February 2010 Archives

Between Thursday night and Friday morning of this past week The Atlantic launched a new website redesign and switched the comments on the various blogs from self-hosted to Disqus hosted comments.

My first shock upon my morning review of the website was the new colors: Red - White - & - Blue - UGH! I find red, white and blue to be very divisive and a cheap, cheap, cheap visual shot.

During the 2000s, the red and the blue of Red, White, & Blue were used to separate out Us Vs. Them. At that time, the Us was the Red and the Them was the Blue. Still is. I just hate that American politics has dissolved down into color. UGH.

What was the rotten, pus-y cherry on top of the political sundae was the summer of 2006 when I spent a good deal of time traveling around Northern Ireland, where the colors of Red, White, and Blue are used as a symbol of war and hate. Driving through towns that had painted red, white & blue curbs as well as flags and placards was beyond creepy.

Heaven forfend that the United States of America devolve into a Northern Ireland style division, warfare, and ideological hatred. But the continued use by a variety of media of the colors red-white-&-blue only furthers a cheap visual metaphor about supposed patriotism and political partisanship.

Why did the Atlantic Monthly, formerly one of the most intelligent news sources, decide to join the ranks of creepy and division? Could they not afford a graphic or brand designer who could explain the concept of visual literacy and metaphor to them?

I showed the Atlantic's site redesign to other web designers at Tuttle Club LA on Friday morning and they were as horrified as I was. One thought it looked like a conservative business website and the other went on a discussion about hosted comments and HTTP Request loads.

As my visual acuity was assaulted by the new color scheme, I went to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Altantic blog to read what others in his community of readers thought only to be confronted with the fact that the comment section had been switched over to Disqus hosted comments.

Disqus. My blood boiled at 212F and my blood pressure went sky high. I hate Disqus comments.

I don't really like hosted comments, but I understand why bloggers use them for ease of AJAXy goodness with ratings, liking, and threading. The big but is that Disqus login fails about 2 out of every 1 time(s) that I try to login and then a good portion of those failures also deletes my carefully crafted comment to the blog in question.

My problems with Disqus occur regardless of computer or browser. Yes, I have my third party cookies set to on. Yes, I have been in dialogue with Disqus' one man support team.

I have come to dread encountering a blog that uses Disqus, as it normally takes me 3 times as long to comment on a Disqus blog as a blog with a complicated self-hosted comment system, if Disqus lets me comment at all.

On one hand, I understand why a large site like The Atlantic would prefer to use Disqus, as it reduces the load on their database, but given the amount of readers on the site, Disqus is a bad idea for two main reasons: usability and privacy. When I went to comment on Ta-Nehisi's blog, it took 3 times of attempting to login before Disqus would post my comment and it took over 5 minutes for the 3rd login to commence and post the comment.

When my comment finally posted, it made the title to be "404 Error". Perfect. Yes, Disqus is one big 404 error waiting to happen on a website with as many users as The Atlantic's website due to the heavy load of HTTP Requests from theatlantic.com to the disqus.com's servers. Good thing Andrew Sullivan does not have comments on his blog or Disqus's servers would melt.

Beyond HTTP Requests and error messages, the more important part of the Disqus Fail is that Disqus publishes one's comments not just to the website that one has decided to comment on and participate in that community, but Disqus also creates an automatic page for ALL of one's comments on the Disqus website of which one cannot make private or switch off.

Go look at my Disqus Profile, of which I can't make private: http://www.disqus.com/msjen/

Yes, every comment I have ever made to a blog that uses Disqus' hosted comments is now available and search-able on the Disqus website out of context and without my permission. I have searched the Disqus site for a way to make my comments not publicly viewable on their site, but there is no way to turn off the comments from my profile page.

I don't mind the information that I placed into my Disqus profile to be viewable publicly, I do very much mind that Disqus makes all of my Disqus blog comments available to anyone to view.

This breaks the community of comments and the context of the comments to the blogs where they were originally posted.

