Nonsensor: Mike's Blog

Visit my Tumblr

Mike Propst — 2008-06-18T12:33:00+00:00

I may have mentioned that actually blogging hasn't been happening lately. I was reminded at some point though, that I have a Tumblr blog which I think is pretty neat. It requires neither the conciseness and short-cleverness of Twitter, nor the actual thought behind making a real blog post. So point your feed readers here for links, videos, random thoughts, quotes, etc...

nonsensor.tumblr.com

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Funny how that works

Mike Propst — 2008-06-16T21:00:00+00:00

The more interesting your life is, the less likely you'll have time to document it...

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Stop using Ajax!

Mike Propst — 2008-05-06T02:10:00+00:00

Let's get something straight: I don't think that. That's actually the title of a blog post on an Opera Dev blog I wanted to link to.

There's always a lot of talk of accessible JavaScript, especially from designers. Usually they advocate complicated solutions involving appending event handlers onto HTML elements after load, to avoid inline onclicks and such. And to me, that's an audience thing. Yes, flashy scripts on blogs for no good reason are silly, but to say that the user experience is equivalent between the real Flickr and the example prototype he put together is... well, you know.

I go around in my head about this occasionally, and sometimes I feel like I've sold out accessibility in the name of great features and ease of use for customers who can see at the expense of people who can't. Because let's face it, when we talk about accessibility and Ajax, we're talking about the visually-impaired or blind (and that's largely because of the terrible technology those users are forced to deal with).

But then I think about what amazing products we've made with Ajax, and what advances we made in usability and user experience (yes, the two are different) because of it, I don't want to stop what we're doing.

Besides, there's a semi-universal truth here: no absolute statements are always true.

Except that one.

Ha! But really. That's extreme. And worse - while the designers adding event handlers may be cautiously and constructively conservative, this is plain reactionary. I don't have an answer for it, but like most things, the solution lies somewhere in the middle of a pure Ajax world and a purely plain hypertext world.

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Mixwit

Mike Propst — 2008-04-24T01:25:00+00:00

Hot on the heels of Muxtape, a new (I think?) service called Mixwit lets you create mixtapes that are a little different.

The tapes are visually more fun
They're sharable on a blog
It's flash-based (so unlike Muxtape, no iPhone compatibility)
You can have multiple tapes per user

But most fundamentally different, Mixwit's pretty well protected from a C&D order by the fact that they don't even host music. All they do is let you search using Skreemr and Seeqpod, two already cool services, and grab the audio from the results.

It's a little lacking in social features, but much like Muxtape, a lot of the fun comes from randomly discovering new mixes and seeing what people have done with it.

Here's a tape I made of old ska, rocksteady, and reggae from the 60s and early 70s.

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Life is good when you design your own blog software

Mike Propst — 2008-04-04T12:50:00+00:00

Why? Because WordPress 2.5 came out, and I pine for Blogsmith every time I use it.

This was supposed to be the be-all, end-all, Mr. fixit version because it changed so much design-wise in the CMS/backend portion. Well, it did change. Let's look at some of the benefits:

Improved image handling: I won't lie, this is an improvement, and something that we need to work on as well. The biggest improvement is a Flash multi-upload, but I think Blogsmith proves that you can't end there, we've had it for ages but still have work to do.
Note to all WordPress users: "Full" size does in fact resize your images, to the width defined in wp-includes/media.php. I use the image caption easy plugin, so I need two "full" sizes - one for with captions, one for without. I have to change that setting in that file every time? I'll work on it and see what can be done.
Better tagging: looks a lot like ours now. But that's ok, with the exception of the auto-complete (really the big thing and we finally got around to it only a short time ago ourselves), we got the interface style from Flickr.
"Improved" dashboard: Wastes piles of space.The same information, except I can only see some of it without scrolling.
"Improved" post editing screen: Approximately 480 pixels down from the top of your browser viewport lies the top line of content in your WYSIWYG editor. I thought our 300 was bad, and we have a logo and two rows of navigation showing at all times. On my Macbook, I have a hard time blogging because I can see about three lines of content. I could scroll down, sure, but hitting "enter" in your post will re-scroll the page back to the top. Just a frustrating bit of unneccessary nonsense. All of the options, except the publishing options, are underneath the post, which I suppose doesn't technically bother me but why not use all that empty space on the right? I'm not sure I get the reasoning behind that, 2.0's collapsible side boxes were great.

I don't mean to insult what are basically my people, and I certainly am not trying to be on a high horse, but WordPress 2.5's CMS was quite obviously designed by "designers" who seemed to be striving for aesthetics rather than useful software. White space is very pleasant to look at, but a calming effect is secondary in my writing environment to the ability to do my writing.

I hope someone out there does a reworking of the back end a la the "Tiger" version from a while back, but frankly a little CSS work isn't gonna hack it. Maybe we'll do it...

