Lee.org

Hello and welcome to a new feature of this blog… I’m calling it “Poor Design Workshop“. In each segment, I’ll show you some… well… something that I think is a poor design. We’ll talk about it and then see if we can’t make it Good Design.

Our first item up for bid is a sign I’ve seen quite a bit in airports lately. It’s an ad for… well, I’ll let you guess.

That’s right, it’s an ad for a new foofy perfume called Pre’tentious. This scent conjours images of being famous, being photographed by top photographers and being in framed photos of… what’s that? Oh, it’s a phone. Yes, my eye is drawn to the head and eyes of the model with the feathers, down to her breasts, over to the bottle, left to the photographer, left to the other face in the frame and… that’s it.

Congratulations, Samsung just sold me a scent that doesn’t exist.

That’s right, the ad isn’t trying to sell perfume, it’s actually, after reading the fine print, marketing a cell phone with a camera.

Who is going to buy this cell phone? Professional perfume photographers? No, I don’t think so. Fashionista? Maybe

Micro-er than twitter, it’s…. it’s nano-blogging from Flutter!

local version:

Batman: The Dark Knight on 2-27-09. Intense. Quite a ride

V For Vendetta 3-28-09. I came out of the movie thinking it was completely excellent. After a few minutes of mulling I can think of many plot holes and unexplained bits. So I’ll just say that the theme and visual elements of the movie were excellent. A little something was missing… maybe it got lost on the editing room floor? Still a worthwhile movie!

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.0. It’s useful when writing long items… a few paragraphs or more. Here is a list of phrases you can tell DNS to do good things:

select that/ correct that – correct the last thing you said
correct [word] through [word] – correct a string of words
(hit – on the keypad) – pulls up correction window

Show-dictation-box – pops up a text window that will paste when it’s closed. Good for Firefox.
Edit-selection – You should select something, say “Edit-Selection” and it’ll be pulled into a dictation box.

Cap … – next letter is capitalized
caps-on – Capitalize the First Letter of Every Important Word until “caps-off”
caps-off
All-caps – next word is in ALL CAPS
All-caps-on – EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALIZED UNTIL “All-caps-off”
All-caps-off
No-caps – next word is in all lower case.
No-caps-on – no caps until “no-caps-off”
Cap-that – capitalize the first letter of each word in the last phrase, or the selected text

open-quote – “
close-quote – “
open-parenthesis – (
close-parenthesis – )
open-bracket – [
close-bracket – ]
at-sign – @

scratch-that-[X]-times – multiple undo

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Moving the cursor and mouse

mouse-grid – brings up the mouse grid. Then…
mouse-click
mouse-double-click

move-up-[n]-lines
move-left-[n]-characters / words
go-to-top / bottom
go-to-beginning-of-line / end-of-line

insert-before-[word] / after

select-[words I want]
select-again – tries other choices

select-[starting word]-through-[ending word]
select-all
copy-all-to-clipboard
paste-that

backspace-[n]

scratch-that
undo-that

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Actions

To kill a voice-recognition action that has gone awry, click the little red X inside the Result box. That will also turn off the microphone.

To spell out individual letters or numbers, pause, say “spell-that”. Wait for the spelling menu.

This post was originally named “Phoey on Atmel” because I had emailed and submitted sample parts requests from Atmel and got no response for over a week. And Digikey was unable to help (see below) but I just (2pm 5-26-09) got a call back from Mac Wilson at Centaur Corporation. He is representing for Atmel. He’s going to get me some samples and help me move forward with the T. Pen.

Chat start time May 24, 2009 5:41:26 AM EST
Edith ext 1601: Welcome to Digi-Key Live-Help. How may I assist you?
Lee Sonko: I’m trying to get a hold of a few of this IC ATTINY43U-SU-ND to test. It looks like I can only get it in quantities of 1,000 or so. Can you help me get just a few units?
Edith ext 1601: I’ll check on this, one moment please.
Lee Sonko: Thanks very much. :-)
Edith ext 1601: This is a part that we don’t stock; we can order it from the mfg but we have to go by their mins
Edith ext 1601:  which is 1,036 pcs
Edith ext 1601: We could ask a technician if there’s a sub
Lee Sonko: hurumph. This is a new part, released in March or so from Atmel. You’re the only folks I see it even listed with so far. I’ve tried contacting Atmel but no response in a week. :-(
Lee Sonko: I doubt there’s a sub. It’s a new class of part… a microcontroller with a built-in voltage converter.
Edith ext 1601: I’m sorry; I don’t understand why new parts are advertised if they aren’t available.
Lee Sonko: Me neither! Thanks for looking.
Lee Sonko: Have a great night.
Edith ext 1601: Thanks.  You too.
Lee Sonko: G’night.
Edith ext 1601: bye.

Of course I wonder how it was he came to contact me. Was it one of my emails, my sample parts request, or the “squeaky wheel” post you are looking at now? I’ve heard it can be hard to get samples from Atmel.

The Box Shop, the space SWARM and the Flaming Lotus Girls work out of, has a new pretty website. :-)

http://boxshopsf.org/

If you need space in San Francisco to make large metal art, consider the Box Shop :-)

• @ShamelessHeatha my favorite! in reply to ShamelessHeatha #
• in your polls working ur election #

I am seriously skeptical about this whole 140 character revolution. That said, my friend  Marah is going to be a presenter  at the  140 Characters Conference in New York City June 16 and 17.

I just got done with another Etherpad collaboration. Gosh darn, Etherpad works well.

Marnia and I were making a shopping list for some robots we are building this weekend. She’s in San Mateo, I’m in San Francisco. Over the phone (with headsets) and with Etherpad, we hacked out a list, exchanged links to websites we were considering shopping, and had a finished shopping list in a few minutes. Since we each had our own computer to work on, the collaboration may have taken a tiny bit LESS time than if we had done it in person. That’s weird.

Primer at the recomendation of Warren Lynch (film maker). It was really good and entertaining.

X Men 2 and X Men 3 – Jeez, they are scary violent. I mean, when you go up against Wolverine, he doesn’t knock you out or paralyse you or anything; he puts 6 long metal blades into you and moves them in opposing directions with superhuman strength. He kills you. And the ending of X Men 3… yow, Jean Grey uses telekinesis to tear everyone in a 100 yard radius into what look like 1/4″ blobs of flesh.

Star Trek. Saw it at the Metreon on the IMAX screen last night with Brenden, Charlotte, Jon F and Rick T. Wow. This is the summer’s blockbuster. Very heavy on the attitude, energy, emotion and visuals. A couple plot holes but that’s not what the movie was about. It was more about getting kick-ass backstories for the ST:TOS characters that we thought we already knew and loved.  This morning I was exhausted; I think it was because the movie took it out of me. Phew!