Category Archives: Red Ramblings

Rants, observations and general commentary about life not involving usability.

Why?

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This will never be a political blog.

I will not go into who I’m voting for in November.

I will not express my opinion on the Joe Paterno statue.

I will not debate the validity of the 2nd Amendment in a day where the chances for indians or wild animals attacking my home are quite low.

Tonight, I will just say this…

It’s wrong in every conceivable way that some kid can finally work up the nerve to ask his dream girl out on a date, take her to the “big summer movie”, worry about when to “make his move” and suddenly take a bullet to the head because some total lunatic who thinks of himself as the Joker happens to be in the same room.

I can understand death. Death and it’s inevitability is the thing that keeps all of us paying attention to today. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, so never leave an “I love you” or an “I forgive you” unsaid.

I was able to come to grips with 9/11… some people hate us and attacked the symbols of American business and the military.

I understand that accidents happen… a rubber tube snaps at the wrong time and a van crashes, killing ten kids on a field trip. Randomness is built into the equation when you get up in the morning.

But the idea that people died sitting in a movie theater because somebody with mental problems decided to kill them… that is NOT the randomness that comes with daily life.

That is evil. Senseless, remorseless, evil.

I uninstalled DC Universe Online this weekend. I used to enjoy the game, but I just can’t see myself ever being able to play a character in that “world” again. I used to love the Joker as a character and I thought that Heath Ledger was brilliant in the role… but now all I can think of when I see that painted face is… why?

My thoughts are with the families of the victim They’ll never be able to get past this because there will never be an answer to the most important question…. why?

Freemium

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First, check out this article: http://gigaom.com/2012/07/21/freemium-has-run-its-course/

Finished?

OK, I’ve got a problem with this. I’m an avid WoW player (told you I was a geek) and  I know that the MMO world is split between two models.

The first is “subscription”- where you pay a monthly fee and you get everything. Well, almost everything. There are some micro-transactions like buying vanity pets, but nothing that effects play.

The other is “free to play”. In here, you can sign up for free and play most of the game at no cost… up to a point. However, if you want to reach the upper levels, play the end game, get the best gear, use in-game email or any of bajillion other features then reach for your wallet.

Every game wants to be subscription based. Currently, there are three that I know of that are actually able to do it. There is WoW, Rift and Sta Wars-TOR. They all offer to let you pay for free for the first 15-20 levels (with a lot of functionality turned off) and to go beyond that you need to whip out the credit card.

Problem is that both Rift and SW-TOR are having problems staying above water and there are constant rumors that they will be “going free-to-play” in the near future, like Conan and several other formerly subscription based  games did. Why make the change? Because it makes the company MORE MONEY than staying subscription.

So… if the “freemium” model is dead then why is the online gaming world completely the reverse? Wizard 101, Eve Online, LotR Online… all of these are making money by using the same “freemium” model that they say is dead.

Just a random thought…

-Jay

Deadliest Catch

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I’m about to admit that I am a HUGE geek… my favorite channel is the Discovery Channel.  There, I said it.

One of my favorite shows on there is “Deadliest Catch” which, for any of you that don’t know, follows several crab boat crews in the Bering Sea during the King and Opillio seasons. The guys are dealing with almost hurricane-force winds, ice, thirty hour work days and the ever-present danger of falling overboard where you’ll be dead in less than two minutes.

It REALLY makes me appreciate my nice, warm, safe desk job.

Couple of things have always bothered me though…

  1. Why don’t they use some sort of “fish finder” sonar? They just chug up to a site, say “I guess they’ll be here” and start dumping traps (called “pots”). Half the time, when they reel them up 24-48 hours later they are “blanks”, meaning empty. According to the show, crabs move in what is basically an underwater herd called a “bio-mass”,  There has to be some sort of radar or sonar that can see this massive clump of crab on the floor. Hell, how about an underwater camera? This entire “pot and pray” technique such seems so 19th century.
  2. The number one enemy of the boats is ice. It gets so cold that sea spray immediately sticks to the boats and freezes solid. Within a couple of hours you have an extra couple of hundred TONS of ice on the ship and the crews have to go out with sledge hammers and shovels to spend 8 hours knocking the ice off the boat before it becomes too heavy and rolls over. Every time I see this I think “There must be some way of keeping ice off the boat.” Maybe coating the metal in Teflon so it doesn’t stick. Maybe some sort of electrical current that the captain can flip a switch and send a jolt of current down the rails. There HAS to be something that can be done.

Anyway… I’m a geek and I spend too much time thinking “How could you do that better?”

– Jay

This has nothing to do with UI, but I couldn’t help myself.

This charming fellow is a street preacher that stands outside my local Starbucks.

preacher

He has a guitar, a portable megaphone and stands there screaming at us about being “slaves to the devil coffee”. Locals know not to make eye contact or he’ll follow you, offering to “bless” you.

Life in the big city…

– Jay

WTB Visio reader for Android

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There will be a full post a little later today.

Right now, I just wanted to take a moment to whine about the fact that there is NO Visio reader for Android.

I don’t expect to be able to do any editing of a Visio doc on my tablet… but at least let me look at them.

If anybody sees a Visio reader for Android, please let me know.

Thanks.

And so it begins…

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Let me begin by answering the question that I know is running through your mind.

“Red Paint?”

Here’s a riddle for you: “What is red and smells like blue paint?”

If you ask most adults that question, they will stare at you for a second and then start racking their brains, coming up with one convoluted answer after another. “A fire truck painted blue and immediately washed off” was a personal favorite.

I then asked my 11-year-old daughter the same question one night when I was bringing her a drink of water. She looked up at me with big, tired eyes and said “Duh, red paint daddy” and immediately returned to watching cartoons before going to sleep.

The point of this story? As adults we tend to overcomplicate things. We try to be too clever. Kids just look for the simplest answer. As adults, we can learn a lot from that lesson, especially in our working lives.

We see a problem and we try to come up with the most elaborate, complicated solution imaginable. This may happen intentionally or by accident, such as because of “design by committee” where there is no central theme and the result is a hodge-podge of parts stuck together.

Naturally, the most egregious examples of this are on the Internet. We’ve all been to sites that have no identifiable navigational structure. Sites that as soon as you take four steps into it you have no idea where you are or how you got there. Sites that seem to be designed to confuse the user into submission.

In my fifteen years of design experience, I have learned several important lessons. The biggest was the “Well duh” principal. I would get a new project, start off with an idea and keep playing with it, tweaking this part or that until that little light bulb went off above my head. It wasn’t until I thought “Well duh, how else COULD you do this?” and felt like an idiot for not seeing the most obvious solution that I knew I was done. It was my “Well, duh” moment.

I couldn’t name a blog “Well, duh”… so welcome to Red Paint.

This blog will be a discussion of the world and how we interact with it. It will also cover the tools that we use to create those interactions. True, there will be a heavy emphasis on the online part of the world, but it won’t be limited to that. In fact, the next post will be about something as simple as the color of a door.

Feel free to contact me at redpaintblog@gmail.com or follow me on twitter at @redpaintblog.