Well, okay, Director, if you insist.
Software really should be designed for error tracing. I don't want to know the address of where the page fault occurred, but a decent trace of what calls led to the error isn't too much to ask. Debugging is a necessary step in the software development process (see, Professor Young, I really was paying attention!) and if programmers would include human-readable trace dialogues, post-release debugging would occur exponentially faster. As the open-source movement has shown, thousands of lay programmers are out there willing to chip in to improve products. If Macromedia had told me why printing my stage in Director caused a fatal error, I would in turn have reported that back to them, especially if there were a way to do that right from the dialogue box. It's all about the reciprocal love, baby.
Granted, most software users couldn't care less about why errors occurred; but the option to list the error trace in dialogue boxes would make nerds like me happy. My mock dialogue box (below) reveals my ignorance about what actually goes on under the GUI, but you get the idea.
| Breakdancers are coming out of the woodwork lately. Twice this week they've been throwing down (see, I'm cool, I've seen Breakin') on thirteenth street. Made my day. |   |
  | Have you ever noticed that megnut's little robot, which is all cute in IE (top) hides behind her name when you view her page in Netscape (bottom)? I think he's hiding in shame, or in protest of noncompliant browsers. |
From Tiller (always a fount of brilliance):
"in order to understand induction, you must first assume that you understand induction"
From Pseudodictionary:
rock star - Used to describe an extreme situation or personal actions. Ex: "You got rock star parking."
asap-ish - From ASAP, but only sort of. Ex: "I'll sort it out asap-ish"
uglet - The ugly gray patch that appears when a java applet is loading. Ex: "Aaargh, I crashed on that damn uglet!"
Need a recipie for instant party success? Try the clothespin game. What you need:
A bunch of clothespins
A sharpie marker
A party full of hottie Swedish guys
Write something clever on a clothespin. Bonus points if you can write it in another language (especially Swedish) on the other side. Sneak up behind an unsuspecting partier and clip him discreetly. Repeat. If you find yourself thus adorned, clip it on someone who isn't. Now don't we all feel special?
So now I have this groovy title-changer going on. Check out the title bar and hit refresh. The code comes from Annie Tomlin's site, out of order. Tell her you love squirrels.
From Professor Louise Bishop at the end of a response to an obtuse sentence syntax question I had: "Grammar. It's where it's at." Damn skippy.
From Evhead:
Ring!
Me: "Pyra, this is Evan."
Them: "Hi, yeah. This is Christina. I just need to check on the photocopier there in the office. I need to know the model number. Could you look on the front and let me know what model that is?"
Me: "I think you have the wrong number."
Them: <click>
Me: Hmmm.
Coincidentally, I got another call, this evening:
Me: "Pyra, this is Evan."
Them: "Yes, may I speak with Evan, please."
Me: "This is him."
Them: "Evan, your credit card didn't go through. Do you have another one we can use."
Me (thinking, How dumb do they think I am?!): "Who is this?"
Them: "Extreme Pizza"
Me (thinking, Oops.): "Oh. Yeah, I have another card. Hold on..."
Tonight was opening night for Godspell out at Marist High School. The kids have been working so hard on it for months, and I've been fortunate enough to be their pianist. Feeling sheepish about posting such a lame Aquarium clip this morning, I thought I'd run something from the CD that we recorded a couple of weekends ago. Nibble on Turn Back, O Man. That's me on the piano, and my gal Gillian doin' the Mary Magdalene vocals.
All of my life I've been daunted by Aquarium. Not the algae-reeking tank in my living room where only the hardiest fish survive (I'm a firm believer in pet darwinism), but Saint-Saens's Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals. Figured I'd never be able to play the four against three. But I had a Major Breakthrough™ yesterday, and suddenly my fingers' brains are on autopilot. I'll keep you posted about my progress, but think of this as the uber-slow "before" version. Pretend it's intentionally bad, that way you'll be wowed when I post the "after" version.
Do you know about Brewer's Yeast? My mom used to put it on my cereal as a little kid. But, you know, it's awesome on pasta with a little olive oil and garlic. Or on tofu with (drumroll please) a little olive oil and garlic. (And soy sauce.) At the Bijou, they'll put it on your popcorn. Normally I'd link to my buddies at Bijou Cinema, but their page is one of the worst examples of gratuitous animation I've ever seen. You know what - it's so bad it's almost good. If you need to feel the pain, go ahead and click here. Much worse in IE than Netscape. Consider yourself warned.
Fare thee well, my sweet little Kozmo. You made the latter half of my days in the desolate wasteland that is the Georgia Tech Dormatories pleasant - even enjoyable. (Well, maybe). Stating the obvious laments your demise as well. May the ecommerce angels deliver you lightly to other pastures where everyone orders a ham sandwich and a DVD player for lunch.
For the music nerds: something my friend Tyson pointed out. Take the word "resolution." Break it into its component syllables - Re | so | lut | ion. Okay, now drop the "l" and the "ion" because they're just padding. With your master solfeg training, you know that "ut" is another way to say "do." So, you've got re-so-do, and voilá, resolution = a II - V - I chord progression.
Spent last week at CHI 2001 in Seattle. I think I hurt my thesis advisor's feelings when I told him people were making fun of the cognitive modeling crew. Well, they were. Bill Gates gave the opening plenary, but his thinly-veiled two-hour advertisement was massively eclipsed by the closing speaker, Gregg Vanderheiden. Vanderheiden preaches the inclusion of features to assist people with disabilities - but that these features would be popular with the abled crowd, as well. Imagine if your Palm could recognize the face of your business associate walking down the hall towards you - and it could whisper that person's name in your ear.
Iron Chef vs. peeps. From the article in today's Oregonian:
"I just spoke to Iron Chef Morimoto and asked him if he'd ever cooked with Peeps before and he said 'Don't be ridiculous. Of course I have. You forget that I'm a chef in New York, and Nobu is well-known for its Peeps sashimi.'"
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