michael-mccracken.net

Updates from April, 2006

• 

  Full Screen Focus

  mike 5:38 pm on April 19, 2006 | 0 Permalink
  

  I visit 43Folders only about once a week now – I couldn’t deal with the cognitive dissonance implied by procrastinating by visiting a site about how to be more efficient and avoid procrastination.

  I was really glad yesterday to see Merlin’s post about faking full screen mode with a trio of useful apps. I had tried Menushade before, and didn’t really see the point – the menu bar doesn’t bug me – but in combination with the other two that Merlin recommends, Spirited Away and BackDrop, his scheme is a really great way to turn your computer into a tool for focus and not diversion.

  At first I thought I wanted a faster auto-hide than the default 60 seconds, but after a bit of time with the delay set to zero and then a less disconcerting 10 seconds, I decided that it was confusing to lose context that quickly, so the default’s been working well for me. Also, it makes diversions painfully obvious when your work-related windows blink away and you’re sitting staring at ESPN. It immediately begs the question: “You’ve already wasted one minute – is this that important?”

  I was also reluctant to hide the dock, but I tried it, and now I’m never going back. I have SpamSieve and Growl to point out important emails (checking once an hour), and for the rest of the time, my numerous diversions are better off out of sight, out of mind.

  Another tactic I’ve started using is a dedicated browser app for Gmail. Just because I need to look at my mail doesn’t mean I need to spend some time checking hockey scores – so I built a separate browser that only loads Gmail, and that temptation is gone. I’ll probably post more about that sometime later, but for now, I need to get back to work.

   

  Reply Click here to cancel reply.

  Name (required)

  Email (required)

  Web Site

   
• 

  Dear Innovative and Revolutionary Management School

  mike 5:55 pm on April 10, 2006 | 1 Permalink
  

  Dear Rady School, you may be dedicated to producing business leaders who can straddle both the business world and the world of science and technology, but please ditch the little animated guy on your homepage who told me that.

  Also, please read this adaptive path essay on user-centered URL design, and revisit your URLs. Most of your URLs look like this: http://management.ucsd.edu/cms/showcontent.aspx?ContentID=163

  I care about 30 of those characters, including dots, one slash and protocol. There are another 31 characters that never change and don’t tell me anything about the page.

  For the previous URL (#163), might I suggest: http://management.ucsd.edu/facilities

  And for the next number up, #164 (apparently not up yet, but it should be the web syllabus for a class), might I suggest: http://management.ucsd.edu/courses/2006/summer/mgt-111

  Thanks,

  mike

   
• 

  Ingredients: prunes, salt.

  mike 3:13 am on April 2, 2006 | 4 Permalink
  

  If you’re ever at the liquor store down the block and see a tempting new combination of previously unconnected flavors, and you feel a sudden urge, a tug, to buy that bag of Salted Prune Saladitos and rush home, eager to shut the door behind you and experience something alien and tasty in private, stop. Just pay for your diet coke, leave a penny, and walk home a fortunate, humbler man.

  

  Prune Saladitos: fit for a king with a powerful jaw.

  The one Saladito I tried was probably harder than anything else I’ve been told was food, and certainly the saltiest thing I’ve ever tasted, including salt. It was like biting a really big, wrinkly pistachio, shell and all. A two-hour soak in warm water did little to soften the nugget, and now this bag sits in my kitchen, awaiting fate. Maybe someday I’ll try a fresh one.

  You’re wondering where else you can read about these formidable treats on the internet. I’ve already done the background for you, and I recommend learning about diversity with lemons and saladitos.

  To be fair, King Henry does make a delicious trail mix.

   
• 

  Buying my TV from the iTunes Music Store?

  mike 2:23 am on April 2, 2006 | 0 Permalink
  

  I don’t have cable TV service anymore. Now I have NetFlix and books instead, and so far that’s working out OK for me – but as much as I can’t handle 300 channels, I would really like to be able to pick a few programs to watch.

  Thus, I’m cautiously optimistic about getting my TV over the internet. I think it could be cost-effective for me – cable bills can be pretty expensive, so even though TV seems cheap, consider how much crap you have to watch to get the price per show lower than $2. Is it worth it? Suppose I watch two games a week and three shows each week. At current iTunes rates, that’s about $10 a week or $40 a month, assuming I don’t get discounts for season passes, or screwed on sporting events. That’s not bad.

  But is it a comparable product? I watched an episode of Scrubs today, and I’d have to say yes and no.

  Buying it went smoothly, not having to watch commercials is pretty great, and I assume I can send the audio to my Airport Express, right? However, you wait for it to download the whole thing first, the resolution is low, pausing and scanning through the video sometimes hangs briefly, and I’m not sold on having the video play in a separate window – it seems like a major afterthought. I’m really curious why iTunes is a worse video player than the Quicktime Player for the same exact file.

  The file’s 104MB, and I’m not likely to watch it over and over again – what I am likely to do is keep it around because I’d feel guilty trashing something I’d paid for. I’d be much happier if I knew I could re-download these shows in the future, so I’m not saddled with a massive file if I don’t need it around.

  What’s more, I remember pretty clearly sitting in the audience for Steve Jobs’ keynote in 2004, and watching him demo super-fast, live, streaming playback and scrubbing around H.264 high definition content. It was pretty impressive. Two years later, where’s the HD content? HD would really sell video on the internet – not many people have HDTVs, but lots of people these days have a monitor that can display at least 720p (1280×720), and once you watch sports in HD, you’re hooked.

  So – I say, bring on the laptop HD revolution. Bring on live HD sports via iTunes. Let me stream it and re-stream it. Let me decide what to pay for – I don’t want to have my cash go to subsidize Elimidate, ever again.