kuh • pain´• kah

I’ve had this idea for a while now, I guess I should just finally put it down in pixels.

You know the White House? Yeah, THE White House in Washington, D.C.?  Yeah, I think it’s time to retire it.  And possible the Congressional building as well. Listen, it’s 2011 and we’re still running the country out of a 1800′s manor house? And a cramped, round room, with wooden desks?  I think it’s time for an upgrade.

Remember when Obama got elected and he was all grumpy about not having any technology?  Like, where’s my presidential touch surface with bad ass Minority Report graphics showing all of the world’s hot spots?  Oh, sorry, here’s a whiteboard. Let’s get these guys some real tech tools to use. Maybe then we can see who’s too old and inept to understand the modern world!  All joking aside, I wanna see these guys move beyond Steno Pads and “email”.

So seriously.  Let’s build a new Government Operations Center.  It can be all secure and super decked out with the latest technology.  People might be able to get real productive work done.  It can be designed in such a way that citizens can witness their government in action. No more “back rooms”.  I’m talking ACTUAL transparency, like the Today Show and whatnot.

And the best part?  It’ll be OUTSIDE the beltway, away from all those lobbyists, traffic jams, ritzy overpriced hotels and restaurants whose ceilings are caked with cigars of one million fat cat deals.  It’ll create jobs, excitement, and tourism.  It can be the Greenest Complex EVER with smart roofs, and gardens and recycling and solar/geothermal/wind power, etc.  It’ll be amazing!

And what about the old buildings…museums. Duh.

Did you catch any sunrise sets at Robot Heart this year?  I certainly hope so.  If not, I’ve found a way to recreate the experience at home!  Here’s what you need to do:

• Stay up until 5am
• Put on the most ridiculous clothes you have laying around. Points if you incorporate a bathrobe.
• Cover yourself from head to toe in spare playa (you have some for emergencies, right?)
• Install Boom (OS X) and crank up the bass and volume settings.
• Play this playlist through your headphones at full blast while watching this video, full screen, on repeat, with the sound muted.
• Dance around with a ridiculously huge grin on your face. Ignore your roommates’ glares.

I’ll give this a try tonight and let you know how it goes.  My preliminary tests here at my desk are going swimmingly.  I’m seriously resisting the urge to put my radio on (which I have to get back to HQ ASAP).

I figured I would weigh in on the revelation yesterday that Apple is “tracking your every move” via iPhone.  I know that it makes great headlines, but it isn’t true.  I’m not going to be an Apple apologist, but after poking around on the web, it would appear that there’s an innocuous reason for this.  Sure, it’s a PR nightmare for Apple and an invasion of privacy, but the reason for the tracking appears to be much less nefarious.

While examining my own data, I noticed some interesting things.  It wasn’t my location being tracked, and it wasn’t second by second, as stated in this CREDO action email:

If you have an iPhone 4, iPad, or up-to-date iPhone 3GS, Apple covertly records a second-by-second database of your location to your mobile device and your computer. Apple never told you about it, or asked you to opt in, or even let you opt out.

Actually, what appears to be happening is that your device seems to be keeping a record of the celltowers it connects to, and where they are.  This information can help the device locate towers and save time and energy by looking them up once you’ve been there.  Secondly, the data is horribly inaccurate, in terms of location, and finally, it is limited to 3G/Edge (cell) access.  Not a single pip on the map from my recent trip to Japan.  Why? Because I never connected to any cellular network.  I used WiFi and GPS to whole time, but not a pip on the map.  Same goes for my trips to the Black Rock Desert.

If Apple was concerned with tracking you, they could do it much more accurately, efficiently and nefariously.  Unfortunately, this will probably end up being a huge deal for the company and Apple will probably have to make some changes and save face, but the truth is much less sexy than the headlines.  Regardless, the ease of access of this information is a massive privacy concern.

