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Saturday, November 27, 2004
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Took the kids to see The Polar Express
today. Based on the trailers I'd been seeing all year, I had low
expectations, but I'm happy to say that my expectations were greatly
exceeded. The story and its presentation are effective, and much of the
animation is stunning, far exceeding what I'd been expecting. Parts
were a bit scary for the younger ones (two four-year-olds), but they
survived and said they enjoyed it.
2:41:24 PM 
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Usability and interaction design make another appearance on Slashdot, this time in response to open-source developer Benjamin Roe's noble attempt
at summarizing some UI design principles for open-source use. At least
it's a step up from some previous discussions, in which it was claimed
that there is no hope for usability to make its way into open-source
software because there was no way for developers to discover the arcane
and esoteric rules and guidelines of usable UI design. To which I
answered at the time "hogwash," or something similar. The
principles are not secret; there are plenty of books out there that can
provide guidance; and usability testing can be as simple as getting
someone else to try using your application and see what happens. User
and task anaylisis doesn't have to be an expensive proposition. I
wonder if any of these OSS developers who complain about the futility
of applying usability principles to their applications have ever
bothered to ask for help. Sometimes that's all it takes.
2:36:55 PM
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I'm a big fan of Christopher Moore's books, so I was gratified to see
that Laura enjoyed his latest, just-in-time-for-Christmas tome, The Stupidest Angel:
I started reading last night, and have laughed several times already.
Moore is a genius at comic bizarreness, right up there with Robbins and
Pynchon.
10:16:25 AM
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Last update: 5/21/05; 10:24:52 PM.
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