To that end, I am a bit surprised that the web had a collective apoplexy last week about Google Buzz and the original lack of the ability to opt-out of a public display of one's Buzz's but no one has said a thing about how both Disqus and Intense Debate do not give the registered user the ability to make their comments private on the Disqus or Intense Debate websites. This lack of ability to opt-out is just as egregious as the first week of Google Buzz, as in all three cases the display of the comments/threads without permission and context breaks the original posting of the comment within the blog or media community that it was posted in.

Some folks may want all of their comments to be public beyond the blog they originally posted them on and search-able for that matter, but many of us may not. Disqus and Intense Debate, offer your users a profile privacy option.

For a magazine as web savvy and web successful as The Atlantic has been, this redesign is both a tired political branding trope in the color choice and a social media privacy bomb waiting to happen.

********

Update, Sun 02.28.10 10:30pm (PST): I am not the only one who doesn't like The Atlantic's redesign, Mr. Sullivan doesn't either for different reasons.

Wow. I am more than a bit stunned that the Atlantic would go ahead and do such a big visual and content management redesign without consulting the main bloggers/writers who create their content and draw in the readers who form the community of the site.

Now I am just sad. Sad as a faithful reader & subscriber of the Atlantic and sad for my profession of web design. In web design, we talk a lot about User Experience, but UX is just not the experience of the end user, but also of the authors, bloggers, and content creators of the websites in question as they are also our clients who we must design a good experience for.

Happy Birthday to Julie Wanda!

Fri 02.26.10 - I would like to wish a big Happy Birthday to all the last week of February folk I know: Julie Wanda Espy, Jody Ward, Jeremy Keith, Heidi Richman, Kim Volstedt, and LJ Rich!

And Happy Birthday to you if this was your Birthday week, too!

Today, maybe yesterday, Anton saved my sorry hide, and probably many of ours, by announcing that Project52 has been moved to start on March 17, 2010 to go through March 17, 2011:

"A New Beginning February 24th, 2010

Can you believe that it's nearly March already? As you can see, we're finally starting to make some visible progress around here when it comes to Project 52. I hope that the lack of updates on this site hasn't gotten in the way of you and your writing.
A Fresh Start

As the captain of this leaky boat, I consider it my duty to steer us in a more productive direction. I've decided to re-boot the project with a new launch date of March 17th -- St. Patrick's Day. I feel that we got off to a very unorganized start. This is due in part to the number of people that discovered the project after January 1st had already come and gone. Also, a lack of preparedness (in the amount of interest that was shown) brought the logistics of managing this machine to a crawl.
Again, just to be clear: our new dates will be from March17th, 2010 to March 17th, 2011. Please note that on your calendars.

So, for those of you already (and still) participating -- thank you for your patience. We're nearly ready to provide the inspiration and data that you've been asking for. If you've already got nine (or more) entries live on your site, then you are already leading the pack in your habits. But from what I've seen, there are still a lot of you who have signed up that have already stopped writing. Consider this a second chance to begin again. We would love to have you back in the fold!"

Yay! Two days ago, I declared my Project52 February Fail since I was so busy the last four weeks and dropped off the face of the Project52 planet, I am glad for a new start three weeks from now.

Now, if I account myself as smart, I will pre-write the first few weeks of entries and get them queued to go starting March 17, 2010.

Once again, I hereby pledge to write more about Mobile user experience, Mobile and Web application building, etc.

Thanks, Anton, et al, for all your hard work. Y'all rock.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s and stitched together with Photoshop Cs. Please click on image for larger image.

Thurs 02.25.10 - The El Nino influenced winter storms with their attendant high surf have more than chipped away at the sand and beach contours of Huntington Beach's Dog Beach, as there are whole sections of beach that are now depleted, areas where the beach sand was tall and deep are now shallow and thin. What was a nice straight beach is now undulating like a ribbon. Today at 1:17pm was a -1ft low tide which usually would mean at least 50 ft of damp sand extending into the interstitial area of the ocean for the dogs to run on, but instead, due to beach sand erosion, the -1ft low tide was at the mid-high tide mark over much of the 2 miles of Dog Beach.