Here are some links to back me up:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/how-apple-tracks-your-location-without-your-consent-and-why-it-matters.ars

http://ericfadden.com/2011/04/iphone-location-tracking-consolidated-db-and-a-rush-to-judgement/

http://www.willclarke.net/?p=247

~Spanky

So, I’m coming back to Plone after a long absence of direct exposure, and I can say that I’m super-excited.  I really look forward to seeing the improvements and hard work put in by the community, and to giving back as well. So today is Day Zero and so far all is going well.  The Unified Installer is a welcome sight.  I used to have a customized version of it to change some of my filesystem paths again, but starting fresh, I’ll take what’s handed to me.

So, wish me luck, I have to get our Fuze Box site fully replaced with Plone by Feb 28th!

Dear Instagram:

Your software is awesome, thank you. I’ve just started using it much more regularly, now that my friends have started using it and we’re “friends”.  So I have a suggestion for your app:

When I’m browsing my “feed”, I want to see the photos of my friends.  Normally you accomplish this by scrolling, but this gets old and tiresome after a bit.  This is partly because you after a photo there are often comments and such which make the amount by which a user has to scroll different each time.  So my suggestion is this: treat each photo and comment as a “frame”.  When you flick, or scroll past a threshold, have it flip to the next frame with the next photo at the top.  Be sure to make it such that if you really just want to scroll, you don’t get caught by this (or better yet, have an option that allows you to turn “frame scrolling” on/off).

This way, if I just want to quickly browse through my feed, I can flick flick flick and be done rather than “manually” scrolling.

While this suggestion may sound whiny (what? you can just scroll?), I think it would add a great and unique user experience to your app.  Sure, I’m happy to scroll through, but if it had this feature, I would be impressed with the forethought of your engineers/interaction designers, and I would be much more likely to flip through my feed, and therefore use your product, more often.

Thanks for listening!

(also, the comment and like buttons should be right below the photo, rather than at the end of the comments. or both.)

Every year, I hear some dicksquat make some uninformed shitpile of a comment about how Burning Man is so expensive.  This recalls a conversation I once had very drunk and very early in the morning on the Black Rock with Cowboy Bob, and I figured I’d just put this out there.

Burning Man is free.

Well, not literally, but let’s do some math, because math solves everything. Here we go:

Burning Man tickets cost about $300.  That $300 gets you in at midnight the Monday before Labor Day, and the Event ends on Labor Day Monday, let’s say, at 11:59.  That’s 8 full days. But not that many people really stay until the very end, so I’m gonna be generous to the math (you’ll see how in a second), so let’s call it 7 days.  7 days in the Black Rock Desert.

What does $300 get you. At the barest minimum, $300 guarantees you:

1. somewhere to camp on public lands during the private event

2. a private place to evacuate your body

3. police protection

4. access to emergency medical services

5. access to ice and a minimum assortment of beverages

Really, that’s all you’re guaranteed.  But what do you REALLY get? You get amazing art seen nowhere else on earth. You get an amazing pyrotechnics show on Saturday (the Man) with probably the single largest fire you’ve ever personally seen. You’ll get another, possibly equally large or larger “burn” on Sunday. There’s also music and other performances 24 hours a day.  There are people that you meet that may become lifelong friends (or enemies). Those things are pretty tangible.

You also get to potentially learn new things, like how to tie a knot, pull out stuck rebar, pitch a tent or shade, and cooperate with others.  You’ll learn to rely on yourself and provide for others. You can attend any number of classes on everything from tantra to trivets. You will learn to tolerate others’ unique perspectives on what it means to participate. You may become more comfortable with your body/self-image by seeing other people’s bodies and positive self-image.  It’s quite possible that you will learn things about yourself you never knew before, or try things you otherwise were reluctant to try.  You may climb a tall tower, or roll in fresh grass, or ride a huge glowing dancefloor-having duck.  You will learn your limits of sleep, patience, tolerance, acceptance, and rethink the world that you’ve trudged through every day unawares that things could be different if we all tried.  But I’m getting off track here.  Back to the math.

So, Burning Man is 7 days, 24 hours for $300. 7 days divided by the price comes out to $42.86 per day. Taking this a little further, that comes out to $1.79 per hour. $1.79 per hour.

