Author: Victor

finally met peterme in person. he stopped by razorfish for lunch and discussion with the info architect group. spirited discussion about epinions, internal development vs. agency work, syndication, and more. good time, must do that more.

Braves Pitcher John Rocker Suspended to May. I’m glad, what a backwards dude. I don’t agree he should be forced to seek psychological counseling by the baseball league. Basically, the league and the team are his employers, and they should take the same steps of progressive discipline a thoughtful, concerned employer would take. But they’re not a court, and shouldn’t be able to force someone into therapy just to keep their job. Penalize him, offer him help, and if he still doesn’t learn, fire him. I think that would send a better message to everyone than all this paternalism.

The Lomo Camera. Neat stuff – alternative imaging, fast and cheap cameras, photography with an attitude. Someone at work pointed it out, hope to check out some prints.

ugh, More Priests Die of AIDS. What’s wrong with the Catholic Church is not so much that this is happening, but that it’s not talked about. The failure to be open and responsive, much less proactive, is a tragedy. via rebecca.


Forecast for 2/5/2000: Friday...fair. Low in the mid to upper 20s. High in the lower to mid 40s.


5 days ago the forecast for today: “Sunday…fair. Low 25 to 30. High in the mid to upper 30s.” But’s it’s colder and snowing hard, so that would be incorrect. 3 right, 5 wrong. Maybe I’ll go up to ten to make figuring out the percentage easier :-)

Appreciation for the American Way of Life:

…they might have bombed cities for this,

or sold apples in the rain.

but whoever did it,

today I wish to thank them

all the way.


Forecast for 2/3/2000 and 2/4/2000: Wednesday and Thursday...partly cloudy. Low in the mid 20s. High in the upper 30s.


Looking back 5 days ago, they thought today would be “fair, low in the mid 20s. High 30 to 35.” It was sunny between 15 and 36. Close enough for me. 3 right, 4 wrong.

Looking for a reason for Futurama not being on the air (after looking for the time slot everywhere, not finding it, and thinking every TV listing on the web was broken), I found Futurama Chronicles. Now, I know of course that this TV show would inspire fan sites, but I was still wow’d that someone has compiled a fairly intriguing portal concerned with such a young show. Do they have too much time on their hands? I think the tagline explains it well: You gotta know what you gotta know.

idea for children’s book for the current generation of future info-savvy adults…

Irene and Her Info

Irene watches her father read the newspaper

He reads the newspaper everyday

He pulls the newspaper apart into sections

Then he flips the pages

Sometimes he tells Irene what he’s reading about

One day, Irene made her own newspaper

Irene’s newspaper has sections

There is a section about what she ate today

And a section about what she learned in school

And a section about the weather outside.

Irene sells the newspaper to her father for 25 cents.

And so on through the household, as Irene adventures continue through various lands of information…

Being Jakob Nielson: The Story of the Blue and the Green is funny and honest and insightful. The aspect that most gets me is the zen perspective: he takes Jakob’s rantings and accepts them as zen koans. What a great attitude. Makes me feel like a whiny fuck.

Humans destroy each other, we let horrible things manifest in our
society. We pay money to hurt ourselves. A bead of sweat or two may collect
in Jakob’s fine wisps of hair, but he is confident that it will all sort itself out.
You stare the bad things in the eye, buy another large fries and Coke, strap
on the Nikes, and in your own small way try to make the world a better place

Of course I disagree about the Nikes, but I get the point.

Funny aside: One of the info architects at Razorfish has a small, framed picture of Jakob Nielson on her desk. We usually rant on and on to each other about how much of an interface gestapo he is, so it’s a funny inside joke.

Another funny aside: Razorfish is responsible for designing a prominant site with a swirl and a blue and green palette. But like brig, we had to work with a branding agency to come up with that thing of a logo.

Forecasted 5 days ago for today: “Friday…partly cloudy. Low around 20. High 25 to 30.” Let’s see, it’s been sunny between 16 and 28 with a wind chill that makes it feel like -10. So they kinda missed the low, were right on the high, but without mention of the wind they would have mis-managed my poor little expectations. But I guess I’d dress the same for partly cloudy/20 as I would for sunny/16 with a wind chill, so I’ll give this one to them. 2 right, 4 wrong.


Forecast for 1/31/2000: Monday...cloudy with a chance of rain or snow. Low in the upper 20s to lower 30s. High in the mid 30s.

Forecast for 2/1/2000: Tuesday...cloudy. Low in the mid to upper 20s. High in the upper 30s.



The forecast 5 days ago for today said, “Thursday…cloudy with a chance of snow. Low 20 to 25. High in the upper 20s. They got the high right, but the rest wrong. Since “cloudy with chance of snow” generates significantly different reactions than “sunny”, which is was today, I’m counting this one against the National Weather Service. 1 right, 4 wrong.

Today’s weather in NYC: partly cloudy between 24 and 35 degrees. 5 days ago they predicted a chance of snow (nope, that was yesterday) and a high in the upper 20s. Not exactly wrong but not really right either, I won’t count this one either way.

peterme points to Task-Centered User Interface Design which has gone shareware (shareread?). The user testing stuff could be valuable, but the “Creating the Initial Design” section is notable for its defeatest and possibly Neilsonian approach:

The foundation of good interface design is INTELLIGENT
BORROWING. That is, you should be building your design on
other people’s good work rather than coming up with your own
design ideas. Borrowing is important for three distinct
reasons. First, given the level of quality of the best user
interfaces today, it’s unlikely that ideas you come up with
will be as good as the best ideas you could borrow.

OK, so we’re all borrowing, then where the hell do the original ideas come from? In the beginning, someone invented, and that gave us the good stuff that you’re borrowing. Ugh!


Forecast for 1/30/2000: Sunday...fair. Low 25 to 30. High in the mid to upper 30s.



Hmmmmm, the forecast 5 days ago for today said, “partly cloudy. Low 20 to 25. High around 30” when actually we experienced nor’easter weather: several inches of snow changing to freezing rain and (currently) back to snow. They weren’t far off on the temp though, it’s been between 29 and 33. Still, if I had dressed for partly cloudy today I’d be screwed, so I’m counting this as wrong. 1 right and 3 wrong.