Minimal

Well, this weekend’s been one long car-ogling marathon. With helmet in hand (clean your mind, filthy child!), and with Grant and James in tow, I set off to check out a load of cars on my possibles list. As a result, the following are now officially casualties of my far-from-excessive height:

• Lotus Elise
• Lotus Exige
• Vauxhall VX220
• Mazda RX-8
• Mazda MX-5 (I was getting desperate, ok?)

I strongly suspect that the Racing Puma, which had crept onto the list after some rose-tinted reminiscences, can also be discounted. After all, apart from a few flared arches and a little performance boost, it’s essentially the same car as my old Puma 1.7 and there was no way I could wear a helmet in that.

On the up-side, however, the following cars are now officially contenders:

• Nissan 350Z
• Porsche Boxster (fairly unlikely, given the price and styling combo)
• Audi TT (highly unlikely, given I’ve turned it down before)
• Honda S2000

Although I didn’t get to try out a Clio V6, M Coupé, Impreza, or Evo, I reckon it’s looking like a slugfest between the Honda and the Nissan. Right now, the Nissan’s gearchange, tin-top and all-round slickness are keeping it ahead, but the Honda’s coming up hard on the rails. This could get interesting. :)

I’ve always had difficulty having reasoned debates with managers and marketing departments that wanted “skinned” or themed desktop applications. All too often, theming was seen as the primary way to brand the software, almost ignoring the branding that came from the name, the logo, the website, the parent company, the adverts and so on. This, IMHO, was folly.

While a certain degree of branding can be achieved in the UI, subtlety is rarely the order of the day. The result is an application whose look and feel gets in the way of the user’s everyday work and/or a maintenance headache for the developers. In fact, I wish my current employers (who shall remain nameless) could see this too. I’ve already wasted weeks getting our themed custom controls to do what I want.

Maybe I should just point them in the direction of Microsoft’s latest advice on theming? For me, it’s great to see some degree of balance in a discussion of the topic.

At work, I’ve got a ridiculous mailbox size limit of around 22MB. Receive a few Powerpoints and I’m unable to send email until I permanently delete a load first. Ironically, I’m also sent further large emails telling me to clear out my inbox. Sucks, no?

It doesn’t help that so many people send Word docs as attachments either. Even when you can’t reference a document sitting in source control or elsewhere on the network (thereby avoiding the use of attachments), you’re better off using a format other than Word.

Today, for example, I received a 224KB, text-only Word document. Upon saving it as a .txt file, its size fell to 5KB. What the hell are these people putting in their docs that causes such bloat?! I’m sure it’s not inherent in the .DOC format. In fact, to prove it, I copied and pasted the contents of the 224KB doc into a new document and saved it. Its size? 33KB. And that’s with all formatting intact. Anyone know what’s going on?

At work today, I spent most of the day mentoring one of my project’s testers in the use of NUnit and test-driven development. Despite normally working in tech support, the guy’s actually got a computer science degree from the same university as me. Consequently, it was fairly easy going and quite enjoyable. I felt so proud when his little face lit up at the sight of a full set of green lights. ;)

One thing that surprised me, however, was his revelation that the university now teaches extreme programming and the agile manifesto. I was stunned. When I was there, they were grudgingly accepting that it might be worth teaching a little bit of C instead of just Modula-2. To hear that they’re up to speed with the latest commercial trends is like hearing that the Pope has just declared himself a Darwinist. Unbelievable. Cool, but unbelievable.

I’ve blogged here before about how I love Gav’s full-of-beans nature, but now he’s started a weblog on his real passion: snowboarding. Anyone who knows Gav knows he lives for this stuff. Afterbang [definition] should, therefore, make for great reading and, with its reviews, become a great resource for anyone into a bit of freestylin’. Sick!

Sounds like a spam subject line, doesn’t it? In fact, with the release of 2007 Microsoft Office System, it’ll be reality. For home and student users, anyway. Have to say, I’m delighted about this. Office has been waaay too pricey for your average home user for waaaay too long. And Microsoft Works is simply nothing like a decent substitute.

Speaking of Works, my dad will be sick when he hears about this. He’s just ordered a new laptop... with Works on it. Haha. Sucker! :P

Despite the fact that Phil tipped us off about The Mighty Boosh over 1½ years ago, I’ve only just got round to watching a couple of episodes. The first was a case of “Whoooah... this is... odd”. I wasn’t even sure how funny it was, but figured that might’ve been down to it knocking my brain off balance. This last week’s episode, however, was fantastic. I guess it’s one of those things where you need to know the running jokes and which characters appear every week. Regardless, Nanageddon was a gem. I think the Boosh has a new fan. :)

I like people who make me take a step back and reconsider established practices. Jan Miksovsky does just that in his latest post, Some basic UI patterns for preventing accidental deletion.