More math, since Burning Man is 24 hours a day for 7 days, that’s 168 hours of non-stop, world-class, participant-created, non corporate-funded, non advertising-having, non revenue-driven, non politically-motivated, unique, sometimes dangerous, raw unadulterated art and culture.  In fact, I’m gonna nix “art & culture” and just go with “experience”.  All 168 hours are available to you if you want it. I don’t know anyone who’s stayed awake for the entire Event, and I don’t recommend it (it might be impossible), but again, you ticket entitles you to all of it, whether you can or not.

Now, let’s compare this to a few things:

Lady Gaga is coming to the Oakland Arena. I have nothing against Lady Gaga or her performance, I’m just using this as an example because it’s current.  So here comes Lady Gaga, tickets are on sale now.  They’re $50. The ticket price from Ticketmaster is $65 after all the fees and whatnot.  So let’s do our math again:

Lady Gaga costs $65.  The show “starts” at 8:00pm. I don’t know for sure, but I assume it’ll be over at 11pm or midnight. I’ll be generous and go with midnight.  So, Lady Gaga performs for 4 hours. Doing the math that’s $16.25 hour.

What do you get for this? You get:

1. entrance to the Oakland Coliseum

2. a private place to evacuate your body

3. police protection

4. access to emergency medical services

5. access to an assortment of beverages & snacks

But what do you REALLY get?  You get in to the arena to see possibly an opening band and Lady Gaga perform their music live.

Now here’s where I get critical (again, no slight against Lady Gaga in particular, I happen to enjoy a few of her tracks).  For SIXTEEN times the cost, you get to see someone perform live, something that you’ve probably heard/seen over and over for the previous year or two. On tour, she’ll probably perform a smattering of new material, but you’re really there to hear the hits and solidify the experience of hearing it pre-recorded.  While you’re there, you will be heavily marketed to through advertising and other types of targeted sponsorships.  If you want a souvenir t-shirt, the design on it will probably not be what you hoped (but maybe it’s an epic shirt, who knows) and it will start at $25 for poor quality (maximum markup/profit) materials.  If you want to enjoy a beer, it will start at $9.  The entire experience you have will be overpriced, commodified, and controlled.  You will passively watch the performance, and cheer when it’s appropriate to do so.  You can’t push the button to make the fire go. You can’t climb to the top of the stage and watch from there if you want. You can’t ride around on a pink furry mushroom.  You cannot participate.  Sure, it may be the best show of your life, and it may change your outlook on everything from then going forward, but I highly doubt it.  What will you take away from it? Some photos of a tiny stage? A crappy t-shirt? A Lady Gaga souvenir DVD?

At Burning Man, for $42/day you can make your own souvenirs of your own design and quality. You will more than likely be given them as gifts, just because.  Want a beer, just ask for one.  Hell, come ask ME for one. It’ll be free. Want to get involved? Just ask, before you know it, you might find YOURSELF on stage giving the performance. When you leave, you will have bruises, you will have loved or lost love, you will love it or you will hate it, but you will have had an experience you will never forget.

Now I’m sure I’m gonna hear it about the actual TCA of Burning Man (Total Cost of Attendance), which is, of course, much higher than just the ticket price, but it doesn’t have to be.  You could buy some groceries, find your old tent, jump in your car and be there in a few hours. TCA: food + gas + ticket.  OK, no car, go with friends.  No friends?  Rent an RV. Wait, you want to look fabulous? Ok, you get my point, the pricetag can skyrocket depending on how much you want to put into it, but most of that is your choice on how much you want to participate.  But let’s be fair and put up some real numbers for 1 person, going with 3 friends.  Ticket: $300, food: $300, car rental: $600, gas: $100, costumes: $150, blinky lights: $40, beer: $60, tent $100, extras (goggles, sunscreen, lip balm, lotion, etc etc): $100. Let’s see where we’re at now: $1750. BUT you split the car and gas and food ($1000) with friends.  So your portion is $250. Now we’re at: $1000 for you to come to Burning Man in style.

