Gah… somebody at Sun sent me a link to an article that he thought might be useful background reading for my possible OSS Usability article for Interfaces, and now I can’t find the email. If you’re reading this, can you send it again please?!
GIMP usability
Alan Horkan (link still b0rked at time of posting) pointed us at a sneak preview of the results of a GIMP usability study by Relevantive today. How far open source usability has come that such a thing was even contemplated… and how far we’ve still got to go 🙂
Happy Birthday Calum, from Zizou
Still trying to feel sorry for England this morning after their almost-Scottish performance against France. But let’s be honest– it was hilarious :o)
Oh my god– they Kilkennyed!
Spent much of my **th birthday today taking in the rather excellent Wexford v. Kilkenny Leinster hurling semi at Croke Park (and snapping a few photies such as these into the bargain). We’d decided to support Wexford beforehand on the informed basis that they had the coolest shirts. Having already reached my Guinness limit for the day, though, we celebrated the result with several slices of Julie’s home made dark and white marbled chocolate cheesecake instead.
Eeeww
I really don’t want to know which Scotsman Seth has in him. He may turn out to be related.
Fame at last
Was invited this morning to write an article about open source usability for the British Computer Society’s quarterly HCI journal, Interfaces. Hopefully I’ll have time to do something more than just a re-hash of our recent CHI paper…
Weekly GNOME accessibility bug nag
P1,2 [Imm,Urg]=7 (-1 since Jun 1st) in=5, out=6 P3 [High] =48 (+8) in=16, out=8 P4 [Normal] =244 (+5) in=25, out=20 P5 [Low] =74 (+1) in=2, out=1 Total Untriaged=32
I hide from the headlamps, no lights in the window
Gotta love Fiat… took the barc in yesterday to have its headlights adjusted (amongst other things), and apparently it may still fail its NCT retest because there are fingerprints (not mine) on the inside of the glass that are causing the beam not to focus properly.
Just buy a new glass then? Ah no, Fiat will only sell you a sealed headlamp unit, for 300 euro…
Black and White
Have just rolled a 2.6.2 release of gnome-themes, which gives greater (but sadly not yet complete, unless you’re running JDS) main menu coverage for the High Contrast icons.
On the Buses
Back in residence after my trip to Norn Iron with Julie. Took in all the usual touristy things, like the Giant’s Causeway (I’m sure in Scotland we were taught that it was Finn MacCool who ran away from Benandonner though!), the Tyrone Crystal factory, the Belfast bus tour and the traffic jams in Dundalk. (Okay, so Dundalk’s actually on this side of the border.)
Still not quite sure what to make of the fact that said bus tour includes the Shankill and Falls Road these days… the fact that open top buses can now freely parade around (perhaps not the best choice of phrase) interface areas is a sign of remarkable progress, and our ironically-monikered tourguide Billy’s irreverence towards the tricoloured-kerbstones, murals and army observation points would probably have seen his kneecaps in some danger not so many years ago.
But the 12th of July bonfires were still being readied, and I don’t suppose we’ll hear any fewer poisonous party songs at the next Old Firm game.