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Not that my posting has been heavy with the holiday (or ever, for that matter), but it will be lighter still as I’m going to be putting together my new machine. Last component came today and now I actually have to do this. (Deep breath).

No, not “clean” as in no porn, but clean as in no spyware/adware. This site lists applications that are free of the nasty evilware that exists in so many programs. And, this software is available for free!

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Ok, this won’t win me any points if some random web app developer happens across my page, but I have a request for anyone who’ll listen.

Please, for the love of God, consider the actual user of your application.

Let me explain where this comes from. I work on the development of a web app, not in the technical sense (I’m not working in the backed), but I am using an admin-type web interface to modify and enhance the UI that our customers will use. So, in essence, I’m the middle man. I consume what our solution provider makes, use the product to create another product, and then maintain that second product. Confused? It’s a standard scenario I’m having trouble verbalizing at the moment (Christmas is close and I want out of here; give me a break).

This is my dilemma, issue, beef, if you will. One of my tasks is to implement user assistance. I won’t get into the idiotic implementation our solution provider has “provided”, but suffice it to say, they need to read this post as well. We have gone with hosting static files on the same server as the web app, linking to those files from the UI of the application, and then doing whatever we need to do in our own “environment”, so to speak. Yes, it’s a hack, but it’ll work for our purposes and minimizes the politicking that would be required to use, say, ASP. I digress…

My plea begins here. Adding a link to our static pages is fairly simple, unless you want to do anything except add a value for “href”. Why? Because the Active X control that has been implemented allows only for input of a protocol and an address. Because lots of people are linking to Gopher these days. (Seriously, that’s an option in the pull-down menu.)

This is a dead easy thing to implement. Allow me as a middle man user to add links to whatever I want however I want. I can’t say how much the system cost the organization, but adding fifty bucks to the cost of the license to implement an Active X control that allows me to specify a value for “target”.

I know that right now, someone is saying, “just edit the code, dummy.” Yeah, there’s another shortcoming. While you can edit the code directly, sometimes code changes take. Sometimes they don’t. No one set down why code would be reverted, or a way to change something and set an ignore switch somewhere. Even our developers went, “Humph, isn’t that interesting?” Not very helpful.

After I rolled my eyes for the 7th time this morning, it dawned on me that I’m on the receiving end of a more fundamental problem. It’s not that the tool couldn’t accommodate these enhancements, it’s that the solution provider didn’t think anyone would use their product any other way than how they imagined it to be used. Ok, that was a mouthful, so I’ll just say it bluntly.

The original developer was shortsighted. They envisioned a single scenario of implementation and use, for both the middle user and the end user. It never occurred to them, or was completely ignored by them, that legitimate uses outside of their development efforts should be accommodated. Every crappy HTML editor in the world allows you to set values for the “a” tag. Not theirs. Why? It would’ve cost them something, and they weren’t willing to spend the resources.

Who am I to tell them how run their business? Their customer. While it may be a PITA for me to work with, I have to work with it because I have to provide a solution. The ultimate sufferer is going to be my end user, my customer, because I have to spend ridiculous amounts of time coding the simplest things, which leaves less time for me to actually assist the user. To me, that’s a bad tradeoff.

So, my plea is this, web app developers (or, really, solution developers): Think about the actual end user. Make your solution fit what they will need. If your customers (people like me) are going to use you app to build other apps, I need to provide things like documentation, user assistance, UI enhancements, and god knows what else. Making it simpler for middle-level developers to use your apps only improves your products.

I’m addicted to mash-ups.

Most of them suck, usually because someone is trying out a new technique or learning their way around a mixer (and, no, I shouldn’t be one to criticize because I couldn’t mix two tracks of static). But once in a while, a great one comes out, like the Grey Album or Collision Course or The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.

It’s an interesting concept of doing music, completely (or heavily) relying on other artists for your source material. It’s gets to the heart of copyright law or lack thereof. When does artistic freedom trump the rights of copyright holders (and not necessarily the artists who created the work). Should artists be able to consent to their work being used for such a project, or dictate the terms of another artist’s project? Should artists be able to sample whatever they want as long as they don’t try to pass the original work off as their own?

But I’m neither a lawyer or an artist, so I’ll just sit back and enjoy the product of this controversial practice. Like today: presenting, The Beastles.

More mashy goodness at DJ BC: The Boston Mash-up Project.

Bwaaahahahahahahahha!

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I don’t even know if that’s a word. But this story has all the elements of a classic West Michigan story; 2nd-tier University, Lowell, and rednecks.

Raychel Swift was driving back to Lowell Friday afternoon when her pet boa constrictor, Mr. Cracker Basket Sassy Pants, sneaked out of a pillowcase and slithered its way into the car’s dashboard.

Take that Florida. Mr. Cracker Basket Sassy Pants. Man, I need to find a dealer around here.

I’m a conservative, that’s no secret. I support this administration when I can. I have issues with a few things they’re doing, but Ashcroft is out, so that’s one huge thing off my list.

Until today. This has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. In the event of a terrorist attack, the government could shut down the GPS system.

First of all, why? Is the huge barrier to sucessfully carrying out a terrorist attack knowing how to get out of somewhere? I’m pretty sure they were doing this long before Garmin had a handheld unit. Not to mention, the event that would trigger a shut down of the system is the very event the shut down is meant to prevent. You see the logical black hole created with that last sentence? Yeah, that’s where this idea emerged from. Hopefully, it looks around, sees the idiot telling people (with a straight face) about possible implmentation scenarios, and then heads right back into that logic hole.

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Doing some work at home, I stumbled across .gov sites with block- and tract- level maps of almost every county in the country. They’re FTP sites, but the PDF maps are current from 2001. Wonder how long before this gets pulled down to save us from “the terrorists”?

Block maps (FTP)
Tract maps (FTP)
County voting districts (each 000.pdf is an index)

I wonder how long before they get sued over this. I have money down for three weeks.

Blockbuster Video is implementing a plan on 1 January to allow you to keep your video an additional week beyond the due date without penalties. However, if you keep it beyond that week, they charge you for the full movie, minus the rental fee.

I have two problems with this:

• So, now, not only will new releases be gone on Tuesday afternoon, they won’t be back in the store for half a month.
• The first time Jane from Allendale‘s kid forgets to turn in “Walking Tall” and she gets charged for it, her first call is to Sam.

Plus, don’t video stores pay hundreds of dollars for the videos they rent out? Are they going to charge customers for the video they actually rented, or are they going to charge consumer retail prices?

Well, it’s official; I’m a Wolverine. I think we’re actually required to say that as new employees of the University of Michigan. I’ll read through the hundred or so dead trees I was handed today during orientation.

Nothing too spectacular today; your basic sign-here, date-here, smile, sign-here kind of day. And then I got to lunch when I got to my office. You know that standard easy day you get when you start a new job? Find the bathroom, find the coffee, decorate your cube? Yeah, not me. I’m in it head-first. Thank God I have a vacation over Christmas.

I’m working on the MPRIME project. A very cool and worthwhile project; should be a challenge and a blast. Can’t be any worse than what I tossed at my last employer.

Anyway, light posting for a while until I get to a) breathe and b) figure out what I can and can’t do at the U.

Go Blue (sorry Dad; I’m not required to cheer for the football team so, take heart!)