I'm redesigning Fury again.

I know that must sound strange, since Fury's design hasn't changed significantly in nearly 5 years, but would you believe I've redesigned it at least four times since then? I have, only I've never actually built it out and pushed it live, since I was never really happy with it.

Now I have a new litmus test: If it's better than the current version I should put it out there. By that standard I'm almost certain to have a redesign up in the next week or so.

Just as a reality check, it would be helpful if you briefly commented on what part(s) of the UI or overall site that you find most valuable personally. I'd love to hear it, along with any random ideas for improvements. I already have the design in my head and halfway done, but it's not too late to make an impact.

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Heya, so Netflix Friends features are so much more useful when you have more than two netflix friends. Are you on Netflix? Do I know you personally? If so, pelase add me as your netflix friend so we can share the collaboritive filtering fruits of our friendship!

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I've noticed when watching people (as it is often my wont to do) that lots of people I know have default faces, the faces they show when they stand in the elevator going to lunch while trying to remember what they ate for lunch the day before, or reading a book, or stopped at a stoplight. These faces can be happy, pensive, dour, vapid, or intense, and I get the feeling that most people have no idea of what their own default face looks like to other people, or the giant effects that other people's impressions of their default face have on the course of their lives overall.

Do you have a default face? What do you think it is? Ask around. Are you right?

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Apologies in advance for a question several people may find in very poor taste, but such is the blogger's life. I thought of this while Rachel and I were flying to Las Vegas, eating honey roasted peanuts. I was disproportionately excited because so often they just serve salted peanuts on Southwest and it's a special treat to get two precious bags of the honey roasted variety. (Incidentally, either one is miles better than United's peanut, almond, and pretzel mix. I just can't enjoy small hard pretzels; I don't know why. I also don't like almonds, but I know where that comes from.) Anyhow, back to my inappropriate question:

Say there's a plane crash in your neighborhood, much like one near my cousin's home when a small plane and a Boeing 737 collided and both fell out of the sky in Cerritos several years ago. During the three mile drop to earth, debris scatters in a wide field, and lighter things are carried farther by the wind.

Now, say that later this afternoon you're in your debris-free backyard (you're aware of the crash, but the majority of debris has fallen several blocks away from your home) and you come across a pristine bag of honey roasted peanuts. Assuming that the tiny bag is in good shape and appears no different than normal, and assuming you love honey roasted peanuts, what do you do with the bag?

If you have no particular attraction to this variety of snack, substitute your own airline fare of choice. For example, a mini-bottle of cognac falls in your swimming pool.

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If you could 'uncancel' any 5 TV shows of all time, assuming that the show would come back today with the original cast and writing, all at their original ages, which shows would you most want to resuccitate?

I'm still working on my list. Right now the only three I'm pretty certain of are Firefly (duh), Babylon 5, and La Femme Nikita.

What would you save?

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First I stop posting but everyone keeps commenting, now I start posting again and everyone's all hushy, even though more of you are reading than ever!

In Malibu for the weekend for my Uncle Alan's birthday, back tomorrow. I love airplanes.

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Wired has an interesting article on lack of attribution in weblogs, and how many large blogs 'steal' ideas from smaller blogs without giving them attribution.

This certainly happens, and with the rising popularity of RSS feeds, it's easier and easier to read a few hundred blogs a day and pass along the interesting content, without attribution. For many sites, like Metafilter and BoingBoing, this is exactly the point, though Cory (Boingboing) does an exemplary job at citing sources. Since I'm currently working on building out my own 'meta-site' this is a subject of particular interest to me.

The argument's failing, and I freely admit that I need to dive deeper to determine whether it's a weak point of the article or of the underlying research, is that it assumes webloggers predominantly get their content from other weblogs. While that's often true, it's certainly not always the case.

Take for example the 'furry germs' example given in the Wired article: The author claims this is an example of a blog meme with a point blog source and dozens of copycaters blogging it on their own site, without attribution to the original blogger. This is absolutely not the case.

Having blogged about the "plushie microbes" four weeks ago myself, I know exactly where it came from: A monthly advertisement sent out to Think Geek customers. The Wired article's argument is that the specific term "furry germs" is a unique identifier, proving that any two bloggers using the words have the same blog source. In fact, the term "furry germs" is a fabricated example for the article that, at the time of this writing, doesn't exist anywhere on the web except for in the Wired article and in this one (so far as Google can see). More likely the actual example is the term "plush microbes", the term that is used in the marketing email, and on ThinkGeek's site itself.

It's small wonder that bloggers would use the same term when writing about the product, and isn't any evidence of 'blogstealing'. On the contrary, this example raises awareness that we, as bloggers, use the whole world as our source, and that often the same part of the world is shown to many of us at the same time (e.g. through advertisements, the news, terrorist acts).

It's only natural that advertising would raise awareness of a new product, and the far more accurate implication that bloggers don't feel compelled to cite a source when the source is an advertisement that shows up in their inbox is much less insidious than saying we all read each other's weblogs to pilfer content and self-aggrandize.

Just for fun, it might be interesting to have 'attribution week' in the blogosphere, where we carefully document the source of every idea we blog, in as detailed a form as possible.

I propose the week of April 18th, when we're all done with taxes.

[thanks to Amit Asaravala at Wired News, a member of the Terra-Lycos Network]

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It's funny that most of the unsung (or at least unposted) content I have is in the form of memes and links, the things that weblogs were 'supposed' to be, before the term matured into much more.

As part of the trifurcation of Fury, I'm going to split off the Meme-o-matic into its own, entirely separate site. I'll probably keep the sidebar here, driven by an RSS (or maybe Atom?) feed, but will have another site, updated several times a day, for slightly more robust pointing.

I'm looking to BoingBoing and Gizmodo as examples of this genre of blog. It's really more of an aggregator than a community, and probably won't have comments.