Back to the math: $1000/168 hours = $5.95/hour, or $142/day.  But you’re STILL not up to Lady Gaga prices. So let’s do the math backwards.  To get $16.25/hr “worth” of entertainment at Burning Man, you’d have to spend $2730 ON YOURSELF.

Now, how is Burning Man free? I just paid $1000 to go!  I’m not going to break it all down, but think of this.  Go back and read all of the non-tangible things you might get if you’re not a total asshole, ruining everyone’s experience sitting at camp bitching and complaining about how it’s “hot & dusty”.  Put a price tag on some of those things.  Let’s put a dollar figure on “self-esteem”.  Therapy to work out all the shitty things your parents said to you that make you think you’ll never amount to anything runs about $100/session. Sessions for once a week for a year: $5200. Welding class: $1000. Wilderness class: $250. Camping trip to the Redwoods: $300 (all told).  Basically, if it was even possible to put together all of the things that Burning Man gives you for free (once you’re there) and put a dollar value on them and come up with a price tag, I ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE that it would come out to more than $300. More than $1000. And certainly more that $2730.

And while you’re there, everything is free*, all you have to do is participate to get your money’s worth. You can’t beat the price.

* Except coffee and ice

Greetings again.  Today’s rant post is about Firefox and CSS and Accessibility/Usability.

The problem: Users (and QA) complaining about the dotted line that appears around links and form elements (buttons, submit, checkboxes, etc) in Firefox.  This line is usually just inside of the bounding box.  The line appears “on focus” and “on click”, or “:active” and “:focus” in CSS parlance.  So basically, if you tab through a form or series of links, this border gives you an idea of where you are in the tab order. It serves this purpose well, but there are times that it fails or can cause confusion.

If you have elements positioned off-screen or use off-screen image replacement techniques this border can behave strangely, showing the dotted border going off the screen in odd ways.  Also, if you fill out a form and click on a submit button that is a link, the border can persist while you wait for the form to process, which is unsightly.  Also, if you have image-based links, and click on them, this border persists until the HTTP response data starts to come in and the browser beings to load the subsequent page.  Again, unsightly.

Now, I understand this border’s role and purpose in the world, and I will go over how to remove it in a minute, but before I do that, I’d like to give my $1.50 service fee, which mostly has to do with clicking on things.

First, I think that this border can be unsightly to layouts.  When you click something, the design is not intended for it to suddenly become outlined and this outline is imposed by the browser.  Many of us are proud of our designs and the work we put in to them.  We don’t plan for them to have this ‘feature’.  My main beef here is that it is imposed by the browser and finding out how to control it takes some deft Googling.

Second, I think it is confusing, but only sometimes.  When you’re tabbing through things, it makes perfect sense and requires no explanation.  The user inherently understands it.  But when you click on something, it appears out of the blue.  Sure, you’ve drawn focus, and that’s why it’s there, but the user doesn’t think like that.  They think, “why is that there all the sudden?”, but then it’s gone and the user moves on.  Still, there is a moment of wonder.  I don’t really like that part.

Now, I want to support accessibility, so I don’t want to remove this border completely.  If I remove the border on “focus”, I eliminate the accessiblilty, which I don’t like.  So, my answer was to only remove the border on “active”, which seemed to work except for one thing: after “active”, you’ve drawn focus so the border THEN shows up for focus.  Feh!  You can’t win!

From a JavaScript perspective:

IDLE -> MOUSEIN -> HOVER -> MOUSEDOWN -> MOUSEUP -> HOVER -> MOUSEOUT

From a CSS perspective:

IDLE -> ACTIVE -> FOCUS -> IDLE

Basically, you cannot activate without drawing focus.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it makes perfect sense, but it leaves my image button with an unsightly dotted border after clicking on it.  I can’t really argue that this shouldn’t be the case, either, I mean, you clicked on it, therefore you focused on it, right?  To me, it seems that at this point what does it matter to show focus?  The deed has been done, the page is about to be destroyed and a new one built.  The only [overkill] thing I can think to do is to build some crazy JavaScript (jQuery) that would de-focus buttons on mouseUp.

