2D is Better Than 3D

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote 8 years ago about the uselessness of 3D effects in web design, and I think its still true today:

"Note that 3D works for games because the user does not want to accomplish any goals beyond being entertained. It would be trivial to design a better interface than DOOM if the goal was to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible: give me a 2D map of the area with icons for enemy troops and let me drop bombs on them by clicking the icons. Presto: game over in a few seconds and the good guys win every time. That's the design you want if you are the Pentagon, but it makes for a boring game."

2D is Better Than 3D (Alertbox Nov. 1998)

Categories: technology

Birthday dinner

Saturday night we had dinner at Macaroni's grill for gina's 14th birthday. A good time was had by all; Gina, Bob & Max, Marina, Millie & Seymour, and Bob & Linda. Gina was serenaded italian opera-style, and Marina entertained with japanese translations on the placemat.

Categories: family news

9-ft Shark off Sunglow Pier 3/10

OutdoorsBest Forums: 9-ft Shark landed off Sunglow Pier This is in Daytona Beach. The writer says it took about 30-minutes to land and 9 people to bring up on the dock with 2 gaffs. The surfers nearby were nonplussed.

2.0 Culture

Naked IT » Blog Archive » 2.0 Culture: "simplicity combined with big fonts, shiny shaders and very, very strange brand names."

I'm usually the standard-bearer for 'content above everything', but this is a great analysis of the new look and feel of Web 2.0 design and cultural standards as they have emerged.

Web 2.0 is fundamentally a new technological approach to web-based applications and open standards-based architecture. But the design: we're talking pastel colors, rounded shapes, sans serif fonts. Our recent http://p-adl.ucf.edu/ site is smack in the cross hairs here. (However, I was into rounded corners and sans serif waaay back in 2002, see http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~rgreed/ )

The design recommendations go a little deeper than appearance, and touch on some technology guidelines, like no java applets, no animation or flash, and always use descriptive html. An interesting read.

Categories: technology

snubster - beta

OK, you've got to understand the phenomenal trend of social networking on the web these days, but there's a backlash begining. Instead of friendster or myspace.com, we've got snubster!

See one of jason's snubster lists here. The only thing I don't get is why the 'e'? Wouldn't it be oh so much more cutting edge to spell it snubstr ???

Categories: technolgy

Categories: humor

Trace Adkins

This past weekend Linda and I escorted visiting students Marina and Sachiko to the Strawberry festival in Plant City (near Tampa.) I thought we had been to this big event way back when we moved to Florida in the 80's, but Linda corrected me. This was our first time. The draw for us was a 4pm outdoor concert by Nashville star Trace Adkins, and he put on quite a show in front of at least 10,000 fans. Most of the crowd, including us, were seated in bleachers, and I really really missed the binoculars -- we left them in the car which was parked a long ways away. However, we charged down front during the encore to get a close up look at the singer, and he's pretty damn impressive; about 6'6" with arms the size of my thighs.

It was a good show. Adkins current hit is the boundary-stretching rap-influenced Honky Tonk Badonkadonk, and he got the entire crowd to sing along with the irreverent refrain "well shut my mouth and smack my grandma!".

Most of these snapshots came from Sachiko's camera. The thumb in the one picture is mine. Larger copies and a few more pictures are available at http://www.presby-book.net/rgsr/strawberry

The festival itself was shoulder to shoulder packed. We gorged on strawberry shortcake, and greasy carnival food. In ambiance and crowd profile, it was probably most like an extremely crowded day at Flea World.

Categories: music and song

YouTube - Real Life Simpsons Intro

This is too funny.

Categories: humor

Washington DC

Daughter Gina departed on a school trip to Washington DC, by bus. She called us from somewhere in Georgia last night, and it was clearly pretty chaotic and loud on the bus. Thank goodness they rounded up sufficient chaperones. I can only imagine.

Categories: family news

"Smiling Bob" Not Smiling Anymore

"Smiling Bob may have been happy, but many customers were not," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

"The defendants violated consumer protection laws that rest on a simple principle: businesses must deal with people fairly and honestly. This settlement will prevent further violations and compensate consumers harmed by the defendants' practices."

article at consumeraffairs.com

Categories: humor

1986

Shortly after we moved to Orlando...

1996 and 2006

1996, Sanbina Street




2006, Little John road

choreo-juggling?

This one's for Rick... be sure and turn your sound up. It's pretty pointless without the soundtrack.


(requires Flash plugin, thanks Nick.)
http://marketplace.espeakers.com/movie.php?sid=5290&aid=10558

Internet Explorer 7 ?

Check out this link: http://www.ie7.com/

cute.

Categories: technology