Who says usability for the web can't be fun! Please play responsibly.
Mar 01, 2001
Creating usable web sites is important — just as important as it is to create visually interesting sites with interesting content. However, at times you just have to sit back and give things a good roasting.
Please...play responsibly.
- Go to any web or internet related conference.
- Sneak in lots to drink.
- Sneak in lots of friends.
- Attend the obligatory "User-Centered Web Design" keynote session featuring Web Usability Guru (™) Jakob Nielsen.
- Follow these rules:
Every time he says "micropayment", take one drink.
Every time his reasoning relies on having solved "the bandwidth problem", take one drink.
Every time he uses a made-up word like "linkrot" to sound more like Tufte
, take one drink.
Every time he forgets that design can be fun, take one drink.
Every time he excuses his own refusal to observe the rules he dictates to everyone else on the grounds that he "knows his audience", take one drink.
If he mentions scrolling, take one drink.
If he mentions that users don't scroll, take one drink.
If he mentions link colors, drink: once for "blue" once for purple" three for "red", which nobody who's used a browser since 1993 thinks of as a followed link color, anyway. It's the "active link" color, dammit.
If he mentions the Macintosh desktop metaphor, have a pretzel.
Every time he quotes statistics from an unrelated study to prove a point about Web usability, take one drink.
If he actually uses a relevant study, finish the bottle.
If Nielsen admits he got his design skills from watching Jerry Pournelle work on his "web page", clutch heart and die.
Keywords: | usability | sarcasm | Jakob Nielsen |
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Cats and dogs and men and women.
Feb 19, 2001
Cats are low-maintenance animals. You don’t have to housebreak a cat, or take it out for walks every day. They don’t make a lot of noise. You can almost completely ignore a cat and it won’t care much. Cats won’t demand that you give them attention. If you don’t give them constant affection, cats won’t get sulky and start destroying your belongings and ruining your life.
With all these qualities in cats, you’d think that more men would be cat people.
You can’t get a cat to change its behaviour. Cats will just sit there if you tell them about your problems, but they won’t act interested. A cat’s idea of a good day is lounging around on the sofa. Cats will never ask for help. Cats want to be touched, but only sometimes, and always on their terms. You don’t own the cats — the cats own you, and everybody knows this. Cats are very fickle, and will leave you if they find someplace they like more.
With all these qualities of cats, it’s almost surprising that so many women are cat people.
Dogs are high-maintenance animals. You need to teach a dog things, like not to pee indoors. You have to take dogs out every day, or they get unhappy. Dogs expect you to have all the answers; and when you don’t, they get unhappy. You need to give constant attention to dogs, or they get unhappy. When dogs get unhappy, they howl and whine.
With all these qualities in dogs, it’s interesting that so many men are dog people.
Dogs love spending time with their humans. Dogs will do almost anything you ask them to without complaining or asking “why”. Dogs -=know=- when they’ve done something wrong, and will work hard to get back into your good graces. A dog will never leave you for another human. A dog won’t even let another human take him away from you. To a dog, you are always and unquestionably the most wonderful creature on Earth.
With all these qualities in dogs, you’d think that more women would be dog people.
Keywords: | humor | dogs | cats |
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I like my vacations unstructured and relatively inactive. Apparently, this is abnormal.
Feb 15, 2001
Why is it that vacations are usually more stratified and planned out than a standard work week? It would seem, logically, that a vacation should be a restful time of leisure and calm. So why is it that vacations often cause as much stress as filing your federal taxes? People seem to have this concept that on a vacation, you need to be constantly Going Somewhere and Doing Something. It’s just wrong to sit still and be quiet for longer than three hours — then, by Mum And Apple Pie, you’d better be off to your next event, or you’ll waste your vacation time! But isn’t that the point of vacation time? To be still if you want? To go places if you want? To do nothing if you want? To waste it if you want? Or are we all so structured and strictured that we can’t function without some kind of externally imposed routine?
In the modern age of automation when people might work ten or twenty hours a week,
man for the first time will be forced to confront himself with the true spiritual problems of living!
