James's Weblog

For the third year in a row, Mitch and I lost track of time and missed the APE comics convention. Argh!

That reminds me: I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t like most modern comic books. I’ve flipped through a number of issues of various titles, but none of the mainstream superhero stuff looks interesting to me.

Have I merely outgrown them? Perhaps, but I still like watching shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League. I have no problems buying trade paperback collections of 1970s and 1980s superhero comic books.

Is it nostalgia? Am I merely out-of-the-loop on current storylines? Am I totally confused because they’ve turned the worlds I knew upside-down and inside-out? Are my expectations simply higher because comic books are now at least three times as expensive as they were when I fell in love with them? Probably all of the above.

Nonetheless, when I look at the pages of modern superhero offerings, I can’t help but think: “Wow, yet another Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane wanna-be.” Comic books certainly look a lot better than they used to; the artwork is crisp, detailed, and stylish. Colors are no longer limited to flat sections of uniformity; better paper and better printing technology now allow spectacular, rich gradients and subtle shading.

But somehow it all feels so soul-less. Comic books have gone the way of MTV with flashy art, extreme closeups, and gratuitously skimpy outfits on abnormally buoyant women.

Get rid of the expensive, glossy paper and the flashy CG coloring. Bring back the cheap newsprint and flat colors. Sometimes less is more. Airbrushed colors don’t belong with iconic art. And stop aping Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane.

And bring back the Charles Atlas and x-ray specs ads too. Those kicked ass.

Well, I received the Endurapro 104 dream keyboard that I bought on auction.

Surprisingly, although the keyboard was said to be used, it appears to be very clean. It looks quite pristine. The keys feel really nice, and although they are indeed louder than the keys from modern membrane-based keyboards, they’re not as loud as I had expected them to be.

Unfortunately, the TrackPoint is a disappointment. Because the keys are physically taller on buckling-spring keyboards than on membrane-based keyboards, the TrackPoint stick must be significantly longer too. Increasing the stick length increases the lateral distance that the head needs to move. Overall, it takes much more effort to use the TrackPoint on the Endurapro 104 than it is on my IBM TrackPoint IV keyboard, which is a shame.

I’ve been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes books recently. I thought that this strip was relevant to the current weblog craze. (Used without permission.)

And yes, I’m a hypocrite.

There’s a lot of confusion out there about rechargeable battery technology.

Is the memory effect real? Do modern rechargeable batteries suffer from it? Should you discharge batteries completely before recharging? Should you charge batteries whenever they’re not in use? Does overcharging damage the battery? What are the differences between NiCd, NiMH, lithium-ion, and lithium-polymer batteries?

In this case, confusion leads to disinformation. Some people often say to discharge lithium-ion batteries completely to avoid the “memory effect”, even though most of the sources I’ve seen say that completely discharging a lithium-ion battery is bad.

Forget it. Batteries should be more intelligent. Sure, there currently are “smart batteries” out there that report things such as chemistry type, number of charge cycles, voltage levels, and temperature, but do users care about these things? Do users know what they mean? The batteries (or the devices that use them) should be smarter and tell users what matters:

• Estimate time left on the current charge. Making accurate estimates is difficult, because many devices do not consume power at a constant rate. Manufacturers want to avoid complaints from users who say, “your device said I had 1 hour and 15 minutes of battery life left, but I really had only 50 minutes!” Instead, device manufacturers often don’t say anything at all.

  Truly smart batteries or devices could generate statistical data and usage patterns. Even with variable power consumption, they ought to be able to use such data to compute reasonably accurate estimates. When in doubt, they should be conservative with their estimates.

  If nothing else (and to rip off an idea from Mac OS), if you can’t be accurate, be less precise. For example, a better estimate might be “About 1 hour” or “About 30-60 minutes”.

• When to recharge. Smart batteries or devices can know their chemistry type and could tell the user the appropriate charging behavior to follow. Messages such as, “You should recharge your device now to maximize the lifetime of the battery” could be used to supplement existing low battery warnings. Overcharging should never be a problem; smart devices already detect when the battery capacity is reached and stop automatically.

