Category: Weblog

Bad Design at the LA Times

Last week the Los Angeles Times revealed their new design. Here’s a snippet of the press release:

The A section of The Times will sport an arresting new format beginning Oct. 22 aimed at providing a compelling snapshot of the day’s most interesting stories via skybox spotlights and a bolder index on the front page, as well as expanding the use of larger headlines, photographs, color, and information graphics, such as sidebars, back story boxes, maps and diagrams. It also will include the Opinion pages, Monday through Saturday.

Well, as one of the rare readers of the newspaper every morning, I have to say, it sucks.
Every morning I walk outside and pick up the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Even in this day of internet news, I still feel that for good in-depth reading, an actual newspaper is best. You might even see something that you want to read that wouldn’t normally search for… *gasp*


What are there, eight or nine different fonts and sizes. Geez, what a mess. The LA Times does a great job with their photos and especially their graphics, but this plethora of typefaces is just plain annoying.

Take a look at the right hand side. Now, the bullet sub-heads are informative, but what’s with the font change? The mix of sans serif and serif is strange. Using sans serif for headlines is pretty typical, switching to serif for the actual article. But why mix the two styles in the sub-headline bullet items?

Sliding over the the left side of the page, we find even wider use of the pull-downs in the newspaper design software. Left = ITALICS. Again, why can’t their be a little consistency here? Does the italics mean something special here? Do italics mean ‘don’t take this article seriously’ or ‘salacious stuff here’?

On the next day, take a look at the right column. Yep, we are back to the sans serif/serif battle. But what’s this, a question the in the headline? Really, news stories are supposed to be telling me the news, not asking me a question in the headline. This isn’t talk radio trying get you to make an irate phone call, it’s supposed to give me an impartial reporting of the news.
The second sub-headline reads ‘Pink light, Disaster Aid’. What exactly is that trying to tell me? There is no verb or even an obvious connection to the headline. Are these supposed to be tags? Are the editors trying to trick me into reading the article or are they trying to inform me?
I love the newspaper, but I hope the LA Times revises this design choice and refocus on the news rather than trying to mimic web sites.

Potpourri

A few tidbits for Loyal Cruft Readers
Space Food Sticks
Eric Lefcowitz, Grand Poobah of the Space Food Sticks Preservation Society writes to tell me that”

Believe it or not the new Space Food Sticks are out! Chocolate and peanut butter. I thought you’d like to know it since your blog alerted so many people to the old (inferior) imported sticks. You nearly ruined me!! Nearly. Just kidding of course. Anyway the ongoing saga of bring back the fabled astro-snack continues at spacefoodsticks.com with vintage TV commercials and all sorts of fun and ephemera. Please alert the masses!

Previously I reviewed Space Food Sticks at Cruft Labs. You can see what the hub bub is about at SpaceFoodSticks.com and even order them for your own space missions.
Vox Launch
I was lucky enough to get into the beta of Vox.com a while ago and have really enjoyed it. Vox made posting videos and photos incredibly simple. I also love the Question of the Day. You can see what I was up to at cruftbox.vox.com.
Vox has now launched and you can join as well. I suggest you go sign up for a Vox account right now! Congrats to Ben, Mena, Anil, and the rest of the SixApart crew on the launch.
Craft Magazine Launch


Today the entire family went to attend the Craft Magazine Launch Party. I had given Michele a copy of Craft and she loved it.

There were stacks of Craft magazines to be had and all kinds of neat stuff including pizza and…

CRAFT CUPCAKES, which made the girls quite happy!
I got a chance to meet and chat with Mark, editor of Make Magazine, and that lead to Michele and Carla, editor of Craft, to look at Michele’s felt work and embroidery of ‘Toxic Jellyfish’. Here’s a close-up of the toxic jellyfish and also the felted skulls.
We had a good time at the launch and Michele even decided to attend Felt Club the next time it rolls around.