The power of the ocean and winter storms is truly extraordinary.

Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thurs 02.25.10 - Today was the first day in many weeks that Scruffy, Belle, and I went down to Dog Beach, the lack of which has been a combination of winter storms and Scruffy's being a bit ill a few weeks back. When we arrived today in time for the afternoon low tide a very different Dog Beach greeted us. There has been a great deal of beach erosion and re-contouring of the sand & beach due to the powerful El Nino storms we have had the last two months.

Tues. 02.23.10 - If you aren't already a fan of Heather Champ's photography, please bookmark | favorite | subscribe to the feed of her Flickr Photostream, as Heather takes delightful photographs.

I love this photo of her dog Chieka. I love the framing. I love the composition. Formally this is a brilliant piece with almost all the tones in mid to dark and then a spot of bright Chihuahua.

Lovely.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I hereby declare that I had a failure, more like a forget-ture, in February to label any vaguely mobile | web dev | design posts as Project52 and develop them into articles.

So Sorry. It has a been a busy month for work & various family bits, so I am begging your forgiveness.

I shall start back up again before the end of this week, which would/should/shall be Week 8 by Thursday.

Hold me to it.

Be you a-theist or a theist, three great links were found on the Inter-Tubes today, one is on Anne Hutchinson and the other two are on the recent archaeological find of an 11,000 year old Turkish temple complex.

It appears that religion started before the villages, agriculture, and cities did, rather than the other way around. More importantly is how advanced the sculptural art is on the T-shaped temple lintels, the photos are truly gorgeous. For as much as we love to think of ourselves as the only era who makes art and creates systems, humanity has been doing both and more for far longer than our systems of history and archaeology have accounted for:

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder--who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites--says: "Many people think that it changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city. - Newsweek.

History in the Remaking: A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

Smithsonian Photo gallery on Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?

And then let's move the the new world and to America's first public heretic (not really) and feminist (yes, really, 15 kids & was willing to go out on her own and stand up to the authorities in 1630s Boston!), Killing the Buddha parsed out what it heresy means and Anne Hutchinson's wonderful defense for any person's direct connection / petitioning of the Divine without the need of the clergy. She out-Protestanted the Puritans:

Where had Anne Hutchinson learned such an outrageous idea--that a person can be in direct communion with God? From the Bible; from the promptings of her heart. Minister John Cotton--who would later condemn her so severely--had taught her that the inward dwelling Spirit of Christ was more than a mere metaphor or abstraction. "It is not you that speak (and consequently not you that think or do)," he had written, "But the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you."

Just as Antinomianism wasn't something that Hutchinson had cooked up on her own, but an ineluctable (if morally and philosophically problematic) corollary of the doctrine of Justification by Grace Alone, there was ample biblical precedent for Hutchinson's conviction that she could hear God's voice. When the court demanded that she tell them how she knew that it was God who spoke to her and not the Devil, she answered with a question of her own: "How did Abraham know that it was the voice of God, when he commanded him to sacrifice his son?" - Killing the Buddha

The best part is the the two sets of folks that I know who descend from Anne Hutchinson are also bold, outspoken, creative people of (non-conformist) faith.

Luke W on Mobile First: "More often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the PC version is complete. Here's three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead."

tnkgrl reviews the Nokia N86 8MP camera phone : This is not just a review of the Nokia N86 and its position in the market, but Myriam also took out the Samsung Memoir, the Sony-Ericsson C905a, and the Nokia N86 for a test photo shoot and the winner really surprised me. Good work, tnkgrl!

Also congrats to tnkgrl for being listed in the Top Mobile Pundits of 2010!

Nokiausers - An Interview with Nokia Enthusiast - Clinton Jeff : A fun interview with Zomg! It's CJ!

PeteSearch on How to Split Up the US from Facebook Data

Rooted

Photo of a DimeStorePretty.com hair pin purchased on Etsy taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N900 on 12.01.09.

