Finally a fresh way to look at user interaction

It has been my belief for some time that we are caught in old tired rules for user interaction, click the left or right mouse button, drag and drop, drag select and of course double click. All the these actions have been around since the 80's, meanwhile, the computing power we have at our disposal has gone through the roof and the amount and type of data we work with has moved grown even more.

Something has to change, the old techniques we used in the 80's and 90's were fine then but they really don't address the problems of today. Now, I'm not saying computer interaction is being ignored, far from it, it's just that lots of the work is really variations on and existing theme.

It is because of all of this that I find this work so refreshing. Watch the videos on the both pages, it gives you some idea of how you can interact with large and complex data sets. Sure, a lot of this is very experimental and doesn't address many aspects of today's computer use but it is a step forward.

I look forward to seeing where this goes and what influence it has on the industry in the coming years.

Strange game

Not sure what this game is all about but it is addictive and rather interesting. My best score so far is 2,799.61 meters.

Viral effects and Subversion

So way back in October I had the opportunity to incorporate Subversion into a work project, now this was a fairly big deal since our company has been a Source Safe shop for a very long time. There was also the small fact that plans were well underway to migrate all development to Microsoft's new Team Foundation Server.

Call it a case of fortuitous timing and a genuine need for some good version control and branch management and of course a little direct force to put in place a solution when nothing else was immediately available.

My experience with Subversion had been somewhat limited up to October, sure I had used it but only for smaller personal projects, never for large projects. Things have changed now, me and a small team have been using Subversion daily for a pretty large code base and have learned a thing or two in the process. Working with Subversion and it's companion software Tortoise SVN have proven to be a pleasant experience and have allowed us to work with the source in ways that would have previously been a pain. For example, I work on a laptop and routinely work on the code at home with or without access to the repository. This has never been a hinderance since all the source is write enabled and you can perform diffs against the base version at any time without network access. Even when you do have network access through VPN or what ever, I've found the speed and reliability of Subversion to be very good, operations perform just like I was working on the companies internal network.

Okay, so I'm gushing over Subversion.... it is not perfect, what software is? However, after years and years of using Source Safe this is a very pleasant change. Now, one might ask what are these 'vial effects' you mention in your title? That is where things get rather interesting....

I mentioned at the beginning that a move to Team Foundation Server was in progress in October, well, it is now February and Team Foundation Server has pretty much arrived. Build systems are being updated and tested and the client software is now being deployed. So, all of the development teams are going to move to Team Foundation Server within the next couple weeks and from my point of view Subversion will be removed from the daily development activities.

Just as the sun was setting on Subversion use I got an unexpected visit from our IT person today. It started out innocently enough, he had some questions about Subversion which I assumed was related to backup related activities, etc, then as the discussion proceeded some interesting questions began to arise. He started asking about differencing of binary files and then we got into how one might lock a file so that only one user can modify it at any single point. Eventually I asked what this was all about and got a bit of a surprise..... he was seriously considering switching our documentation team over to Subversion.

I can guarantee that this would never have happened if we hadn't injected Subversion into the company in a rather direct way. It is unfortunate that it didn't become the standard for our software development but at least it will have a life in other parts of the company. Should be interesting to see where things go from here... does anyone have some good scripts for transferring change sets between TFS and Subversion? :-)

Another shot....

Here is another shot of the sky this evening...
 

A wonderful sky tonight

Today was a wonderful sunny day but the rainy weather is looming, this was all to clear tonight as a the sun set and the clouds started to push their way inland. I was able to snap a couple shots from our second level window before it got to dark. 

Hiking around Garibaldi lake

On Sunday we got up bright and early (trust me... the cows weren't even up yet) and drove with some friends to Garibaldi lake.  For those unfamilliar with the area, Garibaldi lake is a small part of a very large park called.... you guessed it, Garibaldi provincial park.

The area around the lake and the aptly named Black Tusk mountain peak was quite remarkable, lots of wild flowers and interesting vegetation at this time of year.

Without further ado, here are some photos of the area.  This first set of photos are from and area known as Taylor meadows which is one of two designated camping areas.

And this panorama gives you a better feel for the lay of the land.

After going through the meadows, we reached an area known as the Cinder Cone which is the home of a small volanic cone.  The landscape in this area completely changes and in some ways looks more like a moonscape than a volcanoe.

After a fairly big decent to Garibaldi lake, we just hung out for a while at the lakeside to recharge before doing the 9 km trek back out of the park.

Most of the scenery going out was either lots of trees or the occassion lake view, however this particular area was incredibly rugged and was certainly worth taking a moment to appreciate the forces available to mother nature.

At the end of the day, our hike took us about 30 km and at least 800 meters of vertical assent.  All of us were certainly feeling a little tired at the end of the day, so on the way back to Vancouver, we stopped in Squamish for a little bit of ice cream.  :-)

technorati tags:garibaldi, lake, hike

Networks gone bad

Sometimes networks get really bad and here is the proof.

Boring job? Listen to this!

Some of you may really relate this this remake of a popular song by James Blunt.  Really tells it like it is for some people in todays work force.

My Cubicle - Beautiful song with a blunt message - on Bore Me