Digital Diner

I hate splash pages. I hate being held hostage. The topic came up recently on the “Information Systems Forum” listserv. It’s a listserv of diverse participants, gracefully managed by the indefatigable Deborah Elizabeth Finn.

The question was: “Are splash pages effective.” I thought about it for a few days and I posted a response. Michael Gilbert (who I think of as my own personal Perry White) suggested I repost my response here, on the Diner. (I think he’s worried that I haven’t posted much stuff in the last few months. Not to worry Michael, it was just a dry spell caused by excessive time travel.)

On this particular list, the recent conversations have drifted into the rights and wrongs of collecting (and using) personal information (like one’s birthday) for fundraising, and, more recently, the efficacy of “splash” pages — especially by nonprofits. While musing over the thread, I was reminded by an early example — a pre-internet example — of an attempt to hold an audience hostage.

You’ll find my original post below, (slightly edited and embellished to make me look more thoughtful):

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It happens with an eerie regularity.  I hear a song, one of uncanny depth and beauty; something that just reaches down and twists at my heartstrings.  Intrigued, I will Google a smattering of half-heard lyrics, seeking to discover a new artist.  Instead, I discover a familiar name, Leonard Cohen. It’s a strange consistency — one that has been with me from 15 to 50.

It’s a consistency that caused me to preorder, unheard, his latest CD:  “Leonard Cohen - Live in London — July 17th, 2008.”  It arrived a few weeks ago.

Let me say, unabashed, this man is a poet, masterful, unmatched, unequaled. But it’s no “big girl’s blouse” type poetry. Rather it’s the soul of a man. It’s raw, and masculine, sensual and sexual; carnal and biblical. If his voice were any deeper it would measure on the Richter scale.  Like a rockslide of passion, gravelly and rich, aged and tempered like leather in smoke, dipped in raw emotion, the words of Leonard Cohen caress the ragged edge of love and passion and age and youth.  Continue Reading »

I thought it was a joke. Who could blame me? After all, the announcement began: “Starting on April 1, 2009…” Then again, Microsoft usually ain’t one to make “April Fool’s” jokes.

I read the announcement again. I clicked the buttons. The download started. I double-checked the URL — “Perhaps it was a fancy phishing scheme,” I thought to myself. “Better check.” “Free” often means free trouble.

I Googled. I got half-a-dozen links. I clicked the Wikipedia entry. It said: “SharePoint Designer 2007 is available as license-restricted freeware.”

Hey, if Wikipedia says so, it’s got to be true, right?

Here’s the scoop, the lowdown, the straight poop: Continue Reading »

I’ve been using a dual-monitor setup since before before. In fact, I can’t remember (and can’t imagine) not having two monitors in front of me. My office setup is currently two 20-inch 16:9 LCD flat panels. It’s amazing what you can artfully stuff on that sort of screen-space. I’m here to say that it ain’t uppity opulence — it’s productivity enhancement, and damn handy too. For example, with two monitors:

• You can chop-and-paste from one monitor to the other, keeping a browser open on one monitor for… uhm… err… research and your Great American Novel front and center on the other.
• You can set different resolutions on different monitors. This lets you quickly see through other eyes, a handy thing when designing web pages, especially if you have a penchant for extra-large (or extra small) fonts. Guilty, I am. I often forget that some people like their icons larger than a pinhead and text measured in multiple microns.
• You can run multiple flavors of browser — IE, Firefox, and Safari, maybe Opera just for grins — simultaneously making sure that nothing looks right on any of them regardless of what you do.
• Finally, for the A.D.D. amongst us, you can while away your day, in manifold multitasking, with more stuff in your face — calendar, email, task list, Facebook, ESPN and CNN, three or four or five or ten browser windows, slash-dot, iTunes, and a copy of the DMCA (just in case).

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Who’d of thunk it? A simple shoe — well, actually two — thrown with the right twist could so clearly express an opinion. An opinion so succinct, that the world can do nothing but applaud (and perhaps wish the thrower had had slightly better aim). It was a shoe heard ’round the world.

Shoes have power. You can vote with them (or I guess more accurate, you can vote with your feet). You can heat up a cold war as Nikita Khrushchev, shoe in hand, pounding on the lectern at the UN, shouting, “We shall bury you.” (Although there are those that say the more accurate translation is “We shall attend your funeral”). Continue Reading »

A Thanksgiving Tale from the Wild Wild East

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and the car’s steel struts, I felt every bump and grind of the ancient city’s streets. I was the car’s only functioning shock absorber. Noticing that it was past midnight, I thought: “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.”

As we zoomed around yet another roundabout, my friend Tamás shouted over the engine noise: “This is ‘Hero’s Square. You can see the statues of the seven Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarians into the Carpathian basin. You remember, Saint Stephen — he’s there. See.” He gestured with his right hand, his ubiquitous cigarette smoldering in the other. He was a hell of a driver, Tamás. One hand always on the wheel, another manhandling the stick shift, ratcheting through the gears, clutch be damned; another Bogarting a constant cigarette, and another hand to spare, artfully used to point out landmarks and other points of interest along the way.

