Quarter Life CrisisThe world according to Sven-S. PorstIt wasn't me- July 22, 2008 &8230; but that car still parked right behind me. Thought it looked cool, though.http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/it_wasnt_me Tastes like Chicken- July 20, 2008 I developed a taste for grilling chicken last winter and did so pretty much every single weekend, learning about little details like brushing salt water on the chicken&8217;s skin over time. On the warmer days of summer enthusiasm for oven made food ebbed away and only this weekend - in dark and cloudy July -it came back. I went to chicken shop, filled the oven, grilled some carrot slices along with it (herbs are nice and butter is essential for that) and had a nice meal. This one came out.http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/tastes_like_chicken_1 Macintosh or Windows- July 19, 2008 After I discovered a while ago that my EyeTV&8217;s analogue input wasn&8217;t broken but its failure of getting any pictures to me was another case of SCART FAIL; And after discovering that plugging the SCART plug in sort-of half at a slight angle would give me an image, I started going through my trusty video collection to see which of the films - lovingly recorded from telly back in the 1990s -I wanted to keep. Luckily I&8217;m not a big re-watcher, which kept the number reasonable and only.http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/macintosh_or_windows Serviceweltmeister- July 19, 2008 I had to choke chuckle over breakfast when I saw this full-page ad in the paper: Deutsche Telekom putting an ironic (or ironic-ironic or pseudo-ironic It&8217;s hard to tell in these times of ironic post-irony.) heading Serviceweltmeister (service world champion) with their name along with some small print that they haven&8217;t managed to be that yet. That sounds like sufficiently many people must have suffered from Telekom&8217;s &8216;service&8217; that even their higher echelons and...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/serviceweltmeister Keyboard Equivalents- July 18, 2008 Lukas commented on yesterday&8217;s localisation post that keyboard equivalents are a sore point for him in a lot of today&8217;s software. And I can totally relate to that. I seem to remember that some HIG revisions hinted that you shouldn&8217;t use non-alphanumeric characters for keyboard equivalents. But that&8217;s a thing of the past now and many applications love using non-alphanumeric characters like or for keyboard equivalents. As a consequence we have user interfaces whose...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/keyboard_equivalents Localisations are a hassle- July 16, 2008 Dan Wood shares his experiences with localising software. While I detailed a few of the difficulties of the localisation process right on a language and &8216;social&8217; level, yesterday, Dan focuses on the technical difficulties of doing it. Even with the tools we get for that task in Mac OS X and additional tools like iLocalize which are considered to be above average in the software world at large, the whole process is a rather huge effort and it&8217;s easy to see why people don&8217;t.http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/localisations_are_a_hassle Localisations are hard- July 16, 2008 As a matter of principle I am a big fan of localised software. With the exception of many localised applications, that is. I am a fan because, obviously, not everybody can use applications in English, German, Chinese or whatever language they were created for. As an application should help the person using it - rather than creating another language or cultural burden - presenting itself in a properly localised version helps a lot in that respect: The user will feel more welcome and...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/localisations_are_hard A few pixels more or less will matter- July 14, 2008 What a difference a few pixels can make -a little comparison for fellow Mac OSX.5 sufferers. When trying to drag another application into the Dock, I always find it rather hard to actually get it in there. Dock icons tend to try staying in place and not open up that gap for a new application unless you aim very precisely. And aiming precisely is rather difficult when you aim at the moving target that enlarge-on-hover Dock icons are. As a result I usually find dragging applications to the...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/a_few_pixels_more_or_less_will_matter Washed to death- July 13, 2008 I came late to the mobile telephony party and only recently I had my cheapo Motofone F3 for a year. I rarely used, but this weekend it was time to say goodbye. Or rather to say &8216;AH HELLO!&8217; to the phone when I opened the washing machine. I tried washing the thing a little and drying it thoroughly (as annoying and noisy as the heat vented out of the back of a MacBook is, it&8217;s great for gently drying things), but that didn&8217;t help. Connecting the phone to the power adaptor...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/washed_to_death So, huh- July 12, 2008 The first day of the brave new world was today - the release of the second iPhone. And more importantly the release of its version 2 operating system. I can only judge this from the sidelines, but I think the release of the new operating system which enables third party applications is a big step. Quite likely the updated phone isn&8217;t such a big step. And even the hardcore fanboys seem to think so as there wasn&8217;t as much silliness in front of computer and phone stores this time...http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/07/so_huh |