kindproject

no netflix, no problem

Posted by jonathan - 25/03/08 at 07:03:47 am

Yesterday I popped over to netflix to peruse the fringes of their streaming service for any gems to distract me while emma was having the fits, only to find that their site was down. Apparently it was down for more than 12 hours and it reminded me of times when I was young and the power went out. I had that fleeting sense of anxiety wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my night, but then I made some tea, swaddled emma and curled us up to the tome I’m reading, David McCullough’s John Adams.(It bothers me that the cover of this book now has a picture of paul giamatii as john adams rather than plain old john adams)

I wonder what kids will do these days when the power goes out. Seems like we have gone to an extreme where micro-boredom is considered a scourge, but we don’t allow for unstructured time where kids can develop the creativity to occupy themselves without electrical stimulation. If your interested in this subject go spend the couple bucks on a subscription to the week, and read the last word column for this week, “in defense of boredom”.

“In this era of incessant text messaging and two-minute sitcoms, idle moments are going extinct, says The Boston Globe’s Carolyn Y. Johnson. But what if being human means having time to think? “- The week

critique: how ie8, firefox and opera handle browser tabs

Posted by jonathan - 16/03/08 at 02:03:38 pm

My friends and colleagues from work just got back from the land of sin, Vegas, and posted their review and redux of Mix08. A couple of post about ie8 got me wondering if Redmond has been watching opera and did anything with the tab in ie8. After being burnt on trying to double install ie between 6 and 7 I have yet to download it, but since I now have four machines at work lets sacrifice one for the sake of experiment.

On my box affectionately know as sub-prime, ie8 shows me that the wordy tab instructions of ie7 has been replaced, but only with web 2.0ish gradient language telling me the obvious, “you’ve opened a tab”. This weak phrasing reminds me of the oldie but not so goodie aol phrase turned movie, “you’ve got mail”. Sorry IE8 team, but this is pathetic. Both ie7 and ie8 do not give me anything useful when I hit ctrl+t.

I am going to skip over firefox and delve right into opera because firefox is even worse than ie in that ctrl+t simply gives me a blank address bar and blank page. No instructions nothing useful. Simple, yes, useful, no. In this case the KIMAC has not been met.

My superb memory, ha ha, has faltered since I’m not exactly sure how I came across Opera again, but somehow I heard an interview with one of the oldest players in the browser space and downloaded their operamini to my phone. In general it had a nice feel to it so I recently decided to stuff the pipes of the old laptop with yet another program and download the latest opera. For the most part it has been a good experience. Its tab implementation absolutely rocks.

Opera is on the forefront of the tab. They have a feature called speed dial, invoking the paradigm from a phone where when you instantiate a new tab, ctrl+t, rather than being presented with a blank page like in firefox, or a page which explains tabs (only useful once), opera gives you a 3×3 grid of thumbnails with which you can add your favorite sites. Like a mini favorites/bookmarker it allows you to throw in a reasonable number, nine, sites you might use. The paradigm is easy for non-techies, the number of options is kept manageable and the thumbnails give you visual cues for easy nav. I love this feature.

Click here for a side-by-side comparison of the implementations.

The second tab feature of note is a thumbnail of your other tabs. We have seen this on other sites, such as ask.com, and on the windows powertoy alt+tab switcher, but opera incorporates a thumbnail of the webpage into the hover state on other tabs. This gives you a nice preview of non-focused tabs in a mouse-friendly way, if you are not a master ctrl+tab switcher.

Click here for a view of the thumbnailing feature.

I have had a few crashes most notably when trying to add cookinglight.com to the speeddial, but overall it has taken over as my default browser for everything but web development. There are probably ways to manage this better, but ff has become clogged with development tools, firebug, webdev toolbar, yslow etc that impede on my general surfing not to mention the memory creep.

onehanded activities

Posted by jonathan - 16/03/08 at 08:03:13 am

Week two of fatherhood has my girl emma exercising her lungs until she is picked up and cuddled in daddy’s arms. Therefore, the last week involved many more experiments in onehanded activities. Opening bottles and scooping leftovers into the tupperware have become easy, but the one difficult task has been logging back into the computer. ctrl + alt + delete was meant for two hands. Here is an explanation of why I have to contort my right hand like a crippled person in order to log in to my computer.

fatherhood week 1 retrospective

Posted by jonathan - 07/03/08 at 12:03:07 pm

One week into fatherhood, its much more than I ever expected. At one of my doctors yesterday, he asked “is it difficult?”. His question caught me by surprise as I have not had any difficulty yet, but only a hard time containing the pleasure I have watching my baby girl and her beautiful mom. The roller coaster of emotion that a much anticipated and proudly celebrated arrival of a poopy-diaper cannot be fully explained to the uninitiated.

