Stickin' it to them

Hey there, I know I'm a few minutes late on the post, but I've been caught up in trying to beat a boss on the new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess game. I hate it when you're told to do something, and it sounds simple, and then manages to utterly fail your comprehension. Press "A" to grab the rolling rock. Um, sure. And what do I do when it just rolls right over me and/or knocks me into the lava?

Anyway, I bought a new book today, heard about it from the Signal vs. Noise blog. The book is titled Made to Stick, and it is a book that attempts to explain why some ideas blossom and some fail to make an impact. They open by asking the reader to read a passage about the old "drugged - ice bath - stolen kidneys" urban legend, then take an hour break, and then tell a friend the tale without looking back at the book. They then show you a corporate message - you know, those things that use words like "accountability", "factor", "categorical requirements". Then they ask to to tell that to a friend without a break, with the knowledge that it is almost impossible, due to the lack of concrete things that we can visualize.

They manage to get their point across using examples such as Army commanders, teachers, Nordstrom managers, and even the Jared commercials from Subway. I'm really looking forward to reading the book, and then passing it on to those who can make good use of the ideas I hope to find in it.

CSS woes

So, as much as I love the power of CSS, it has really been killing me lately.

I've been tweaking the hell out of our website at work, and every time I change one thing, something else seems to break. I have to deal with supporting IE6/7 and Firefox, so my headaches are 3 times as bad as I thought they would be.

Now, I'm trying to be smart about the code I am writing, using conditional comments to make sure IE6 acts the way it should, but that hasn't solved all of my problems. It has helped, and I don't want to downplay the coolness factor that it is available for us to use. The question rises again, however — Why must we be forced to use them?! Oh, right. IE6 is like the rash that won't go away...

I'm going to be redesigning my blog soon, and I'm definitely going to use CSS, but to hell with IE6. The only browsers I'm going to even think about supporting are IE7 and Firefox 2.0+. And yes Cris, I'd be happy to do some CSS voodoo for you, but with the same stipulation: no IE6 support.

On the upside of life, my girlfriend is being great and is helping me by cleaning my apartment, and she made some fantastic chili for dinner tonight. :)

Later!

"Snap" to it!

I ran across this earlier, by accident, but I really like it. It's a simple javascript addition to your page, and then this company "Snap" will snag a preview of the linked site, so that if you hover over a link you will see a popup with an image of the site in it. It's simple, but nice.

Snap Preview

Interesting Concepts of Visualization Methods

So part of my job is to do wireframing, sketches, and otherwise figuring out all the ways to describe and show an idea to people. Now, for me, this is pretty much layouts for web pages. There are only so many ways to show the layout of a page - but sometimes one needs to get the idea of how the user is going to see the page, and use it. That is when some kind of other graphic can come into play. Explaining abstract and potentially confusing ideas can be difficult, but with the right graphic tool, it's possible to properly describe the problem with a minimum of difficulty.

Enter Visualization Methods

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

As you can see from the linked page, there exists a large selection of styles we can use. The hard part, is choosing not only which one to use, but whether it even makes sense to use one.

My company does a lot of presentations, and those presentations have a lot of these types of graphic representations in them.

And I'll leave it at that

Another Customer Service story

I was reading my /. feeds earlier, and I found an article from PC World of a guy who signed up for a bunch of Web services and his experiences with the cancellation of said services.

Just Cancel the @#%$* Account!

I posted about poor customer service last night, and so this fits with that blog. It is nice, though, to see that he did find a list of companies with very little to no hassle when canceling.

My walk on Saturday night

Check out my walk; it was nice

Global Warming, Cite Bite, and "Why do companies insist on treating their customers badly?"

Global Warming

So today it appears we have set a new record high temperature: 68F — the previous high was 62F, back in 1913. Anyone who does not believe that the phenomenon of Global Warming exists and that we are currently experiencing it must be delusional.

