Access All Areas

Thu 13 May 200401:29 PM

Often, it takes me a while to warm up to software features that more savvy users begin taking advantage of as soon as a publisher unleashes them. Case in point: I’ve been running Mac OS X for over two years and Panther practically since the first weekend it was launched, but it’s only been in the past few weeks that I’ve been using the operating system’s improved Full Keyboard Access feature.

This addition to Mac OS X 10.3.x allows users to control just about anything you can click on with a mouse by using only the keyboard. It’s something that Windows has had for a long, long time, and in spite of my frequent dismissive remarks about that OS, this is one area where Microsoft has a long usability lead; Apple is a latecomer and it shows.

Outraged by the Outrage at All the Outrage

Wed 12 May 200401:41 AM

One of the most frustrating tricks that conservative politicians manage to actually get away with is the inversion of indignation, i.e., taking an offensive position on issues where clearly, all good sense would indicate that they should be defensive. In the awful bellyflop that was President Bush’s most recent press conference, I remember Bush answering a question about the paltry international support that the United States could point to in our ongoing operations in Iraq, and how when one took a close look at the numbers, it becomes apparent that, after U.S. and British troops, the single largest demographic of allied troops on the ground is “ private contractors — literally, hired guns.”

The Design of Everyday Briefings

Thu 6 May 200405:55 PM

Greg Storey posted an interesting and thoughtful exercise on information design last month over at Airbag.ca, in which he suggests that a better sense of design might have benefitted the Bush administration in August of 2001, when they apparently underestimated — or wantonly disregarded — a series of warnings that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had intentions to attack the United States.

His post is altogether earnest and well-intentioned, and I applaud him for it. The point he’s making is a good one that designers have been trying to get the world at large to understand — and with increasing seriousness — over the past few years: good design can have monumental impact on the effectiveness of information. Still, I can’t help but be a smartass about it.

Old Musical Express

Wed 5 May 200411:14 PM

Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of the 01 May 2004 issue of the New Musical Express, a long-running, weekly British music tabloid that I once read at least twice a month but that I now rarely ever glance at. Though the roster of bands that the NME covers has changed over the past decade, the tenor of the journalism is remarkably the same: patently snarky, often hilarious, willfully dismissive and still composed primarily of hot air.

What I Did on My Vacation from Blogging

Tue 4 May 200401:56 AM

Wow, what a bust the last week turned out to be, at least for blogging. I took the Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. very early on Monday morning for a meeting with a new client. Even the unreserved coach cars now feature electrical outlets, so I was able to plug in and get some work done on the way down and the way back — compared to flying, the simplicity and convenience of traveling by Amtrak is almost a luxury. Our client visit went well, and I managed to find some time to meet up with some old friends, so in spite of actually dreading the long day, I had a pretty good time.

When I Grow Up

Thu 22 Apr 200411:58 AM

All I wanted to do when I got out of school was be a graphic designer, so in that respect, I’m pretty happy with my job. As I get older though, I wonder if perhaps I pursued that goal a bit too single-mindedly, too much to the exclusion of other career choices I could have made. I wanted to be a writer for a long time, and in self-indulgent moments — like when I’m writing these overlong and unnecessarily complicated blog posts — I still fantasize about renting a house in Saigon or Hanoi and writing a book. I also wonder sometimes if I should have pursued my adolescent goal of drawing comic books for real money, before id lost out to superego and I decided to pursue ostensibly more serious matters.

Lately, I’ve been mentally compiling a list of careers I might have pursued if I had the opportunity to magically return to, say, sixteen, and completely reconstruct myself from scratch. Almost all of these would strike anybody who knows me now to be pretty absurd, but here is an incomplete accounting of them: film director, television producer, comedian, professional baseball player, career officer in one of the military services, foreign correspondent for a cable news channel, Capitol Hill lobbyist, police officer. Some of these I take more seriously than others, of course, but for some of them, it wouldn’t be completely outside of the realm of possibility for me to suddenly take them up. But, here in my early thirties and deep into a job that is threatening to become my life’s work, I guess if I’m going to make a career change then the time is now.

In Studio Visit

Wed 21 Apr 200401:37 AM

As one of my gifts to my girlfriend for her upcoming birthday, I went the extra mile to obtain tickets to today’s taping of “The Daily Show with John Stewart,” of which she is a big fan. In-studio seats are booked solid through the end of this coming summer, but I was lucky enough to grab a pair of canceled reservations last Friday by calling the show’s booking line. Having a reservation still doesn’t guarantee you a seat though, and I had to show up at the theater about ninety minutes ahead of time to wait in line, and even then, we barely made it into the studio made the cut-off at a hundred audience members. It was worth it, though; I saw nothing in the studio that would contest the idea that this is the most consistently funny and certainly the politically sharpest show on television. Still, I was surprised by how small their stage set is.

My Review of “Kill Bill Vol. 2”

Sun 18 Apr 200411:24 PM

Couch Report

Fri 16 Apr 200412:52 AM

Having recently gotten through a huge project at Behavior, I’m finally getting some evenings and weekends back. Some of that time is spent hanging out and some of it watching movies; I’ve definitely missed being able to watch movies with frequency, and in the past two weeks I’ve finally been able to squeeze in a good number of them. Here are some quick thoughts on some of them.