If you know me, you know that I really don't like jewelry at all, but I do like a good sparkly hair pin. Forget a diamond ring, or the necklace, or the diamond tennis bracelet, but give me a few lovely vintage rhinestone hair pins and I am very happy.

All that said, recently, per my usual, I have composed whole paragraphs of wonderful, amazing, world alerting blog posts in my head though I am nowhere near a computer. Once I get to a computer I have completely forgotten what I wanted to write about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I could talk into my mobile and record my thoughts as I compose them. I could text myself the ideas as I have them. I could email them to this blog. YES, I KNOW.

But it doesn't happen.

If the business dudes in their suits and BMWs get to wander about like crazy people, gesticulating wildly with their hands, while talking loudly into their bluetooth headsets, can someone please invent a super cute 1940s rhinestone wifi to my blog hair pin so that I can walk around or drive around town talking to myself as it gets transmitted to my blog?

Please?

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

I know that there is another name, more proper name, for the child transporter that one attaches to the back of one's bicycle. Magnolia and Gracie were off to take Magnolia to school in this photo, while Scruffy was trying to figure out what in the heck they were doing in that contraption.

Cell phone subscriptions to hit 5 billion globally

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

Tim Bray on HTML5

After months of going going going, it has all caught up with me this week and I am exhausted in a bad way. I am off to bed soon. Yes, shocker, before midnight.

But I have a few posts I would like to write and by writing them now it will remind me to do so in the next few days:

1) Voice Mail Transcriptions: Spinvox vs. Ribbit vs. Google Voice

My quote for the week in an email: "I have had Google Voice for months now. The transcriptions suck pustulated monkey butt. "

2) My Final Final Wrap up to the Nokia Booklet 3G. Somehow I was prescient in all my moaning about the evils of Windows 7 Starter and how I wished wished hoped against hope that Nokia would partner with a linux distro to put a proper OS on the Booklet, and on Monday Morning, Feb 15, 2010, OPK & Intel answered my prayers to the mobile deities: MeeGo.

3) A few assumes that there will be at least three things in my list but I have forgotten the third due to tiredness, so instead I will delight you with this link from the New York Times on how the seafaring history of humans has been pushed back another 60,000+ years if not more:

On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners

Go read it.

Plus a small lament:
Oh, Google App Engine, why oh why did you wait until only the last few weeks to get semi-decent docs? Oh the agony you could have spared by putting those up months ago.

Contrary to all of the uproar this past week, I like Google Buzz, but with a reservation or two.

I like that Buzz is a version of Jaiku, which I love love love, that is attached to my Gmail & Latitude on my mobile phone. I like that most of the people I liked best on Jaiku are already on Google Buzz and are already my friends due to being in my address book. I really like that I am not limited to 140 characters, as I am on Twitter, and that to interact with Google Buzz I just need to log into Gmail.

Google did ask if I wanted to have Buzz attached to my Gmail account and I said yes. Google also asked if I wanted my Google profile public, which I edited and then made public and searchable.

My only but about Buzz is that it would have been much better if Google Buzz had asked if I wanted to make all my address contacts and Google Reader follows to be my friends in Buzz. I would like to have opted-in rather than logged in with over 100 people I was following automatically! 100! Woah!

I can't really go unfollow them now. And by automatically having me follow the folks in my address book who are on Buzz, it took away the fun game of joining a social network where one has to search for one's friends or other interesting people. Google took away the exploration phase.

Google, please allow for opt-in, not opt-out. And don't forget to let us explore to find our own friends rather than finding them for us.

Today I officially started something that I have been meaning to start for nearly 11 months, a new mobile website. A blog for all the non-tech folks out there who want to either find usable information about their cell / mobile phones or a place to share with others their experiences in a way that is more about sharing & D.I.Y. than about mobile tech geekery.

I set up the blog, though I still need to work out the layout / style, and I shot my first video with my Mom's friend Debbie who is the mildly bewildered owner of a hand-me-down refurbished Nokia 6750 from AT&T.

The questions I will be asking folks are:

1) What phone do you have?

2) What do you like best about your phone?

3) What did you figure out how to do all by yourself?