The jury’s still out on what car I get next, so I figured I would list my requirements:

• Must not be front-wheel drive, as I want to broaden my experience and improve my driving skills.
• Must have enough headroom for me wearing a helmet, so that I can take the car out on track.
• Must have outward looks that say "I’m designed for the enthusiastic driver", so that I get a buzz every time I approach it in a car park.
• Must not overtly reek of testosterone, so that I’m not accused of getting a penis extension.
• Must not overtly reek of oestrogen, so that I’m not accused of getting another hairdresser’s car. No, scrub that: the Puma and Mini have both been excellent, so hairdresser’s cars are fine by me.
• Must have exceptional handling and chuckability, so that I can enjoy every drive I take, no matter how long or short.
• Must be usable every day of the year, so that I can retain my current mobility and independence.
• Effective purchase price must be less than £10k (after accounting for the sale of the Mini), so that I don’t bankrupt myself.

I think that’s all I need (until I find something abhorrent that matches the above). I think it’s time I made another sub-site... *evil grin*

Chris Sells recently linked to this video of a new touch-screen interface with the words "I wonder how many years that existence of the mouse has set us back". Have to say, the demo looks mightily impressive (and natural to boot), but it’s not about to make the mouse obsolete:

1. I bet that screen costs a hell of a lot more than your average mouse
2. A lot of the coolness of the demo comes from the software—it’ll still take good designers to make the most of the new interaction paradigm
3. Fingertips don’t lend the kind of precision you’ll need for a lot of software packages e.g. Photoshop

Despite these limitations, I still hope this technology becomes affordable and fairly widespread. It’ll give us another weapon in the interaction arsenal, could be an accessibility boon and might open up whole new ways of being creative.

I hate having to make posts like this. Ah well, here goes...

Following Jack’s recent post on TDD on the Reiver Games blog, I posted a “me too” kind of response here. All this has done is increase people’s perception of me as anti-agile; a badge I wouldn’t ordinarily give myself. Admittedly, it’s all my own fault—in an attempt to provide an alternative viewpoint, I’m painting myself as way too black and white. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to take the time to explain myself. If not, please skip this post.

So much to blog, so little time. In light of this, here are 3 quick links to games-related sites and articles that caught my interest this week:

• Game reviews @ jogobom.com: a long-overdue games review blog by Chris Preston. Also has its own atom feed, despite not being prominently linked.
• Finally, games are getting in touch with our feelings: Aleks Krotoski writing in the Guardian’s G2 section.
• Creation and Play: board games rather than videogames, courtesy of Mr Reiver Games himself. Will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Enjoy. :)

All those years of reading sci-fi... what a waste. I’ve just come to the conclusion I’ve been reading all the wrong books because The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time knocks the spots off everything else I’ve ever read. If you want to know why, read the rest of this post. If you’d rather find out for yourself (thereby avoiding spoilers), go to Amazon and order it... NOW! :)

[review with minor spoilers follows...]

Jack makes a post on the Reiver Games blog that beautifully encapsulates perhaps my biggest concern with test-driven development: TDD: it’s great, up to a point.

Bravo, Jack. It rings so true that I barely even feel the need to read the linked article—but I will.

Andy Rutledge appears to write (about design) the way we should all write. Short, sharp and to the point. And he swears—mildly, but effectively. A man after my own heart. That said, I’ve only just stumbled across his site, but if he continues to deliver as sweetly as he does in Hungry? Want another bullshit sandwich?, he’ll have me hooked. :)

Damn straight! A quiz that gets it right for once.

You live on the edge, and you live for the adrenaline rush. You don't need luxuries, snob appeal, or superfluous gadgets. You put your top down, get your motor revving, and take all the curves that life throws at you at full speed. So what if you spin out occasionally?

Deep truths courtesy of the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Now that Souness has gone, it’s a relief to see someone speaking honestly about the club’s predicament. It’s a little more surprising that it was Shearer:

“We need to rectify this before it becomes an emergency. Otherwise, we will be sliding down the table and, before you know it, we’ll be in real trouble. We have a big battle on our hands; we are not in the comfort zone at the moment. We have such big games coming up—forget the FA Cup, we need points on the board.”

It might not be pleasant to dwell on, but it’s good to hear that the playing staff aren’t kidding themselves about the situation. I just hope Big Al can rally the troops.

In this month’s Evo (subscriber’s edition), Harry Metcalfe, the magazine’s editorial director, reminded his readership of a couple of important facts:

1. The Geneva Motor Show is on soon (02-12 March)
2. Low-cost airlines like Easyjet fly to Geneva

Combine this with the fact that I have a mate living in Lausanne and it’s a no-brainer. For little more than a trip to the NEC, I’m off to Switzerland for the weekend. Bring it on! :)