Intonarumori performs in Seattle 11/7/08

SIL2K and BROWNBOX
present

*SIL2K*
performs
Tetraktys

An Oratorio after Pythagoras
Rachel Lissman, narrator

Based on Lucretius'
"On The Nature of the Universe"

And closing the evening:

*inBOIL vs. Intonarumori*

Friday November 7
7:30pm
$5 cover
The Rendezvous
2322 2nd Ave, Belltown/Seattle

[Update 11/7/08: The Stranger's Classical Music Column, The Score, previews the show]

Sarah Palin/Katie Couric parody

What I think would be awesome, just do the interview parody straight. Palin was so goofy in those interviews there was no need to change what she said to parody her. They could have just redone the interviews verbatim and it would have been hilarious!

Here’s the original in case you haven’t seen it:

iPhone shuffle usability suck

My iPhone is the fifth iPod I’ve owned over the years, so I’m pretty familiar with how they work. One thing that has been bugging me about the iPhone though is that there was no shuffle mode without going into a playlist and hitting the shuffle button at the top of the list. This seems like it was a bit anti-intuitive and off from how previous iPods worked. When I found out that the new iPod Touch would shuffle by shaking it, I assumed that was how the iPhone must already work, which wasn’t true. It was starting to be a bummer because I often have the iPhone in my pocket and I just want to listen to some music without having to unlock it. I finally did a web search figuring that I must be missing something and I came across this page which describes the problem of always having your iPhone in shuffle mode. I’d always seen the shuffle and repeat icons in the second screen of info when playing a track, but I’d assumed that they were either: notifications, not buttons, since they weren’t in the primary interface; or applying only to the currently playlist since they were only accessible while playing a track. Since the iPhone has a settings menu for the iPod and every other iPod stores the repeat and shuffle mode switches there, that is where I assumed they would be on the iPhone.

It seems the the iPhone UI designers decided that the iPhone was a significantly new device that they could change the user expectations about how the user interface should work. That is a classic blunder in UI design that Apple above all other companies should not have made. Maybe they need their designers to go back and re-read the Apple human interface guidelines where this rule was made very clear.

This choice was bad on other HCI levels as well. What is my expectation when manipulating controls on a song while it is playing? Would it be that I’m making a global settings change when there is another location where the global settings are edited? I doubt it. Did Apple do any user trials? Because of their secrecy, I somewhat doubt it, but it would have been dumb of them to do none.

Since this paradigm was established in the iPhone 1.0 software and has obviously not changed since that time, let’s hope that Apple at least has the sense to add setting switches for shuffle and repeat in the settings menu if they don’t want to get rid of the ones they currently have. That would save a lot of frustration from their customer base as we get iPhones.

Inducing sleep into an infant without making you hate yourself

This is the first post in a new category, fatherhood. While, I’m just as sick of reading weird daddy-ness blog posts as the next guy, I’ve got a couple things to share without being obnoxious (I hope).

First of all is my sleep-inducing playlist for my daughter with songs in it that I actually like. I’m looking for suggestions of stuff to add to this list…

  1. Good Night Good Night – Spiritualized
  2. Lullaby – Tom Waits
  3. Cradle Song – Shriekback
  4. Johnsburg, Illinois – Tom Waits
  5. I’m Still Here – Tom Waits
  6. Waltz For A Drunken Angel – Gregory Page
  7. Comptine D’un Autre Été: L’après Midi – Yann Tiersen
  8. L’anniversaire d’Irvin – Angelo Badalamenti
  9. Passenger Seat – Death Cab For Cutie
  10. Sleep (Instrumental) – Kimya Dawson
  11. Fish And Bird – Tom Waits
  12. Jitterbug Boy – Tom Waits
  13. Such Great Heights – Iron and Wine
  14. Two Step – Low

I also have the Rockabye Baby! Cure record in there, but honestly it is starting to bug me. This list is also very heavily weighted in the Tom Waits direction, but that was just because of how well I know his songs, I guess. I’d love some suggestions for other tunes…

This playlist is pretty much a guaranteed sleep inducer for my daughter so far though…

[Update August 6, 2013]
It turns out that I don’t like to blog that much about fatherhood. Maybe since I don’t feel like I have much to say that hasn’t already been said. This was really a music post, so I moved it to that category and I’m putting the fatherhood category on ice for the moment.

wonderful music film

I was browsing around the blogotheque site, and I came across this wonderful film they did of the MusicNow festival. It reminds me greatly of the wonderful Russian Ark film in both character and style, but the performances are simply wonderful and unique. It’s about a half hour, and you should watch it through in one go…

Nice discussion of white box and developer-driven testing in Google Chrome comic book

I debated copying the scans from blogoscoped.com or referencing the images here, but I decided instead to refer you to the appropriate pages to be a good blog citizen.

Getting Scott McCloud to write a comic book announcing your product is a great idea. He did a great job distilling some complicated stuff into a very accessible piece. Tons of people will talk about the Google Chrome announcement and what it means for Microsoft and about using multiple processes for tabs.

One of the things that struck me though, was the nice discussion of white box automated testing. Also, a very simple and concise description of developer-driven testing. I am a huge proponent of these principles since I first worked on an XP project 8 years ago and became an XP coach. Every project I’ve worked on since has had a large test-driven development component and hard-core whitebox QEs (when I’ve had the resources). Doing automated stress testing on a browser is a no-brainer. Internet Explorer has been doing it forever. Google isn’t doing anything new or different here: fuzzing inputs isn’t new, and neither is reducing the test space to make automation run faster and results relevant for users. However, McCloud’s comic does a great job of explaining these ideas in a very simple manner. It’s a great tool for developers, QEs or engineering managers trying to explain why these things are important to others in their organization.

Check it out on pages 9, 10, and 11 of the Google Chrome comic book.