http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:22:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We developers love getting detailed bug reports - the more detailed the better in fact. Unless you're reporting that something broke your pr0n in which case, less detail might be best. (If you're not seeing it, keep scrolling down... and who is Paola Rey anyhow?) http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/24/the-reason-dev-environments-should-be-sandboxed/ CNN Shirt is a great idea, made even greater by the gaping content security hole that allows anyone to create any t-shirt headline they want (look in the URL for details). I'd love to get this shirt: CNN is "America's Most Trusted News Source" so it must be true. http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/21/cnn-shirts-beta/ Actually, they think we're all idiots if their printer driver installer is any indication. Curious about why a printer driver would need 250 megs of space I clicked on the "More Info" button: As a general rule of thumb when the user asks "What is it that's being installed on my computer?" ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/18/hp-thinks-im-an-idiot/ This is going to seem like an anti-Windows rant but really, Windows is just the catalyst for this, again. The deeper question driving this post is this: why do we still put up with this shit? The machine: a brand-new HP 6820s laptop, out of the box. The operating system: Windows XP. The ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/11/but-it-always-says-its-sorry-afterwards/ I just finished reading Joe Kissell's excellent article Instant Messaging for Introverts which is so true-to-form for me that it felt like I could have written it myself. The gist of it is this: Joe, an introvert, explains what life in in an always-on, Twitter/iChat world is like for introverts. ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/07/explaining-my-twittering/ Dear Creative: you're doing it wrong. But in all seriousness, Creative's mis-handling of this situation is a great learning opportunity for other companies. The lesson is simple: If your users care enough about your product to improve it themselves, thank them. Use them. Hire them. Pay them. William Gibsom famously wrote: The street finds ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/04/creative-looks-gift-horse-in-mouth-shoots-it-in-head-apologizes-afterwards/ I just noticed that Karl Schroeder's Ventus is now available for free in digital format from Karl's site in damned near every kind of format you could ever want. In my opinion the description on Karl's site really doesn't do Ventus justice: Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/04/01/ventus-available-gratis/ Today I took the plunge, downloaded Twitterific and decided to give Twitter a go. It took me awhile because some time ago I decided to only engage in a limited number of social networking sites/experimnents. Before Facebook, something had to die (sorry Friendster). Before Twitter something else had to die ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/03/17/into-the-twitter/ Undoubtedly Scrabulous is perhaps the best reason to stick around on Facebook (some might suggest only?) - I've been thoroughly enjoying it, with my 1-1 record at the moment. However judging from the number of 1300+ and 1400+ rated players I appear to know I seem to have been unwittingly ... http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/03/12/un-scrabulous/ The ultimate tribute to Gary Gygax. I LOL'd. http://www.postal-code.com/mrhappy/blog/2008/03/07/natural-20-again/