So now, while I've learned the hardships of desgning by committee, I'd like input on which domain to use for this new site. The candidates are designfoo.com, outgeek.com, memeomatic.com(/net/org) or voxen.net.

Ready? Set... Opine!

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So yesterday Google soft-launched Orkut, a new online community site along the lines of Friendster and Tribe.

Like Tribe, Orkut supports communities, but this is still a starting point. I expect it'll get better as it grows. The site's launched invite-only, so only members can invite new users. Rather than try to figure everyone I know, I'm happy to invite Fury readers who I know even the littlest bit (you know, old friends, the frequent commetners, stuff like that).

Drop me an email if you're interested and I haven't invited you yet!

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Following up on yesterday's post about possible forthcoming iPods, I point you to SpyMac's blurb about the transition from unsubstantiated rumor to unsubstantiated fact, where professional publications erroneously state that Apple 'has announced' products that may or may not even exist.

This reminds me of the early days of the Newton, some ten years ago, when someone would post a self-declared wishful prediction of a new Newton device on the newsgroup comp.sys.newton.misc and it would get rewritten on a Newton rumor site and it would get picked up by a trade magazine with 'industry insiders say' tacked on to the front, then the first guy would run to the newsgroup and say "look! MacWeek says there's a new Newton coming out, and it's exactly what I was predicting! Woohoo!"

Still, kernels of truth and all... I'm sure there will be some new low-cost iPod announced next week, and it's quite possible there will be a mini iPod, though I'm not certain that that smaller necessarily means cheaper. Doesn't usually work that way in the consumer electronic world.

Update: And now, of course, there's the requisite Slashdot article talking about how the mini iPod rumors have more certainty now, because a mainstream paper is reporting it as fact.

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You find a botttle, monkey's paw, wish coupon, what have you. You get three wishes.

What's your third wish?

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Ugh, the color is grating on me. The design, while cutting edge in 2001, is grating on me and is growing too heavy. As the site has grown into a community the functional design hasn't adapted enough to facilitate user communication.

My previous redesigns were just iterative, with little or no outside influence. The same can be said for the Fury 4.0 redesign.

Maybe it's Google's influence, but I've really got to lighten things up, throw out the framework and start over. When I do and I roll it out, I hope you all stick around.

I know you're only reading Fury for the beige.

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So with the rash of blog comment spammers (where Movable Type based weblogs are particularly succeptable) I have all the more reason to implement my new commenting system. I have it all spec'ed out in my head, and it's my next Fury project, hopefully to be done in the next few days.

As usual when I change Fury, I strive to solve a problem at the same time as increasing functionality, so there will be some other very cool features to the commenting system as well.

You can see them all implemented by next week at the latest, or you can wait a few months until they get copied into Movable Type, Livejournal, and the other main blogging tools. :-)

'till then, feel free to ignore the silly spammers who can't even type a url right.

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I watch my traffic logs. It's one of those things bloggers don't really talk about. There are those who try to keep their blogs quiet, a small publishing venue for friend and family. There are those who don't care who reads, but aren't out there trying to get the world to read them. These are the ones who don't look at their server logs, don't have webmonitor bugs on their pages, and don't really look into the audience while they're speaking to the world. Less catwalk, more mountaintop.

I'm one of the other kinds of bloggers; the ones who have their stats page bookmarked, the ones who can tell you without skipping a beat that their weekend traffic is 2/3rds of their weekday traffic, the ones who feel a pang during Thanksgiving and Christmas because they know they'll see it as a dip in their weekly traffic.

There are a lot more of us than you'd think. It's one of those things a lot of bloggers do, but none of them really talk about. What's a lot of traffic? 10 people a day? 100? 10,000? It's like talking salaries. If you do it to make yourself feel better, you'll easily find someone who's got you beat, and so much for that (strangely, I don't feel that way about salaries, but I figure some people do so maybe it's a useful analogy).

Back to traffic though. It's tough. Keeping the daily watches on where people come from, and how many people come by gives me a good read on the pulse of the site. I know that it takes one particularly good story to increase my daily traffic by 80%, but that it'll fade back to normal within 4 days. It takes about three weeks of consistant above-average content to start building my regular rolling average, and about two weeks of poor or no content for the numbers to start dropping, but when they drop, they have inertia.

I have two lists, one in my pocket, one in my head, of things to do on the site to double my traffic. Part of me wants to do it for the egotism, part for the knowledge that I must be doing a better job of content creation if I get more visitors.

But the other part worries.

Traffic is more than eyeballs. It's people. One surprising and valuable thing I learned these last couple years is that simmering the pot makes for a great soup of users. If I post things that might get a little bit of attention outside the regular readership, they'll come in and take a look around, read the comments, post a little, and stay if they feel like this is a place for them. This tends to create a relatively like-minded group.

On the other hand, when there's something that gets a lot of attention, a lot of traffic, the whole culture of the site gets overexposed for a few weeks or a month. First time visitors read the comments of other first-time visitors and the maturity of the site folds in half. Some of the regular readrs get discouraged and drop off, and some of the newbies stick around, thinking this is the norm and liking it. This is a full boil, and it can scaldan otherwise great soup.

I've been reluctant to bring the site up from a simmer, mostly for fear of scalding the pot, and to a lesser extent because I'm worried of failure; that I'll do amazing things and nobody will care.

I'm working on solutions to the first, one of which is to create less tenuous ties with you the reader. I'm working on making very easy logins, (possibly passwordless) and letting anyone leave comments, but those comments only appear on the site once they click a link in an email the site sends to their stated email account. The email account can be totally anonymous on the site, but it'll stop the user who just wants to graffiti, or who cares too little about their own content to click the one-time verification link. This site-reader relationship would have a lot of advantages to the reader as well, but we'll get to that later.