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
I remember vacationing in Panama for Christmas 1991, during the time when the Panama Canal had been given to the Panamanians but the Canal was still being managed and run by American personnel. My then-boyfriend and I flew down, stayed with his parents for ten days, spent three days at the San Blas Islands (I recommend that anyone who visits Central America go scuba diving off the San Blas Islands - it’s gorgeous), and then flew home. I didn’t really care about seeing the native market, or buying gold jewelry, or heading into the mountains to browse at a craft fair. I just wanted to walk around, relax, and spend time with my boyfriend and finally see the place where he grew up. I vividly remember looking out the bathroom window every morning and seeing the blue-black clouds from the morning rains, and the bright green hills in front. I remember the flight to the San Blas Islands, and how small the island looked when we came in for a landing. I remember meeting his aunt and cousins at a family dinner. I remember meeting the marmalade cat from the next yard over, who came into their back yard every afternoon and purred like he was trying to loosen his skeleton. I loved my time there. Apparently, though, many of them thought that I was unhappy because I didn’t express any interest in doing these various things.
My mother was hit by some bug — I believe it is commonly called "competition with the sister". Every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, as well as a few other days each year, the two families would gather at one house or the other for a family evening. I dubbed these "Happy Family Memories": Thou Shalt Be Happy Or Else, God Dammit. My cousins heard about my term, and called these little get-togethers "Hideous Family Memories". There was inevitably tension at these get-togethers, but it was the weeks of planning that preceded the events that were the true hell. Mum would gradually become more tightly wound (as would everyone in our house, and probably in theirs, too), and she’d start getting snappish. Then came The Day Of Reckoning. Get a decoration theme ready. Dress nicely. Set the table with the nice dishes. Clean the whole house. Clean it again. Okay now, this is family. They’ve seen us ill. We’ve seen them ill. The kids have seen each other bruised and banged up from playing. Why are we acting as if they’ve never seen the house with a tiny bit of clutter before?!?? Eventually Mom outgrew this phase. I had moved out of the house by then. Funny how life works out like that…
Let me say how much I love my family. Really, I do. But sometimes they drive me so crazy. Then I get out into the Real World (™) and find that other people aren’t much better.
Don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes I like running about and doing things. But that’s usually when I’ve planned for that type of vacation. When I met up with the Lexxians in Halifax, the group of us walked all over the place. We went to local plays, we walked up and down the wharf, we checked out the last days of the Busker’s Festival (this in addition to the convention-like stuff). But I didn’t tour the Citadel. I never visited Peggy’s Cove, nor do I particularly care to. To paraphrase what many said when James Cameron’s "Titanic" hit the theatres: "It’s a cove. Get over it." If I were a Nova Scotian, I might feel differently. As it is, I don’t really much care. The beaches on the west coast of the continent are nicer anyway (snark). And we don’t have to worry about freezing to death after four minutes in the water (snark snark). I’d rather spend time talking with the people, or sleeping in, or loafing about — all things I can’t do when I’m at home and in the middle of a work week.
Stop for a minute and think. When was the last time you just...did...nothing? And I’m not talking the kind of nothing that people often do at large corporations when someone further up the decision-chain is stopping things. I’m talking about just sitting and being quiet. Relaxing. Having yourself a little Zen moment. (Sleeping when you’re ill doesn’t count.)
Or pretty soon, you’ll start needing vacations from your vacations.
Keywords: | stress | relaxing | free time | family |
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Why I choose not to have children. Ever.
Feb 09, 2001
We’ve got a work ethic that infuses almost every facet of the culture: everything is work, and there is no excuse for slacking. This, in part, means that many people simply assume that all women want to have children at some point in their lives. I have a healthy work ethic, but I don’t want to have children. If hysterectomies were voluntary procedures, I would have had one shortly after I hit puberty. My appendix will probably get more productive work than my ovaries. My reason for not wanting children isn’t based in childhood unhappiness, or in fears for my health, or financial worries. It’s much simpler than that. Problem is, my reason sounds to most people like an excuse or a dodge.
American society (and to an extent most Western societies) is full of messages that say that women should not only have children, but should want to have children. New mothers are like zealots, trying to convince other women to have a child because it feels so great. When you find a truly enthusiastic woman, the experience of being coerced into giving birth can be like attending an Amway sales convention or a religious revival. Some people may argue that a woman’s body is made for having children, and that by not having children I’m not fulfilling my potential. I reply, I have the ability to use a handgun...or a club, for that matter. Should I then go out and shoot or beat people to fulfil that potential? I think not. Bearing children is one thing that I am physically capable of doing. It doesn’t mean that it’s something that I should do. (Another analogy is: I have the physical capability to have sex with every man I meet, and there’s no -=WAY=- I’m doing that. For one thing, there just aren’t enough colours of pink.) Others may say the Bible tells that God charged man with being fruitful and multiplying. I say to them, read the rest of that verse. You know, those last little words that read “...until all of the Earth shall be filled.” Have you taken a look at global population numbers lately? We’re there and past the point, and still the population is growing. The annual global birth rate exceeds the death rate, meaning that there are more and more people on the earth every year. Unfortunately, the resources — like food, space, even something as simple as meaningful work — aren’t keeping pace.