Anyhow, my solution was as follows:

input[type="button"]:active::-moz-focus-inner { border: 0; }
input[type="button"]:focus::-moz-focus-inner { border-color: #eee; }

This removes the border for when you click on it, but still shows it, although super-dimly.  This way, you still get a visual cue for tabbing through form elements, but when you click on it, you barely notice the border while the page is loading.  Won’t work well on varied backgrounds.  If ti came to it, I would do the JavaScript thing I talked about earlier.  Let’s see if I can do it now:

$('input[type=button]').mouseup( function(){ $(this).blur(); });

Well, there you have it.  So you only need the first piece of CSS above and this jQuery snippet, and it works how I want.  Feel free to apply to “A” links too.

Many thanks to the following:

http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/108868
http://stamatiskritikos.com/2010/01/03/remove-dotted-outline-vs-accessibility/

I am SO sad.  I love Twitterriffic.  It was the first Twitter client I used and every attempt to replace it has brought me back to it. Sure, I am admittedly addicted to the Tweeting bird sound, but that’s not all.  It’s clean, fast and uncluttered.  Despite missing some MAJOR features (like Retweet. Hello?!) I still use it.

Well, that’s over.  At least for the iPhone version.  IconFactory just released their 3.0 version, after basically going dark about it, and releasing instead, tons of icon packs.  So, their customers (like myself) waited and waited.  We eyed other apps.  We tried out Tweetie which handled a lot of things better, but has a unique, nonstandard, and interesting (yet kindof wonky after heavy use) interface.  Well, here it is, and I can tell you that they just lost me and here’s why — and I haven’t even really used it heavily:

1. They made the avatar icons smaller and increased the font size, and offer no preferences/settings to change it.

2. No geotagging support that I can find.

3. Removed multiple account support (now in paid version)

4. Removed all the convenient bottom row icons in favor of a stupid “more actions” button

5. “Nearby” seems to be gone. Maybe it’s somewhere

6. The awesome filter button is gone.

7. Settings seems to be just…gone.

At least it has Retweet.

Here are some things that had to be added or it was a total flop:

1. Lists

2. Delete Tweet

3. Search

It just appears to me that this release is a huge step backwards with seemingly less feautres.  Maybe it was a complete redesign and they just couldn’t get all the features into the new codebase…not like they didn’t have a TON of time between releases.  Alas, to me it seems like they just don’t care anymore.  It seemed to me this was their flagship product, but maybe they see the hostile actions taken by Twitter as a sign to drop Twitter and focus on making fun eye candy instead.

I will continue to use Twitterrific on the desktop, switching to Tweetie only when I need to manage my other accounts (increasingly often).  I am sad to go b/c I really wanted 3.0 to be a success.  It isn’t.

If you know me well, you know that I’m essentially an Apple Fanboy. I mean, I own an AppleTV for crying out loud. (It sucks, BTW).  But you also know that I’m not blind to Apple’s faults.  For example, I routinely go off about OS lockdown and carrier lock on the iPhone, the endlessly shifting landscape of hardware input formats (buy many cables?), and Apple’s inability to listen to what their most loyal consumers are asking for, opting instead to deliver simply what they think we want.

Well, today I’m pissed off, and if I had a viable alternative, I wouldn’t buy an iPhone.  But there is no viable alternative so I’m (re)ordering my iPhone 4.  Please, do not try to argue with me about Blackberry, Palm, or Android.  Especially Android.  The iPhone is the only acceptable smartphone experience in the game. Period. (Do NOT leave me comments about this point, I’ll write another blog post about it if you want to hear my thoughts on that)

So, why am I pissed off?  Well, like any good Apple Loyalist, I pre-ordered my iPhone 4.  I was up at 5a Pacific when the online Apple Store opened, and I seamlessly placed my order for my shiny new toy.  At the end of the process I was offered a choice: pickup or delivery.  It stated (I’m paraphrasing) that I would have a reservation and be able to go to the store and pick up my phone, so I decided that rather than incur additional shipping nonsense (extra packaging, possible delays, addition carbon output from delivery trucks, etc), that I would take the reservation and pick up my iPhone at the Apple Store.  The Apple Store is just a few blocks from my office, so it wouldn’t be a huge deal to get up a bit early and stop by the Store before heading to work.