I struggled to see out of the side window, smudged and clouded with urban fallout and the night’s reflections. I could see shadows, light and dark, vague objects lit by the cold calculating stare of mercury lights. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ll have to come back here sometime during the day.” “Yes,” said Tamás. It’s a beautiful city.” With those words, he lit another cigarette and whipped the car to the right, sliding me away from the window. Like a square, steel security blanket, I cradled the PC. We dove down, down into the dark, diving driving deep into the Budapest night. I was glad he knew where he was going, or at least he seemed to know. I wasn’t going to question. If this worked, it would be he who had saved the day; saved the week, saved my ass — assuming it, and I, survived the ride.

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The culprits struck in the dead of night, repeatedly. With each subsequent attack, we doubled-down, increased the bet. There was no choice. Such small acts of vandalism speak volumes. Such attacks are disheartening. I find it hard to fathom that whilst praising freedom, or liberty, or democracy, people would attempt to rob me of mine. Defiance is the only recourse. Defiance (minor as it was in this case) is the only acceptable response to totalitarianism, no matter what form it takes.

I have to admit, I had had a twinge of trepidation when the signs first went up. Truly, elections bring out the silly season. There was an edge of only slightly veiled intolerance this time around, fanned by the various candidates themselves. “Not good,” I thought to myself. “It’s not wise to fan the flames of wackiness. We’ve got too much of it.”

Relatively rural, there is little around me to temper such flames. I lack the protection of a crowd, wise or otherwise. And, I didn’t want to end up with a cross — or a ying-yang symbol for that matter — scorched into my front lawn. Shaking my head, I shrugged off the trepidation. If one can’t put up a campaign sign without fear of retribution, then it’s too late. Up went the signs. Continue Reading »

I’m quite fond of my Kindle. Sure, the design’s a little bonkers; and it’s a wee bit awkward. That aside, it is easy to read, easy to use, and mine happens to be loaded with books I want to read.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when I’m travelling. As a result, I tend to carry lots of lots of books along for the ride. For unfathomable reasons, one book is not enough. I must have at least two or three, sometimes more. Consequently, I end up schlepping somewhere around three-point-two million pounds of books to the far corners of the world.

It’s a proven fact that books get heavier the longer they remain in your luggage. It’s something to do with gravity, airplanes, hotel food, relativity, dirty socks, quantum mechanics, and the amount of missing dark matter in the universe. Perhaps, too, the TSA is involved. I can’t quite explain it.

Nevertheless, somehow — depending on the number of books you’re carrying and the length of your trip — they get heavier. It’s one of the true mysteries of the universe, right in my briefcase.

For me, the Kindle has solved this problem. I’ve cut my beastly book burdens down to one pound. I do still, however, manage to clutter up my briefcase with lots of other stuff, but the book weight has definitely diminished. Sadly though, the addition of my Kindle contributed to what I call “the YAB epidemic” (Yet Another Brick). The Kindle added one more power brick to my ever-expanding multiplicity of power bricks; another brick for the wall. Continue Reading »

I blame Santa. It was he that started me down this road.

It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me in to the dark world of digital photography. And, at first I was happy, wandering the night streets of Brussels, amazed at the versatility and just down-right fun of modern digital photography. But soon, I wanted more — more lenses, fancy carrying cases, tripods, books, and filters; batteries and bling.

The birthday fairy — an enabler working in cahoots with Santa — served only to fan my addiction. She delivered an amazing piece of glass; a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens. Oh my. With this combo, I’m almost superfluous in the process. You want a lens, this is the one. One lens to rule them all, One lens to find them, One lens to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…

Between the camera and the glass, I need only twirl a few dials and pretend like I know the difference between aperture and exposure, mutter a few incantations about depth of field, and… voila! I have pictures, pretty pictures. I was caught, before I knew it. I’m now carting Nikky the Nikon, everywhere, buying her presents and shiny bling. And, her latest bling is a marvelous thing — automatic geo-tagging. Continue Reading »

Connectivity is dangerous. The fricative sounds of German wafting through the open windows of today’s hotel room reminded me of that fact, reminded me of a misadventure long past, a memory from a time when connectivity took a modem and a phone line. Sometimes it took the diligent and careful application of alligator clips. Hotel phones were, and still are, nothing but trouble.

That time, in that past hotel, things went south. I had tried to look innocent. I failed. “Monsieur!” said the hotel’s night manager as he pounded loudly on my door. “Monsieur, he repeated as I opened the door, “is there is a problem with your telephone, Mein Herr?”

The switch from French to German seemed ominous. Moreover, he looked ominous. He looked like he had spent his formative years on a diet of steroids and fondue, while bench pressing Tony Soprano. “Whoops,” I thought, “this can’t be good.” Articulate and ever ready with smooth repartee, I replied with a set of universally understood monosyllables. “Uh, err, ah, umm,” I said.

Gathering my wits about me, I continued: “Uh… nope, err… Nein. Ich bin… err.” At that I had exhausted what I remembered of my high-school German. All I could think of was “Ich bin ein Berliner.” That wouldn’t work. Wrong country, wrong era; moreover (urban legends about jelly donuts aside) I am no John Kennedy. Giving up, I continued in English, once again adopting my best Midwestern silly grin, “Can I have a late check-out?” I said. Continue Reading »