But underneath it all, I didn’t choose not to have children because of any noble reason like not wanting to contribute to overpopulation, or breaking the stereotype of all women wanting children. Those are explainations, true; and I do believe that they can be good reasons for not having children. But the real reason is that I don’t want that responsibility.
Children can be a joy to their parents (just ask the mother or father of any newborn), but they’re also a responsibility. This is another person that you have to care for, feed, clothe, shelter, teach, and entertain. This is no short-term job, either. This will go on and on for at least eighteen years, longer in many cases. You need patience, and tolerance, and a sense of humour. It seems to me that many people have children without considering the responsibility they will have for these children, and giving the matter a really good think. They end up unhappy. The children, who are completely innocent and have no coping mechanisms for this kind of wrongful blame, bear the brunt of the unhappy parent’s dissatisfaction.
I know myself well enough to know that I would not be happy as a mother. Setting aside the physical pain of passing a bowling ball and the back troubles my pregnancy would give me, I do not have patience when I think someone should know better. I am very patient with ignorance, and several people have told me that I’d make a great teacher. But when I believe that someone should know something, and they either don’t know it or don’t know it and make no effort to find out, I’m not a pleasant life form to be around. Kids make lots of mistakes. They push boundaries. This is all a part of learning and growing up, and sometimes they have to make their own mistakes and take the consequences. Being a good parent means finding that balance between supporting your child and smothering them. I simply don’t have the patience to keep finding this ever-changing balance.
I don’t think I could be selfless enough to give a child the mental and emotional arsenal that they would need to thrive in today’s world. Sometimes I’d be a great parent. Other times, I’d be a hideous parent. I would want to do things that I couldn’t, and I’d get resentful and take it out on the child. Okay, let’s revise that. I’m sure that if I suddenly had to care for a child, I could probably modify my behaviour and become more supportive to the child. I just don’t want to if I don’t have to. I don’t want to take on the responsibility of raising even one child. Two cats are enough, and they mostly take care of themselves. They don’t ask for allowance, they don’t need to be clothed, and they don’t need braces. They won’t ever be attending university. They won’t call me nasty names, then ask for the car keys in the same breath. I always make sure they have enough food and water, I clean out the litterbox, I play with them, I take then to the veterinarian every year, keep their claws clipped (that and bathing them are adventures in and of themselves), and I let them know how much I love them. I get someone to watch after them whenever I go on a trip. I enjoy petting them, watching them, and playing with them. But I don’t have to teach them right from wrong. I don’t have to let them go out on dates with other cats who I think might not be good for them. And while owning a cat can also be a commitment of eighteen years or longer (if we’re lucky), cats are able to care for themselves after a few months — not after a few years. Of all mammals, humans have the longest time span where the young are utterly defenseless, and completely dependent on the parent for the basics of living (5 to 7 years). Humans aren’t even physically mature for the first decade of their lives. Our society has effectively extended the time of childhood out to 18 years. While this does give children more time to simply learn without having to divert resources toward survival, it does mean that the parent is partially to completely responsible for providing at least the basics of survival for nearly two decades. That’s a long time. I don’t want to do that. The payoff is not, for me, worth it.
I don’t get along well with most people. I am not incredibly social. Given a choice between attending a party and reading a book by myself, I’d choose the book every time. I know that it’s just a matter of learning. But if I don’t truly long to be the parent to a child, then I shouldn’t take on that responsibility. This isn’t like cooking a meal, or even building a house, where if you don’t like the results you can just throw it out and start over. This isn’t even like writing a program, where you can erase the offending code (or leave the program untouched for months at a time). You have one chance at helping this person grow, and the tiniest mistake can have unforseen consequences and the cost of fixing the mistake can be very high, both to society and (most importantly) to the child itself. Plenty of other people make the decision to have children, and lots of them are very happy. That’s great! People who really want to have children and raise them, who know the responsibilities involved, are prepared to take on those responsibilities, and still really want to raise children...should definitely have children.
I just don’t want kids.
