February 2004 Archives

…arothmel

Can you imagine what the world would be like if the US was run by Vaclav Havel?

Yes!

The joy of imagination :)

So I have this theory…

Now that the USA is the world's sole superpower, and given that the USA uses up most of the world's resources and spews most of the world's greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I think it might be time to change the way we elect the person in charge of this mess. In a nutshell, I think the President of the United States should be elected by an electoral college picked from the all the countries in the world.

Essentially, the President is now so powerful, it doesn't make sense for the American people to elect him anymore. In fact, it/05/make sense to pick a candidate from the whole world, not just from native-borne American citizens. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the US was run by Vaclav Havel?

Actually, not exactly--it's just that I can't remember the actual term that describes how the virtual representation of a "folder" behaves like a real-world folder in the way it respects Newtonian physics (i.e. it can't be in two places at once, and if you view it closed, it can't be open the next time you look at it unless you've specifically opened it in the meantime).

Many really smart people have criticised the Aqua Finder for the lack of this behaviour (and many others). I know it pissed me off and it made the whole experience of navigating my content that much less intuitive. Well, as a recent Panther upgrader, I can happily report they've fixed it--sort of.

I had by now totally retrained myself as an Aqua user--no more Apple-N keystrokes etc. So imagine my surprise when switching the toolbar off (Option-Apple-T) actually changes the behaviour of the windows as well as their appearance.

So now that all this is in place, what would make this a nicer place for new users would be an "Emulate OS9 Finder" checkbox in the Appearance control panel. Anyone fancy writing the Applescript to do it?

Nick and I are always being amazed that the moment we have a good idea for something, bang--someone else does it :-)

Congratulations to 37Signals (w.a.n.w, w.a.n.w.) for getting the natural progression from TypePad right.

I guess this means we're going to have to move a little quicker…

Have you heard of The Annoying Thing?

He's a thing on a bike. Well, actually, there's no bike but the sound track makes me scream:-)

Just wanted to let you know that nine (9) letters and five months later, Orange has finally come clean.

They agree that their terms and conditions are unfair--they agree that it is ironic for them to be running an advertising campaign called "Fair"--and in consequence, they agree to fix my bill. They also agreed to review their T&Cs and are having an internal review about customer handling.

I'll package the correspondence up nicely for those letter-writing voyeurs out there when I get a mo.

Just tried to join the Yahoo Group of a project I'm working on.

You know how there are a jillion Yahoo users, well, try finding a username that isn't taken. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous, why can't Yahoo switch to an email-based handle, or allow handle duplicates as long as some combination of other data is unique?

"yahoogroups@safs.demon.co.uk" was taken (they suggested "yahoogroups@safs.demon.co.uk2000") -- "bozo" was taken (of course), but "bozobozobozo" was taken as well! And, I have to say, the suggested alternative "bozobozobozo2000" really pushes the envelope… You'd think that a company as big as Yahoo could use some sort of clever language-based suggestions?

In the end, the wordy-but-mnemonic "dugathumaniteinenglish" was also unavailable, so either Yahoo Groups is broken or Satan is in charge of the user registration.

Robotron anyone? (double-joystick arcade machines really were mmmm)

http://www.cepophan.com/atari/</ a>

http://www.zugakousaku.com/

It's amazing how right Apple gets it when it gets it right :-)

UPS guy arrives the day after I call. He's clutching a bundle of special Apple paperwork, complete with printed instructions. He knows all my details and has brought me all the documentation I need to safely send my iBook AND the most awesome specially designed packaging, specifically designed to safely guard Powerbooks and iBooks in transit.

He fills in the paperwork…

He packs your computer for you…

And closes and seals the box.

It's like you've time-warped to 1958--OK he doesn't salute you when he leaves, but pretty darn close.

Just fantastic :-)