Archive for January, 2007

Slide master/title master is crappy HCI and crappy engineering

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Using powerpoint on mac, it took me ten minutes to figure out how to add a new title master to a presentation.

Even though you open a new presentation and it automatically adds a blank title slide, you the View > Title Master option doesn’t exist. And from this view you can’t create one. First, you have to view the slide master (incorrectly applied to the title slide) and then you can add a new title master. This operation is an exercise in frustration and how to not design interfaces.

Perhaps its time for that Keynote purchase….

EDIT:

It’s good I wrote this down I’ve had to look at this *every* time I make a new presentation since then.

Yes.  It’s still obnoxious.

BlueTooth

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

The lappy has BlueTooth, and I have a Razr. Ergo, you now have pictures.

The Bean in downtown Chicago in December 2005 (my sister graduated from Northwestern then).
Snow on the Bean

This is one of the two Rabbit Ears from the top of Rabbit Ears peak near Steamboat Springs, CO. It’s a fantastic hike up to the top of this.
Top of Rabbit Ears

It’s a giant concrete and bronze octopus at a pool. Clearly.
Giant Pool Octopus

A life size lego T Rex from out front of the Lego store at Disney in Orlando.
Lego Dinosaur

The octopus muny from the Muny art show at ÜberBot (ÜberBot Rocks)
Tentacled Muny

A lovely drip and bucket sand castle from Fort DeSoto county park (extreme south end of St. Petersburg).
Sandcastle

ZOMG I got my MacBookPro

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

The FedEx guy woke me up to give my my 15″ MacBookPro this morning. New Computer Face

This makes me happy.

And is also unsurprisingly distracting. I have quals in two days and I’ve done about an hour of studying so far today and its 11 oclock already.