obso1337.org

Google’s Gmail chat interface was recently made public. Justin and I tried it out Friday while he was at work. It is certainly fun to use and convenient if you cant use an instant messenger on the network you are on, however it is no replacement for a robust IM client.

There are two options for the interface, you can either have a little widget sitting in the corner of your screen where you can chat back and forth, or you can pop-out the widget in to a separate window. There are no bells and whistles with the functionality of the application but it does have some nice features. If you type several messages in quick succession it appends it to your original NAME label instead of adding new messages on top of each other (so it looks like one big message instead of a bunch of little messages). It shows the other user’s typing status and when they go idle.

Obviously you have to be constantly logged in to GMail to be available for chat (this might not matter if you always have an email window open) and it is difficult to notice when you have notifications (of friend status or incoming message). It would be interesting to see how network admins would block this kind of client (AFAIK its some sort of AJAX application) where instant messaging is prohibited (some for good and some for not so reasonable reasons). Its not a IM client replacement but something you can use when youre in a bind (and you have friends who are constantly monitoring GMail).

This weekend was pretty uneventful and relaxing. The beautiful weather we had last week turned to bitter cold (with no precipitation luckily). The on-and-off cold is more than annoying, I noticed Thursday one of my tires were getting low, and it became significantly lower once the temperature dropped. I’m hoping I dont have a flat and the weather just did a number on the pressure in my tire, but it may be time to get two new tires and a rotate anyway.

I played more World of Warcraft this weeken than I have in a few weeks. Playing a horde character opens up a lot of quests and areas I never quested in before (it also helps to be playing a matured game than when it first was released). I also managed to hit level 40 and Justin helped me out with buying a mount (re: giv me teh gold)

We also are in the process of watching all the Harry Potter movies (Justin has never seen them). The first episode of the second season of 24 also arrived from Netflix, but we opted to go see Munich instead. Very good movie by the way, however I do agree with critics about its over objectiveness. The characters are presented so objectivly it is difficult to find a ’side’ to sympathise and relate to (thus involving the audience member and making the movie meaningful to them). It was full of Jewish culture and phrases so tiny details might go unnoticed if you dont understand what a kabutz is or what the Jewish idea of the afterlife is.

Luckily I never think of Monday as the stepping stone for the rest of the week, or else I’d be in trouble. There was some miscommunication with a client I am working with. I didnt realise I had a meeting until she called me to ask if I was stuck in the cluster-fuck of traffic due to a major accident on the outer-loop of the beltway (it took a friend of mine who lives nearby 3.5 hours to go to work which is about 20 miles away). That’s D.C. for you. Traffic at any time, any place, often for no reason at all.

But hey, after figuring out that I had both the Sun SDK and GCJ installed, not knowing GCJ was installed and that is why the Sun binaries wern’t globally linked and that is why none of my homework was running, I think I’m finally ready to start the week.

Is it Friday yet?

seele :: Feb.20.2006 :: General, Movies, Technology, Work :: 2 Comments »

So I forgot to publish this post, some if it is outdated ;P

I still have a bit of homework to do tonight before I can try to do anything else. Ive been waiting for a response to a question on the message board for a day now and no one seems to want to answer it. The homework itself should only take about 30 minutes once I get a response.

I did get my homework done last night in about 30 minutes which was nice. I was a little annoyed how well some of my classmates did not answer my question, and instead acted as if I didnt know what an algorithm was and gave me an unrelated explanation. All I wanted to know was what a certain variable meant because it hadn’t been defined in the example. Luckily one of my classmates knew exactly what I was asking because he had the same question and answered it perfectly.

My other two classes I have only had two reading assignments for, although I will eventually have larger projects to begin working on. I managed to get most of the reading for the one class done last week on the Metro, and the other book I had previously read so I will go over the material in between classes tonight.

I’m pretty happy with the reading selections some of my Ubalt classes have made. Most of the books are either prose/philosophy or reference, so I’ll get good use out of them after the classes have ended. I got back to reading “Digital Ground” for recreation, although it might get put back on the shelf if I can’t find time to read after I stop riding the Metro.

I need to figure out a way to consolidate postings on my KDE blog and my personal blog. Various blogs get syndicated all over the place but one audience always misses out on a story. I wouldnt expect you to subscribe to all of my blogs, but sometimes I wish I could cross-post interesting stuff.

I had good intentions of adding the 2005 usability reports to the KDE Usability website, but I was more interested in playing WoW. I havn’t been able to play since last week, and even then it was only for a few hours the entire week. I managed to get on for a bit last night, but it took forever for me to log in to the Battlegrounds and I ended up going downstairs to watch the Chapelle Show and Southpark with Justin.

Tonight are the second classes of the semester for Ubalt so I will probably get some homework or projects to work on.

So much to do, so little time.

seele :: Feb.08.2006 :: Academics, Books, General, KDE/Kubuntu, Work :: No Comments »

Happy Lunar New Year (of the Dog)!

World of Warcraft hosted festivities throughout the worlds with towns and cities decorated with lanterns, and special vendors providing treats such as fireworks and lucky dumplings.

I start my first classes for UBalt on Wednesday. I also signed up for an additional class (Data Structures and Algorithms) to transfer from UMUC. The University System of Maryland has a program where you can cross register between institutions without having to ‘transfer’ credits.

I’ve already had Data Strucutres at Duquesne, however if I take the graduate version of the class (not much difference) I can get it to count toward my programming core requirement for my IDIA degree and possible pre-requisites if I decide to pursue a doctorate. It is an online class so I can work on it whenever I want, however the book was $88 plus I needed to pay extra to have it shipped 2-day. Unfortunatly I could not find a used copy of it anywhere.

So begins the drive to Baltimore once a week.

I also start at my new company, User-Centered Design, Inc., in two weeks. It is a completely different job, working as a consultant on various projects from home and on-site with clients. I am senior interaction architect (IxA) and will be working between the usability engineers (UE) and developers.

The company’s portfolio is primarily government/web based, although they do have product and public-sector experience. They are also starting to get in to some industry research topics such as Usabile Voting, so it should be pretty interesting.

We’re also still looking for an apartment to move to by the end of March. There was a place we looked at in Silver Spring, but at the time of the special price they were running, they didnt have any apartments available. If anyone has any ideas, our pre-requisites include being within walking to distance to the Metro and some dining/shops/stuff-to-do. Oh, and affordable ;P

seele :: Jan.30.2006 :: Academics, General, Work :: No Comments »

Thursday December 1 and 2, the F/OSS desktop community gathered in Portland, Oregon to discuss what we can do to make it better. Although I will talk about this more in my K Developers Blog later today, I did have a good time meeting up with KDE peeps and geeking out. When I got back, Justin and I drove up to Pittsburgh to watch the Pens and Steelers play. If you watched either of those games, then you know why were in such a bad mood today ;P

Continue Reading »

seele :: Dec.05.2005 :: Books, General, KDE/Kubuntu, Life, Work :: No Comments »

I created a short survey to gather user usage and satisfaction information about the Start Menu. It would be a great help if you could propogate this URL to your friends and family:

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=131534

Most of you I know are computer geeks (re: advanced users) so your input is less valuable than that from the average user.

Thanks!

seele :: Nov.28.2005 :: General, Usability, Work :: No Comments »