Davin’s blog Occassional posts on Web design, technology, my faith, family, and so on

25Apr/090

Pistol practice, Apr 25, 2009

I hit the range again this morning for a practice 900 bullseye match. What a beautiful morning! I started just after 8 AM and was facing East, and the sunshine played a nice highlighting on my iron sights.

Gun: .22 caliber Ruger Mk II
Ammo: Winchester Super-X .22 long rifle standard velocity

Slow fires were at 50 yards, timed and rapid fires at 25 yards.

Slow Fire National Match Course Timed Fire Rapid Fire Total
SF1 SF2 SF TF RF TF1 TF2 RF1 RF2
79-0X 83-1X 91-2X 93-2X 97-1X 93-0X 94-2X 90-3X 90-1X 810-12X

So, other than the Slow Fire of the NMC, it was a rough practice!

The Saginaw Field & Stream Club, where I shot, has a really nice 50 yard bullseye pistol range. I feel very fortunate to be a member there.

I put the remaining 10 rounds through a hybridized High Standard Victor. It had been working poorly, but my father brought it to the High Standard folks at the national championships at Camp Perry last year and they replaced the spring in the slide.

It looks like that was the problem, because those 10 shots all functioned great. Previously, I couldn't get off 3 rounds without a malfunction.

I plan to shoot the High Standard for my next practice outing.

21Apr/090

1st foray with svn:externals

Okay, confession. Since the mid-90s I've helped produce hundreds of websites. Yet, I've been using source code management software for less than 1 year.

Hindsight, right? In retrospect, I was just plain ignorant. Had I been using something like Subversion, I can think of a few big issues on past projects that just simply wouldn't have mattered.

  • Before using Subversion: "Argh. I  just royally whacked 189 files in one fell swoop. Curses! When was my last backup?!"
  • After using Subversion: "Hrm. I just royally whacked 189 files in one fell swoop. Eh, I'll just update from the prior revision and try again."

Source code management irritant

I have a side project, rangelistings.com, built with the Nephtali PHP framework.

Updating the framework source code into my site's code was trivial, but irritating. With each new release of Nephtali, I would upgrade. I'd do this by doing an export of the Nephtali source from a Google code repository and then copy and paste in the framework files to my working copy.

I couldn't just drag in a directory because that would drop Subversion's meta files from that directory and really mess up my working copy. Then I'd spend an extra half hour or so fiddling around to undo my screwed up Subversion copy. Very irritating.

svn:externals to the rescue

I knew about a feature in subversion called "externals," but had no first-hand experience. I investigated and realized that externals could be the answer to this particular problem.

Here's how I made use of externals. When upgrading Nephtali, I updated the files in a working copy directory /nephtali/src/NCore/.

  1. Since you can't create an external for a directory that already exists, I removed the NCore directory from my working copy and committed that change.
  2. Using Versions, an SVN client for the Mac, added a property to the src directory (NCore http://nephtali.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/NCore/).
  3. Ran an SVN update on the src directory and, as though by magic, I suddenly had the up-to-date source of Nephtali's core in my working copy.
Screenshot of Versions, an SVN app for the Mac

On my first attempt, I  followed an example  I had seen online and created a text document that had the svn:externals property in it, and then added the property '-F name_of_file.txt'.

That didn't work so well. It created the folder, but failed to load the files from the remote Nephtali repository.

Once I put the local directory and SVN URL in the property itself, it worked like a charm.

Here are a couple other pages I used while looking into svn:externals.

21Apr/090

Thanks MS. But I don’t want to disconnect from the Internet.

That's just a bizarre instruction. "You can now disconnect from the Internet."

MS .Net Installation - You may disconnect from the Internet.

MS .Net Installation - You can now disconnect from the Internet.

I almost blew it too by clicking the "Cancel" button because (1) I thought it was all done and it was the only button shaped thing available, (2) I do not want to disconnect anyway.

Luckily, I noticed in time that the progress bar was still working.

I know Microsoft takes a lot of abuse for no reason other than that they are M$, but it's just so easy with stuff like this.

6Apr/091

Helvetica vs Arial comparison

I was on the phone with Adam and interrupted him because I noticed a commercial that switched fonts from Helvetica Bold in the middle of the spot to Arial Bold in the closing frames. The fonts are so similar that they really shouldn't have switched. It was probably an oversight, but I was startled by it.

