obso1337.org

From Jacqueline: List your five favourite artists, your five favourite songs by those artists and tag five other people to do it.

This took me all weekend to think about. I can’t commit that these are my favourite 5 artists and favourite 5 songs ever, but they are certainly in any top list I compile.

Nine Inch Nails

• Closer
• Hurt
• The entire The Fragile album
• My Violent Heart
• Meet Your Master

Tool

• H.
• Jimmy
• Lateralus
• The Grudge
• 10,000 Days

Radiohead

• Lucky
• Morning Bell
• I Might Be Wrong
• Where I End and You Begin
• There There

BT
Nothing of his is better than the 5 song sequence in the UK release of Movement in Still Life.

• Mercury and Solace
• Dreaming
• Giving up the Ghost
• Godspeed
• Namistai

(Unknown)
I have too many other artists who would tie for this position. Also, they haven’t made as much of an impression as the previously selected artists, or, do not have enough material to select five songs from.

Also, since not everyone blogs off-topic, so I’ll just ask my five other people to post a comment response (and whoever else who wants to!): Bokunenjin, Chani, JRiddell, Lowmagnet, and Nixternal.

seele :: Mar.09.2008 :: Blogging, General, Music :: 19 Comments »

Can’t help but post this quiz: How Pittsburgh Are You?. I’d love to know what some of yinz get ;-)

seele :: Jan.21.2007 :: General, Humor, Quizzes :: 11 Comments »

1. Name: Celeste, aka seele
2. Age/Birthday: 25 as of last Monday!
3. Single or Taken: Taken
4. Favorite Movie: Ghost in the Shell
5. Favorite Song: Illuminat by Thievery Corporation
6. Favorite Band/Rapper/Artist: I have no single favorite, but I did just get tickets to see Massive Attack
7. Favorite Book/Comic Book: Neuromancer by William Gibson
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings: Used to have some piercings, but now not even my ears are
9. Favorite TV Show: I don’t watch TV but when I did it was X-Files or The Daily Show
10. Favorite Video Game/Board Game: World of Warcraft or RISK
11. Do we know each other outside of Livejournal?: Yes
12. Would you give me a unicorn?: Once designer genetics is more affordable, sure
13. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you: Other than being a total geek (which you already know), I probably spend way too much time reading research papers that don’t have to do with my current classes
14. If you could change anything about your current life, would you?: I would live closer to the city and have a puppy
15. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?: Ta-da
16. Post a picture of you:
    

seele :: Aug.18.2006 :: Blogging, General :: 7 Comments »

In an effort to get to know better the needs of developers are from the Human Interface Guidelines, I solicited several groups of developers to participate in a survey which ran for two weeks in May. The outcome was very good with 52 participants providing their comments and suggestions.

After reviewing the results and compiling them in to a report I think several things are safe to assume about developer’s relationship with the HIG:

• They don’t trust it.
• They don’t trust us.
• They expect more from it.
• They didn’t know it existed.
• They might actually use it.

They don’t trust it. The old guidelines are just that — old. Being out of date and inaccurate are strong reasons why developers might not use them. Being incomplete also raised some questions in their validity.

They don’t trust us. Some of them flat out said they didn’t trust them (and those who write them) and won’t until they see some theory behind the claims. Trust in the usability community has always an issue. Theory is fine and dandy, but misunderstood or out of context its useless. Just because you don’t like it or don’t understand it shouldn’t be grounds for creating inconsistent interfaces. If you really feel that strongly against that particular guideline, there are better ways to change them than ignoring them.

They expect more from it. The quality and quantity of the guidelines are an issue. There isn’t enough there and what is there is dated and old. If the HIG is to be a definitive guide then it needs to be current and updated frequently. Important issues need to be added in order for them to be referenced, there were many comments of fruitless searches because content was missing.

They didn’t know it existed. Apparently it isn’t very easy to find the guidelines because many of the participants didn’t know they existed, or had looked for them and never found them. Along with a community-wide effort to promot the guidelines, it has to be more easily accessible.

They might actually use it. No one was really against having guidelines, infact many were optimistic they would use it if it met their explicit demands. If we can solve the Q&Q (quality and quantity) problem which is present in the existing guidelines, I’m optimistic the new guidelines will be happily adopted.

What you’ve been waiting for: KDE4 HIG Developers Survey Results (PDF 601KB)

seele :: Jun.02.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: No Comments »

Although earlier this year I had hoped to get the reports up by the end of January, that they got up by mid-February isn’t too bad. The 2005 reports page is here.

Reports were added for: KBruch, KMail Recipients, Koffice Startup, Kopete, KOrganizer, KPrinter.

There have been more reports than this, particularly through OpenUsability.org. These were just the ones which were specifically sent to me to get posted to the site. Also, much of our contribution is through talking and working with the developers and not necessarily preparing web-ready deliverables.

I also cleaned up some of the links to the XML contribution style we dont really use (OpenUsability.org however does, and reports can be submitted through them). I also removed some of the links to the older reports while I clean up the structure, and I will eventually add them to the archives.

BTW, I also have a Jabber account on kdetalk.net (celeste at kde dot org). I have never used Jabber before, so I’m still figuring out what this is about.

seele :: Feb.19.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off