Last night’s BayCHI meeting had a talk by Scott Weiss, author of Handheld Usability. He mentioned, among other things, a couple of additional points about PDAs versus physical calculators:

• Instant gratification. Calculators turn on and are ready to do their thing immediately. With a PDA, you usually need to tap some sequence of physical and virtual buttons just to start the calculator program.
• Batteries not included. Many four-function calculators and some scientific ones don’t need batteries at all, instead relying on solar cells.

On the other hand, he noted that PDAs can be better for specialized programs for common tasks. For example, a program can display the sales tax or 15% tip automatically for a given value.

Coincidentally, the 2004 PalmSource Developer Conference is going on this week. During one of the presentations yesterday, a speaker from palmOne suggested that students use PDAs instead of physical calculators. Ugh. That brings me to my next point:

I don’t see a lot of benefit to having computers in the classroom, especially in schools full of upper-class children who probably have computers at home already.

I think the one big win is if every student has a laptop or PDA with network access, students can provide real-time, anonymous feedback to the instructor. Peer pressure discourages students from asking questions, even good ones.

I’m sure there must be a good low-tech alternative, but I can’t think of one. A locked drop-box isn’t real-time, making it difficult for students to correct the instructor. It also isn’t very anonymous; students submitting questions might be seen by others, and it’s not that difficult to distinguish students’ handwritings.

(I wish that I had thought of setting up an anonymous feedback form while I was a teaching assistant. I don’t think I got my due share of “James is a stupid-head” remarks.)

Well, I found and bought a used one on auction. I know I previously swore that I never again would buy a used keyboard, but $30 for the keyboard of my dreams seemed too good to pass up.

I’ll see how filthy and disgusting it is when it arrives.

As much as I like PalmSource (the company that makes Palm OS), its registration forms always bug me.

There are always questions that are required but don’t apply to me, such as job title, company name, number of employees, what distribution systems I use, what type of market I’m targeting, and so on. Admittedly, the majority of registrants shouldn’t have any trouble answering these questions. On the other hand, a significant number of Palm OS developers are hobbyists who don’t represent their employers, and these days a lot of people are unemployed.

If your marketing department demands that you require demographic information in your registration forms, remind them that disinformation is worse than no information. If nothing else, provide “not applicable” or “I don’t know” options.

For anyone curious about what’s so special about my dream keyboard that I mentioned last December:

• Buckling-spring construction. It’s equivalent to an old IBM Model-M keyboard. Unlike the flimsy, cheap membrane keyboards most people use, buckling-spring keyboards are solid, are built like tanks, and last forever. True, they are much noisier, but my typing already sounds like a jackhammer, so it shouldn’t be much worse.
• Integrated TrackPoint. Some people hate these things, arguing that a normal mouse is better. While I won’t argue with that, a TrackPoint and a mouse aren’t mutually exclusive. Modern operating systems support multiple pointing devices; why not use both? If you need to do a lot of mousing and only a bit of keyboarding, use the mouse. If you need to do a lot of keyboarding but only a bit of mousing, you can use the TrackPoint without taking your hands off of the keyboard. It’s the best of both worlds. It rocks for coding, and I think all keyboards should have this.
• Windows keys. Some people hate these things too, arguing that they’re nearly useless. If they bother you that much, there are versions without them. Me, I think they’re useful. Use an application such as WinKey to assign keyboard shortcuts to Windows-key combinations. For example, I set Win+p to open the command prompt, Win+i set to start my web browser, and Win+v to open my volume controls.

Two-week old news:
ACiD recently released their final artpack, and to commemorate the event, ACiD is making their artpacks archive available on DVD. The DVD includes artpacks from other groups too, so some of my old (and sucktacular) ANSI art is actually on it. Wow.

(For anyone who doesn’t know what ANSI art is, see History of the Underground Scene.)

John Langdon’s ambigram site inspired me to try to make ambigrams of my name and of some of my friends’ names.

• James
• Karen Cheng
• Jennifer
• Michael
• Corrie
• Mitchell

Most of those could be refined quite a bit more.