Notices by Jeff Miller (orange hatband) (jmeowmeow@hachyderm.io)

@inthehands Discoverable UI is so powerful.

@inthehands I had a terrible usability experience with the iPhone my first time, though my point of comparison was the HTC Dream.

Mostly my feeling was that the iPhone touchscreen was impossibly awkward for a person with fingertips of my size.

A couple years later, Google's employee holiday gift was a touchscreen phone. And that was the last time I had a phone with a real keyboard.

Touchscreen controls let the designer do everything in software, but they also got us autocomplete as a necessity, and hinder the usability advantages of muscle memory.

@thomasfuchs Appreciation for sharing the Weather Channel report format revival. And it detected my location by IP address!

My own weather report revival project is an homage to Tamsin Bowles' Weatherpixie, at https://pixiereport.com/ .

Hope you're staying cool.

@skinnylatte wow, no kidding on the wind.

https://pixiereport.com/metar?location=KMRY

Wind: from the WSW (250 degrees) at 14 MPH (12 KT) gusting to 26 MPH (23 KT)

And even breezier at SFO today.

https://pixiereport.com/metar?location=KSFO

Wind: from the W (270 degrees) at 30 MPH (26 KT) gusting to 45 MPH (39 KT)

@inthehands Original from @sarahtaber https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/114699899186653035

@inthehands The financial bubble around generative model technology is pretty much the primary feature I see.

Since there's current value to repackaging any effort around the bubble's hot buzzwords, it makes it that much harder to understand what any given technological effort is doing.

@skinnylatte "Chi Pants" had a central gusset patch rather than a central seam, more robust for squatting and stretching.

The original company doesn't seem to be in business, but "Dash Hemp" of Santa Cruz advertises pants of that design.

Maybe a fan of the original would have a recommendation.

@inthehands I have observed the original poster (of the quote; not the quoted speaker) to make categorical assertions in a style I find difficult to read, frequently enough that I avoid following him, while continuing to follow his well intentioned indie web work.

Even if his condemnations have good reasons that I may agree with, and help to motivate his good work.

@inthehands always a reviewer, never a committer

@skinnylatte <3 Bump!

@skinnylatte Today is the first day of the wrasse of your life, as the self-improvement affirmation used to go.

@inthehands Inescapable. I was at my doctor's office, and it so turns out that the big pedestrian bridge across the freeway was a demonstration site.

I was running late so I didn't take my sign or participate, but I heard supportive honking.

@skinnylatte Novato? Dairy farms to the north, bayside marshes nearby.

@inthehands The one report of LLM-generated / LLM-using code that I found most striking was from Jon Udell, related to generating an app for converting a photograph of an event flier into a useful calendar entry.

Partly it was striking because Udell has been a long-term advocate and a developer of community-run local information resources including calendaring, which have mostly been absorbed by Big Social Media.

The app combines small deployment scale and low cost of error (hand-fix the calendar) with toil reduction around composing APIs -- and makes something possible by making it easy. Not an app I'd want to maintain for others, but a technique for bringing tedious things in reach, so they happen on a relevant time scale.

@inthehands I suspect that answering the question "why is it the _what_, _how_, and _why_ of development are at odds" heads straight into the way human systems get stuck in bad states.

Having the words for the intentions, expectations, and qualities of the work can help people at least not talk past each other.

The field in practice has shipped a million leaky prototypes that demo'ed well. Time to market? Time to capture funders' attention? Those bring their own pressures and problems.

I think of Kingsbury's Jepsen project as a model of asking whether the "what" was actually delivered by testing the fundamentals.

@inthehands Things which ought to be obvious bear repeating, to check that our premises haven't changed.

Brooks' No Silver Bullet and Mythical Man-Month remain relevant critiques and mostly unlearned lessons; an indictment of the information technology field as practiced in the world.

NSB is absolutely worth checking. If you make the "how" as easy as you can, you're grappling with the "what".

Opinions vary on the division between "how" and "what". ("dev" and "product"?)

@inthehands @straphanger Get there with positive social priorities while things are loose, so as not to waste a crisis opportunity? That sounds like the maxim "chance favors the prepared mind" applied to policy advocacy.

The same story has been told for having system resilience plans ready in a box for when a digital service outage opens a window to use them and improve the future now, while you can.

@skinnylatte Our SF laundromat was the "Little Hollywood Launderette" on Market Street which closed a few years ago after 52 years in business. A laundry trip was a little two-hour excursion together.

https://hoodline.com/2017/08/little-hollywood-launderette-spins-down-folds-after-52-years/

@skinnylatte I am following your food posts with attention so that I can forward them to the resident college student who does most of his own cooking and enjoys rice and spicy food (sometimes too spicy for me; I would expect not so for you).

@inthehands A genuine loud laugh echoing from the walls of the finished basement.