Another possibility is something more along the lines of Derek's POWlist. I love ths list because sometimes Derek's site falls off my radar and once a month or so I'll get an email from the list with a particular good or important post, and I face the decision of unsubscribing, visiting the site, or keeping with the status quo of getting these periodic updates. I love it because it's push without being pushy, and I can't even tell how many readers I've lost from Fury when their computer crashed, they switched browsers and lost their bookmarks, or gradually forgot to check Fury, when they never really intended to leave. It's a wonderfully soft way of keeping friends.

I want to cut loose with some bigger projects that would get attention from outside the blogging community. I'm sure that coming across AOLiza articles from the Wall Street Journal while moving yesterday is no small part of this resurgence. So I'm thinking about the best and fastest ways to cement the readers I have, in a worse-comes-to-worst eventuality, I can whisper to you "Psst! Let's ditch these new folks and make it like it was! The new site's over here!)

Or I could just put the new stuff on one of the domains I've owned for years and haven't gotten around to utilizing yet.

Anyhow, it's another late night at the Googleplex, and I should probably call it a night. I'm deciding whether to go to my new place with my newly-purchased bedding, make my bed, and sleep in the new place that feels so empty of both stuff and spirit, though an excellent canvas for both, given a little time, or trod over to Rick and Ammy's, where my toiletries and their guest bed are.

Heh. Ammy? I'm comin' over. The new place will wait one more day. Just so long as I put some things away before the second wave comes from Pittsburgh.

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Random question for the day: When you read the subject of the post, did you think 'content as in satisfied' or 'content as in stuff'?

Suffice to say, Google is as or more wonderful than everyone has led me to expect. Truly, the best job I could have in the entire world right now.

Still ramping up and crazy busy, but I can tell that I'll attain cruising altitude within another couple days. Before that I hope to tell y'all about the fabulous place I'm moving in to in a week and a half, and catch up with the rest of the thigns that have happened, and will happen, with my life!

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About 90% of my web reading nowadays spawns from the 45 RSS feeds that I follow, the articles they point to, and the sites linked from within those articles. Now when I finish reading them, I'm almost at a loss as to where to surf next.

I've forgotten how to surf. I remember when it wasn't about finding a particular piece of information, but just about seeing what's out there. So much of how I surf finds me the latest memes, what everyone else is talking about, that I've lost most of my ability to just go out and hunt for interesting things... How do you surf? Why? What are your daily habits?

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So, amazingly, after giving you guys this speech about how I wanted to conduct a transparent design process, I squirrel myself away, whipping up visual iterations, changing them, showing them to a few close friends, and making changes. that's exactly what I was trying to avoid.

Still, my current design thoughts have problems, and I guess it's artistic ego that doesn't want to let me show it while those problems are unsolved. Nevertheless, discussion might help solve those problems, so here goes.

The 'current' mock is Fury 4.0d5. Caveats:

• The parts that I focused on here were the masthead, the first entry on the page, and the 'on this page' nav box.
• The rest of the nav boxes haven't been touched yet, though they absolutely will, and several will be going away, and new ones replacing them.
• The HTML and CSS code are very messy. Don't worry about that. This is a design mock and the code will be optimized when I write it into the live system. CSS folk might notice that the 'on this page' nav box is all css, reducing a fair bit of table junk.
• I haven't personally tested this on any browsers other than Safari.
• The 'comments' summary after the first post is still a work in progress. I still need to put in links to the actual posts, see how it looks when there are 25 comments, and not just 2, have a clear link for adding a comment, etc.
• I removed the 'comment dots' from the timeline. They made the design even busier, and their usefulness is diminished by the 'on this page' box.
• The timeline bar items will actually be colored the same as the 'on this page' items, in a gradient (like topics is) instead of the 'new, 1day, 3 day, old' system. (Thoughts on this?)

Okay, now the known issues:

1. The color scheme is either too sterile or too patriotic.
2. The page seems too crowded. (This should be improved when the rest of the nav boxes are done)
3. I'm not sure that I'm happy with the presentation of the # and newness of comments in the 'on this page' box.
4. More I can't think of just now.

Okay, I again stress work in progress, but have at it anyhow.

For comparison and conversational fodder, check out a few earlier versions: 4.0d1, 4.0d2, 4.0d3, 4.0d4.

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So hey, I've long found it amusing that so many webloggers with such tight design skills do their redesigns in private, suddenly unveiling them to the world with a big "here it is!"

Trouble is, this is the antithesis of the traditional interaction design process. Showing the design around to a few of your friends shouldn't be a substitute for an actual usability experiment, for a lot of reasons, most notably an inherent bias towards the designer, a familiarity with the existing site (this is useful, but naive users should also be tested), and most importantly, the fact that a person's subjective opinion is not the same thing as the usability of a site.

So I'm going to (more or less) conduct the Fury 4.0 redesign by the numbers. I'm going to do some low-fi prototype testing, some task analysis, a smattering of cognitive walkthroughs for the identified common tasks, and some rolling usability testing as the redesign comes along.

I've already started with a lot of logfile analysis of Fury 3.2. I've identified the five categories of visitors, and their use patterns:

1. The regular subscriber - You read this site at least once every two weeks, and get here either via a bookmark, by hand-typing the URL, from your RSS aggregator (desktop app, or web-based aggregator), or by a link on your own personal links page (I'm so tempted to link to some of these as examples, but they might be private, so I won't).
   
   You read comments. Most of you use the timeline bar at the top of the screen. You might lurk, or you might post. Most of you check in at least 3 times a week. Some check several times a day.
   
   You almost never visit anywhere other than the front page, unless I linked to it in a new article.
    
2. The general referred user - You saw a link on the sidebar of another site and decided to check it out. You might look around a bit. There's a 30% chance that you'll click on one of the topics in the 'Read by Topic'. If you do, there's an 80% chance that you'll follow the 'sex' topic. There's a 90% chance that you'll be disappointed by it.
    