4) What do you like least or frustrates you about your phone?

5) What do you wish you knew how to do with your phone?

If you would like to be interviewed, let me know.

Give me the rest of the weekend and Cell Phones for the Rest of Us will be officially launched.

First off, I love the name. easypeasy

Second off, I love the first paragraph of copy on the Easy Peasy website:

Why was your awesome netbook shipped with that horrible operating system? Your netbook is not a typical laptop, so why should you use a typical operating system? easypeasy is harder, better, faster and stronger than what came with your netbook. And did I mention it is 100% free?

I shall install Easy Peasy on the Nokia Booklet 3G today and see if there are any differences from Jolicloud.

Screenshot photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Wed 02.10.10 - In the last two weeks of trialing the Nokia Booklet 3G that WOM World/Nokia sent to me, I have had a range of great to ok to just bad experiences with the Booklet, but all of them have been predicated on the Operating System (OS) and not necessarily the Booklet itself. I am of the opinion that the Booklet is a great little mini-laptop that is beautifully designed but hampered with a crappy OS in Windows 7 Starter. It would be great if Nokia were to install an OS that had the same level of polish, attention, and design that the Booklet itself has.

Here are my thoughts after two weeks of testing, installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling alternative Linux based Operating Systems in the form of a Pro & Con comparison of the hardware, and the various potential OSs of Windows 7 Starter, Ubuntu, and Jolicloud:

Pros for the Nokia Booklet Hardware:
Beautiful hardware design
3G with a sim chip port in a netbook is excellent and frees one up to be able to work on a computer anywhere
Lovely screen
I like the chicklet style keyboard, even if a bit narrow
Truly long long long battery time: 10-12 hours. I have yet to run it all the way down.

Cons for the Nokia Booklet Hardware:
I don't like the touchpad, rough surface, works poorly in Win7

Overall: The Nokia Booklet 3G is a lovely, little mini-laptop. The only thing cuter is Jackie's pink Eee PC. The Booklet would be cuter than the Eee PC if it came in hot pink or deep purple.

****

Pros for Windows 7 Starter:
Native 1280x768 screen resolution

Cons for Windows 7 Starter:
Wow! Win7 Starter sucks.
AT&T Sim chip does not *just* work for the 3G side, Al and I had to add our own settings & it still didn't work. It finally did about 3 days later.
Multitouch on the touchpad does not work or works very badly and intermittently.
Win 7 on the Booklet is slow. Sometimes molasses in a blizzard slow. Unexceptably slow.
Can be quirky on start up and starts in Airplane Mode with wifi/3G turned off. Odd but true.
Windows 7 Starter does not let the user do a lot of normal tasks like change the background, so I had to download a specious 3rd party app to rid the desktop of the Win7 logo.

Overall: Windows 7 does NOT live up to the hype. While it may appear to be an improvement over XP or Vista, any OS is an improvement over those two, so it is not saying much. Windows 7 Starter is a bad little OS. Nokia's biggest mistake is not the 1 GB of RAM or Intel Atom chip speed on the Booklet, but the inclusion of Windows 7 Starter as the OS as the Windows Bloat slows down the hardware. If Nokia wants to be in bed and having relations with Windows (each to their own), then for the price of the Booklet, they should have Windows 7 Ultimate as the shipped OS, as it is more polished and for the $600 price unlocked the Booklet does deserve a polished OS.
Did I mention how damned slow Windows 7 Starter is to do any task? Ugh.

****

Pros for Ubuntu via Wubi:
Super fast install of Ubuntu via Wubi which uses bit torrent.
Wow! Ubuntu is much nicer than Win7 Starter! Can I say that again?!
AT&T sim chip 3 G data *just* works in Ubuntu after you answer 3 questions, no fiddling with properties & preferences.
Multitouch does work on the touchpad and it is *fast* (it worked on the first two times I installed Ubuntu through Wubi, but not the last two times)
Ubuntu is fast on the Booklet, none of the hesitating or slow loading of Win7.
Ubuntu comes shipped with over 25 applications that provide a wide range of office, graphics, web, and developer tools and programs, including Nokia's QT.