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What is Dreamhost doing to keep people?

Mike Propst — 2008-03-25T23:24:00+00:00

Yes, my Blogsmith-powered blog is safe from all these issues, and has some of the best people behind it, but I do have other sites and projects, and they're hosted on Dreamhost. In fact, some of them are clients and friends' sites. The $7.5 million dollar fuckup notwithstanding (it didn't affect me), Dreamhost's ridiculous amount of downtime in the past 2 years versus the great service they offered when I first jumped on has gotten ridiculous.

High class problems to have, I suppose - they grew too fast. But I use a fraction of my alloted services, so it kind of makes me think, why not scale back the 180,000TB of storage and bandwidth you offer customers like me who pay only $10 a month?

The only thing they seem to be doing is coasting by on their "personality," i.e., joking on their blog about mistakenly charging customers hundreds of dollars.

At any rate, my account comes up for renewal next month, and I think I'm going to be gone by then.

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Austin bound

Mike Propst — 2008-03-06T00:18:00+00:00

It's that time of year again. Time to hit some warmer weather and hang out with a town full of geeks off the leash. It should be crazy, fun, and yes, even edifying. Maybe I'll blog my thoughts on some panels, but time can get away from you around there.

If you see me and the Blogsmith crew, stop by and we'll hoist a nerdy beer for Gary Gygax.

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It's not the same

Mike Propst — 2008-02-27T09:17:00+00:00

I suppose I'm a little behind the times, and maybe hindsight has left both of the authors here with a little change of perspective, but I was kind of bothered by a couple different blog posts on the same subject, namely that iPhone-specific or iPhone-optimized sites are tantamount to "this page best viewed in" warnings of the 90s.

First, there's CSS whiz Eric Meyer being absolutely, unequivocally, against optimization for a single platform. I get red flags going off all over the place when I see anything absolute - to put it another way, "absolutes are always wrong ;) - and this is no exception. The problem with his position is that is contains a lot of assumptions (and no actual evidence: I've never seen a site give the warnings he claims to have seen), not the least of which involves the "lockout of other users."

Now, if there is an iPhone-optimized site out there that locks out other users from the same content, point me there. A standardista's pledge of total inclusivity is all well and fine, but an iPhone-based site does not negate that inclusion. It provides an additional alternative for someone with a specific device. Comparing that to requiring users to be at a certain screen resolution or running a certain desktop browser? Off base. It's not the same. Don't get me wrong, I straight up learned CSS from Meyer's books, but this is the same guy who insisted that reverse-chronological blog post order is somehow "broken."

Second post is on a Wired blog, comparing the iPhone to IE4. Well, that's even more ludicrous, although a couple half-decent points are raised.

"In essence, Apple has forced a third tier of websites on the world by failing to provide developers with an alternative means of creating applications on the iPhone."

That I'll say is partially true, but I don't think the SDK is going to stop iPhone-optimized sites. Why am I going to waste valuable storage space on my iPhone to download (for instance) an RSS reader that has to connect to the internet anyway, when Bloglines provides me a browser-based experience tailored to my device?

And if I want that tailored experience, goddammit I should be allowed to have it. Saying you feel excluded when Bloglines provides a fine desktop interface and a great mobile interface in addition to the iPhone one makes little sense. You're not being excluded. And that third tier is hardly "forced" anyway.

In essence, here's my thing: if a content or web app provider gives you a full desktop experience, and a mobile experience, why not a third? Google, Bloglines, 37Signals, tons of people are doing exactly that and I love it. I understand that you don't want to see the "standard" mobile version suffer, but if it doesn't, what's the harm?

Your policy of inclusion looks pretty non-inclusive if I can't have the optimal experience with my device just because you're afraid of "locking out" non-iPhone users from, uh .... iPhone Battleship.

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Interaction 08 videos online

Mike Propst — 2008-02-14T00:22:00+00:00

If, like me, you weren't at IxDA Interaction '08 in Savannah, you might enjoy this collection of videos from the conference. I've only watched a few so far, and though some skip the slides at seemingly important parts, many are really interesting. I especially liked Doug Bolin of Avenue A | Razorfish's presentation on making the complex help system for Microsoft's Sync, but maybe that's because we've been working on a help system recently as well. [via Thomas Baekdal]

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One hand clapping

Mike Propst — 2008-02-04T13:46:00+00:00

Merciless deadlines at the hands of a famous wizard (you know what I'm talking about) have really had me busy and a bit high strung lately, so here's some Japanese Zen wisdom for you.

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl" said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

You're welcome.

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This post has an image!

Mike Propst — 2008-01-31T11:48:00+00:00

The Veranda, Orlando. With French doors. A romantic place for a codejam.

