DragonStyle

Darius Goes West

Last night Megan and I actually arranged for a baby sitter and went out for the evening (first time we've ever done that since moving to Seattle). A friend had forwarded an email about a screening of a documentary, 'Darius Goes West,' that was part of a fund raising effort, and we decided to attend. The film is the story of Darius Weems, a young man with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and a group of his friends. Together, they drive from Georgia to California and back. The film was moving- wonderfully put together and telling a touching story.

Darius Goes West Trailer

If you have the opportunity to see this film, I'd highly recommend it. If you have the chance to see it and raise a little money for DMD, even better.

Technorati Tags: Movie, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Dice-K

If all goes as planned, I will spend tomorrow afternoon at Safeco field, sitting behind home plate with a lap full of Garlic fries and watching Daisuke Matsuzaka pitch. Feel the jealousy.

Technorati Tags: Baseball, Red Sox, Dice-K

Man Throws a Log at a Bear, Killing It - New York Times

Used to be, before life got complicated, I would head to the Boundary Waters in the summer and do a little Canoeing and a little fishing. Black bears, though unusual, are present in those parts, and you're really in the Wilderness once you paddle in a few days. So, a couple friends and I have a long standing discussion about whether, in a life and death situation, you could fight a black bear without a gun and win (you could throw rocks, use a paddle, etc). I guess this settles the argument.

Man Throws a Log at a Bear, Killing It - New York Times

Technorati Tags: Funny, Bear, Camping

Inch by Inch

So I'm reading a back post from Joel on Software and I stumble upon a quote from Dave Winer that I believe (without any reservation) hits the nail on the head.

So when I say "inch by inch" -- that's what I mean. To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don't win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch.  

Once you know the truth of the above, there almost nothing more depressing than watching software get created by people who aren't fighting for every inch.

Bravo!

Technorati Tags: Usability, Sofware Development

Focus and Keyboard Mnemonic Behavior

A tester has pointed out some inconsistency in Writer's behavior when the user presses the alt key to activate a control. It seems that some of the time, the activated control, though selected and accepting input, doesn't actually look focused- it doesn't display the focus rectangle that we're used to seeing.

I mentioned this to Spike, and he said that the rules governing the display of focus vs. mnemonics were complicated, but in essence, the two aren't always shown together.

With that clue in hand, I set out to see if I could figure out what the expected behavior should be. I started with some searching using popular search engines, but after 20 or so minutes decided to simply build a small test app and see if I could just figure it out. 15 minutes later, I think I'm done.

Article on some of the new goodness in the WLW API

Scott Lovegrove (I'm pretty sure a 0 belongs in there somewhere) wrote a nice article that includes a change that even I'd forgotten was in Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - plug-ins now have access to the content that is selected in the browser. This is a tiny change that should unlock a world of possibility- plug-ins can now interact and modify the user's selection!

Thanks for reminding me about that, Scott! Thanks for the 'I'm feeling Lucky' plug-in too!

LiveSide - Developer Blog : Windows Live Writer's New APIs, Deployment Methods And A Hidden Extra

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer, SDK, Plug-ins

Great Little Feature of Writer

The latest Beta of Writer includes a great little subtle feature. If you're trolling the Net and find a great video on Youtube, Soapbox, or whatever, just paste the embed code right into Writer. It'll do the right thing!

For example:

or

Nice!

Technorati Tags: Writer, Video, Conchords

Onfolio Installer Error 2739

I recently reformatted and cleaned up my home machine, and as a part of the reinstall of various apps, I went to gallery.live.com to get trusty old Onfolio . When I perused the comments from users of the Gallery, there were some positive, and some negative. A number of the negative comments had to do with installation problems specifically on Vista. Of course I know that we worked _really_ hard to make Onfolio work on Vista, so I was bummed to read that.

Vista Wired Network Performance Problem Solved

So I recently cleaned up my home machine, repartitioned the drives, and reinstalled Vista. Exciting since it will mean the machine is in a wonderful clean state (I had previously upgraded over XP, which worked fine but always makes me a little bit suspicious). But, since that time, my network performance has been just terrible. How terrible? Well have a look-

You're reading that right- my Comcast cable modem was performing just a little better than dialup. It felt like 1995 all over again.

While I'm Suggesting Revisiting A Body of Work

May I suggest a little Dinosaur Jr.? I spent a couple of weeks focused on Dinosaur Jr. and there is an awful lot there to like. I recommend spending a little time on them.

 

Technorati tags: Music, Dinosaur Jr

 

And of course there is new Dinosaur Jr to check out...