Cons For Ubuntu:
800x600 screen resolution. As of Jan 29, 2010, don't try the kernel mod fix to make the res 1280x768 as recommended on the Ubuntu wiki, it makes for a very unstable install, wait for the Ubuntu dev folks to make a stable fix.
Sometimes the multitouch works great, sometimes it runs too fast.

Overall: Ubuntu is my favorite OS for the Nokia Booklet 3G hands down and miles ahead of Windows 7. While at the time of writing this, I could not get the native screen resolution to work with the Ubuntu fix, the Jolicloud folks did, so the Ubuntu folk should not be far behind with a workable fix.
The best part of Ubuntu on the Nokia Booklet is that the OS has a light footprint which makes for a fast Booklet and even though light & fast, Ubuntu is powerful and comes with or one is able to download easily any and all developer tools to really work on the Booklet with Ubuntu. I can code and deploy Django, Google App Engine, and Nokia's QT with Ubuntu, which I would not be able to do fast or easily with Windows 7 Starter or Jolicloud on the Booklet.
I really do think that Nokia should do a co-promote with Ubuntu's Canonical and ship a version or a dual boot of Ubuntu customized / polished up for the Booklet, as it is provides much more programs and functionality than Windows. For all the naysayers that don't think Ubuntu is polished enough, if Nokia were to work with Canonical, much of the polish problems could be solved within a few weeks with a team of devs & designers on the project. The main points are to make sure the native screen resolution and multitouch always work, as well as the syncing with one's mobiles. If one really wants Windows, then provide a dual boot. Many folks would be happier with Ubuntu after 30 minutes of using it, not just a geek like me.

****

Pros for Jolicloud:
Native Screen Resolution of 1280x768 out of the box (or install as the case may be)
Different User Interface desktop layout
Apple/Mac style keyboard shortcuts work to close windows (ctrl+w) & exit programs (ctrl+q). Ubuntu & Windows do not do this.
Touchpad is fast for moving the cursor.
I like the black background & the colors & icons are easy on the eyes.

Cons for Jolicloud:
First time I tried to install last week, it kept quitting. It worked tonight, but it was very slow.
Slow start up load
Froze completely the 1st time I asked it to use the AT&T sim chip for data connection, had to force re-start.
2nd time I tried to use the AT&T data, it froze again. Not working.
Different User Interface desktop layout
Multitouch does not work, two fingers won't scroll
While Jolicloud is built on Ubuntu, it does not have as many programs & applications available without downloading or using the package manager
Jolicloud takes over any install of Ubuntu on the Booklet and I had to uninstall both to reinstall Ubuntu to get it to load again.

Overall: Jolicloud has a great deal of potential, esp. as a netbook OS for non-power/non-geek users. The User Interface has quite a bit of polish, the native screen resolution of the Nokia Booklet works on startup on Jolicloud, and I love that some Mac/Apple gestures & keyboard shortcuts just work. The downsides to Jolicloud of non-working 3G, missing programs & tools that Ubuntu ships with, slow load time, and the lack of multitouch on the touchpad make Jolicloud unworkable for me as a geek user who would like to use the Booklet as a mini-laptop that is a mini-dev box. But I will not discount Jolicloud as their developers are ambitious & very responsive and many of these issues may be solved within the month or two.

***

Conclusion:
I may expire waiting for Apple to deliver a cute, tiny, light, fully powered 10 inch MacBook Pro. Nokia has done the next best thing by making a cute, tiny, light, well designed 10 inch Nokia Booklet 3G. But... it is under powered with a bad operating system in Windows 7 Starter that slows the machine down and makes for a bad user experience. Sorry, but the Windows 7 experience does not cut it, even in the upgraded $80+ Ultimate version.

As with many Nokia products the hardware is beautiful, but the OS is either lacking or the wrong fit for the beautiful hardware. In the case of the Booklet, Windows is a wrong fit, but there are options out there and Nokia should give the customer a choice of a great user experience with the Booklet.

