OhRyan.ca

I feel compelled to comment on the new Facebook layout. Based on status updates, I was one of the last people on my friends list to receive the new layout. Every single one of their status updates were negative, all of my Facebook friends universally hated the new layout. It seems like that last redesign only came out a 3 or 4 months ago, I wonder if this might been partially responsible for the backlash. It’s human nature to hate change.

I must say, when I first saw the screenshots of the new layout posted on the official Facebook blog a few weeks ago I was rather optimistic. The FB crew seemed to be embracing the new “real-time” web that’s become popular with the rise of Twitter. I really like the way that all your friends’ updates just appear in one big long list. It’s a major improvement over the old “news feed” which was entirely broken! There would be times when I’d see a “story” 2 times on the same day, or the story would appear one day, then re-appear the next for no apparent reason. It was frustrating.

I haven’t run across it yet, but I imagine they the real-time feed could easily become incredibly busy and equally unusable. The filters along the left-hand side should help to alleviate this problem. But it’s possible that at certain times of the day, for heavy users, there is going to be too much junk to weed through.

I’m really not sure how I feel about the overal design itself. They left the header and (floating) footer alone. Those two elements have have always been the least useful, most confusing elements of the site (like why does the “Inbox” drop down menu have a link to “view message inbox” that takes you to the same place as clicking “inbox” – baffling!). It’s lacking something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s empty and busy at the same time, if that’s possible.

Years of switch ads and John Hodgman awesomeness have finally gotten to me. I bought a 15″ MacBook Pro. I’m living the iLife. It’s my first real Apple experience since the Apple IIe, overall I’m pretty impressed, though I have this sinking feeling that I’m not using OS X to it’s fullest potential.

That said, there are a few major myths about the operating system that need to be busted.

1. It’s easier to use
For a long time, Macs (even before OS X) had the unfortunate distinction as the “dummy” computer, good for old people and computer illiterates. Because of this sterotype, I had assumed the the user-interface was somehow inherently easier to use. This is absoultely untrue.
Some things are a little easier. Installing apps is a little easier, sometimes, depending on the installer. Systems preferences is a laid out a little better than the Windows control panels, especially Vista’s. Apps integrate with the OS a little better. Spotlight is pretty awesome. But in general, things are just different, no better or worse than Windows.

A number of important apps/features are actually harder to use:

• cmd vs ctrl: The OS X equivalent of the control key – in windows (and gnome for that matter) – is command. ctrl+z in windows, translates to cmd+z in osx. The issue here is keyboard layout. The cmd key is located right next to the spacebar. This makes any shift+cmd combination extremely difficult to pull off.
• Finder Sucks!: Finder is just not a very good way to manipulate files. The main problem is the lack of an “up” button to navigate to the parent directory. Finder has a back button – “back” isn’t always “up.” Finder also has a dropdown which lists all the directories in the path, while this is a more efficient way to go navigate “up” 2 directories or more, it’s less efficient when you want to navigate up 1 directory – 2 clicks to use the dropdown vs. 1 click to use an “up” button.
  Another issue is the accordion directory interface you get in list view – 1 click opens the directory in the current view, 2 clicks opens the directory as your current view.
  The list view itself is also broken. There is no way to organize the list view to match the default windows list view. I.E. Directories at the top, files below, in alphabetical order.
  Don’t even get me started on the “save file” interface.
• Menu Bar: While I think the top of the screen is actually the correct location for things like the clock and other indicators, the menu bar paradigm does not work well with multiple displays. When I open an app on my secondary display I have to go back to the primary display everytime I want to use the app’s menus. Really does not make any sense.
• Dock: It’s kind of useless.
• Alert Boxes: Application alerts (eg. “Are you sure you want to exit”) appear at the top of the app window, as opposed to the center of the screen. This is another minor UI mistake, imho.

2. Security features are not annoying
OS X warns me the first I open a file or run an app I’ve downloaded off the internet (even if i actually downloaded the file in an archive). Enough said.

3. It doesn’t crash
In a week of use I’ve had 2 or 3 (stable) apps crash, the OS froze and needed to be powercycled once. This is not a good start.

UPDATE!:

Setupmac.com has a solution to my issue with the up button.
First, the keyboard shortcut ⌘↑ goes to the “enclosing folder.” I think this alone solves my problem!!
Second, they also have a patch to add an up button to the finder toolbar.
Link

Hak5 is an internet TV show about “everything from network security, open source and forensics, to DIY modding and the homebrew scene.” In some ways it’s the spiritual successor to The Broken. I was a big fan of thes how when they first started releasing episodes 4 3 years ago.  But for one reason or another, I stopped following the show sometime near the end of the first season.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I heard that Hak5 had been signed to Revision 3 earlier this summer. I watched the first and second episodes as soon as I found them available on tivo. To my dismay, the show has gone down hill. The episodes were not at all up to par with the production quality of most other shows on the revision 3 network. 

First of all, the show did not seem to be edited or rehearsed. The hosts were literally reading off scripts in front of them and they still managed to make mistakes! A couple of times the shot quickly switched between the 3 sets for no apparent reason. In some cases the hosts had trouble demoing the software they were talking about. I don’t get why they did not take the time to edit out any of these error and/or reshoot scenes. I’d assume that Revision 3 would be giving them a budget or direct accept to their editing infrastructure, so that amateur mistakes like this don’t make it to air. 