Oh right, on that “passing a bowling ball” remark: I’ve heard from a number of mothers that giving birth gives you a feeling like no other in the world. There is pain, yes, but afterward you feel so amazing..! Got news for ya, folks. That’s a very simple chemical reaction. A pregnant woman’s body is in varying degrees of pain for four to eight months, not including the birth itself. Once the baby is born, there is no longer a weight pressing on the kidneys and other internal organs. There’s an instant weight loss of 20 lbs. or more (the baby, plus the fluids), which means that the back isn’t being stressed. Weight is removed from the pelvis. The leg muscles don’t have to support this weight any more. It’s a huge release of endorphins as your body’s systems slowly come to realise that they’ve just been freed of constantly carrying around a 20+ pound, 2.5-foot-round object. That great feeling that women get from childbirth is your body -=partying=-.
Keywords: | family planning | childfree |
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It's the little differences that throw us the hardest.
Feb 03, 2001
I recently emigrated from the United States to Canada. (And if I hear one more person ask "Why did you move from the US to Canada?" in the same tone as they might ask "Why did you slam your hand in the car door on purpose?" I will be Very Angry.) For everyone in the United States, Canada’s great. You really should come up for a visit some time, though if you live in the south or the west, I’d confine my visits to the summer months. The people of Canada do not live in igloos, there is not snow on the ground year-round in Toronto, and you get from place to place using your feet, a bicycle, or a car - not sled dogs. Unless you go to Quebec, you don’t have to speak any language other than English. The money looks different and there are no dollar bills, but it’s spendable for food and lodgings and other things. In cities on the US/Canadian border, most businesses will even accept American cash (you’ll just get your change back in Canadian money.) Cars drive on the right side of the road (that’s "right", not "correct"...but for North America, it’s the same thing.) US citizens don’t even need to get a visa go travel to Canada. If you were in a US city one day and magically woke up the next day in a Canadian city, you wouldn’t notice the difference right away. The differences are all in the details.
The maple leaf, not the stars and stripes, flies from the tops of buildings. The sodas use sugar, not corn syrup. (They never went through the "new formula Coca-cola" garbage up here, they stayed with the good stuff!) Sausage is spiced differently - it’s not as piquant. The drugs are different. Not the illegal ones...they’re probably the same just about everywhere. I’m talking about the legal ones that are in every drug store and supermarket. The stuff that everyone depends on to get them through colds and flu. Out of all the things that could have given me problems — this one was by far the oddest.
When I was living in the US and had a bad cold, I would get non-drowsiness formula cold medications. I would take a single regular dosage of the medications in the evening, and never mind what the package said, they would put my lights out. Non-drowsiness forumula Sinutab and Benadryl were companions I could count on. I was guaranteed a good night’s sleep uninterrupted by coughing, waking up achy, or any of that garbage. Best of all, this was all without alcohol (which is in most cough syrups.) I would wake up the next day feeling, well, not necessarily better, but I did wake up the next day - not several times during the night. This did mean that I had to suffer through the days, but I’d make the best of it, knowing that my non-drowsiness forumla buddies were waiting to speed me on my way to six, seven, maybe even nine hours of blissful, uninterrupted, healing slumber.
My first Canadian winter was no problem. I crossed the border in October, and had a decent single-person pharmacopia for winter chills, coughs, hacks, fevers, and flu. My second Canadian winter I was out of medications, and made a trip to my local store and bought a package of non-drowsiness formula Sinutab. I got home, waited until after dinner, took the Sinutab and got ready for bed. Damn if the non-drowsiness formula didn’t do what the packaging said: it didn’t put me to sleep!!! I stayed awake most of the night aching and wheezing and feeling yucky; and couldn’t sleep during the day. This was a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
After a few days, the cold began its migration from my head to my chest, and I started coughing. Previously I would have gotten enough sleep that this stage was REAL short - a day or so, at the most. This time, though, it hung on and on and on… I headed back to the store to get some cough syrup (those lozenges never do me a bit of good.) Looked through all the usual suspects, Nyquil (just slap a "percent-proof" on that stuff), Vicks 44D, and others of their ilk. I spotted Buckley’s Cough Mixture on the shelves. I’d been seeing ads for this stuff since I crossed the border. The price (about half of what the others cost) combined with the lack of alcohol in the stuff decided me, and I took a bottle home.