This is something I have wanted for a quite some time. When prospective employers asked me where I wanted to be in five years, I never had a good answer for them. My dreams and aspirations have never been oriented toward work, but the intensity of my dreams and pleasure center around my family. I have known for years that I would have a baby girl and that fatherhood would be a time of life that I thoroughly enjoy. I attribute this longing to the strength and dedication of my own father who I continue to grow more fond of for his dedication and sacrifice for me.

It has been great to get away from the daily grind and focus on the family. I could get used to this.

Figure 1 - 00:00:01, baby jesus pose

Figure 2 - 00:00:02, yawning

Figure 3 - 00:00:03, content

nyc ied

Posted by jonathan - 06/03/08 at 12:03:38 pm

NEW YORK (AFP) — A small explosion struck a military recruiting station in New York’s Times Square in the early hours of Thursday, causing minor damage and disruption but no injuries, police said.

The blast occurred shortly before 4 am (0900 GMT) and shattered windows and buckled the door of the small booth, a frequent focus of anti-war demonstrations and one of the most public faces of the US military.

Behind the shattered window, a familiar World War I recruitment poster featuring Uncle Sam and the words “I Want You For US Army” was exposed.

Police said only that the explosion was the result of an improvised explosive device, while local reports quoted a witness as saying a passer-by had thrown an explosive device. Police would not confirm the account.

The Department of Homeland Security said there was no information to suggest an imminent threat to the United States after the explosion struck.

- AFP

The surprising part of this article is down at the bottom where apparently there have been 2 other explosions in New York in the past two years that I had no clue about.

Its been a while since I have really thought about terrorism, but being a recent dad I am now re-evaluating my decision to live so close to downtown nyc. Luckily the government has been helping us prepare by setting up a new website, http://www.ready.gov, the 204 page pdf, “Are you ready?” should be a real page turner. In case you only want the cliff notes check out this funny take on some symbolism that the ready gov site uses.

Family leave bill

Posted by jonathan - 04/03/08 at 11:03:31 am

New Jersey would become the state second in the nation to offer employees a paid family leave program under a bill the state Senate approved today despite dire predictions from opponents who said New Jersey cannot afford it.

The bill would allow workers to take up to six weeks off, paid for by a payroll deduction estimated at about $33 per year. Workers would get two-thirds of their salary up to $524 a week.

- Star Ledger

Sitting here on my second day of leave as one lucky yuppy, since my employer gives me 4 weeks full pay, I think this is a good tax and I have no problem contributing to helping people raise families. While this may be difficult for small business at first, there will probably be some refinement around these companies as well as qualifications around “caring for the sick”. For anyone who state that jobs will leave the state, this will be a temporary phase as more states catch up with the benefits that progressive states such as California provide.

ref: NyTimes | WSJ

itzbeen, by geek for baby geek

Posted by jonathan - 03/03/08 at 07:03:22 pm

I’m declaring the most useful baby item through day 4 as a present from Jason, the itzbeen. For the baby by numbers set, which seems to be popular now with the resurgence of breast feeding, the itzbeen provides five clocks in one. Besides the clock time, you have minute increment counters for, diapers, feeding, sleeping and some unknown thing peditricians and other “professional” baby consultants have yet decided you should track. We have been utilizing the diaper and feeding clocks only and then transferring times to a worksheet the educator for the child rearing class gave us on the first day at the hospital, the kellymom breastfeeding log. Maybe this is useful, but the little switch to indicate which side the mother feed on last has no use as mom can feel which side is full. In general though its a cool little gadget. Next on the list of frivolous but kind of cool will be the purchase of Breast Milk Alcohol Test 8 Pack

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