So, I thought I killed my entire blog when I tried to upgrade to a new version of WordPress. I actually stopped the process mid way, just in case there was a chance the upgrade would have stopped before it reached my blogs.
And then I decided they were gone and went ahead with the update. And then I found out they were still there!
Yay!
I just ran my second marathon of the year, I’ll add an update about that and other things soon!
ask me to install software to control the trackpad built into my HP laptop?
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say that the operating system driving this hardware should actually come with all the software needed to control it. But apparently in this case, track pad software isn’t part of the base install of my HP.
This is … stupid. I hate this trackpad. I end up clicking and dragging all the time because there’s this magical way I can touch the trackpad and it thinks I’ve clicked something. I would like to turn this idiocy off, however I can’t. Because Windows thinks I’m using a mouse.
That’s reason 4,321 I like my Macs better. Got a mouse? Cool. Got a trackpad? Whatever, we’ll make it work. There’s no silly software for me to install. It knows what I need and gives it to me.
The big news here is, I’ve landed a job at the Active Network in Seattle. This should be an awesome job. The atmosphere is really great, the people are young and active like I aspire to be. But more importantly, I am the second trained designer they’ve ever hired (The other one has the same start date as me) and we’re given the task of basically meshing all of their products into one. It’s a lot of responsibility, so, this should be a lot of fun. Or hard work. Or both.
#1 - Blog once a week. - Faltered again. Will probably fall behind further in the coming weeks as I have a lot to do.
#2 - Try new technologies. - I signed up for Twitter. I’m barely using it tho.
#3 - Continue to be skeptical of technology. - I certainly am skeptical of Twitter.
#4 - Run four marathons. - Three to go! Disney 2008 was my first of the year on Jan. 13th. Registered for Anchorage on June 21 and Chicago on October 12. Haven’t decided if I’ll run San Diego on June 1.
#5 - Improve my marathon time for each race. - Have to best a 5:37:58 time on my second.
#6 - Finish what I started. - My personal website has been redone. Now its onto that pesky school stuff.
#7 - Find a better job. - Found it! Moving to Seattle in a couple weeks to work for the Active Network.
#8 - Save some money. - Looks like I can officially start doing this. I had a lofty goal that preceded the housing/credit crises. But, a good amount will be decided upon shortly and we’ll go from there.
#9 - Learn to make bread, pizza and pasta. - Now feasible yet again. I might add fried chicken to the list.
#10 - Sell 100 DVDs. - Need my DVDs! But the Apple TV is apparently going to stop the bleeding.
#11 - Get back into tennis and rock climbing. - Pretty much handled. I’m now looking to add curling and hockey to the list. Go Canada!
#12 - Make a Facebook application. - Looks like Team in Training is the application to make.
#13 - Find four new vegatables/fruits to eat. - Still working on this. As in, I haven’t started.
#14 - See Kansas in the NCAA final four. - I couldn’t make it *to* the Final Four, but Kansas surely did win it all! Consider this one accomplished!
New portfolio launched! Can be found at www.matthewahenry.com.
I have some minor changes to make, including some content issues (dates, groups, roles), more pictures and possibly a different picture scheme using CSS instead of JavaScript.
Now that I have the new CSS and HTML standards supported in Safari, I could make the pictures ROTATE! Which would be … yeah, nevermind.
The new version of my portfolio is in hiding, but will soon make its debut, possibly as early as tonight. There may be a few tweaks that need to be made after launch, but nothing that should be used as a reason to delay launch.
This would be a key piece of my “things to do this year.” Excitement! 
While the higher ups at Yahoo! worry about whether to sell to Microsoft, the rest of Yahoo! is still hard at work, trying to make better products for its users to enjoy. It’s a fast-paced company, and over the past few months a large number of products have been launched or updated.
But something I have learned is that “new” doesn’t always mean “improved.”
One trend that has surfaced as Yahoo! launches new products is to use pop-ups (typically designed to look like Post-It notes) to alert the user to new features. This could be seen along side the new Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Autos. These pop-ups have typically made me a little uneasy, as they are both obtrusive to the user and casts some doubt as to whether their new designs are really transparent or intuitive. In some cases, as with Yahoo! Search, I give them a little slack because the new features were so different than what users have encountered.