Second, the new hosts are really unpolished and awkward. There’s a weird (lack of) chemistry between the 3 of them. Also, the topics they talk about are fairly complex and the hosts aren’t able to strike a good balance between explaining the complexities in a way that’s understandable by a wider range of people. For example, in episode one, mubix tried explain a piece of “forensics” software called Maltego. I spent the entire 10 minute segment wondering when he was going to actually explain the software, benefits of using and how there was anything “forensic” about the software. Even though he gave a couple of use-cases, I didn’t understand what he was talking about. He just said the word “transforms” a lot. 

The other software that they talked about in the two episodes I watched was all fairly irrelevant. Covering openDNS in a show that also covers fairly advanced network management tools and hacking concept seems a little backwards. And why would you have a guy try to explain decompiling windows programs and hexediting when he admits that he’s not even a programmer.

The overal format of the show has just become very confusing.

Other than that, the show still has a couple of good things going for it.
The microshaft ads are still hilarious.
The old host Darrent is still good.
It seems like they are focus on some more pratical “hacking” technics, DIY and other stupid nerd tricks.
Even though I’m not involved in it, it does seem like the show has a good community, that’s always a good thing.

Links to the episodes: 
Episode 1
Episode 2

With the looming Canadian federal election, I thought I’d take a look at the federal party websites. I’ll be rating them on 5 characteristics, on a 5 point scale:

• Design: How much I like the look and feel.
• User Interface: How well does the site layout work
• Candidate Info: How good is the info on the candidate in my riding. 
• Web 2.0: How well are they pimping themselves on the social networks, are they including a lot of media, etc. 
• Ease of contributing: Online donations have been a major part of the current US Presidential election. I took a quick look at their contribution processes to see if there were any obvious problems. I didn’t actually donate.

NDP – 92%

• Design: 5. My favorite site. Nice and tidy, good use of orange. Cute icons.
• UI: 4.5. The index page is really well organized. The drop down menus are a little redundant, since most of them only contain 1 elements. The use of flash on the for the candidate finder is unfortunate that page should really be accessible to everyone.
• Candidate Info: 4.5. The bio is a little sparse.
• Web2.0: 4. Twitter, facebook. Their site looks the most web 2.0.
• Donation: 5. The most straightforward process of them all.

Conservatives – 90%

• Design: 4. Decent overall. Some weird layout and graphic choices. 
• UI: 4.5. Dropdown menus are familiar, nice series of quicklinks on the right nav. 
• Candidate Info: 4.5. Has everything I could want except for his mailing address.
• Web2.0: 5. They’re on the ball, flickr account, friend feed, twitter, myspace, facebook. And all their ads are online. 
• Contributions: 4.5. Giant donation buttons everywhere. They’re already required to collect a lot of info already, they could have at least made it a one step process. 

Green – 76%

• Design: 4. Pretty good. Albeit a little uninspired and sloppy. Probably designed by a volunteer.
• UI: 4.5. Bonus marks for using a drilldown information structure and NOT using dropdown menus.
• Candidate Info: 4. Long Bio. No mailing address.
• Web2.0: 2.5. They have blogs and a youtube channel.
• Contributions: 4. Nice and easy.

Liberal – 52%

• Design: 3.5. Simple. Just a little too simple. Too much white. 
• UI: 3. Use of flash on the index for something that could’ve been easily done in javascript was a bad choice. Other than that, it’s pretty run of the mill. 
• Candidate Info: 0! No picture! No personal contact info! No permalink. Unacceptable. 
• Web2.0: 3.5. Facebook, youtube, some video and pictures. Seems like an afterthought. 
• Contributions: 3. The page is quite cluttered and a little confusing. The page contains elements outside of the secured site, causing a certificate error that will probably scare of some potential contributors. 

Bloc Québécois – 47.5%

• Design: 2.5. Looks like puke, but it could be worse.
• UI: 3. Mediocre. 
• Candidate Info: N/A. They only run candidates in Quebec.
• Web2.0: 1. They have a “blogue” I guess that’s worth something.
• Contributions: 3. The online form is only available in french (isn’t that against some law?!). It appears to be pretty straightforward.

Libertarian – 23%

• Design: 0. My 7 month old son could design a better site. 
• UI: 3. It’s oldschool, but effective.
• Candidate Info: N/A. None in my riding.
• Web2.0: 0.5. They have a forum *shrug*.
• Contributions: N/A. I think they’re still too small to be accepting donations on a large scale. 

 
There you have it, if you want to vote based on my opinion of the party’s website, you’ll have to vote NDP.
I took a look at the rest of the minor parties for any standouts. The Canadian Action Party has a surprisingly good website. The West Block Party‘s site is easily the worst, it has an under construction diggerman.

I’ve been trying to find a good todo list keeping method for years. I’ve tried online services like tadalist, i’ve tried using a moleskine. Nothing seems to work for me.

Internet Super Mom bought me this combination mouse-pad, todo list about a week ago. So far it seems to have solved my todo list woes.