Sun ‘n Fun Airshow at Lakeland, FL
April 14th, 2008I took a much deserved day off work on Friday and attended the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In and Air Show in Lakeland, Florida with my buddy Les. It was a beautiful day for an airshow and this was quite an airshow.
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First we walked around and looked at all the homebuilt airplanes that were there for the fly-in. Then we walked around all the vendor exhibits for a while. Then we watched the airshow and it was quite impressive. Then after a dinner break, they put on a very cool night airshow. And after that, they put on the most spectacular fireworks display I think I’ve even seen in my entire life! It was quite a day. Here is a short video compilation that I posted to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UqFCnRzDso
And here are some of the photos I took:
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Kurt
Osprey eating a fish at KSC
April 13th, 2008The other day at work I saw an osprey sitting on a pole eating a fish, so I took some video of it and posted it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1GHx1SbmbM
Ospreys are pretty common around here. Sometimes that are mistaken for bald eagles due to their white heads.
Kurt
KSC Beach Cleanup
April 13th, 2008Last week I was able to take part in an annual beach cleanup on the very remote beaches of the Kennedy Space Center. It was a lot of hard work, but it was pretty cool to take part in this worthy cause. I put a short video from the beach cleanup on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjT6dTbacg0
This is an annual event at KSC and it is organized by the Fish & Wildlife Service, who owns most of the land that KSC sits on. They do this every year before sea turtle nesting season starts.
There were some pretty interesting items that were collected, in addition to a ton of bottles and bottle caps, which I noticed were the most frequent item found. A lady right directly in front of me found 2 separate messages in bottles. One of them was a letter from a 9 year old girl in the Bahamas who’s whole class had put messages into bottles for a “sea-pal” exercise. The lady who found the message said she was definitely going to write the little girl back. I found quite a few bottles, but none with messages.
It was hard work in the hot sun, but I’m going to sign up again next year.
Kurt
User Interface Annoyances: Indicator Buttons
February 17th, 2008As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.
Today’s annoying user interface is inside the elevator in my building at work. It’s not very nice to make your floor indicators (which cannot be pressed by the user) look exactly like the floor selection buttons. (Sorry about the poor quality photos.)
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Now, I consider myself a fairly sharp guy, but on the rare occasion that I actually use the elevator in my 2-story building, the indicator lights which look exactly like the floor buttons always throw me for a loop. They look like buttons that can be pressed.
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The only reason I haven’t been tricked into pressing them is because they are way up high on the panel. But still, last time I was in the elevator I had to try to press them just to make sure they were not actually buttons. They’re not. But they sure look like buttons. Why would any user interface designer in their right mind design an indicator to look exactly like a button? Is this a game they play just to mess with our minds or something?
This would be even more annoying if this were done on a software user interface. But I don’t have any examples of that to post right now. Let’s just try to avoid using buttons as indicators, shall we?
Just my opinion,
Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)
User Interface Annoyances: Blind Confirmations
February 13th, 2008As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.
But one thing that I think is a bad idea is to pop up a dialog to the user that asks them if they are sure, without giving them any more information.
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On an Internet Forum that I’m a member of we use the very popular forum software phpBB. And this evening I kept seeing this same “blind” confirmation dialog over and over again as I was making various unrelated configuration changes to my account profile. If something is worthy of an “are you sure you want to do this” type of dialog, then surely telling the user what they are about to do and why it could be bad is also worthy of mentioning? When I try to close Word without saving my document, it doesn’t just say “Are you sure?”. It says something more along the lines of “Don’t you want to save your document before closing Word?”.
Just my opinion,
Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)
User Interface Annoyances: Labeled Toggle Buttons
February 13th, 2008As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.
But one thing that I think is a bad idea is to use a toggle button to turn on or off a certain feature and to put a text or image label that states the current value of the feature onto that toggle button. Was that sentence confusing? Well, so is a labeled toggle button! And what’s the last thing you want your user interface to do? Confuse the user!
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I use PrintKey 2000 as my free screen capture software. Yeah, it’s old and outdated, but it works for me and I haven’t felt the need to go out searching for a replacement. Hey, if it ain’t broke …
All of the big fat buttons across the top actually do what their label says … all except for one, that is. The button labeled “OFF” does NOT actually turn something OFF. It does just the opposite of turning something OFF. It turns something ON. It’s a toggle button for the Auto Save feature and the current state of the Auto Save feature is OFF, so when you click on the button labeled OFF, it will turn the Auto Save feature ON and change the label on the button to read ON.
So the button is telling the user the current value of the feature, not what action the button will perform when pressed. But users are used to buttons doing what their label says. The Print button prints, the Save button saves, etc. But this one button acts differently than all other buttons in the world?!? Why? This sort of user interface behavior is not intuitive to most users and should be avoided.
Solution: If the value of the feature were placed into a text field that is separate but adjacent to the toggle button and the toggle button was labeled something like “Auto Save”, that would be just fine. It might be even better if the button label were “Toggle Auto Save”, but I realize that might be too wordy. Another solution would be for features that can be toggled, to forgo buttons altogether and use checkboxes with labels instead. A checkbox labeled “Auto Save” would turn the feature on when the box is checked and vise-versa. I think most users would find that intuitive.
Just my opinion,
Kurt
1950’s Peoria Cinema Club Films
February 10th, 2008A few years ago my dad transferred some of my grandfather’s old silent films that he and his friends from the Peoria Cinema Club had made from the original edited films onto VHS format. I recently transferred them onto DVD and then stumbled across a website called CreateSpace where you can publish and sell your own DVDs. They do a nice job of printing the packaging and also printing onto the DVD itself, and they also set you up a store to sell your DVD. They even let you upload a 30 second trailer that they stream to potential customers. That’s a nice touch.
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So if you’re interested in watching some historic 1950’s Peoria Cinema Club films, just go to the below link and order yourself a copy. It will only cost you $9.50 plus shipping. What a bargain! https://www.createspace.com/243975
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2/17/2008 Addendum: As if CreateSpace wasn’t cool enough, they are also affiliated with Amazon, one of the largest online stores in the world! So you can buy this 1950’s Peoria Cinema Club DVD from either the CreateSpace store linked above or you can purchase it from Amazon.com! (http://www.amazon.com/1950s-Peoria-Cinema-Club-Films/dp/B0013TPGE2/)
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GEF Light the Way 5K
January 19th, 2008The Gilchrist Educational Foundation had about 300 runners and walkers in their 2nd annual Light the Way 5K race this morning. The weather was cool and foggy which made it very nice for running. I walked the 5K rather briskly while pushing both boys in the stroller and “Team Leucht” completed it in about 46 and a half minutes. I’m happy with that time since it was about 5 minutes faster than my walking time in last year’s race.
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Mitt Romney fans: Buy this Life Magazine!
January 5th, 2008I was cleaning house today and came across this old Life Magazine from 1962. I hate to throw away old stuff, so I was gazing at it trying to figure out what to do with it when I noticed the feature article on “Romney of Rambler” the “new star in politics”. I’m not super crazy about politics, but the Romney name did sound very familiar.
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Turns out the article is about George W. Romney, president of American Motors at the time and who later became the Governor of Michigan and also was a presidential candidate in 1968. On page 34 is a family photo of the Romneys that includes a young Mitt Romney who is currently running for president.
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Huh. This might be worth something to someone somewhere, no? I put it on eBay today for 7 bucks. I found quite a few other copies of the same edition starting at 10 bucks, so I think 7 is reasonable for a collector’s item that may increase in value. The value could actually go way up if Mitt Romney does well in the elections. Here’s the link to the eBay auction if you are interested: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=190188207688
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