onThought

Archive for July, 2003

Pulling an Ellen Feiss

Sunday, July 6th, 2003

How many mistakes could I possibly make in one evening? Rianna and I planned on seeing a movie tonight at 7:30 PM. I decided to take a power nap and correctly set my alarm clock accordingly. A phone call at 7:50 PM awoke my extended slumber. After seeing that no other movies started for another hour, I told Rianna to stay put and that I would be over shortly. I phoned Rianna while driving and asked her out to coffee at Barnes & Noble. Then I hung up and banged my head against the steering wheel causing other drivers much trauma. How could I forget that Rianna abhors corporate chain bookstores (i.e. Barnes & Noble) and coffee (i.e. the Starbucks within B&N)? I pulled into the parking lot, approached a vehicle that resembled The Rianna Mobile only to find that it was not her sitting in the car after brining attention to myself and subsequently feeling really stupid again. So I phoned to find her location in the parking lot. We met at the door, grabbed a conversational book (Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld), and drank our contribution to the evil corporate coffee empire.

Quote

Friday, July 4th, 2003

I’m wearing blue and red, and I’m white, so I’m patriotic. Mel

Ye Olde Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration

Friday, July 4th, 2003

Ali, Mel, Rianna,Ryan, and I attended T.R.B.C.‘s celebration of America’s birthday. After the fireworks at Liberty University, we headed over to some church near Lynchburg Stadium and caught an even more impressive fireworks display. I love America!

The wind shear from the crowds rushing to the "Celebration!!" adversely affected this road sign.

Rianna, Jeremiah (me!), Mel, Ryan, Ali

Ali’s toes were very patriotic.

iChat AV Public Beta Thoughts

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003

Regardless of what Ken McCoy emphatically declared, Apple iChat 1.0 sucks. The public beta of iChat AV adds the most impressive instant messaging / audio, video conferencing combination yet. My OrangeMicro iBot and integrated microphone allowed me to conference with fellow iChat users within minutes after installing the beta software. I look forward to AIM and AIM-compatible applicationsusing Apple’s standards-based, open-source conferencing developer kit, so that all AIM users can share this feature.

However, iChat still needs much improvement before I make the switch from AIM for Mac. Here is my list of demands:

1. Buddy Groups
   1. I have over one-hundred people on my buddy list. Groups allow me to easily access and categorize online friends. iChat’s implementation of this feature is an excellent example of what not to do when designing a user interface.
   2. There is a bug that when details (e.g. first and last name) are added to a buddy, the user is copied to every group on the AIM server.
2. Chat Logs
   1. iChat creates a separate log file every time a new chat window is opened. If I have five chat windows with the same person throughout the day, five log files are created. I prefer how AIM groups all conversations with one person into one file for each month.
   2. Conversation log files are named Jeremiah Cohick #15.chat. I prefer how AIM names conversation log files IM "Jeremiah Cohick"-2003.07.html. This allows the user to immediately identify when a conversation took place by its file name.
   3. Also notice that AIM saves conversations as HTML files. In order to read iChat’s conversation logs clearly, you must launch iChat. AIM’s conversation logs can be read in any application that can render HTML.
3. Most of the people on my buddy list are casual acquainances. I strongly dislike that iChat requires me to add people to my system-wide address book when the only interaction I have with these people is through instant messages.
4. AIM’s extensive AppleScript library is awesome, but Apple’s iChat still lacks an adequate AppleScript dictionary.
5. iChat should implement AIM profiles using WebCore to achieve feature parity with AIM for Windows.
6. iChat does not distinguish bot or mobile users from full-featured AIM clients.
7. UI errata 1: Repeating of the last message when typing after having a picture received earlier in the conversation.
   
8. UI errata 2: Broken speech bubbles and the text field highlight stops at the :-) dropdown menu.
   
9. UI errata 3: Motion blur on previous messages after having a picture received earlier in the conversation.