Recursive

Category: Opinion

  • 10/GUI


    10gui.com

    This is as much an HCI concept as it is about the GUI.

    I think a multitouch pad would be great.
    5 fingers, i.e. one hand, would be plenty though, and having one hand remaining on the keyboard allows for faster resumption of typing long text.

    My HTPC keyboard already has a simple multi-touch action, two finger to scroll, and I’m sure moving up to five fingers would be perfectly achievable by most users. In fact, in the video above there were only s few times when you’d have to use more than two or three fingers.

    I think this is all fantastically interesting, and discussing the subject with people who won’t just shoot down the unknown/unfamiliar will lead to some great things.

    I wish I could be more involved with this area of research and development.

  • Leaving Bitopia

    Prior to the big move, I’m leaving my current job at Bitopia at the end of the week.

    Last Friday, all the staff went to watch Saints beat  Castleford Tigers.
    At the end of the evening I was surprised and honoured to be presented with a personalised and autographed Saints shirt by Paul Sculthorpe.

    Paul Sculthorpe presents me with a personalised autographed Saint shirt
    Paul Sculthorpe presents me with a personalised autographed Saint shirt

    I’d like to thank Christian for arranging it all for me, and Steve, MD of Bitopia, for paying for the evening!

  • Recommended: iammoving.com

    iammoving.com was recommended to me by the estate agent who advertised the house we’re moving to in August.

    After registering, for free (though I would pay for the service), you select the organisations you need to notify from a large, categorised list, and provide your account number (or whatever detail is appropriate).

    You can then send each message individually, or send them all at once.

    Unfortunately, some companies still require that age-old ink on paper malarkey. In these cases, a preformatted letter is made available to print.

    iammoving.com is ‘in association with Royal Mail’, which makes sense because it could save them from thousands of undeliverable/redirected letters.

  • RAC

    The RAC have impressed me.

    Whilst driving to my fiancée’s parents’ at the end of last week, the car conked out (while on the M6 Toll).
    Fortunately, the power simply seemed to dissipate rather than instantly disappear, so I was easily able to slow to stop by an SOS box.
    I have a mobile phone of course, but the SOS box allowed me to give a very precise location.

    Calling the RAC was straightforward, just a matter of answering questions and confirming my own and the vehicle’s details.

    The RAC man (an ex F1 engineer, apparently) arrived within 20 minutes (better than the estimate given on the phone), having called my mobile to let me know that he was a couple of minutes away.

    He identified the problem simply by listening to the engine for a couple of seconds, and confirmed it by replacing the dead coil (a transformer that supplies the power to the spark-plugs).

    I’d be very happy to recommend the RAC to anyone considering them (or their competitors).

  • Firefox 3 to break Zoom (Edit: I’m mistaken)

    Mozilla is about the make a big mistake, the same as that made by IE7.

    Zooming the whole page is not a good idea.

    Browser Zoom Method Comparison

    Current Firefox text-only zoom on the left, IE7 on the right.

    Using the current Fx way you can easily read the text without having to scroll sideways, but the new way (which is how IE7 works) means you have to scroll right for each line of text, then back to the left, and so on.

    I simply cannot fathom how they thought this was the right move.

  • BBC Homepage Beta Using jQuery

    The BBC Beta Homepage is using jQuery, but unfortunately it’s ugly.

    I should qualify that – I think it’s a good move to make the homepage more personalisable, but does it have to look so Web2.0?
    Big text was a fad a year ago, but it’s too informal for an internationally recognised and respected news source, and it makes it look so childish – I dread to think what the new CBBC sites would look like!

    I realise this is only a beta, and may well change considerably, but without a bit of a shrink I won’t be likely to use it as a homepage tab.

  • Recursive Moved Itself

    The highly observant amongst you may have noticed that I have moved this blog to my personal domain, jezmckean.com.
    You should have been brought to this domain automatically, and I hope to fix the multitude of links online, but need the automatic move for those I can’t fix.
    I’ve done this because I’m working to separate my freelance business, jazzle.co.uk, from my personal stuff.

    Eventually, the blog subdomain at jazzle will be replaced with a work related one.

  • Rename Terrorism

    If only [tag]terrorism[/tag] were renamed to ‘mild trepidation-ism‘ it wouldn’t be so effective.

    Fortunately, I live in the [tag]UK[/tag], [tag]England[/tag] specifically, where our stiff-upper-lip-ed-ness prevents us from being too affected by [tag]terrorist[/tag] attacks.
    It’s only when services are damaged that the country is really slowed.

    Clearly there are some who unfortunately bear the brunt, often physically, in these attacks. Life for them, and their family and friends, may well be permanently changed.
    But we have to put things in perspective: many many more people are killed by smoking than by terrorists in the UK; many more people are injured in simple DIY accidents than by terrorists. So why be so scared of it?

    Being terrified by such a slim statistic is no way to live a life.

    Calling it ‘Terrorism’ only serves to make it more powerful.