes of memory, and a half a terabyte of internal disk... For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It's a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux... I just want a system that works... I find Windows of absolutely no technical interest. They took systems designed for isolated desktop systems and put them on the Net without thinking about evildoers, as our president would say. We're just lucky that no one has sent around a virus that erases people's disk drives. I sure hope that doesn't happen, but it's not exactly hard to imagine someone doing it. And hope is a lousy defense."
I don't like to think of myself as a Mac bigot, but it's nice to hear a respected software pioneer express his similar opinions. I get these strange looks at work for having a Mac -- the sort of "you don't do real work with a Mac" kind of opinions. Most of those holding those opinions haven't used a Mac in several years though. They haven't seen it since it moved to a Unix core under its skin. So you can do fluffy "grandma writes an email" kind of work or hard core workstation style work on it. It depends how far you want to "peel the onion".
Odd n' Ends - For those who follow his development, Timothy is now crawling on his hands and knees. He's no longer doing a military style crawl just dragging his legs behind him. Claire is going to be Mrs. Claus in an upcoming class play. The twins are talking about the potty, but I think it'll be months before they "walk the talk". And Abby just keeps making more and more crafts. "She's crafty!"
Scott,
A little something we learned in class....when you have hyprlinks, you want to open them in new windows so as not to take the user away from you page. If you would like to know how this is done, I can show you how in javascript.
Hi Chris,
Yes, I've seen that code. Thanks for the offer though. The "spawn outgoing links in a new window" is a controversial idea. I hope your instructors aren't teaching you that you _should_ do it. Some sites consider them "the wrong thing to do" (TM). Consider point number six under "Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002" at:
http://useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html
Jakob Nielsen (web usability guru) writes:
" A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser's "open in new window" command -- assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior."
Personally I agree with him. I hate popups. Some of the "Printer Ready" links often do this. In doing so they break my ability to manually open the printer ready page in a new tab. I love tabbed browing compared to having 10 browser windows open. It's much more manageable. The Javascript option breaks that and forces the issue the developer's way rather than the user's preferred way.
BTW, there's lot of stuff about web usability at useit.com . He's far from a graphic design/layout guru, but he's spent a lot of time doing studies of how people use web interfaces rather than just having us tech insiders developing interesting things and new techniques "because we can".
Hope you're enjoying grad school. I wish I could say I miss it, but by the time I was done, I had had enough. When faculty started talking about further studies and PhD pursuits, I let it go. I learn enough every day at work. I don't want to come home to prepare for another exam or finish a lab/project anymore.
Best wishes,
Posted by: Scott at November 20, 2003 09:38 PMOur teachers dont agree with popup's at all, but they do believe you want to keep the user on your page. Its hard to say what right or wrong.
Posted by: Chris at November 21, 2003 04:36 AM