Nokia needs to step up their game and either develop a kick ass version of the Maemo OS for the Booklet, which would be delicious, or work with Ubuntu to make a Nokia branded version of Ubuntu that would make the Booklet experience a delight to use and worth the $600 unlocked asking price.

At this point, I would love to buy a Nokia Booklet 3G if it had a great OS, but not if it comes shipped with a bad OS at $600 when I could get a pink Eee PC at $275 and install Ubuntu on it for free.

Tues 02.09.10 - Today, Jackie Ojeda, singer of Bella Novella and talent buyer for Alex's Bar , and I talked about her super cute new little pink Eee PC netbook that she bought for taking notes at nursing school and to communicate more effectively while on tour with Bella Novella

The last week, Jackie got to see and test out the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook that I had with me, of which she liked, but when she went to buy a netbook she was turned off by the AT&T 2 year contract for the $199 price on the netbook or the $600 unlocked price. She was able to get the Eee PC for $275 without any contract, even though it does not have 3G nor GPS as the Booklet does.

We both agreed that the best part is that the Eee is pink.

'At the beginning of her long affair with Harold Pinter, Antonia Fraser was warned by her brother, "You are a woman and a strong character yet you want your husband to be stronger. Women with strong characters who want to dominate are always fine because there are plenty of weak men around. Also plenty of strong men for weak women. But yours is a special problem." ' - Sharanya Manivannan quoting Antonia Fraser's brother

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Sun 02.07.10 - For some folks this may have been the day of men in lots of plastic armor running up against each other in some sort of bowl type object, for other folks, particularly the ones in Southern California today was a truly lovely, sunny, clear day after another good rain storm.

As the first Sunday in February, today did a very good job in the sunny, kinda warm, but lots of flowers department. The local ornamental pear trees have been blooming for the last week and they are in full bloom now.

As for the men in plastic armor assaulting each other today for some sort of trophy, well, I am sure some of them won and others did not. I didn't watch them. Instead, I walked the dogs, went to the Long Beach Marina farmers market, took photos, baked a chicken and some root vegetables, and otherwise enjoyed a fine fine Sunday.

I owe y'all my wrap up post about the Nokia Booklet 3G, which I can summarize here: Ubuntu works as a dual book when installed via Wubi, although as of right now, the proper screen resolution does not work reliably; I tried to install Jolicloud last week but it would never download all the way but would stall about 1/4 into the download; and last but not least, I actually found a use for the Windows side of the Booklet, which was to update various Nokia devices with Ovi Suite, until Ovi Suite decided to go dicey on me and stop.

Tomorrow is a big work day but after I have tied up all the little code ends for the final client wrap up on Tuesday, I hope to do a proper write up about the Booklet Day 14.

Project 52 : Week 5

If you haven't read Paul Graham's essay "Hackers and Painters" yet, and you are a maker / creator / creative, go read it.

I read it about 4 or 5 years ago for the first time and reread it this morning. Today it resounded as I have been frustrated at myself for what I perceive to be my failure at software engineering, as I when I code, I think of how I would apply paint. When I get stuck with trying to code in Python or PHP, I draw in my sketch book until I can get unstuck. Many times if I can't solve a problem, I do something else or go to bed and my brain will serve me the answer or solution while in the other activity or when I wake up.

Much like Mr. Graham describes in the essay, I build web apps and web sites much like I would build a painting or a whole dinner, I think about the whole idea, I get the ingredients or supplies ready, and then I start to make | code | create | sketch | paint. Scrub out what does not work and repaint | recode. I don't plan it the app out extensively before hand, I code in the browser. I am not the type who writes out pseudo code beforehand, or does wire frames, or designs in photoshop.

For a couple of years now, I have jokingly called myself a 'Professional Art Weirdo' whenever someone asks what I do for the living. This title always confuses other web professionals who know that I am a web / mobile developer. In 2007, I found myself at a programmer's conference full of Java folk, while in a small group setting everyone said their names and very detailed descriptions of their Java skill sets, when it was my turn, I cheekily said, "Hi, I am Jen and I am a painter." Then I passed on to the next person.