This was a stupid decision.

Apparently, to Apple, having a reservation means “everybody show up at the same time”, so having a reservation is completely meaningless.  Instead of one line at the Apple Store, there are now two lines, and interestingly, the line for reservations was LONGER than the regular line.  So when I arrived this morning for my “reservation” I found the line to be 3/4-way around the block.

Now listen. I’m sure some of you are thinking “oh, right, you just thought you would walk right into the Apple Store, pick up your iPhone and walk out? On Release Day? Yeah, right”.  Well, no, of course that’s not what I thought at all.  What I thought was “I have a reservation for 7am, and probably so do a lot of other people, but they can only handle so many an hour, so I can’t have to wait more than an hour or so to get my phone.”

See, here’s what I would think you would do if you were taking “reservations”.  You would do it like a restaurant.  You would know your capacity (Number of dedicated Apple Store staff on hand), you would know your throughput (how long it takes, on average, each Staffer to process an new iPhone), you would do some math to give yourself some slippage, and then you would fill up that many slots per hour.  So, let’s pretend:

Apple Store SF has, say, 30 Blue Shirts dedicated solely to iPhone reservations.
Each Blue Shirt can do 3 iPhones an hour. (20 minutes each)

Therefore it would be safe to assume that you would be able to process 90-100 iPhones an hour. THEREfore, you would give out 100 reservations for 7a, 100 reservations for 8a, and so forth.  This is the expectation you set by calling it a “reservation”.  Instead, it appears that Apple took this approach instead:

We’ll have 2,400 iPhones in stock on opening day, so we’ll give the first 2,400 people a reservation.  (I’m guessing on the numbers, of course).  So let’s do this math backwards, if you can process 100 iPhones an hour, and you have 2,400 iPhones, that means it will take you 24 hours, non stop, at pace, to clear out that many iPhones.  Well, last time I checked, the Apple Store was not open 24 hours.  Let’s say they only have 1,200 on hand.  That’s 12 hours.  I think the Apple Store (today) is open 7a-7p (12 hours) so they could reasonably expect to move all 1,200 iPhones in 12 hours, so reservations make sense, especially if you stagger them by hour.  Seems like a reasonable expectation, no?

But the point here is, why make “reservations” and give you this idea that that somehow means something if instead you’re just going to have yet another free-for-all under some false pretense? I thought the point of the reservations system was to alleviate lines and waiting and mayhem? I made a reservation because I don’t want to wait in a retardedly long line.  I made a reservation because I didn’t want to get up at 4a (probably still way too late) and sit outside in the cold and dark.  I made a reservation because I wanted to do my small part to save the planet, by using my feet to pick up my iPhone, rather than a UPS truck.  I made a reservation because I expected it to BE A RESERVATION.  I mean, I was awake at 1:00am working, so if I’d really wanted to, I could have gone down and gotten in line then.  But I didn’t because I HAD A RESERVATION FOR 7AM!

So, Fuck You Apple, and Fuck You Steve Jobs.  Once again, ONCE AGAIN you have fucked me but yet you’re STILL going to get my money.  Why? Because your product Kicks Ass.  But you really have a lot to learn about being good to your loyal customers, especially you loyalest of customers.  I’m not the first person, and I won’t be the last that you Fuck, and still come back.  But like any abusive relationship, one day the sex won’t be so good anymore, I’ll tire of being treated like shit and ignored, and whatever after-the-fact apologies you offer, shiny gifts you try to appease me with, or kind words you speak that always seemed to work in the past, it won’t matter because it’ll be just one too many times, the love will be gone, and I’ll want your shit out, my keys back, I will look back and wonder what I ever saw in you in the first place, and I will never EVER want to speak to you again, no matter what.

Am I clear?

Read either:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/serverside/modssl.html -or-

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041129143420344

Notes about problems with either will follow.