Today, I found the pop-up demon rear its ugly head yet again in another Yahoo! products, Yahoo! Shortcuts. And while Yahoo!’s previous uses of the pop-up made me uneasy, this one downright angered me. After finding a sightly entertaining quotation in Yahoo! News from Barack Obama that I wanted to share with a friend, I double clicked on a paragraph to copy and paste it into an IM client. This is a pretty common method of text-selection, found in any modern word processor, and on most websites, including the New York Times and CNN. But on Yahoo!’s page, a wholly different event occurred. Instead of selecting text, it created a Yahoo! Shortcuts pop-up, so that I may search on the specific word on which I double clicked.
Now, I realize that Yahoo! is hurting for any market share it can get, but this really puts Yahoo!’s business needs ahead of the user. It is a clear violation of people’s mental models and there is certainly no indication that double clicking on *any* word in a Yahoo! hosted article will create this pop-up. Yes, double click on “the” in a paragraph, and you’ll be delighted by a Yahoo! Shortcut pop-up, helping you search for other places on the web where “the” appears.
Yahoo!, I understand the need to push things out the door as fast as possible, but these pop-ups … there’s a reason most modern browsers and toolbars - even the one *you* make - have pop-up blockers. We don’t want them. And you keep using them. Sometimes in hopes of helping us, but now apparently you’ve taken to helping yourself. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here. Maybe you have some justification. I hope there is. Please, tell me there is.
It may sound strange, but I’m trying to take my website down. Well, only strange until I tell you that I’m putting a new one up in its place.
I’ve consistently designed websites for myself that I don’t like, and the current version is no different. While I still like the color scheme, the overall design has really felt like “design for design’s sake.”
The new version is quite different. One of the primary goals for the redesign was “no design.” I think the finished site will really achieve that goal, and it allows the portfolio pieces to exist without competition from the website.
At this point, all of the webpages are finally designed and the extensive (probably way-too-much) amount of copy is written. All that remains is picture collection/posting, and some link checking, especially for downloads.
I think the website is actually very near a design I can stick with for a while, however I have a nagging concern that I’ve “over-categorized” everything. The result of which is a lot of repetitive copy. It’s usually acceptable and distinct, but it may be too subtle to really be justifiable.
In other resolution news (yes, I’m still trying to keep up with them) …
1) Blogging – I slacked, but I’m back again. I can’t really blame it on my briefly dead laptop.
2) New technologies – I’m thinking of trying Twitter, if only to understand why “lots” of people are using it. I’m not sure I see the difference between Twitter and Facebook’s status messages or even the messages left on IM clients. I rarely update those, so I’m not sure why I would want/need another one.
3) Skepticism – Well, Twitter, I don’t really use you, but I truly despise your existence because you strike me as the grandest example of technology for technology’s sake. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong if/when I try you out.
4) Four Marathon’s – I’m training for Alaska still and about to launch a few fundraisers for Team In Training. I’ve had a few injury setbacks in my training. I had to stop running after 3 miles on our first 8 miler, due to lower leg issues. I’m hoping to be able to run tomorrow with the group, but I am still developing a substantial bruise after kneeing someone in ultimate frisbee yesterday. We shall see. I’m now running the Indianapolis Mini Marathon in early May. Lots of running!
5) Improve marathon pace – I’m probably doing quite well with this; I’ve been running 8 minute miles in track workouts and 9 minutes for long runs. If I can maintain a 9 minute mile for an entire marathon, that would be a under four hours and amount to a nearly 2 hour reduction in time! That said, I might try to tone the improvement down because it might be contributing to and running pains I feel.
6) Finish what I started – Oh, a lot of that is coming up in the next couple months. The website is one piece of this, and it’s about 90% finished now.
7) Find a better job – Still working on this. Hopefully the site update will be helpful in this!
Save money – Wow. Not working out very well right now.
9) Learn to make dough-y foods – On hold.
10) Sell 100 DVDs – Hard to do as I don’t have them with me right now. On hold.
11) Get back into tennis, rock climbing – Replaced tennis with ultimate, and rock climbing now two days a week (when I’m able to bend my knee). Getting better at climbing I think.
12) Facebook Application – Well, I’m now working on two of them. Team in Training is my solo project, and I have a second one now in the works with Christian Beck and Craig Birchler. TNT will be pretty straightforward for version one. The group effort, that one could get hairy, but it should be worth the effort.
