Usability.

I’ve always been somewhat interested in usability. I took a couple of courses at the university and I’ve read a few books on the subject. Even my graduation paper touched usability issues. The paper was not my proudest moment, though. Interesting fact in life: Other things than my grades have landed me jobs.

But I digress, let’s get back on track. What is usability anyway? Google has a lot of suggestions, but in the context of web sites and the interweb I like this one:

The degree to which a software application or a website is easy to use with no specific training.

Short and sweet. My web site designs have always been plain and minimalistic and I like to think that it’s because of the little I know of usability that makes me embrace KISS. No, not the band, rather Keep It Simple, Stupid. Another possible reason is that I know nothing of web design whatsoever. Lately I’ve been working on somewhat subtle changes to the way links are displayed on this site. For instance, I’ve never before cared about make visited links stand out, or rather fade away. But when you think about it, they are not that important anymore because you’ve already visited whatever site they link to. If there’s a lot of links on a page, it would be interesting to be able to visually remove the links that you’ve already visited. So now, visited links will be greyed out and there will also be a little “check”-sign appended to the link if you’ve got a browser with good CSS support. Come on, click a link and give it a try. But please come back soon, because there’s more to read below. Continue reading "Usability."

New One-Liners.

It’s long overdue, but here’s a few additions to the one-liners list.

• It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you look when you play the game.
• Monday is the root of all evil.
• Does the noise in my head bother you?
• It’s better to be a well-known drunk that to be an anonymous alcoholic.
• Time flies like a bullet. Fruit flies like a banana.
• A smoking section in a restaurant is like a peeing section in a pool.
• Canis meus it comedit. My dog ate it.
• “If I misbehave and nobody sees me, that’s one less lie I’ll have to tell later.” - Dave Dunseath
• Software is just like sex. One mistake and you end up giving lifetime support.
• Hard work never killed anyone but why risk it?
• Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
• If at first you do succeed try not to look astonished.
• To err is human, to arr is pirate.
• “In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” - Charles, Count Talleyrand
• I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
• Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
• I used to be indecisive but I am not sure anymore.
• Honk if you like peace and quiet.
• “Everybody has a plan, ’till they get hit.” - Mike Tyson
• To err is hunam.
• If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
• Don’t follow me, I’m lost too.
• To be is to do - Socrates, To do is to be - Sartre, Do be do be do - Sinatra
• I’m not mentally ill, I just have a problem with reality.
• I don’t care who you are! Get those reindeers off my roof!
• I’m busy now. Can I ignore you some other time?
• I need someone really bad! Are you really bad?
• Living healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die.
• Whatever happens, ignore it all.
• Blondes may have more fun, but brunettes remember it the next day.

You’ve Been WordPress’d!

Yes, I’m finally on WordPress. It was about as much work as I’d feared and I’m really not sure if it was worth it. The EVE Online character sheet I’d made had to go, along with the gallery, the features section and some other stuff I can’t remember right now.

Most of the coding was related to handling the database. My database design was a bit different from the one WordPress uses and since I decided to merge the Moblog with the regular posts, most of the IDs were bounced around, breaking the internal links I had between posts. But that was nothing a small PHP script couldn’t manage. In the end I made a script that converted everything in my old database to a WordPress export file, which I then imported into the new database. After a couple of tries, I was able to convince the importer it was working on a genuine WordPress XML file.

What I used most time on was probably finding a theme I liked. Making a WordPress theme is not that hard, which means there are tons and tons of crappy themes out there. After looking at thousands of themes, I found this one, a theme I liked a lot when I first saw it, but now it has turned a bit boring.

Anyway, I’m now finally on WordPress and perhaps even back on the blog wagon?

Spring Cleaning.

Spring is in the air and for many people that means it’s time to give the apartment or the house a good cleaning. I’ll probably do that one day before next Christmas as well, but I decided to start with cleaning the backend of this site. There has not been many updates lately, and I would like to be able to say that I’ve been working on the site’s backend, but I can’t. Because I haven’t. What have I been doing? I don’t know for sure.

I’ve been thinking about implementing a Twitter-like social awareness feature. Of course I could just use Twitter, but I don’t wanna. At least I’d use their APIs instead of the HTML widget they provide. I also want to merge the Moblog and the rest of the entries, since moblog entries are basically just like all the other entries, they’re just smaller and with a picture attached to them. Continue reading "Spring Cleaning."

Break Me.

Yup, looks like I’m taking a break from this, so don’t expect too much to happen here in the next few weeks.