Significant Personal Transformation

Many weblogs dwell on the inner thoughts and feelings of individuals, allowing readers a glimpse into the psyche of the writer as they move through life. Cruft has never really been a place to talk about my life in such personal terms, mainly a place for Cruft Labs research and other whimsical thoughts. Prepare yourself for something just a little different here.
Today I write about a significant personal transformation for myself. I’ve had this issue for years but few knew about it. Only those deep into the subculture could relate to my dilemma. Even my wife was unaware of what was going on. Recently, I’ve taken the tough steps to rectify the situation and approach normalcy.
Please don’t be shocked by what I reveal here, though it may make some of you queasy.
Enough of the preamble, onto the story. It’s been a tough three weeks for me, but I’m past the worst of it now.
I’m sure surprising to many, I broke my habit of using ‘ASDX’ for movement in games and finally switched to ‘WASD’.
Yes, I can admit it freely now that I used ‘ASDX’ for movement in video games for well over five years.


For those not deep into the video game subculture, most people use the traditional ‘WASD’ to move around.

For some reason, lost in my troubled past, I began using ‘ASDX’ instead. Oh the trouble it caused…
Imagine my shame at going to E3 and not being about to pwn newbs since the ‘WASD’ default setting was in place on every game. Sneakily, I would reassign the controls and hope no one would notice my ‘problem’. I mentioned it casually to a few co-workers, hoping someone would help and see my pain, but all I got was rolled eyes and few ‘Dude, that’s just wrong.’ comments. At home, my daughters would ask about the keys and I would lie and say, “That’s simply the way it is…”
Recovery
A little over three weeks ago, a corrupted Windows registry led to me deciding to do a clean install of Windows on my desktop. As a result, I had to reinstall my games. I loaded Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft and was ready to play. It was at this point I mustered all my courage and refused to change the key bindings. Oh, the horror of getting pwned over and over and my fingers tried to learn how to move again. Time and time again, I’d futilely hit the Q and E while getting mowed down. I really wanted to give up and give into the call of ‘ASDX’. Instead, I drank a nice glass of scotch to steel my nerves and continued to endure the pain of ‘WASD’.
Steadily I kept at it until my very muscles relearned their tasks and I began to pwn again.
Today I feel much more comfortable with my new habits and no longer want to give up and go back to ‘ASDX’. To anyone that is trapped in the world of ‘ASDX’, I can offer hope that you too can get through your issues and find some peace in ‘WASD’.
Thanks to you Loyal Cruft Readers for your support as I continue through this significant personal transformation.

Control-Alt-Children – Cheese Pie

I have been watching several podcasts, including Ctrl-Alt-Chicken. Recently they did a short segment on making Cheese Pie. Go ahead and watch it. This entry won’t make a ton of sense if you don’t watch it first.
The girls love cheese, so I thought it might be fun to make the Cheese Pie per the Ctrl-Alt-Chicken recipe.
Enjoy the first episode of Control-Alt-Children:


And yes, our video camera really did break during filming. I think the CCD itself blew…

Burnout

From time to time, the blogging here at Ye Olde Cruftbox gets sparse. I tend not to want to post what-I-had-for-lunch entries just to fill space.
Between my expanded role at work and the start of school for the kids, my energy can get used up well before I have a chance to do quality blogging, TV watching, or even video gaming. For the last month or so, I’ve even stopped playing Warcraft since it takes up more effort and energy than I’m willing to spare.
Lucky for me, my work does not run at internet speed (for the most part) and when I start to burn out, I can slow down and reenergize. I won’t be an internet billionaire, but at least I won’t have a heart attack.
A lot of friends DO run their lives at internet speed. Constantly multi-tasking. Constantly scanning the web. Constantly reading syndication feeds ’cause the web is just too slow. Constantly updating dozens of sites.
I understand the feelings. You want to keep people entertained, even at the expense of entertaining yourself. When I find myself racking my head to come up with something to blog about, that is the time NOT to be blogging.
Actually, I’m glad to see that Jason realizes that you can’t live this way indefinitely. Jason’s taking a break for the blogging grind to find himself a little sanity. I wish more people on the A, B, C, and Z-list blogs would see the same thing and step off the merry-go-round and recharge. The bloggers might not see it when they lose the passion, but their readers do.
Props to Jason. Of course, it may just be a ploy for him to have more time to prepare for the Burning Crusades expansion in World of Warcraft…
And now for a drawing of my lunch today at Famima !!