Anyway, Adam commented that it's crazy I noticed the difference. So, here's an image to show why it isn't crazy to notice the difference between the two.

Comparison of Helvetica vs Arial. Note the capital G, R, and lowercase e, r, a, and t.

Comparison of Helvetica vs Arial. Note the capital G, R, and lowercase e, r, a, and t.

The giveaway for me is the capital letter R. Helvetica's capital R has some nice curves on the leg of the R, compared to Arial's fairly angular stroke. I really like Helvetica's.

4Apr/091

Eva: It’s hard growing up

Eva Marie, Dec. 2008

Eva Marie, Dec. 2008

Eva, my 5 year old, was sitting next to me on the couch. She looked up at me with a sad face and said, "Daddy, it's hard growing up."

I gave her a little squeeze and prompted, "Yeah?"

"I don't like losing teeth," she finished.

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4Apr/090

I was a Whole Foods first-timer

Asparagus! Credit to Esteban Cavrico on Flickr.com.

Asparagus! Credit to Esteban Cavrico on Flickr.com.

I am not a foodie. Okay, now that that is out of the way: Whole Foods is amazing.

One evening at last week's IUE2009 conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my colleague Jackie and I breezed through the local Whole Foods store. From a user experience perspective, my Whole Foods experience was really great. But, let me digest it a bit further.

As author of "Neuro Web Design" Susan Weinschenk explained, our "old brain" triggers on 3 questions: can I eat it, can I have sex with it, and can it harm me.

Upon entering Whole Foods, we were first met with luscious fresh fruits and vegetables. They appeared and smelled a factor better than the normal produce at the grocer in my village. I walked in with the intetion to buy one item: baking powder that uses potato starch instead of corn starch, so when I realized I was gazing lustily at the asparagus, I swallowed my mouthful of saliva and steeled myself with the rational part of my brain. Discipline! I would not succumb. Still, it was delightful to walk around and see the beautiful cuts of meat, the great selections at the deli, the desserts, the wine, the cheeses.

We had circled the store and were approaching the checkout and realized that we hadn't seen the baking section.

So consider: We were in an unfamiliar store and had not located the item I was seeking. I was not irritated by this. The general happiness of walking through this great store put me in a very tolerant mood. I actually looked forward to seeing what other great things we'd see on the way to finding the baking powder, and I had high expectation that they would, in fact, have the baking powder. They did have it. I bought two cans of it, at a premium price. And, I ended up buying some turbinado sugar that was in the same aisle, since I was nearly out of demerrara sugar that I use for baking (and in coffee and on oatmeal…).

Designers! If you haven't yet, read "Emotional Design" by Don Norman. Oh, and Weinschenk's book too.

3Apr/092

IUE2009: Now what?

Whiteboard ideas cluster from IUE2009 conference

Whiteboard ideas cluster from IUE2009 conference. Click to view larger version.

Now comes the after-conference exhalation. (And I just attended! Imagine the organizers.)

My employer, Covenant Eyes, sent a small crew of people to the conference…8 of us in all. For all but me, it was the first time at any UX conference, and I think we all learned quite a bit.

So now the question becomes, what did we learn from all these tutorials and sessions, what ideas will help us do better work, and how can we make sure to build these ideas into our daily work.

I understand that most of us will gather on Monday to start hashing out those questions, but in the meantime I thought I'd share my initial map of ideas, recently jotted onto my whiteboard. Click the photo for a larger, more readable version.

Concepts on the board:

  • Use Cases
  • Field Research
  • Personas & Persona Maps
  • Rapid Iterative Design, "Kleenex Tests"
  • Branding+Content+Search Engine Optimization
  • Social Web (Podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) But Be Real!
3Apr/090

IUE2009: A few photos from the last day

I had a little break after Cora Bledsoe's presentation, and took a few minutes outside. Just sharing a few photos.

The outside of the Martin Lawrence Building, where the conference was held.

The outside of the Morris Lawrence Building, where the conference was held.

Artwork outside the conference building. Click the image for a larger version.

Artwork outside the conference building. Click the image for a larger version.

A pair of geese by a pond outside the conference building. Click the image for a larger version.

A pair of geese by a pond outside the conference building. Click the image for a larger version.