Drewski   Coming soon in three dimensions

So Windows Vista will come out (when it does) with 7 different versions. My first thought: “[Groan] Oh, that’ll be just great for support, trying to figure out which people are using and why ‘feature X works on my other computer but not on this one…’.” How can Microsoft tout usability and simplicity? Because most people don’t know anything else. For example, since switching to Linux, I use a filesystem that does not need defragmentation. It’s out there, but all Windows filesystems (don’t know about the upcoming WinFS, which apparently won’t be ready in time for Vista’s release anyway) need defragmentation. So, users have to remember, manually, to defragment their hard disk periodically or suffer a performance loss. (Windows does not automatically add defragmentation to their Scheduled Tasks.)

Second thought, from one of the comments at the Slashdot link: artificial limitations. Windows is making all of this stuff, but they’ll only give it to you if you pay more. This doesn’t even sound like a good business model, let alone the fact that GNU software is simply free: Word and Outlook, widely used applications, have limited imitations in Windows by default (WordPad and Outlook Express), because they can’t give away the major draw–MS Office–with the OS. Gosh.

The Heart of the Matter
“I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Even if you don’t love me anymore”

Why do we understand these truths or feel empathy from the world at large when rock singers belt it out? This song has little to do with the way things have been going in my life presently, but there is the same undercurrent. But, when I heard this song on the radio this morning, I suddenly felt like the world understood, like I wasn’t alone. Not that I felt alone before, but somehow Don Henley makes it seem universal. Strange. I’m not sure I want to know what that implies about me.

I’ve heard this quote before, but it has been in my mind this last week or so since I’ve been on the phones supporting customers:
“Computer programming today is a race between software engineers, striving to build bigger and better ‘idiot-proof’ programs, and the Universe, trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe seems to be winning.”

I also read another blog about user interfaces in which he talks about the fact that computer interfaces are designed with beginners in mind. However, once the user gets over the learning curve, the interface is a crutch. He asks a rather tough question: “So is it possible to design a system that’s suits both beginners and professionals?” No easy answer for that. We could probably all rant about how certain implementations fail, but do we have anything better to offer? (For all my GNU/Linux snobbery, I must admit the problems with the two major open-source interfaces: GNOME is too simple and KDE too complex.)

As for “idiots”, I don’t really mean it. The same could be said for everyone driving a car: I certainly don’t know very well how to diagnose the internal workings when something goes wrong. Yet I do appreciate a working knowledge of things. And I can certainly empathize that the trend (rather frustrating for developers) in computing seems to be trying to completely diminish the learning curve, and as usual, that makes most of the usefulness of computing null and void. (If you don’t know how to use a mouse or to save a file, you won’t be very productive.) Does that mean the learning curve should be a bit higher and computers demand a bit more knowledge before using them? Or does that mean we should all invest in our local computer education center?

So I’ve been very busy lately, and mostly because of work. That’s a veryhref=”http://www.google.com/ig”>personalized homepage, I keep a few interesting sites’ feeds there. Makes for a nice break from the dirty innards of Microsoft Office.

So I have managed to stay abreast of a few projects that have kept my interest. As usual, they revolve around Python and/or <a depressing feeling. Spending all day working up my support skills before I get on the phones, my evenings–much shorter now because of the commute–are usually spent relaxing. I’ve not spent much time with code lately (the last thing I want to do is read more documentation) but I can’t think of anything productive I have been doing…. There’s the real kicker.

Since I’m using Windows at work, there’s only one way to stay connected to the open-source world when I’m taking a break: newsfeeds. With Google’s new GTK+. I really do think that the combination thereof makes for good, accessible development that is a great boon to the open-source desktop. There are a few that I’m thinking about contributing to:

• Straw - a news aggregator (in other words, an RSS reader)
• myBudget - a desktop budget program
• And deep down, I have a desire to create a PyGTK web browser using, not Gecko, but GTK+ Webcore. Problem is, it’s not ported to Python, so it’d take much learning on my part to figure out how to do that.

Yet I feel so scattered lately. I haven’t even taken the time to solidify the big changes I’ve made to Pygmy enough to release them. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to rein in, start small, and move forward, even just a bit.

As ever, I’ll keep you (marginally) posted.

Update (2/25/08): I see that this post got mangled a bit, but I’m just leaving it.

So I’ve been repeatedly impressed with Google lately. I mean, many people know that “to google” has been a verb for a while, since it’s kind of the de facto way to search the Internet. But also, I’ve been using their email service, which is really awesome in all respects. Turns out Blogger (what you’re seeing now) is run by Google, and it’s good too. Then there are a handful of ways that Google has been supporting open-source software and projects: their Summer of Code, their APIs, and the fact that they give their developers one day off per week to work on a project of their own choosing. Very cool. I read in a tech magazine that Microsoft’s big competitor at the moment is Google. (Of course, that makes MS very uncomfortable.) Well, stick it to ‘em, Google!

So I made another big update to Pygmy this week. Formatting of the metadata is possible now; I simply exposed the user to what I’ve been using to format it all along. For example, “artist - title” will be replaced per-song, and

"artist:ntitle"

will show the artist in bold text and the title in small text on a new line. Only problem is that GTK+ has a longstanding bug with wrapping labels, so a long format won’t wrap to multiple lines.

Next up: optional tags, so if you have “date” in the format and it’s not in the file, it won’t show up (nor will the space you put before it to separate it from the title).

Lesson of the week: A blog is only as good as the posts you put therein. Of course, since a blog is more than the sum of its posts, …I don’t know what that means for me, but it’s good.

So Pygmy’s coming along. I just released the third version last weekend and am pleased with how it’s coming along. I’m rather surprised how much work it takes to get even a little app like this working. I’m beyond the stage where I needed to read a lot of documentation to learn how to code what I wanted to do (though the PyGTK reference is still quite the boon), but I’m still finding that there are a lot of things to account for. And as the program gets bigger (and harder to manage), I see the use for design patterns to effectively use my code. I’ll need to read up on those more, but there’s no time!

So I just started my new job this week. Computer application phone support, to be specific. This month is just training, but by September, I’ll be on the phones making people’s days… or something. It’s funny: I’m not really an Excel wizard, so my training has been illustrative in figuring out what you can really do with it. But it’s surprising, approaching an application like for the first time. I haven’t really had that experience in a while, but at this point, I notice a lot of UI quirks and awkward presentation of features. For example, you can “set print area” in the File menu, define a “range to print” in Page Setup, define a named range “Print_Area”, all of which do the same thing. Why not pick one option and stick to it? Layers automation and multiple options make the UI complicated and confusing. Anyway….

So I’ve started a weblog. Something I never thought I’d do. I used to use LiveJourney back before the word ‘blog’ was coined and I used Xanga to document my trip to Europe, but I always thought that they ended up being a bit ostentatious. However, lately I’ve been reading more than a few, mostly related to software development. (And, of course, there’s PostSecret.) I realized that it can be a good outlet for thoughts meant to be public and doesn’t need to be a melodrama of life.

So. We’ll see how I strike that.