disobey.com

It is with sad regret that I've come to realize I will be nothing more than a lurker on most mailing lists. I just don't have the time to respond as much as I want, injecting my own personal flava flav into the flame wars or vendettas, idiotic questions, worthwhile threads (a gem in the rough, as it were), or wonderful reminiscings. I can't even keep up with my personal mail (I'm still woefully behind), and going home and answering them for hours at a time is starting to drag (I do have dancing with Britney, you know). Thus, I must prune you from my subscriptions THELIST, and for that, I apologize - I did enjoy you, I will miss you, and personification gives you no charm.

For some stupid educational test, I had to write a quick essay concerning teaching someone something I know, as well as backing up the topic with my own experiences. Here's verbatim what I wrote for the rough draft. The final paragraph and conclusion are lost to the winds (they never return the damn effort I've put in - drives me nuts).

Having been offered numerous job opportunities to teach computer programming and internet technologies, I'll trust in my peers and travel down that well-worn past.

My credentials, for one, lend merit to my abilities. I'm currently working at a mom and pop internet service provider where, as their only employee, I regularly program, tech support, and administer the servers that keep a large portion of Concord connected to the 'Net. Second, I professionally write about computers and technology for the number one computer book publisher, O'Reilly and Associaties. The articles have been well received, garnishing kudos from Apple, multiple foreign translations and a rabid following of "please, tell me more!" readers.

Through it all, there are two important bullets that must firmly be entrenched:

• Average computer users "fear" (or perhaps, distrust) their computer abilities.
• Never underestimate that lack of understanding.

Solving these tenets can also be satisfied with round circles:

• Start first by explaining how to undo a change.
• Establish a firm grounding in the mundane.

The first is the most important. By proving to the end user that everything they do can be undone, the fear of moving forward is displaced. Users know how to back-peddle to safer ground, as it were.

The second complements the first. By creating a safe haven in the simplicity of the Desktop, for instance, users won't fear returning there if they need to. Assuming the solace of a desktop, users should know about icons, windows (and the widgets that control them), the menu system (be it the Start Button, the File menu, or the Dock), as well as how to shutdown (for the "that's it! I've had it!" crowd).

Like I said, relatively gay and, with no conclusion, haltingly incomplete. Either way, I got what I expected for grades - highest in reading and language arts, followed by science, social studies, and lowest, math (I hate math - that's what computers are for).

I get tons of magazines per month (mostly tech, computer, and game related, although I do get the occasional cult-movie rag), so most of my nose is buried in either them or a computer screen when it comes to reading. Case in point, I just barely finished O'Reilly's PEER-TO-PEER book, even though I bought it shortly after it was released in March 2001. Pathetic.

With that out of the way, I've moved on to a quick, light read: PLATYPUS (The Extraordinary Story Of How A Curious Creature Baffled The World). Once that's finished (I expect by early next week), it's on to IF CHINS COULD KILL.

Man alive. I've got so much stuff to do, read, respond, hack, postulate, annoy, retread, and tweak that I have no clue how I'm going to do it all. Definitely not good. I've got a number of things to report today, the biggest being the DETERGENT redesign.

When Detergent was first created, it's sole goal was to be a dumping ground for various ideas and mini-projects that just weren't strong enough to stand on their own. While that may have been true with the random quotes and ever-so-popular SHEEP MOVIE, it wasn't quick and easy for me to add stuff - it was more an exercise in mindless HTML templating and worthless introductory hyperbole.

Welp, I've spent the last week or so tweaking things and, thanks to the power of Apache's mod_autoindex (read more under "Directory AutoIndexes" in MY OWN APACHE TUTORIAL on the O'Reilly Network), I think I've got something good worked out. GO BROWSE AROUND - at this point, it's not much more than a duplicate of the old Detergent content, but I've got a large number of things to be adding in the coming weeks.

Thankfully, this will be a good thing. From a content production standpoint, DISOBEY.COM has slowed down, lately spending most of it's time with GAMEGRENE.COM and AMPHETADESK. With the ability to quickly and easily add random crap to Detergent, I should be able to appear as productive as I really am.

I just had an odd dream. WARREN ELLIS was speaking at some 'upcoming comic book protege' convention thingy - a seven day event with ten or so of the 'most promising new meat in comics'. I was an attendee in the field of writing, and I kept sitting next to artists where a single glance at their artwork suggested talent that didn't exist.

I remained pretty silent through the whole thing, respecting the insight Warren was giving out when, on the third day, he made mention that the class was getting too large (eleven now), and that it was becoming awkward.

So, at the end of the third day, Mr. Ellis comes up to me and he says "You've got your heart." Not as a question, not as a snide remark, but as a matter of fact statement with a smirk for punctuation. I said "Yes", and my dream starts fading from memory as he starts suggesting that that's going to hurt me.

The thing is, I've never even thought of going into comics. Sure, I read 'em, and sure, he write's them, but there's never been an impetus for me to go forth and tell these types of stories. Maybe I've been playing too many dance games and the flashing lights are getting to me ("gettttiIInng BetTTTer!"). Maybe this is one of those shared memories that will bring us together for all of two emails, and then we'll go our merry way.

I'm go email Warren and ask him what the hell's he talking about.

DEVELOPING A COMMAND LINE UTILITY:

Learn how to write Linux command-line utilities that are foolproof enough even for end users. Starting with an overview of solid command-line best practices and finishing with a comprehensive tour of a working page-selection tool, this article gives you the background you need to begin writing your own utilities.

Convenient since I've been fiddling with TARA and some various Perl scripts. It's a good generic article - not tied into C, Perl, etc. It does provide a snippet and explanation of C code, however, and I've long bookmarked A DECENT PERL TEMPLATE for command line processing.

THE CRANKY USER (an excellent ongoing series which, ironically enough, doesn't seem to have a separate index past THIS ONE): Everything I need to know about usability, I learned at the arcade:

A program that is integral to the operation of your business can be hard to use -- yet you will use it anyway. A video game that is hard to use is no fun, and you won't use it. Forged in this crucible is an attitude that's common to most games: Usability is paramount. Productivity software should learn some of the same lessons.

USING WEB WIDGETS WISELY:

This article is the first in a two-part series about Web widgets -- controls that can be incorporated in Web forms, dialogs, and wizards to elicit information from users. Here in Part 1, Jodi Bollaert defines several basic HTML Web widgets, shows graphic examples, and discusses common usability problems and solutions. Next month, Jodi will cover more sophisticated Web widgets that can be developed with scripts.

FOAF (Friend of a Friend) EXCITES me.

A List Apart has an article on time management called THE PICKLE JAR THEORY - it's remotely near to what I do to get all my junk done (people are constantly commenting about how they can't believe I do everything I do). The first time management I ever started was PAINLESS SOFTWARE SCHEDULES which, with some modification, worked wonderfully for my daily life as well. I keep all my notes, thoughts, and TODO's using OMNI OUTLINER (under OS X), which lets me sort by priority and/or duration. Having unlimited space to add notes to each item is handy as well, as I can jot down quickie "don't forgets" without messing up my display (as I would with Excel).