Nosce te ipsum

Today Slashdot had a post featuring a Preview of X Windows Eye Candy which pointed to a specific blog entry which contained some pictures and videos of some upcoming changes to the X Windows system.

From a user interface design perspective, there is a lot of things to consider here, some good, some not -- but I was glad to see some really original ideas like this being put out there. Not sure how useful that would be for day to day computing but at least it's not more of the same that we've all come to expect lately. Be sure to check out the videos that Seth has got posted. For the non-programmers reading this, what he's done is just an insane amount of work and he certainly deserves the respect for that. Rasterman has got a folder full of other visual goodies here.

I had to make a trip to one of our local Apple stores this afternoon and ended up getting to spend some time there, mainly at the genius bar where you really do hear the most interesting things. I was there to drop off my G5 PowerMac 2.5Ghz dual processor box for a little tender loving care that I've been putting off. While waiting for my turn, I got to overhear what the genius folks get to deal with on a daily basis. This one lady had brought in her teenage sons' new iPod shuffle and reported a problem with the device skipping. Of course, her description was quite vauge, didn't know if it was all songs, some songs, some of the time, etc.. but this tech kept his cool. Eventually, she called home to ask the kid for some additional information about the specifics of the issue.

Being a good sport, the tech was studiously listening to her shuffle trying to get the issue to appear and apparently the kid only had half a dozen songs on his shuffle. Long story short, she reported back that the skip mainly happened on the third track - which by this point, the tech had hooked the shuffle up to some external speakers so he could listen while doing other things. The third track turned out to be "Foolin" by Def Leppard and as you might imagine, the "problem" was the chorus of the song what goes "F-F-F-Foolin' -- by design, it sounds like a skip, kinda, sorta I guess. Somehow the tech managed to report this to her without completely bursting into laughter (Pro's to the core, I tell ya!) but she didn't belive him. She said, there was no way the song would sound like that and that it had to be a problem with the shuffle.

What happened next was pure Geek Sci-Fi -- out of nowhere, a dozen iPods emerged from belt clips and backpacks as if summoned on demand. Click wheels turned fast and furiously, madly scrolling down to 'D' to see if they also had that song in their libraries to try and show the poor, misguided customer. Not surprisingly, several other store employees (over 30) had this song and happily played it back for her on the attached speakers to show the lady that it was indeed how the song had been recorded and that there was nothing wrong with her shuffle.

To our amazement, she rebuffed with "wow, you guys are also having problems with your iPods, better get 'em checked out!' -- True story, no f-f-f-foolin' There really are just some people who should not own a computer, or portable MP3 player which requires them to use said computer. After she left, we all shared a hearty laugh at her expense.