13) 4 new vegetables/fruits – Well, I’m now buying fresh tomatoes for sandwiches. But I don’t think I’ll count this.
14) Kansas at the Final Four – Well, they’re a tourney lock. We shall see.
I updated to OS 10.5.2 last night. My computer hasn’t budged since. All efforts to revive my computer have failed, and currently my best options are either a complete wipe, or a weeklong vacation at Apple’s repair facilities.
Sadness.
Last week was a little hectic for me, and I’m not sure this week’s going to be much better.
I was in my second week of climbing class on Wednesday, Thursday was my first track workout with Team in Training, Saturday was my first long run with TNT and I had dinner with some IU friends. Sunday was an ultimate frisbee afternoon made possible by meetup.com, but including a few IU folks as well. It was busy, but fun! This week will be more climbing, more running, more work and more frisbee.
I’ve made some progress on the Facebook front. My Team in Training application is taking some shape, and I’m hoping to get some Facebook profile page mocks out tonight or tomorrow at the latest. Then it’ll be onto the application-side mocks. This’ll let me get to designing the database and then onto development! At times this is a little daunting, and I worry it’ll be either too popular or too complicated for me to handle alone. Hopefully someone involved with Team in Training will be able to come to my rescue on that occasion.
Onto the resolutions update:
#1 - Blog once a week. - Doing well!
#2 - Try new technologies. - Meetup.com counts, and it worked swimmingly!
#3 - Continue to be skeptical of technology. - Well, I was skeptical of meetup. Turns out, it was pretty awesome.
#4 - Run four marathons. - Signed up to run the Mayor’s Marathon in Alaska in June. My third marathon will probably be Chicago in October.
#5 - Improve my marathon time for each race. - Welcome to Team in Training!
#6 - Finish what I started. - Not going that well; I’m working on my plan to finish the text-side of my personal site by the end of the week.
#8 - Save some money. - Stock market’s going down! Bad bad! At least they Yahoo/MS thing erased my Yahoo losses.
#11 - Get back into tennis and rock climbing. - While I haven’t played tennis yet, I’ve gotten back into climbing, ultimate frisbee and running with Team in Training. Thus far, I’d say I’ve gotten this one handled.
#12 - Make a Facebook application. - Got a demo application running on my server now. Now it’s time to get the application I want to make designed and implemented!
#14 - Go see Kansas in the NCAA final four. - Tough loss, but Kansas is still dancing!
It was a crazy busy weekend for a change. On Saturday, I spent most of my morning and afternoon with Team in Training. I got an early ride to the event with my mentor and got to meet a lot of mentors that way. Eventually the participants started to roll in and we got the event underway. The kickoff was a great way to learn about the cause as well as get to know the people who will be training with me for the next few months. We saw a few videos and heard from a cancer survivor. It was really interesting to see how the many people training have personal ties to the cause. After one movie, there were tissues being passed around all over the room. After the event, I had lunch with a few of the people in my running group and a number of mentors. It was a great start and I met a lot of new people. Hopefully my feet can hold out!
Sunday was part two of the kickoff. This time, the early morning event was a clothing/shoes clinic. I’d already gone through this before, but I went anyway to get some newer shoes and a few pairs of socks. From there, it was off to buy a climbing harness at REI and then take my belay test, which I hope I’ll pass the next time I take it. Then I headed into San Jose to meet some people from meetup.com for some bouldering. Most of us then went over to someone’s house to watch the Super Bowl and play a few games (Clue, Settlers of Catan). I lost all of them, but the best loss of the night clearly goes to the Patriots!
I’ve been working on a Facebook application for Team in Training. I’m a little behind at this point. I’ve got a good start for a requirements document which will help me when it comes time to start designing. It just occurred to me that this application could be just as good as a recruitment tool as it would be a donation tool. And of course, the simple awareness it could bring can’t be underestimated. I’m really hoping I can finish that document and get started with the designing. I’m planning for a quick design process and jumping into development within the week. Something I learned as far as Facebook application development goes is to let the iteration happen after launch. Users seem to get very involved in providing feedback for applications. It’s a risk, as always, but I want it to start expanding as soon as possible.
Next week: More on Facebook and a Resolution update, hopefully involving my website!