3. The specific referred user - A blog or news site you read linked to a specific article on fury, and you followed the link to check it out. When you do, you might visit the front page, and it's just as likely that you'll click on the 'Bio' link to find out more about where you are. You're more likely to become a regular reader than any other group.
    
4. The google searcher - You dive in and dive out. You'll almost never go anyplace other than the page you land on (unless it's to the aforementioned 'sex' link). On rare occasion you'll actually leave a comment, but if you do, there's (almost exactly, strangely enough) a 50% chance that you're either a crackpot, conspiracy theorist, extremely vulgar, immature, or some combination. Trouble for you is that, though you don't know it, almost nobody will ever know you left that comment, unless they constantly scour the archives for recent comments.
    
5. Kevin Fox - I use Fury differently than everyone else. When it doesn't suit my needs, I've built hacks in the back end so that I can do what I want. When someone leaves a comment on the site, it automatically emails the comment to me, so I never have to check back to find new content, and can respond to comments right away.
   
   I have hidden pages where I can get up-to-the-second lists of who came to what page of the site, and where they came from. I can spot new referring links easily, and see how popular that link is.
   
   I use the timeline bar as a guilt-o-meter, always wanting to see at least some dark blue on the page, lest I feel the page is growing stale.
   

I've spent the last several months with these use patterns in my head, and they have driven a few changes over the years (the timeline, color-coding, permalinks, comments, etc.) but now I've got enough new ideas that I'm doing a complete rewrite. I closely considered making it 100% CSS, but I found that while the concept of CSS is extremely elegant, in practice the compatibility differences amongst my target browsers (even between IE 5.5 and IE 6.0, browsers of the most common Fury visitors) mean that I'd have to code many kludges just to make it work right, and it would make me more reluctant to institute changes, knowing a small change could wreck the site.

Instead I'm using tables for layout, and CSS for styles, as I mostly do now.

Okay, this post is getting much longer than I intended. Back to the interaction design model, I want your input. I'd like the regular users to be the eyes over my shoulder, I want you guys to play the role of the stakeholder. I'm designing a tool both for you and the other four groups, and while I'll take your comments for what they are, and not gospel, I realize you guys have a lot of good ideas and frustrations, and as long as this post's comments inform the design, and don't drive it, I think it'll make for a better redesign all around.

So, knowing that many of the labels in the following wireframe will need description I won't delve in to until later this week, I'd like to share the preliminary Fury 4.0 home page wireframe.

Questions? Comments? Go for it.

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I'm a sucker for hard luck cases. Here you go, Mandy.

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When you go both 1 and 2,
do you go 1 first, and then make 2?
Perhaps 2-then-1 is right for you?

Or maybe you go 2, 1, 2:
Starting and stopping before you're through?

Is 1, 2, 1 the way you do?
Or both at once? Have you no queue?

Does this make any sense to you?
or do I stir a murky brew?

For those of you who are confused,
the question that I pose to you
for unknown reason to construe:

Do you pee before you poo?

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(or "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves...")

I'm beginning to think that I always have a song going on in my head. True, it's not always at the forefront, but I'm convinced that a part of my head is always singing along to something. This morning, walking tot he bus stop, I noticed my iPod was on zero bars of juice, and I hoped I could at least get a few bars of music, so I could have a song in my head then thought, wait. I don't have one already? And of course I did. I just wanted something else.

I want to write a program, or otherwise find some non-cyclic reminder that asks me what my 'currently playing' song is several times a day. I want to see whether I'm ever without song, and what kinds of music my inner DJ spins for me over the course of days and weeks.

Maybe if you send me email asking me "what are you listening to right now?" I'll reply, and then post the log with times after a day or two of responses.

Just to get the ball rolling, it's 2:29am, and my inner DJ is playing "Haunting Me" by Stabbing Westward.

Somehow that just fits...

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The situation:

• You take the bus to school
• You have a bus pass sticker on your student ID
• As the bus pulls up, you realize that you left your student ID in your other jacket
• You tell the driver, and their stoney face indicates you're going to need to pay the $1.75
• You reach in to your pocket, dig through your backpack, and find that you only have $1.50 (and a couple twenties, but really).
• You tell the driver you only have $1.50. What should you do?
• The driver says okay, but pay the quarter the next time.
• You say okay.

Okay, now flash-forward to tomorrow, when I step on to the bus, armed with my ID with bus sticker: What's my obligation? Should I pay the quarter? Am I really owed a $1.50 that I'll never get back? Do I just forget it and move on?

It's the little questions that can be fun.

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So Zhaneel and Chris asked (within five minutes of each other, no less!) where all the posts had gone. The front page shows all the posts written in the last eight days. The problem is when life gets too interesting, I don't always post every day, and though this might be the first time in over a year, a week went by without my posting a thing, so they all dropped off.

So I spent ten minutes coding something I'd been meaning to for a long time. Now the front page shows all the posts for the last week, or the last 8 posts, which ever is more.

After all, when I'm too busy with life to post, I ought to assume that other people are too busy with life to read!

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This post made my day. Read the comments to understand why.

Actually, lunch with Dawn made my day. But this was great dessert.

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Because nothing fosters determination like the yin and yang of ridicule and support...

Ammy and I have decided to simultaneously diet, and keep a running blog-tally of our progress. She and I are aiming to lose 21 lbs and 18 lbs, respectively, though her's will probably be a greater challenge since it constitutes losing 13.9% of her body mass, while mine only equates to 9.6%.

Here's the deal: You'll notice a new module on the left-hand navbar, titled "Blogger Diet." That's where we'll keep everyone apprised of our respective progress. Later I might add something nifty like a dynamically-generated graph or something, but I need to get better at gnuplot before that can work.