Buckley’s Cough Mixture is apparently uniquely Canadian. Their ads feature an old man walking out on a stage to stand in front of a microphone. He speaks the ad-stuff, and slowly turns to head off the stage to applause from the audience, and then the commercial cuts to a picture of a bottle of the cough mixture against a plain white background. Buckley’s slogan is "It tastes terrible, and it works." Knowing this, I was prepared for just about anything. I read the directions like a good little self-medicator, opened the bottle, and poured a tablespoon of this thickish, oozy, milky-white stuff. My thoughts were a little off the beam:
They want me to swallow this...and they’re not taking me out to dinner first?
I screwed up my courage and swallowed, and for ten of the longest seconds of my life my throat felt like it was being clawed by small animals with lethal pedicures. The main ingredients in Buckley’s are menthol and camphor. They have a soothing effect, but more importantly, there’s a slight numbing effect too. Unfortunately, the numbing effect takes longer to kick in. Well, they were right about the taste - but geez, they want us to swallow, they want us to pay for the privilege of doing so, and they don’t even have the courtesy to add pineapple juice? NOW I know why the guy in the Buckley’s commercial always has that hidden smug look on his face. I also know why he walks like he does. He’s not old, he’s 23!! He’s just prematurely aged from filling all of those little bottles. He can’t even walk completely upright any more.
I now have friends in the US pledged to send me American-style over-the-counter medications in care packages, containing Aleve (basically non-prescription strength naproxen sodium), Neosporin (can’t figure out why this isn’t available up here), and good old American nondrowsiness formula cold medications that actually are "mega-drowsiness formula" for me.
Now if only I could find a way to get McDonalds’ sausage pucks…
Keywords: | pharmaceuticals | illness |
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Vanity, thy name is homepage.
Jul 28, 1998
- Entries: 445 total; most recent on 05/26/2008 11:02 am
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- Former site names: The Akashic Record (1995-1998); Sirocco (1998-1999); The Cynic’s Tea Party (1999-2005)
Title Deleted for Security Reasons began its life back in 1995. It started as a simple personal site, languished for a few years, and relocated (and revived) in 1998. 
In 2001, things took off: the blog was added, the coding switched from HTML to XHTML, full stylesheets were implemented, the whole works. Now, Title Deleted for Security Reasons is available through any CSS-capable user agent (that’s browsers, screen readers, Braille readers, mobile devices, and even printers — I love cascading style sheets), and syndicated as well.
This web site looks good through any browser that supports Cascading Style Sheets...but it looks truly wicked through Opera. Opera
is a free browser for Windows/Mac/just about anything else, and is available in upwards of ten languages. If you want to learn more about this great tool, head over to their site and download a copy today.
The pictures used in the Pagetoys and Timewasters all came from other sources. The artists in question all graciously gave their permission for their works to be used - 
none of these images was simply swiped and re-used (never mind the questionable manners of such an action, it’s potentially legally stupid. Sprechen zie "copyright infringement lawsuit"?) The illustrations on the site were made using several dingbat fonts.
All HTML and Javascript code on this site is available under the GPL (GNU Public License). In a nutshell, that means that you can copy and re-use the source code as long as 1) you don’t charge anyone any money for it; and 2) you attribute the code to its original source, either by URL, name, email, or all three. I advise you to check out the full text of the GPL, even if you don’t want to re-use any of the code on the site.
I believe in personal responsibility — in Real Life(tm), and on the Internet — and accordingly, this site has been registered with the Internet Content Rating Association, or ICRA (formerly RSACi). Before you folks out there thing this automatically means the site is a "goodygoody", or utterly wholesome, read some of my pieces on recreational pharmaceuticals, sex, religion, and politics. ICRA lets webmasters label their sites...not some snooty government agency. I highly recommend it to webmasters of all sorts of online resources, from personal sites to porn sites and everything in between.
I am a web developer, and strongly support web standards, usability, and accessibility. This site uses valid XHTML and CSS. Valid code makes for cleaner downloads, faster rendering, and makes my life infinitely easier. CSS also lets you do a lot of interesting things. (Don’t worry — it won’t bite.)
Title Deleted for Security Reasons also meets all Level 2 checkpoints of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (which, incidentally, means that it’s more accessibility-compliant than most Section 508-compliant web sites.) We’re registered with the Center for Applied Special Technology, which also offers a database of accessible sites. They have a tool that lets you check the accessibility of your site, and outlines features of your site that might make it difficult for assistive user agents to access.
Keywords: | web standards | validation | tools |
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