Now, I don't believe it is all due to us homo sapiens sapiens (yes, I believe we are not the only humans in history, just the ones who won). I believe that global warming has happened before, and it is cyclical. Ice ages are cyclical, as are the reversing of the magnetic poles, among many other things that don't happen (and have not ever happened) in a single lifetime of scientists or other people who think they understand what is going on and record it. Just because we have not seen it happen doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

Now, by that same argument someone can (and will) argue the existence of God. I personally have a major issue (actually, more than one issue) with organized religions and their twisted views of who God is, what He stands for, and the necessary things one must do to "guarantee" a place in Heaven. I honestly believe that there is a truth in each religion out there, but it's buried, and no religious leader is going to let the people know the real truth, because the lies (or obfuscations, really) are what grant the leaders their power, and no matter how pious one starts out as, power corrupts and it is a drug in its own right.

Enough about that — I think I've been reading too many "da Vinci Code" books lately.

Cite Bite

I ran across Cite Bite earlier while reading the LifeHacker blog a little while ago. Quite the cool internet tool; it's made to let you select a chunk of text on a site and open the site to your selection. Not only does it open the site to that bit, but it highlights it too. For those of you who use Firefox (and that had better be every one of you!), there is a plugin available as well. Yeah, I like it.

And finally...

Why do companies insist on treating their customers badly?

So at work, we're doing a full rebuild of our website, and one of the reports we use on the site utilizes a great visual reporting tool that builds nice graphs and maps. It's a great upgrade from the software we used to use on our old site. However, the company that sells it has some issues with the customer service they provide (or attempt to).

The report shows information in Canada, Mexico, and the US. However, the package we purchased did not include maps for Canada and Mexico, so when it was time to make the report, the developer contacted the company (which was between Christmas and New Year's, so some kind of delay could be expected) to request pricing for the maps.

A week and a half later (Thursday afternoon) the sales rep finally got back to us. He said the maps would be $300 each and would take a week to create from the day they received payment. In the meantime, since I have Adobe Illustrator, I found a couple good maps of the countries in question, and began tracing them. Now, the software to do the mapping uses SVG files, so they are very easy to create using Illustrator. Problem is, the maps cannot contain curves, due to requirements in the reporting software. So using Live Trace is out (but maybe I just suck at using it still). Anyway, while I'm working on the tracings (Canada sucks to trace by the way — just look at a map of Nunavut), the dev is trading emails back and forth with the sales guy. I finish the tracings by the time we got an email saying that they could "throw some more developers at them" and "have them next day" for us, and they'd be all tested "in-house." Of course, I don't know how they'd put more developers on creating the maps. It's an SVG, which is a glorified XML file.

Anyway, I built both maps in about 1.5 days worth of work, and we saved a bunch of money (I sure don't make $300 a day). We think someone got a slap on the wrist, because after we told them that we built the maps ourselves, they said that they'd do the best they could, in the future, to have SVGs made next day for us.

I come from a customer service background, so I feel like I have a good handle on what is good Customer Service and what is not. I like to pride myself on providing good customer service, even if doing so is a pain in the ass for me. I get paid to deal with stuff that other people shouldn't have to deal with. Making sure people's problems are solved rapidly and painlessly (for them) is the one of the key requirements for making sure you have repeat business from that client. If dealing with the problem is going to take some time, keep the customer aware of the process and make sure they know that it is being dealt with. If you cannot solve the problem for them, let them know, and try to give them another way to fix the problem, even if it means they talk to a competitor of yours. Of course, if that is the solution, you'd better get to work creating something that will solve that same kind of issue in the future, and be sure to let that client know that you have done so. They will feel like you have listened to them, and that alone may be enough of a reason for them continue (or resume) doing business with you.

Ok, if you have read this entire post, I congratulate you, and I appreciate your having spent the time to listen to my rambling. Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed the content and want to read more posts like it.

Morlocks vs. the Eloi

So once again I've Stumbled Upon a website that I really enjoyed reading. Its main theme is the evolution from teletype to command line interfaces up through the GUI OS of 1999. It was written by a programmer who says he has worked on many different platforms, but also says his article is subjective. Therefore, read on with that bit of info in your mind.

Snagged from InTheBeginningWasTheCommandLine

Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

Morlocks, who have the energy and intelligence to comprehend details, go out and master complex subjects and produce Disney-like Sensorial Interfaces so that Eloi can get the gist without having to strain their minds or endure boredom.

Yeah, sounds like some people I know. And also, there's a bit of my job in there as well.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!