We're aiming to lose the weight by March 1st or so. 1-2 lbs a week is a supposed 'safe rate', and that means sometime between the end of January and the beginning of April.

Good thing we both had big dinners last night!

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From the comments of this post:

phreakydude: I think we shld have a messageboard on here where we can comment on whatever we want not just the entry. Put it in yr thinking cap.

A very good point, and one that's already under my cap. A lot of the features I want to add to Fury are more in the 'sub-post' range, and probably wouldn't have comments of their own, but I'd like a place for people to talk about the site in general, or whatever else is relevant.

For example, if I loosened up meme-o-matic from one meme a week to maybe 3-5 interesting links I come across each day, and post them without any commentary, I'd still like people to be able to talk about things they find interesting, without having seperate threads for each one. Similarly, I'll be starting a photo-nav on the right, where I can post media bits, be they realtime hiptop pictures shot and uploaded within seconds, desktops like the Fall one I posted yesterday, quicktime clips, or whatever. These might have a caption, or might not, but they would have little or no text, and also wouldn't be able to be commented on directly.

So I'll probably make something like a 'furytalk' which will probably *not* be a threaded BBS or anything too fancy, but just a running log that people can write on, keeping a vague conversational thread going.

Oh yes, and I'm going to be creating logins. Don't worry, it's probably the most simple, least-invasive registration process you've ever seen, but will allow me to allow you to customize the site in a lot of cool ways, not the least of which is supporting 'new to you' continuity across all the computers you might use to read Fury from.

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So what I was going to say yesterday morning, when the website unexpectedly turn a turn for the serving-pages-not-so-much, was I was going to (got, it's almost a recursive sentence structure...) ask you all whether you still use/notice/care about the cell-o-scope widget on the left-hand-nav. I'm cleaning things up, consolidation and making room for some new stuff, and perhaps it's time for Cell-o-scope to go hasta la vista.

Anyone care? Any fond adieus?

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Heya, time for a browser check: Can you see the @ below? It's a .png file that should support an alpha channel, making for the nifty drop-shadow on to the post's beige background.

I'd like to know, so I can better judge whether I can start using png files when needed.

Can you see the picture above? Post a comment either way, and be sure to say what browser and OS you use!

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I consider myself very open-minded sexually. Even so, this referrer weirds me out a bit.

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Kerry raised a good point: All those pages I linked to (yahoo, Amazon, CNN, etc) with 9/11-specific modifications, are of course back to normal now.

Anyone know where someone might have archived some of those? I'm about to check Alexa, but I don't know how frequently it scans.

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Hey! If it's between 3 and 3:30pm Eastern time Thursday (noon to 12:30pm PDT), remind me to execute my Yahoo stock options! I'm waiting for the last upswing (hope) but if I don't sell them by 4pm they're gone!

Thanks! (Don't get excited, it's like $600.)

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I'd like to wish a big and joyous happy birthday to Melissa, "someone," Sarah, C.K., Joe, Mac, Cat, Penelope's husband, and Jill's aunt. I hope it's a great one, and a prosperous coming year!

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I know how to pack a car, but I don't know how to pack an apartment. The dichotomy makes a fair amount of sense, I suppose, considering that despite using the same word, 'pack,' the two tasks entail entirely different skill sets and objectives.

To pack an apartment, in order to move to another apartment or, in my case, to simultaneously move to another apartment with the constraint of fitting the new-apartment-bound contents into the backseat and trunk of a Civic; three small boxes to be shipped media-rate, and three computer-boxes (okay, computer, monitor (flat panel, thank all that is good and holy (or, failing that, Apple)), and printer), while at the same time putting a good portion of the remainder into a new storage space of questionable size and location, or at least the remainder which is not one of the several pieces of furniture being held/used by friends for the coming year (65 book-feet worth of Bonde wall bookcases to the girls, four chairs and a good Pier One wood table to join their five twins (err, twin and fellow octuplets?) at Emily's, a 240lb, 36" TV at Ali and Mark's, two floor lamps at Ammy and Rick's, and a multitude of permanent givts to fellow (err, former) neighbors at the Palazzo, and slightly more distant (physically and socioeconomically) neighbors who frequent the People's Park Berkeley Free Box) and all through the sorting and packing process, being swept into the throws of nostalgia and the anxiety of seperating ones-self from one's past enough to part with the lingering physical instantiations of same, is a subtractive affair.

In comparison, packing a car is intelligently stuffing a lot of stuff into a space that is demonstrably smaller than the stuff to be packed.

This, honestly, is a much easier job.

[note: the sentence three before this one should be taken out and shot (with respects to the late Douglas Adams), but if you try to sort out the clauses, parentheticals, and asides, you'll have some small idea of exactly how difficult a task this organizing, sorting, historical divesting, and moving actually is.]

Okay, so this is written after the fact. The above was written in a sparse but comfortable hotel room in Elko (sorry, no elk in elko, as it's in the middle of the desert, but we did see the world's largest polar bear, trapped by an Inuit Indian over half a century ago, and now overseeing the terminator between Elko's 24-hour coffee shop and a curiously muted casino, all sitting in front of the Elko Bus Stop.

In turn, the above paragraph (along with this one) was (is being) written in a room in the Three Bears Inn. It's right around 1am here in the Mountain time zone, just barely inside Montana sandwiched between recently (and quickly) traversed Idaho, and recently (and again to be) visted Yellowstone Park. Ammy has an annual National Parks pass, allowing free access, saving us $20 at the entrance, as well as more untold yuppie foodstamps at the three additional nathonal parks we're scheduled to visit on our continental sojourn.

We've been taking a bunch of great pictures and a few small mpeg movies, but despite unpacking more of the car than I'd anticipated in the search, I'm unable to find the USB cables to connect my camera or camcorder, so the thousand-word pictures will have to wait until the next stop, after a stop into a sufficiently-equpped geek-shop.