How to cook bacon

Bacon is favorite in Cruft Manor. Typically, bacon is cooked in the microwave here. It is quite a production with separating the strips on a plate and careful placement.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Infected, and Martin, Joey, and the Gator were discussing how to cook bacon. Gator suggested that you cook bacon “like a man” and toss the slab in without separating anything.
Now Gator ain’t a man to steer me wrong, so I gave it a try.


I tossed about a quater of the slab in the pan. The pan was nice and hot.

Sure enough, the bottom slice started to cook and it peeled off the slab quite easily. I simply moved the slab off with no trouble and the bacon continued to cook.

Quite rapidly, the bottom slices each began to cook and shrink down, peeling themselves off the slab. It was trivial to seperate them now.

The bacon cooked up just great. I cooked a second slab to test again with the same results.

Of course the final test was if the girls liked it. As you can see, they both rated Gator’s bacon cooking method and superb.

So the next time to cook bacon, cook it “like a man” and just toss that slab in.

Athletic Support

We here at Cruft Manor do not do triathlons. We engage in huge amounts of mental exercise to compensate.
But my co-worker, Mr. P., is participating in a triathlon for charity tomorrow. Please consider being an Athletic Supporter and donating to Mr. P as he does a half-mile swim in the Pacific Ocean, 18-mile bike ride along the Pacific Coast Highway, and 4-mile beachside run for your donation.
The money goes to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS. So please, toss a few $ to Mr. P’s effort.

Yesterday’s Guesses

Yesterday afternoon, I sat with a few of my colleagues in Amsterdam and we discussed what Apple was going to announce today. I wrote down our guesses and emailed them out to timestamp them.

Cxxxxx: New service that integrates movie rental/download with Front Row. Possible rebranding of iTunes into Showtime. Launch of a new iPod video with touchscreen. Steve Jobs is leaving the company. Lion King & Pearl Harbor on the iPod
Dxxxxx: New iPod with wifi access. Movies on iPod. New DRM.
Michael: Movies on iTunes. Airport for video that uses wifi to move video to near the TV.

I do believe that I made the most correct prediction.
For those so unlucky as to work with me, I have been predicting (ranting some might say) this type of move from Apple as opposed to the computer centric “home theater PC” mindset. The idea to place a fully fledged computer next to your TV. As someone that runs multiple computers in the house and has their media on a server, this is the last thing I want. Heat, sound, cable, and simply a place to put it make the HTPC a bad idea.
Microsoft tried some thing kind of like this with Windows Media Center PC but got caught up in their own rules. If you had a Media Center PC, there were extenders that allowed you do basically do what iTV will do. The problem is that Microsoft made it extremely hard to actually use Media Center Edition. Basically you had to buy a whole new computer to get the software. There are ways to get the software now without a new computer, but it’s far from easy.
Apple got two things right that Microsoft got wrong. First, they give away iTunes for free on both Mac and Windows. Microsoft, best case, will sell you the software for $109 for Windows only. Second, Apple had the content people wanted ready to go. Microsoft did not.
Let’s compare the score cards:
Apple – Free software for Mac & PC, online media store with music, television, and movies
Windows – $109 software for PC only, online media store with music
If Microsoft really wants to compete when Zune (their supposed iPod killer) is released, they should included the features of Media Center into Windows Media Player and release a Mac version of Windows Media Player and allow Zune, Media Center Extenders, and Xbox 360s to attach to it. That would level the playing field. I doubt that Microsoft will do this since they specialize in doing things only halfway right.
Apple is willing to fulling commit to new ideas and take on the risk of walking away from their existing safety zone. Microsoft has not been willing to do this. The biggest change they have made since releasing XP is to launch the Xbox. They have done a great job, but they seem to lack the will to really go in for the kill and make the Xbox the dominant machine in the home. Their focus on PCs running Windows in the home is keeping them from achieving the larger goal of Microsoft in the home.
This is the key point Apple gets and Microsoft misses.
Look, I like Microsoft and think they have some of the brighest people in the industry. But they really need to take the gloves off and let their product people stretch the limits, even if it changes some of their core focus on selling copies of the OS. The fact that they are walking away from the Mac is silly. They should be embracing the new Mac line with a version of Windows specifically for the Intel Mac. Windows Media Player should be just as available and useful on a Mac as on a PC.
Best case scenario, a media war between Apple and Microsoft for the living room with escalating volleys of neat new technologies. In that case, the consumer wins.