Productivity is up, up up! It's off the scale!
All due to computers.
The trouble with that is that somebody has to write code to make things happen.
The trouble with THAT is that the people who write code are treated like godz.
But they're not. They are people who may be very good at a small set of skills, which small set of skills have been inflated into something seemingly god-like.
The obvious truth they fail to see, time and time again, is that in the real world, most people don't want to know about the arcane details of their craft. Or have to learn anything about it.
There's a name for these people, and it isn't pretty. We're called "users".
So when programmers include a keystroke combination as a hot-key for picking the default setting for something that appears in a window, and when I, a user, fat-finger that hot-key combination by mistake, I am not interested in learning how cool it is to be able to hot key back and forth between those settings. I want a simple and obvious way to get it back to where it was.
I know for a fact that some users (we'll call them "power users") feel that it is very cool to be able to change default settings using these hot-keys. Their heads are full of key-stroke combinations they can use in thousands of situations across dozens of programs in order to make things happen more quickly.
Sadly, I have neither the room in my head, nor the desire to learn these things. Sure, if I were in command of the phasers aboard some starship and I needed to toggle quickly between the Current Location of the enemy battalion and the History of Movement of the enemy battalion, I would probably learn the key-stroke sequence.
My hope would be that in addition to my ability to present these Facts in a rapid manner I would have room in my head to perceive the Pattern behind the Facts as presented on my screen. And that I wouldn't accidentally whack some keystroke combination that would instantaneously bring up the weather on Tarus or something...
6/25/2013
4/05/2013
The War Between The States
All innocently, I went looking for this term after watching the movie "Lincoln".
Growing up in the 60's, I recalled that people used this phrase to refer to the war of the 1860's. But I hadn't heard it used for a long time.
Turns out it's a loaded expression, a distinction with a difference. A refusal to call that war a "civil" war is very important to some people.
http://www.ncwbts150.com/index.php
Would you think that, more than 150 years later, we would be willing to just let it go? Nope.
As Faulkner said, the past isn't forgotten. It isn't even past.
Growing up in the 60's, I recalled that people used this phrase to refer to the war of the 1860's. But I hadn't heard it used for a long time.
Turns out it's a loaded expression, a distinction with a difference. A refusal to call that war a "civil" war is very important to some people.
http://www.ncwbts150.com/index.php
Would you think that, more than 150 years later, we would be willing to just let it go? Nope.
As Faulkner said, the past isn't forgotten. It isn't even past.
4/02/2013
Music blog
Type 'music blog' into google search sometime.
An hour ago it returned 1,700,000,000 hits. Yes, I couldn't believe it either, so I looked it up. That's one billion, 700 million hits.
I just looked again. It returned 1,710,000,000 hits. 10 million more than an hour ago.
And I thought I'd go read a few music blogs, get an idea what was going on there. Hmmm.
An hour ago it returned 1,700,000,000 hits. Yes, I couldn't believe it either, so I looked it up. That's one billion, 700 million hits.
I just looked again. It returned 1,710,000,000 hits. 10 million more than an hour ago.
And I thought I'd go read a few music blogs, get an idea what was going on there. Hmmm.
3/27/2013
Dead Head
Apart from the railroading term (a trip made by an engine without pulling freight), I guess I have to admit to being a Dead Head. Largely because of the album I'm listening to right now.
A Bob Weir song popped into my head today (money, money) and tonight I decided to spin my old copy of Europe '72. I forgot how far back this record goes in the Dead era- I mean, I've always considered it sort of mid-period, and I guess it is, but Pigpen? A slim Garcia? I forgot.
Lots of people talk about how awful the band was, nothing but silly extended jams and raggedy harmonies. Just a brief listen to He's Gone should dispel those arguments- some of the tightest, most tasteful playing anywhere, full of soul.
The recording itself is pretty special- this was back before they compressed the hell out of everything. There's so much "air" in Cumberland Blues that you can just about tell where everybody is standing onstage. Left to right, front to back.
It is a little uneven across the three disks. Sometimes the jams do get silly, but mostly, this is a band at its peak, doing something it more or less invented, a style of playing that still resonates with audiences at countless festivals every summer.
We're always 17 somewhere.
A Bob Weir song popped into my head today (money, money) and tonight I decided to spin my old copy of Europe '72. I forgot how far back this record goes in the Dead era- I mean, I've always considered it sort of mid-period, and I guess it is, but Pigpen? A slim Garcia? I forgot.
Lots of people talk about how awful the band was, nothing but silly extended jams and raggedy harmonies. Just a brief listen to He's Gone should dispel those arguments- some of the tightest, most tasteful playing anywhere, full of soul.
The recording itself is pretty special- this was back before they compressed the hell out of everything. There's so much "air" in Cumberland Blues that you can just about tell where everybody is standing onstage. Left to right, front to back.
It is a little uneven across the three disks. Sometimes the jams do get silly, but mostly, this is a band at its peak, doing something it more or less invented, a style of playing that still resonates with audiences at countless festivals every summer.
We're always 17 somewhere.
The outpouring of stuff
Somewhere in the general outpouring of stuff I forgot I had this blog. It's fun reading back over it.
Yesterday I filled in the blanks on the Steam Powered Studio homepage. I added a lot of links to songs and projects that I've been meaning to write individual pages for, but just couldn't bear to do.
I did this because I finally realized that nobody (or practically nobody) clicks on over to pages off the main page. There's some kind of web rule about this, time spend divided by number of clicks blah blah blah...
So rather than arrange the site by the way I think it should work, I'm going for catering to the way people actually seem to browse webpages. Which is to say, creating a page that appears to be cluttered with advertising. A tabloid style.
The fact that all the advertising is aimed at the products of Steam Powered Studio is my little secret, OK?
Yesterday I filled in the blanks on the Steam Powered Studio homepage. I added a lot of links to songs and projects that I've been meaning to write individual pages for, but just couldn't bear to do.
I did this because I finally realized that nobody (or practically nobody) clicks on over to pages off the main page. There's some kind of web rule about this, time spend divided by number of clicks blah blah blah...
So rather than arrange the site by the way I think it should work, I'm going for catering to the way people actually seem to browse webpages. Which is to say, creating a page that appears to be cluttered with advertising. A tabloid style.
The fact that all the advertising is aimed at the products of Steam Powered Studio is my little secret, OK?
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