Sadly, for all the Wal-Marts, DQs, and McDonalds we see at every turn, CompUSAs and Frys are nonexistant out here. We'll find out tomorrow if Radio Shack has what we need.

Anyhow, for another perspective, be sure to read Ammy's Elko to Yellowstone account!

We're leaving through Yellowstone tomorrow, and plan on getting most of the way to Mt. Rushmore, the Crystal Caverns, and Devil's Tower, which some of you might recall from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And of course, Wall Drug is just past Mt. Rushmore, so there's another thing not to be missed!

Oh, care to keep us entertained? Send us an SMS message! (PCS#: 5103341620). We'll get it when we reemerge into a cell-equipped stretch of road, and we can only hope that I'm the one behind the wheel when it comes in!

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I'm back!!! Okay, yes there are stories to tell, and yes, most are half written. I'll start posting them tomorrow, and we'll have new content through the whole week. And of course there are pictures too.

PS: Thanks so much for the pages, guys! Some of them were very timely, and all were very well received. I love that you can touch me from across the country (triple-entendre, two of which apply, and a third that doesn't [well, it depends who you are, really. A few, yes.]).

It's good to be home. It does make me sad that this place won't be my home for much longer. But you know what they say about when doors close, doors open. At least I still have the keys to this city, and the door's kept ajar for me.

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Gasping, hunting, writing, sleeping, repeating...

I've been writing a fair bit, including a few posts I *really* want to post, but they'r on my laptop. In my hotel room. I've been insanely busy these past two days, but the writing's piling up. I am so stressed. It will all come out soon, and there's a lot to share.

For now, keep me company by writing in the comments, or writing a quick page to my pocket. My mobile PCS # to send to is 5103341620 (please, please don't abuse it).

One more full day of hunting, then a half day and a speedy return to SF for me! Thanks for being patient. :-)

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At long last, here's my Mardi Gras Gallery

It wouldn't have taken so long except that I took this chance to try out a new gallery model I've been thinking about. The whole layout is created dynamically, grabbing the image information out of a database. I'm planning on using this model, with more features like hide/show thumbnails and prev/next buttons and commenting functionality, for Randompixel, which means that with this gallery, randompixel is a big step closer to going live.

I'd like your feedback on what you think of the gallery design. Is it overbearing? Is it useful? I'm thinking most galleries would have smaller thumbnails, by the way.

Anyhow, enjoy the gallery. For those at work, the pics with the little exclaimation point on the corner aren't necessarily work-safe. It was, after all, Mardi Gras.

Have a great weekend all!

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Theraflu = nasty stuff.

Theraflu 3 years past expiration = really nasty stuff.

For those of you who are going to berate me for doing something dangerous, I was just kidding.

For those who feel my pain and desperation, I wasn't.

Sleep time. Keep those cards and letters coming. They really do help. :-)

(and David, thanks for the virtual chicken soup)

Tired now. Don't know if I'll post tomorrow. Seeyas.

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So the only constants about the advice people have been giving me are to have plenty of chicken soup (don't worry about the labor involved; the coffee house just downstairs makes it. It just means putting on sweats and an elevator ride) and some sort of pain reliever.

Tylenol, Advil, Asprin, can anyone find the difinitive answer? I tried Tylenol, but it didn't do much for me so I switched to Advil which seemed to do a little better. I'm not supposed to take medications that thin the blood, because of another problem I'll probably write about eventually, so asprin's out.

So have at it. Give me the best of your folk remedies, and cite sources if you've got 'em. I'm all ears. I've got a strong incentive to listen.

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First, thanks for all the feedback on what life-decision to make and, more importantly, how I should go about deciding.

That said, I'l also like to say thanks to Dinah's Mom for her advice, forwarded to me via Dinah, and included in her post (linked above).

The concept of 'do it or don't, enjoy that decision or not' is an important one for making single 'yay-nay' decisions, but it's also useful to apply to both alternatives in an either/or decision. Definitely a lot to think about.

In any event, I'm glad that this discussion inspured comments that helped Dinah with her own difficult choice.

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If you haven't voted in the 2002 Bloggies Awards you only have until 10pm (pacific) on tuesday to do it! See Jane Surf. See Jane vote. Vote, Jane. Vote!

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So that I don't completely forget, stories that are in need of telling:

• The Ohio Scooter Story
• How I Met Mara
• CKS & Long Life
• ... I know there's more...

Okay, just reminding myself, because I just know listing them on the blog will get people bugging me to write one or two soon.

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On 1/25/02 12:02 PM, "Sarah Howard" wrote:

Hi,

I've seen some of your journal entries and I'm just wondering, where does the interest in IKEA come from? (seriously).

Thanks,
Sarah

Hi Sarah,

I like IKEA because they present a more appealing aesthetic than my local Sears, Levitz, or Lamps Plus. The general design is consistent enough that almost anything goes with anything else, and the prices are in general lower than other 'department stores' and certainly lower than the stores that have the same kind of 'artistic' stuff like Scandinavian Designs, Z Gallerie, and the like.

Mostly, it's friendly, it's an experience, walking through the whole showroom rather than just finding the department that has the thing you came there to buy. It's like the difference between going on Pirates of the Caribbean versus walking through a halloween store. Also, there's some satisfaction in assembling my own things. I'm proud of my Ikea furniture, because in it I have a poor man's unified, upscale design, while still getting the pride of having designed it yourself and the money left over to accent your space with nice personal touches.

Or maybe it's just a big lemming cult thing, but what's the difference?

Hope that helps!
Kevin

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Okay, we're back to the flat dots, until I come up with something a little more clickable and readable, and just as fury as before. :-)

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So, which dots do you like better?