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Edward Tufte on the iPhone

Mike Propst — 2008-01-25T11:50:00+00:00

One of my personal biggest inspirations, Edward Tufte, the king of information design and one of those old farts who apparently just can't grasp why they'd want to use RSS, has a review up on his website about the iPhone's interface. He also references some of his earlier work that reinforces his opinions.

The verdict is, he mostly likes it a lot, although he criticizes the weather and stock apps for mis-utilizing the high-res screen by showing too little information. I can dig it.

The main points seems to be:

eliminating "computer admin debris" from the interface, letting users directly manipulate the content, has allowed the tiny screen to contain the maximum amount of data possible.
Changing the paradigm from "temporal stacking," which becomes instantly tough to manage and navigate on a small screen (enter Exhibit A, Windows Mobile) to a sideways navigation on the same "surface" helps users keep track of "where they are."

My favorite takeaway, though, is something that is central to much of Tufte's work.

"Clutter and overload are not attributes of information; they are failures of design."

I love that quote. It's a principle Apple occasionally struggles with: they'll rip out functionality you might wish you had, in the name of simplicity. That being said, though, they do get it right much of the time, and the iPhone proves that.

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Remember Dr. King

Mike Propst — 2008-01-21T11:21:00+00:00

Remember why your bank is closed today, and try to forget the sad irony that roads named "Martin Luther King" often run through ghettos. We still have a long way to go (definitely true in Detroit), but I'd like to think today is a day to remind yourself of hope rather than get bogged down in despair.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

Here's the whole speech from YouTube:

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One more thing

Mike Propst — 2008-01-16T15:30:00+00:00

MacWorld is usually a pretty fun and exciting time, when swanky new products are announced that I'll never buy. Usually it's two stupid announcements paired off with one really cool one, and then an iPod update.

But this MacWorld gave us a lot of fun stuff. At least one of those things, the overdue Google Map locator for iPhone, was free (unless you're an iPod touch user, in which case they'll extort you for $20) so I already got it. It's lovely. Now Google not only knows what I'm doing, they know where I'm doing it! Exciting.

The Time Capsule is cool, but the MacBook Air is of course the flagship announcement. Alex likens the mixed response to the release of the iPod, or at least to the original floppy-free iMac. But the floppy drive was way dead when I got my first bondi iMac. I very much doubt that real life will happen for a lot of people without an optical drive; Apple is taking a very Microsoft approach in which convergence happens fantastically and your life is totally easy as long as you drink ALL the Kool-Aid instead of picking and choosing the parts of the Apple Experience you want. I mean, why insert a CD/DVD when you can buy the album/movie on iTunes, right?

I'm sure there's plenty of speculation (there definitely is in my mind) that the recently-surfaced patent application for an iMac-like docking station that a thin laptop slides into has something to do with this. That would, of course, make things even more absolutely perfect. In fact, I could probably get behind that if the total package wasn't going to run somewhere in the neighborhood of eight zillion dollars.

And to wrap it all up, here's a video my friend sent me yesterday of David Lynch expounding on his iPhone opinions. I suppose I see his point, but here's a man who makes Movies with a capital M, whose films don't even belong on the television. I don't even like it when people are eating popcorn when I go see a Lynch movie. But the sad truth is, part of what makes David Lynch great is that he still carries around a lot of romantic notions about movies - and Stomp The Yard is not Blue Velvet. It's real sweet that the idea of someone watching a movie on a small-ass screen makes him sad, but the idea of someone watching the latest Uwe Boll movie at all kind of makes me sad, so to each his own.

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Just some links

Mike Propst — 2008-01-08T15:40:00+00:00

Haven't blogged much lately. Too busy either working, playing music, or just dicking around in the semi-real world to dick around on the intertubes. So here's a few fun things I've looked at lately.

The decapitator. Check this mess out. A guy goes around London and replicates street ads then gruesomely removes their heads. Awesome and crazy street art.

Multi-touch whiteboard on the cheap. In case you don't follow my del.icio.us links (see sidebar) - This guy (not too surprisingly, from Carnegie Mellon) created a "whiteboard" with multi-touch capability that you can put anywhere as long as you have a projector or LCD screen and a Wii Remote, of all things. Surface what? Amazing stuff, and frankly I kind of want to try it. Also check out his rad 3D display.

Gary, Indiana: Ghost Town. I've lived here for how many years now and only recently went on my first urban exploration trip (Fisher Body Plant 21), but I've always assumed that Detroit was the King of Blight. Turns out, Gary Indiana isn't just that really smelly town on the way to Chicago, it's a nearly-abandoned empty shell. Much smaller place than here, but apparently much more complete devastation. Pictures of this kind of subject matter are a dime a dozen in Detroit, but the quality of these is really fantastic.

And finally, my new heroes, DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei (ages 8 and 5). I got nothing to say to this. Via Eliot's Twitter.

