Ambient Irony

Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you but... honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know its not cause at night there's voices so... please please can you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman, or...
Back in a moment.
Thank you Santa.

Thursday, February 28

Just Testing Something

Yeah, that ain't working. sad

Or maybe it is. Who knows? eek

Ah. Working now. Just a corrupted browser cache. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:28 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

Friday, February 15

This Is Your UI Design On Drugs

I just installed Office 2007 for the first time.

WHAT WERE YOU IDIOTS THINKING?!

The "ribbon". It's like a toolbar, except that it takes up far more space, you can't customise it, and you can't see everything at once. In other words, it's a toolbar without any of the advantages of a toolbar.

AND THEN THEY REMOVED ALL THE MENUS!

What the hell? No, seriously, what the hell? They took a successful professional application and turned it into an irritating toy.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:28 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Not had today's pocky Pixy ?

Not sure about customisation. But I've found the ribbon to be ok. Its actually a tabbed toolbar to logically group more functions together. Plus they can squeeze oh so many more controls on since they've got the entire toolbar to do it.

At least thats how I see it.

Hiding it away is fine with me as well as it gives more visual workspace. On the Latitude D630 screen space isn't so much an issue. However my new X61 only sports a 1024x768 screen so hiding everything away isn't such a bad idea.

In fact I'm hiding the whole ribbon when not in use.

Its just different in my book.

Posted by: Andrew at Friday, February 15 2008 01:41 PM (vK23k)

2 Ah... this would be why I have implored people who are used to the older versions of Office to not upgrade. It's the kind of thing that can drive you nuts. You "knew" how it all worked... now you don't. *sigh*

Posted by: Teresa at Friday, February 15 2008 03:39 PM (rVIv9)

3 When I evaluated Vista and Office 2007, I decided that I'd rather upgrade the entire company to Vista than give anyone a copy of Office 2007. At least with Vista, 99% of users would spend a few minutes figuring out where their everyday tasks got moved to, and then be happy. Most of them live in Office, though, and operate it by reflex; UI changes there are much more significant.

Naturally, you can still buy XP, but new Office 2003 licenses are just a dream.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, February 16 2008 06:15 AM (2XtN5)

4 You should try Lotus 1-2-3. Amazing power and ease! The trick is in the forward /.

Posted by: Kevin at Saturday, February 16 2008 06:20 AM (eUFRP)

Hehe, I thought I was the only one who found this incredibly annoying.

The first time I opened it I was like "wtf where is edit???"

Vista and Office 2007 are just awful. Never before has an upgrade been such a downgrade in functionality and ease-of-use.

I tried to avoid Vista, but Dell wouldn't sell the new video cards without it.

Posted by: TallDave at Monday, February 18 2008 11:34 PM (kv6le)

6 I hear ya, Pixy. But that's why I use Open Office smile

Posted by: kyer at Tuesday, February 19 2008 07:23 AM (i+d8H)

7 I just started using Office 2007 and, frankly, I think this is the best interface move Microsoft has made for anything. I still think Vista is a worthless upgrade to XP and so on, but the Office 2007 ribbon is actually quite functional once you get over the learning curve.

And as a student of usability, this is a better idea than menus upon menus with billions of hidden options. I will give props to M$ when they (rarely) get things right, and this is something they got right.

Posted by: Brandon at Tuesday, February 26 2008 05:52 AM (I0jMM)

I've had serious problems with Office.

Outlook just stops sending/receiving, with no notice or error. You don't realize anything is odd until you notice you haven't gotten any email for a long time.

The ability to right-click suddenly goes away for no apparent reason (I assume this is a Vista problem more so than Office). It also causes you to be unable to select a window from a group, or toggle Desktop. Very very bad.

Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, March 02 2008 12:42 PM (kv6le)

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Thursday, February 14

A Question

My new Windows box is named Haruhi.

My new Linux box is named Yurie.

Now I have to buy a new notebook, because my old one exploded. The important question is, what is its name?

Logically, it should be named after a petite goddess from a 2007 anime series. But I can't think of any.

Oh, and by the way, I aten't dead. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:05 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 66 words, total size 1 kb.

1 If you're looking for girls with comparable power levels. Yume from "Someday's Dreamers" is at that level, too. But she isn't a kami, and the series isn't from 2007.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 14 2008 04:05 PM (+rSRq)

2 By the way, are you speaking literally when you talk about your old laptop exploding? Bad battery?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 14 2008 04:06 PM (+rSRq)

3 No, not literally. One moment it was working fine. The next moment screen filled with hash, and I shut it down, thinking the video driver had crashed.

Since then, I haven't been able to get it to boot, or even display a BIOS message.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 14 2008 04:36 PM (PiXy!)

4 Tough question. There was some bunch of supernatural schtick but I bypassed all of it (even Mokke). I guess I'd have to reach for "Isako" or "Michiko". Neither is a goddess, but... Actually I don't know what Michiko is. She may be the goddess of the Internet.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thursday, February 14 2008 04:55 PM (cFJHG)

5 Kamichu was 2005, not 2007. Having said that, are you willing to fudge it a bit and go for 2008? In that case you could use Horo, from Spice and Wolf.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 14 2008 05:20 PM (+rSRq)

6 Kamichu was 2005, Haruhi 2006, so I was looking for a 2007 series. Just a whimsy, really.

Spice and Wolf might be a good idea. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, though... I do most of my anime watching on my notebook, which is, as I mentioned, somewhat deceased.

Or I could go with Potemayo. She's petite, and for all we know, she might be a goddess. Of potatoes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 14 2008 07:00 PM (PiXy!)

7 Technically speaking, Skuld qualifies from the second season of Ah! My Goddess, since the dvds came out last year... smile

Posted by: Balentius at Friday, February 15 2008 10:37 AM (/0yDu)

8 I thought about Skuld, but she's not the central figure in the show, and AMG has been around for a looong time... And I've had servers named Urd, Belldandy and Skuld before.

None of which was in my original post, but there you go. wink

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2008 11:20 AM (PiXy!)

9 Maybe Fumika from Shigofumi? Deliverer of messages from recently dead souls.

Posted by: mparker762 at Friday, February 15 2008 01:19 PM (nqP8K)

10 That's another one worth considering.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2008 03:10 PM (PiXy!)

I'd probably feel bad everytime I got email if I kept thinking it meant somebody somewhere has died. wink

Posted by: Will at Saturday, February 16 2008 01:16 AM (P2D1U)

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