Along the same line, the visual design of fury will likely move slowly and subtly forward like the functional design has been. What's your opinion? Do you like the austere flat functionality? Would you like a little more style (foof), as long as it didn't get in the way, possibly augmenting the visual data presentation?

I'd love to hear what you think.

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Okay, so I did it! The logic took a looot of thinking through, but I've implemented 'new to you' color coding!

Here's how it works:

• The first time you come to the home page since I installed new to you, you get issued a static cookie. Initially, you're fully up to date, and nothing is 'new to you'.
• When new things get posted, they'll show up in the red color on your next visit. Things that are color-coded this way are the message title bars, the 'timeline' bar at the top of the page, and the little 'comment' circles associated with message blocks in the timeline.
• When you visit, look at the 'timeline' to see which messages have new comments since your last visit, and which messages are new since your last visit. you can click on either the message block or the comment circle to have the associated content spring forth.

Here's the slightly tricky part:

• If you visit the site and there's say, 4 new posts, and you follow a link and come back to the site, it would be a bad thing if the system decided that this was another visit, and thus all these things should be marked as read.
• With this in mind, I coded a system where a 'new visit' is made only if the home page view happens more than X minutes after your last home page view. Basically, if you look at the home page every minute, things that were new will keep showing up as new, but when you leave for X minutes and come back, the system will say everything that was posted since the last page view (not counting the current one) are new to you.
• This all sounds horribly complicated, but the point is that you-the-reader shouldn't have to think about it at all, and it should just work like you'd expect.
• 'X' is currently set to be 10 minutes, so as long as you look at the home page once every 10 minutes, Fury will think it's part of the same 'visit'.
• If you want to reset your 'last visit' timer by hand, click on the "New To You" link in the Legend navbar, top right. that will force everything to be marked as read, and will reload the home page.

Make sense? Yes? No? Don't worry about it. If I'm any good as an interaction designer, it should all make sense without my explaining it (except for the 'mark all' easter egg), but I like to keep you posted, and I'd like to hear what you think.

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Well, I'm packing it in for the next several days as I journey to Carmel for fun in the Family sun.

I may have intermittent web access, and I may not. I'll be taking plenty of pictures, and may even get to writing some more stories during the downtime. I'll be back in full just after Christmas, so enjoy the holiday, cherish your family, friends, and other loved ones, and have a save and joyous holiday season!

And thank you all for reading. I enjoy writing this blog as much as I like to imagine you enjoy reading it. Even though I don't know a whole lot of you, and even though some of us obviously have differences of opinions from time to time ;-) I find it really fulfilling to interact with you, and I want to let you know I'm thankful to a degree deeper than can be measure in hit-counters.

Fare thee well!

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It sucks arguing on your own site, because all you can do is alienate people who already value your opinion.

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So I've done a little work on qwer.org to make it more useful.

You can still use qwer as a place to swap text and html easily between computers, but now it's also an ideal tool for making shorter links.

As an example, if you want to share a url with someone over the phone, in an instant messenger away message, an email, or anyplace where a URL with a hundred seemingly random characters would be messy, you can make your own shortcut at qwer.

Say you want to show someone this Calvin and Hobbes book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0740721356/ref= ase_kevinfox02/107-0203713-9114939 but you're talking to them on the phone, or the url breaks when it wraps in an email. You can go to http://qwer.org/calvin, paste in the long url, hit return, and now http://qwer.org/calvin will redirect you (and your friend) to the Amazon page.

Don't give me too much credit. Though I always planned on qwer acting this way, I took some cues from the folks at makeashorterlink.com. I think the qwre solution works better though, for two reasons: First, 'qwer.org' is shorter (and faster to type) than 'makeashorterlink.com', which is in itself an example of irony. Second, while you can make your own shortcut at 'qwer.org/matrix', the same link at the other site would be 'makeashorterlink.com/?C38242C2'. Which would you rather use? Which URL gives you have a hint of where it leads?

In the coming weeks I'll be putting in more code to deal with recycling links after 7 days or so. I also plan to provide an option for permalinks for registered users ('qwer.org/username/matrix' for example) and to let users decide whether a given qwer link or page should be editable by the public at large, the way 'qwer text pages' work now.

In honor of the new functionality, I've officially dropped the [beta] from qwer's name. Please feel free to use it the next time you need to toss someone a mapquest link over the phone or in email.

Visit qwer now!
(if you want to...)

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Erik asked:

"What are the pitfalls you mention to doing a 'new to you' widget? interested because i've been thinking along those same lines recently."

Thanks for asking! It's two things mostly: First is about how you cookie. If you always cookie with a simple permanent 'last visited' cookie each time they come, then if they follow a link and then come back, all the rest of their 'new' stuff is gone because you 'just visited.'

This necessitates two cookies. a 'true just visited' permanent cookie, and a placeholder cookie with a 5 (or 10, or 60) minute timeout that says 'before this session, they last came at such-and-such a time' and whenever they hit the home page, if that cookie exists, it gets renewed with that timestamp, so they don't 'reset' the new until 5 (or 10 or 60) minutes after the *last time* they hit the home page.

That's cool, nifty, and doable, but then what if you use more than one computer? What if you want to be able to share that cookie across several computers? Well, then you have to sign in in some fashion or another, and then Fury has to keep track of modtimes, so it can share them between computers. Without this it gets annoying to see things as 'new' when they aren't really, just new to that computer, and ends up being a detractor because it's giving misleading information.

That's what makes it so complicated. :-)

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So I made a few tweaks to the timeline code. The links are now 'normal' and the title of the post is in the 'title' tag of the link so most browsers will bring up the title as a tooptip if you hover over the box.

I also moved the '?' to the left and made it 'Recently:' which should do a better job of giving the timeline a context, and hint to its meaning to the new user.