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The Least Great Generation?

Mike Propst — 2007-12-05T20:14:00+00:00

60 Minutes apparently ran a story on the "Millenials," the supposed nom de unlikely of the group born between 1980 and 1995 who are, if the story is to be believed, a bunch of worthless slackers that make "Generation X" look like diligent coal miners by comparison. Link is to the web companion story.

I may have technically missed this by one year, but only one year so that means that I'm some sort of "Millenial," and I've rarely seen a piece of reverse-ageism so offensive in my life. A bunch of so-called "experts" giving anecdotal evidence of why these damn kids should get off my lawn is not real journalism, it's useless pablum to tide retirees over until Andy Effing Rooney comes on at the end and makes some "timely" observation about how he sure gets a lot of junk mail - and say, everyone says "holiday" instead of "Christmas" these days.

Doesn't this happen every time they coin a name for the current generation? They did it for my brother with Generation "X" and now they're doing it for me, but the story is essentially the same: Ego-centric, drag-ass, and tantrum-prone, but gawrsh they shore do know them computers better'n us so can't live without 'em huh?

Perhaps most disturbingly, the reversed priority of being family- and lifestyle-minded rather than singularly career-focused is presented as odd. And the desire to be rewarded, in however small a way, for a job well done (the core of so many books about management I've glossed over, and just plain human nature) is presented as selfish and spoiled. Sorry, no I didn't walk uphill in the snow both ways to school. I grew up in Texas. And the bus was invented at some point in the years leading up to my birth.

If you need any proof that this is a load of complete nonsense (I sincerely hope if you're reading this then you don't), have a look at the 90% of my blogroll that falls into the "Millenial" category.

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Amazing mysteries of meat

Mike Propst — 2007-12-03T18:23:00+00:00

Everyone's probably been waiting with bated breath to hear about my glamorous adventure to Hawaii. It was quite exciting as well as relaxing, I assure you. But that's not what I'm here for today. I'm here to talk about sausage. I know what the Viceroy contingent will surely be saying, it's all in good fun until Mike ends up with the sausage in the mouth, but this is more along the lines of Gavin's ongoing series recounting the Horrors of Food.

Apparently some guy thought it would be a great idea to use his macro lens - the same kind that Judith often uses to bring us amazing pictures of birds, bugs, and flowers - to photograph something she probably wouldn't chomp even with your teeth: processed meats.

Did you think it'd be nasty? Have a look. It is.

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Happy Election Day!

Mike Propst — 2007-11-06T12:01:00+00:00

Ah yes, the first Tuesday in November, that magical time when we start to freak out about how dark it is at 4:00 in the afternoon, when wiener dogs decide it's too cold outside now I'll just poop on the floor thank you. Election day. Even better: Local election day. Confusing ballot issues, incompetent candidates, and the inevitable chucking of hundreds of lawn signs. I actually do enjoy it, in spite of how much it makes me think of that Chumbawamba gem from '86, "Always Tell The Voter What The Voter Wants to Hear," featuring classic couplets on political BS:

The matter is as dear to me as it is to you. Give me four years and I'll get right down to it. Because unlike my little balding colleague on my left, we don't make promises we can't keep.

or Alvey-esque campaign pledges:

Tax cuts and platform shoes
For every small businessman!

In all seriousness, I share their cynicism over national politics but on the local level, election day gives me faith in democracy. Plus they are anarchist 40-somethings with a vegetarian dog. Take Ferndale for instance. Where else but America can an openly gay guy move his way up through the ranks of city government for the past decade to run for mayor against the head of a small IT firm whose platform consists of "not gay" and "parking problems would be solved if residents would use their own driveways?" Nowhere, that's where.

So don't forget to vote today. Vote "Yes" on Proposition X and certainly vote "No" on Prop Y (are you crazy!), and worry about the disgusting mess over that president guy next year.

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Hot cider toddies

Mike Propst — 2007-10-29T15:02:00+00:00

Just sharing a bit of fall-time enjoyment for cool nights:

HOT CIDER TODDY

3 parts apple cider
1 part brandy
cinnamon
allspice
squeeze of lemon juice

Heat the cider with the cinnamon (stick or sprinkle) and allspice (whole or ground). Strain the spices out if you use whole ones. Pour in the brandy and squeeze a bit of juice over it. Really simple but a great way to take some chill off during cider season.

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MySpace redesigns dashboard, gets with the 90s

Mike Propst — 2007-10-25T12:36:00+00:00

It really is a welcome change to have the new MySpace home screen. It's not going to win any awards, but it provides a fairly overdue update to the leading social network site. Apparently Facebook is making enough traction to scare them into actually doing something with their design, which was poor for its time and sad in this one.

Oddly enough, it vaguely resembles this half-baked idea I threw together as a design exercise for myself a few months ago (click for full size).

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