usability horror

Usually the infamous ticket machines of the german railways serve as prime example for the necessity of increasing usability of software. Today I found another task, which should be even easier than booking a ticket using some piece of software. I wanted to create a photo calendar.

First I went to Rossmann, my usual photo portal. I ordered prints there quite often already, but apparently these guys didn't get their portal right for calendars. After clicking my way through all possible paths, I ended up facing a blank screen instead of a calendar.
So I downloaded their offline client, which did not have an option for choosing one particular system folder for importing the pictures, but drew them automatically from a so called 'standard' app... well, so I imported the pics in that app first and everything seemed to work fine - until I noticed that GREAT feature of determining the starting month of the calendar, with a range from dec 08 to dec 09... so WHAT now if I want my calendar to start with 2010?? no way....
Afterwards I tried Vista Print, uploaded the pictures, cringed at the shipping rates, and wanted to drag some pictures on the appropriate places ... but - hang on - why is the browser window moving as I'm trying to do that???? Maybe some of you know that silly game where you chase a little window over your monitor trying to click one button to close it? Well, their dragging operation worked exactly like that, except that you can't simply corner your browser window to get the picture on the right spot..

So, once again, one notices that just the ability to deploy some fancy piece of software is not enough - it should also enable the user to do what they have to accomplish with it.

the lament

alright, some elder people have to be allowed to lament for hours about how the state ruined their lives, their dreams, how they were abused giving everything and getting nothing in return. of course the whole society, politicians of all colours and of course their clients and collegues as well did everything to get them to exactly this point.
they must be very disappointed and as they are being victimis of a nation-wide conspiration "nothing can be done about it, as everything is already ruined and will crash in the next moment". maybe they are even right about the last statement. but what really upsets me (apart from the fact that materially they seems to have everything and more than they need - in contrast to millions of other people) is the last sentence bound to be pronounced as the final line of the whole song:
"But actually it's not me, whom I feel so sorry for; it's you!"

It feels like an insult to me, cause I am alive now at this point in time and society and I'm totally not feeling sorry for this fact myself. Actually in a lot of ways I think it's quite the opposite. Of course there are massive problems everywhere, but then people that did never encounter any problems in their lives are very lucky few. So I really see no point in that statement.

no answer

I am intrigued by the fact that some questions keep coming back to me, even though there is no chance they will ever be answered. Maybe there exists no answer.

My current favorite is: "Why did you do that?"

flying over bolzano

i was quite surprised to find myself over this familiar territory :)

on and off

at the moment i have a very unreliable internet connection (whilst landline is completely dead). probably won't be fixed unless telephone people dig up half of the street to replace the wire... sorry for any inconvenience/late replies to emails etc.

nieder mit den nutzern!

hier ein wunderbarer artikel über den nutzen der konservativen unternehmensstragegien!

wer sich mündige angestellte sucht und auf ihre bedürfnisse achtet ist einfach selber schuld ;)

curious family business

It is really interesting what one comes accross when searching for some technical information on the internet. The following excerpt is from an msdn developer's blog which i was browsing for information on wf. It was just too good to keep it for myself ;)

What kind of uncle am I?

Like every language, English has its own collection of words to express family relationships. There are the easy ones like mother, father, brother, and sister. Also comparatively easy are cousin, aunt, uncle, niece and nephew. But most people don't know about this "removal" part, beyond the fact that your "first cousin twice removed" is somebody you probably met once at a wedding ten years ago.

It's really not that complicated. Some people think removal has to do with estrangement, but actually it has to do with generations. The children of your Nth cousin are your Nth cousins once removed. Their grandchildren are your Nth cousins twice removed. In general, to find your Nth cousin K times removed, go to your Nth cousin and then follow their children K times.

You can also look at it from the point of view of the younger relative: Your Nth cousin K times removed is the Nth cousin of your Kth direct ancestor, where K = 1 is your parent, K = 2 is your grandparent, etc. For example, your father's second cousin is your second cousin once removed. There's a nice chart at genealogy.com that depicts many of these more complicated relationship terms.

here is an article on the terminology ;)

the plant

in memory to its twin

another curiosity

there exists a 'buy nothing day'.. wonder if it is useful??

anyway, on the webpage there are a few interesting articles on bad company awards, shopping or not, etc.

//magic happens here

magic