Friday, February 21, 2003

A Quiz designed to give you Fitts. Very nice quiz about usability design by Tog (Bruce Tognazzini of the Nielsen Norman group).  [The Future Dr. Karlsbjerg] 5:27:30 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

So funny (Buffy stuff). I wasn't going to link to this (via WHEDONesque), but this part made me laugh out loud so I had to. Writing Star Wars references into Buffy - Like Fury, Drew Goddard doesn't go out of his way to make Star Wars references. "No, they just come naturally, especially when we're writing Andrew and Jonathan, or Xander. Star Wars is just such a benchmark for every male that age, so when you're writing these characters, it's just natural." Writing for the three nerdy villains is particularly easy, he says. "If I need something for them to talk about, I stick my head out of my office, and I listen to whatever Doug and Drew are arguing about, and I just write it down." You also have to read these 100 questions asked of Joss (via WHEDONesque again). [Keith's Weblog] 5:15:41 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Saturday, in the park... We walked the length of Golden Gate Park last weekend, and it's just great. Spring starts in February in San Francisco, with nearly every flower blooming and new shoots everywhere. Hard to believe that it took 50 years to transform 1000 acres of squatter settled sand dunes into such a wide varying and beautiful habitat. I know that some out there mourn for the lost Sand Dune habitat, which is quite fascinating, but in this case, Humans have improved the Environment. In the ponds of the Arboretum, a flock of gulls had invaded the ducks territory. As we noticed this, the ducks launched across the water, honking and flying low. The gulls were scared off, but not before circling twice and registering their displeasure by rounds of aerial guano bombing. It was amazing, since the ducks really did seem to coordinate their attack. Still, the bits of nature I squeeze from the city, pale to the vivid, familiar and mournful writings of Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac. He truly sees the birds, bears, and grasses as his Peers. [Brain Off] 11:37:10 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

NewsGator I took the plunge this morning. I am trying out NewsGator. So far I like it. I can easily scan new postings at the same time I grab my email (and do so through the same facility - Outlook). Jon Udell provides some insights on how to improve the view and provide a simple mechanism for scanning only unread items. Since's Jon's comments are a little vague, allow me to provide some detail. First, before you import/add any news subscriptions go NewsGator's Folders tab (from NewsGator/Options... menu). Set the Default Folder to the Base news folder. This will group all newsfeeds into a single folder. Next, select the NewsPage tab and deselect the 'Show NewsPage' option.   This prevents a summary page from displaying when you click on the Base Newspage folder (so you can see all of the news items instead). Finally, you will want to customize the Outlook view a bit. Select the Base Newspage folder, then select Outlook's View/Current View/Customize Current View... menu. From 'Fields...' you will probably want to deselect everything but the subject and received fields. Then click on 'Group By...'. Here you will want to select from the 'Select Available Fields From...' drop-down list the User defined fields option. In the first Group items by drop down select Feed Name. Now the news postings in the Base Newspage folder will be grouped by feed. You're done with the grouping. You may want to also go into the 'Sort...' customization dialog and sort postings by receipt date in ascending or descending order (according to your personal preference). It is fairly important that you do these things before importing any newsfeeds (otherwise newsfeeds will get placed in their own folder making it difficult to view only unread posts. One final note, if you mess up, I found that I was able to start over by simply deleting the Base Newspage folder and closing Outlook. When I restarted Outlook NewsGator prompted me for a Newspage folder and let me pick things up from there. [On The Mark] 11:24:36 AM    trackback []     Articulate []