All jokes aside, I was delighted and relieved to read this essay this morning, as Mr. Graham quite nicely makes a defense for the intersection of programming and art as creative | maker disciplines rather than programming as engineering or science. I would love to see more artists learning to program and more programmers learning to paint.

Go read it.

Photos of Thurs 02.04.10 taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97

Thurs 02.04.10 - Three tweets from the 5 o'clock hour this evening:

@msjen: That was *HYSTERICAL* A neighborhood 5 year old boy just showed up to show me his mom's new phone, "Look, it is a mini computer" he says. about 6 hours ago

@msjen: Me, "Does you Mom know you have her new phone?" Ely, "No!" Me, "I think you should go home." "Ok" His Mom has a new Nokia N97 mini. about 6 hours ago

@msjen: Of course, I had him stop long enough to do a video. I am now walking over there to make sure he really took it home. about 6 hours ago

I do have video of Ely standing at my door telling me about his Mom's new 'mini-laptop' as he brandished a brand new Nokia N97 Mini with no adult in sight. I need to get Carolyn's permission before I post it, though. He was so excited about the 'mini-laptop' that could take photos.

When I walked over to their house to make sure that Carolyn's new phone made it home without harm, Ely informed me that the Nokia N97 that I had was 'Too Big' and that his Mom's new phone was much better than the big N97. Carolyn and I tried to show him that the Mini is just a smaller version of the N97, but he was convinced it was MUCH BETTER. Oh, to be 5 and all boy.

I proceeded to show him how to take photos and video. He particularly liked the sports mode of the digital still camera and made his Mom run down the sidewalk to get an action shot.

In other local Seal Beach news, all the flowers are a-bloom due to last week's rain. Magnolia, aka Bird, cashed in her savings for pierced ears at the Westminster Mall. She got pink sparkly earrings. Magnolia hopefully appreciates that her Mom is super cool to let her get her ears pierced at 4, I had to wait until I was 7.

;o)

Wed 02.03.10 - William Sisti, aka Flyinace2000, tweeted me today asking if I had seen his twitters about installing Mac OS X on the Nokia Booklet 3G, here is the transcript of our Twitter conversation:

William: @msjen Have you been following my tweets lately? I got OSX on the Nokia Booklet 3G. about 9 hours ago

Me: @Flyinace2000 I have been a twitter near blackout for the last 3 days due to my TweetDeck being down. Are you going to blog how you did it? about 9 hours ago

William: @msjen I did OSX only now. Working on finishing walk through that i will post in soon. Still ironing out details. www.unboundmobile.com about 9 hours ago

Me: @Flyinace2000 A blog post with specifics would be lovely. Did you dual boot or OS X only? about 9 hours ago

Me: @Flyinace2000 Is it your own bought Booklet or a review trial one? Mine is a trial, so if I can't dual boot w/o harm, I will let you try. ;) about 8 hours ago

William: @msjen It is on loan but i had permission to do whatever i wanted to get this to work. about 8 hours ago

Me: @Flyinace2000 Did you install any of the mac software like iPhoto, iMovie, or the like? iMovie would die an evil death on 1gb of RAM, though about 7 hours ago

William: @msjen I didn't bother too. those applications require GPU support that the gma500 can't provide. about 7 hours ago

The point to having a mini-laptop is to be able to work and play on it when out and about. At this point, Windows 7 Starter that comes shipped on the Booklet is a non-starter, but Ubuntu via Wubi really is a great alternative if one is willing to live with a 800x600 screen resolution until a stable driver for the Intel Poulsbo chip is worked out, as Ubuntu sits lightly on the Booklet and is a power house of a OS plus it comes with creativity and productivity software.

The Prodigal Guide on An open letter to Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: The 10 things you need to do today to be a contender in the high-end smartphone market again

BBC's technology show, Click, on Jan. 30, 2010 around min 7:55 does a quick pan of Black Phoebe's masthead during a segment on Blogging. Thanks, Click, y'all rock!