TedPage

We had a successful house hunting trip, putting an offer on a new house. It was accepted and pending inspection and final financing we'll be moving in.

One of the features that I liked about the house is that it has many energy saving features through out. Low emission windows, efficient air conditioning, a "breathing" attic and thermostats in every room of the house. What's funny to me is that even though the south side of the house has many windows, there are no trees on that side of the house. It seems that in an area that can naturally grow trees (though sadly the builders often plow them under) having trees is the most efficient way to make your house energy efficient. They block the sun in the summer to reduce cooling, and they let it through in the winter to warm the house. Technology isn't the only answer to solving energy problems.

Needless to say, this is one of the first home improvement projects that I'll be embarking on.

posted on Mon, 31 Mar 2008 at 17:22 | permanent link | 2 Comments

It is very easy for us as technologists to loose perspective on what "real users" are using their computers for, and what equipment they have. That's why I was very interested to look at the data for which screen sizes were used to view Ubuntu.com that was posted by Matt Nuzum on the GNOME Usability list today. What can we learn from this data?

The most common resolution used to view the website was 1024x768. This isn't a huge surprise as it is very common resolution, especially for 15" monitors. It seems that most computers today come with a 15" display by default. I then took the data and weighted the area of the screen by the percentage of people using it to try and discover the average screen area. To my surprise it was rather large, 1240x930. Which I think shows that while most people are using 1024x768, we're starting to see that as the low end with most people using higher resolutions. It is important to note that this average size was taken assuming everyone had a 4:3 display, which isn't always the case either.

Personally I've been using widescreen monitors for a while, and I'm addicted. I think it's the way computers should be. But, they've mostly been in more professionally focused laptops and desktops, and not out in the general public. But, looking at the data presented it seems like more and more people are starting to use widescreen displays. Almost one third of displays were widescreen. I think that's interesting as we start to look at usability and design for the desktop. One of the key questions starts to become the handling of panels that are taking up the "long edge" of the display. It is also interesting to note that "odd ratios" either vertical displays or just simply displays that didn't hit these ratios dead on, accounted for roughly 3% of the overall visitors.

I'm not sure if there is any definitive lessons from any of this data other than the most common case was pretty much expected. But I think that it is showing some interesting trends to where we should be thinking for the next generation of desktops. Lastly, here is my derived data if you'd like to check my formulas.

Update: Kees Cook went and downloaded my spreadsheet and modified it in a truly open source way. He was curious about 16:9, which turned out to be less than 1%, and he wanted to make sure that it handled rotated displays. It turns out that rotated displays also account for less than 1% of the entries.

posted on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 at 02:32 | permanent link | 1 Comments

This is a little late, but I wanted to write about SCALE, one of my favorite Linux conferences. It is laid back, but well organized. It is small, but has interesting speakers. It is fun; simply it's fun.

We usually have an Inkscape booth at SCALE, and this year we did it again. It's always interesting to meet people and either introduce them to Inkscape, or hear how they're using it. This year we decided to hold a sticker contest so that we'd have a give away at the booth. There were lots of great designs, but because of a mix up with the printer we didn't actually get them at the booth. Kinda sad.

Another thing that was different this year is that SCALE featured a "Try-it" lab. This was a lab set up with 20 thin clients to allow conference goers to actually play with some of the things being talked about at the conference. We were able to get four slots, and Josh taught four classes that I heard nothing but good things about (I had to man the booth). There was video taken of at least one of them, so I hope that gets online (and is useful) here soon.

This year I also gave a talk called The Ubuntu Desktop: Bling for Usability which focused on the fact that much of what is called bling or eye candy today does have a purpose, and will probably be the expected feature of tomorrow. After last year where my talk went embarrassingly long I managed to make this one too short. Which was okay, but I think everyone in the audience checked their watch as soon as my questions slide appeared on the screen.

One of the most interesting things I learned this year was from the folks at Open Streetmap. Turns out that all of the tiles in their database are made using Inkscape. Apparently they have a project called Tiles@Home which does distributed rendering using Inkscape instances all over the world. They joked, but I think it's likely they're correct, that they're the largest group of Inkscape users anywhere.

SCALE is a fun conference where it's good to meet up with old friends and make new ones. Even though I'm moving, I hope to attend next year as well.

posted on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 at 12:06 | permanent link | 0 Comments

So I wanted to get a couple USB-to-Serial cables for doing some debugging today, and I thought I'd run down to my local Best Buy and grab them because they said that they had them online. Grab some lunch too, it'll be fun.

So after looking through the store in all the places that I'd expect, I asked someone. Then I followed him through all the places I just went to determine that they weren't there and looked in the computer to confirm that there were two in the store. After talking to a couple of other employees I was referred to the older employee who "knows everything." I explained the problem, we looked in one place, and when they weren't there I mentioned that they were in the computer and he turned to me:

"The computer is wrong, we do not have them."
"Shouldn't there be a..."
"Do you know Santa Monica between Bundy and Centinella?" he interjected. (local streets)
"Yes?"
"There is a building there with big green windows. The man in the bottom, he has everything. He will have what you need."

I thanked him and decided to get some lunch, not sure about whether I'd find the man in the building with green windows. After lunch, feeling curious, and having never been on a quest before, I decided to go.

So I got off the bus at Santa Monica and Bundy and started walking towards Centinella. I'm not sure at all what to expect; but sure enough about half way down I see a building with large green windows. No signs. I cross the street and walk towards it. As I get closer, looking in the windows there are displays with everything from beige PCs to rack mounted KVM switches -- but still no signs.

I walked in the door and the directory had all the suites listed, seemingly mostly filled by Doctor's offices. I found my way around to a door that looked to match where the displays on the front where. Inside was a single glass counter filled with various random computer things and with a man behind it. I explained what I needed, and he called to the back. Out came another gentleman with everything. I paid and the only name I know for the place is that on the receipt: "General Sales Equipment."

So my advice to you is: go to the man in the bottom of the building with green windows, he has what you need.

posted on Wed, 05 Mar 2008 at 22:57 | permanent link | 0 Comments