Day 420, You posh sod

Any old office, any day of the year, yours for the princely sum of no pounds.

As long as it is the office below pictured during the summer of 1999.

No not that Prince, there was no partying like it was 1999 or any other year.

Although there was music.

There would have been some Partridge quoting, is that a party pastime?

There was a large cabinet filled with Microsoft Select CDs, there it is in the middle.

Which is enough to end any party intention.

There was also a metal tray-cabinet filled with metalworking tools, needle files mainly.  I have no idea why.

Even less relevant to the idea of partying.  Unless of course "Yeah, files, party time!" stirs you.

"Pictures of plastic hens in shoes", that was one of our favourite Ozzy tracks.*

I'm pretty sure those are the exact words that Ozzy sang.

Deffo.

And nobody had an LCD screen.

Nobody.

Apart from on a Palm Pilot.

And that would be in colour if, and only if, we could refer to you as ...

"You posh sod."**





* His Status Quo cover.
** Partridge in "Watership Alan".


For official/internal use only:
7575
0-9

Day 419, Sophie Germain, Chen, unimaginary Eisenstein, Nigerian

Some days can be quite a mouthful.

Numerically we may be in our prime but emails and telephone calls are mainly very old scams.

Email spam filtering is straightforward - if you are suspicious of everything that is, just don't believe a word.

Telephone spam is a right old pain.

The same number calling every day, even two or three times before the sun sets.

Bastards.

And what is the answer from BT?  "Buy one of our call blocking phones."

For goodness sake, what about BT providing a web interface that allows me to manage blocked calls?

Bastards.

It can't be beyond the wit of a megacorps like BT to provide some comms management methods.

That's easy for me to say, I don't know anything about the telecoms infrastructure world.

It is more expedient for megacorps to keep the processing power with the consumer rather than pushing it to the middle.

All management, maintenance and running costs are with you the customer, hence it is cheaper.

Anyway, 0203 837 8961, they are the real bastards.

And 2038378961 isn't even a prime number, it's divisible by 103.

'Bastards' isn't really strong enough for these energy draining chancers and time thieves.

A right old mouthful is what is needed, just to clear the air.

%$%^ing, £&*$ing, **&£ing *%*ts.

That's better.

For official/internal use only:
7777
0-9

Day 418, Hah!

Another t-shirt.

Carl Douglas, Kung Fu Fighting, 1974.

Kung Fu was very popular in the early 1970s, in part due to the TV series Kung Fu starring David Carradine.

Kung Fu, the TV show, was an implausible combination of action-adventure martial arts western drama.

Not sure I ever watched it.

I was probably out climbing trees, burning things, running across busy roads, or playing on railway lines.

To be fair it would probably have been safer to have taken up Kung Fu.

Let's sing it - Oh oh oh oh, Hah!

Everybody was kung fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightening, yeah, yeah
But they fought with expert timing

From a feint into a slip and a kicking from the hip

Etc.

The t-shirt is not contemporaneous with the song otherwise it would have fallen apart by now.

Like my knees from all that tree climbing, fallen apart.*




*This is not true, it's from all the running, and they are mostly intact.


For official/internal use only:
7777
0-9

Day 417, Only words, expectation failure?

Let's be specific.

My life has been enhanced immeasurably.

How has this happened?

Simple.

My new chair has arrived.

After some months of sitting on a chair which had a broken back, and wondering where my back pain had come from.

At least I'm guessing that's where the back pain came from, it could be a shed-load of other things.

Like lifting the heavy components of a shed.

Never mind all that, this new chair is super comfortable.

Firm.

And totally fully controllable, even the arms fold down in what I like to imagine is a Star Trek style.

I don't recall any chair arms in Star Trek folding down.

But that's what I'm going to call it.

Way cool.

Here's a picture of the chair which doesn't do it justice.

And here's another picture of it after it was modified by a colleague.

He added 'go faster stripes' during a period when I had briefly left the room.

I think they enhance it.

They'll come in handy for the Christmas corridor office-chair racing competition.*

Did I say how comfortable it was?

Expectation failure?

Expectation exceeded.


*Is this a thing?


For official/internal use only:
7777
0-9

Day 416, Large balls, range not satisfiable

The art of being able to conceal things in the hand, to palm.

Depending on the size of your balls and the size of your hand this may be more or less difficult.

So far my hands and the chosen balls are not really a match and palming has proved tricky.

Although the relative size may just make the process harder to learn rather than impossible.

Persevere, that's all.

That fleshy bit under my thumb seems much larger than in the diagram.

I can't yet do it convincingly at all, let alone at near range.

Making a pass hasn't even come close.




For official/internal use only:
5656
0-9

Day 415, Unsupported media

When media goes bad.

Insert a pop filter.

Block out the P - P - P - Propaganda.

See an end to stop-consonants.

Fit a 'pop screen' to minimise plosives.

And that should reduce if not remove the voiceless bilabial stop.

Now test your offering with this simple phrase:

Pete's pa Pete poked to the pea patch to pick a peck of peas for the poor pink pig in the pine hole pig-pen.


For official/internal use only:
7777
0-9

Day 414, First steps in assessing usability and user experience

Some rough and ready questions about usability and user experience.


Quick questions to ask to determine if usability goals have been achieved

Efficiency - does the product allow people to learn well, work efficiently, access information or goods?

Effective - is it possible for people to maintain a high level of productivity once the product has been learned?

Safety - are errors prevented, is recovery from errors easy?

Utility - are appropriate functions available to complete tasks?

Learnability - how long does it take to 1) get started and learn core tasks?  2) learn functionality for wider tasks? 

Memorability - how does the interface support operations which are infrequent?



Quick questions to ask about user experience goals

Is the product:

Satisfying to use?

Helpful to use?

Emotionally fulfilling to use?

Fun to use?

Aesthetically pleasing?

Supportive of creativity?

Rewarding to use?

Enjoyable to use?

Entertaining to use?

Motivating to use?

I find some of the user experience such as 'emotionally fulfilling' slightly odd.  Quite a lot of the products or software interfaces I use don't have any emotional engagement for me whatsoever.  So try reversing the question to say I don't want something to be 'emotionally unfulfilling'.  This may not completely erase the oddity but does make the concept slightly more palatable, so is worth considering.

This is the Atlas 5 rocket preparing to launch and take supplies to the International Space Station.  I bet NASA have spent quite some time considering usability and user experience of their launch procedures.

Yes, that's a screenshot of a Mac.

And that was a usability and user experience in-joke.

For official/internal use only:
7676
0-9