I'm probably done futzing with it for the moment. I may implement a 'new to you' piece of functionality, but that has its own pitfalls. For now I'd like to let it sit. I'll be asking in a week or two whether you actually use it. :-)

Fickle: Okay, I nixed the 'recently' bit because having any text at all made spacing inconsistant across browsers. That's the aesthetic reason, but the real reason is that I like how it looks without indication. I think there's something fascinating about an interface that you get to learn. Note that you don't have to 'get it', as it's perfectly usable without ever knowing that the bar does anything at all. There's an 'ooh that's neat!' quality to discovering things on your own.

Call it an easter egg.

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Five times (or so) over the weekend I wanted to blog about something interesting, and each time I didn't have anything to blog on, so the bit was lost. Argh. I've got to work on alternate blogging methods. I could build an email gateway and use an alpha pager, if I owned an alpha pager.

Though you'd think that after two years of keeping a weblog, I'd have a clear concept of what tone and content my weblog should have, and what it should be about. While it's evolved over time, it seems that posts have tended to fall into three different buckets of late: The present-time life tidbits, with occasional insightful tidbits or wandering rants, the technology essays, and the stories from present or past life, told in more of a storytelling framework.

I feel that while the first is the subject for a blog, it's the second and third that people (other than my immediate, real-life friends) find more interesting. Also, those are the ones that aren't as timely, and it frustrates me that after a week these well-thought pieces that I put more time into are lost off the front page and never seen again except by the occasional 'by topic' wanderer or google search.

I'm looking for different ways to segment this content, so that someone coming to Fury for the first time can see this stuff, without having to know to click on the 'essays' button. I'm also trying to find a good kind of framework for tying in other projects I'm working on, both to and from Fury and to and from each other. One possibility is the 'troff' approach, ala Yahoo!, or cross-referencing bannerlets, but I'm trying to find the right way to structure data presentation so that some 'topics' aren't merely classifications, but real site features.

This is what I do for a living, so I should be able to find a good solution, but I'd like to hear about what you like and don't like both content-wise and navigation-wise, so I can design toward my real user base, not just those people who talk to me about my site.

If you're a lurker, and haven't written to me or posted in the comments before please do so now. Consider this an assignment. I don't run ads, I don't ask for anything from people who read Fury, but in exchange, I'd like to see every single person who reads this site think about the site for a minute or two, and give me your insights.

You have two choices:

Send me an email	Add a comment to this message

Thanks. :-)

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Looks like AOLiza got a press mention. It got a whole slew of hits from Google searches yesterday, and a lot of people trying www.aoliza.com (which redirects to the AOLiza home page).

That usually points to a press or web mention without an associated URL. Anyone know where it came from? Clue me in?

Thanks!

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Great! Now I get to hear all about how much you like/hate what I write and, more importantly, you can all share your views with each other.

Eventually the comments will be incorporated into the atomic entry views (more like inpassing than like L.Y.D.).

Still, those are just front-end changes. Anything written now won't be lost, so go ahead and have at it!

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I'm adding code to facilitate user comments on Fury, so if things look a little strange tonight, that's probably why.

Kids: Never try this at home. Tinkering on your live site is a big no-no. Always tinker on a dev site, then push live.

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Hey everyone, spread the word! The 2001 Weblogger Purity Test Survey is up and running!

Stage One is a call for questions. Go to the site (http://pure.fury.com) and submit the questions that you think should be asked of webloggers. You can also read the most recent submissions from other bloggers and readers.

The site will be open for submissions until August 15th, when a few of us will hide away and pick out the best 200 or so questions and present the test survey for the month of September.

Then, it's tallying up the responses and seeing what the state-of-the-blogunion is for 2001.

For right now, spread the word, and submit your questions!

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Heya! The project poll is working now. Go and share your opinion on which project, past, present, or future, I should put at the top of my list!

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The link below doesn't seem to work on my browsers... Any of you night owls have a favorite insta-poll maker? I'll try again in the morning.

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So naturally as I start more projects, efforts get spread out too much, and I need to decide what to focus on. Since I value your opinion (and I need to learn to work on one thing at a time), I've made a poll for you all to vote on which project you'd most like to see completed or enhanced.

Please vote and help me get a picture of what's hot and what's not here at Fury.

If your opinion can't be reduced to a single click, feel free to drop me a line.

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While the technical production of Qwer is done, there's still a lot of work to be done on the user-experience end of things. Basically I need to make it something that has an obvious purpose to someone who stumbles upon it. I've got plans, and they'll make things a lot clearer.

For the time being, Qwer is an 'internet clipboard' that you can use to easily pass urls or other text-based info from one computer to another.

Say you stumble across a url for a file you need to download on your other computer. Rather than copy the url by hand or email it to yourself (assuming you have email on both your compuers) you can just go to qwer.org/something and paste the url in, then go to qwer.org/something on the other computer to pick it up.

This is also handy when you're on the phone and you want to share a url with someone you're talking to. If it's a deep link (like an amazon page, or anything else with a messy url) you can just put the url into qwer.org/yourname (or anything else) and tell your friend to go there to pick it up. The site is called qwer.org because 'qwer' are the four first keys on the (qwerty) keyboard, and it's one of the easiest and fastest urls that's still out there.

There are other possibilities for uses and features that I'm sure will emerge. One thing is that it's entirely not registration or cookie based: There is no security, other than through obscurity (It's unlikely that you'd stumble across qwer.org/4gnnfn45y5y954 accidentally). I may introduce additional features, like the ability to search qwerbits, but if I do, I'll also make a checkbox so people can exclude their qwerbit.

The most interesting thing I think is to find out what uses people make on their own. One possibility is the communal qwerStory... More ideas? Share with me, or better yet, share with everyone!

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Yes, Chris. I suppose this could be considered metablogging. Wave of the future and all that.

The interesting part (to me) is that I'm simultaneously drifting towards metablog entries like the one linked above, and stream of consciousness personal