My friend got a brand new $2000 HP desktop today, and requested that I set it up. Though where he said “request”, I heard “give permission”, as I play around with software for fun and setting up Windows was novel inasmuch as I haven’t done it in years. I was looking forward to this.

The first thing I do is connect to wifi and begin downloading updates. The sooner we get this baby all patched up, the more stable and secure it is, no?

But it won’t connect to wifi.

Maybe. Windows is a bit confused. The window to select wireless connections says that it’s connected, but the taskbar icon shows no network connection and Internet Explorer can’t find the web. With my MacBook, I check the router. It shows that his computer is, indeed, connected. Huh, that’s weird. So I diagnose the wireless network. Nothing wrong. But I can “repair” it (whatever that means), so I do. Doesn’t work. So I disconnect and reconnect. Nada. Finally I take my MacBook and an ethernet cable, turn on Internet Sharing and connect my MacBook to his HP desktop. No internet.

But throughout all of this, I’m noticing something. Windows will go through most of the process — it connects to the router, then starts resolving IP addresses, et cetera — but then suddenly the internet cuts out and it returns to “No connection”.

Ho’ shit, he has a defective network card.

…Well, I mean, all these diagnostics aren’t showing up anything, but maybe it’s something that it can’t detect? At least it’s under warranty. But I’m going to have to explain to my friend, who is not tech-savvy by any means, that his computer has bad parts. He’s not going to take it well.

Then I look over to the left-most window of the taskbar. It’s a minimized Norton window. It had popped up about something or other and I minimized it because I needed to connect to the internet first. But now I read it more carefully.

It had two options: I activate Norton, or “surf insecurely”.

Fuckers.

I activated it, which took a second, and suddenly the wireless connected fine.

Norton, with all of its tendrils in every little corner of Windows’s operating system, had decided that it knew better than me. And wasted forty minutes of my time in the process.

It’d be nice if that were the worst of it. But I’m not holding my breath.

At our local coffee shop, Loud Guy is as much a fixture as the despicable feet-styled desk lamps.

He annoys the crap out of Beth. I do not particularly have a problem with him. I mean, he seems nice. Other people (at least pretend to) enjoy him. But he is loud. All he ever does is meander around, talking to people, loudly, or singing, loudly.

The thing is, we only see him at night. And only ever at that shop. And he is never studying quietly or anything. Why would he? He is Loud Guy. Naturally, Beth and I have speculated on his story.

A brief, but important, digression: put your forefinger and thumb together in an ‘O’. Once at this shop, I saw a bug of that size skitter across the floor. I could not find it again.

Beth has decided that Loud Guy’s day form is that bug. Feeding off of the cookie crumbs by day, annoying people by night. Or, you know, vice-versa.

Well I did it. I started blogging. And better yet, I did it under my real name, guaranteeing that every future employer and all my friends will find this blog. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does put overwhelming pressure on me to create quality writing. “Oh my god, what if they actually, you know, read my writing and see how bad it is?” I suffer from a bit of perfectionism, just as I am a bit unable to become pregnant.

Almost everything I’ve written has needed more revisions, it’s not good enough, it’s not finished. I wake up the next day and read my draft and start getting disgusted and scratching large sections off. It is not uncommon that I rewrite the whole thing from scratch. After a few days of this, I’m sick of the whatever topic I’m writing about. If I must submit it, I do so, and if not, it becomes on hold indefinitely.

Bafflingly, my professors have disagreed, because I’ve persistently turned in utter-crap first-draft papers and received high marks (this is, thankfully, changing). It quickly became a waste of time for me to apply any more than minimal effort for a paper — a first draft meant a grade that was ‘good enough’. I always felt disgusted with myself afterwords, but it was a good return for the effort. A blog is different. As something everyone can see, a first draft is always disastrous.

Creating a great paper, that has been my ambition for years. A great paper, the groundbreaking writing that people read with fascination, is perpetually elusive. One holdback, among others, is the amount of effort required. Like many great things, 80% of the effort is in the final 20% of the work. I can pump out a ‘B’-is-good-enough paper in an afternoon, and with a few more nights I can get that up to an ‘A’. But it seems to take much more effort and passion to bring it to something I’m satisfied with, something far beyond a mere ‘A’ grade.

And therein lies the problem. Passion. I lack it. I am having severe difficulty having passion my interests. I can tell you that I’m interested in software, computers, photography, math, and science, but that amounts to nothing. It is one thing to be interested in something, it is entirely different to be passionate about it. Interest entails perking up whenever someone talks about it. Passion causes you to actively want to learn more about it.

I am not convinced that passion is the bottleneck preventing me from truly writing, but it is one of them. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame recently wrote “What Makes for a Good Blog?”, in which the second point is “Good blogs reflect focused obsessions.” I have wanted a focused obsession, not so that I could write better, but because my life is rapidly changing and I need an obsession to stabilize myself. With writing quality, I have even more reason to learn passion.

The difference between a goal and an objective is one of hierarchy. A goal is long term, ultimate, and intentionally vague. It is made up of achievable objectives. My goal is to live, to have a more entire life, whereas my new and primary objective is to discover obsession. I want to find what I would wake up in the morning for, what I would read about on my own free time, and what I would do if no one paid me. I have some ideas, and I have some doubts. But more that those I have a drive to learn more about myself, meaning to finally find a passion, something that defines the very essence of my being.

Just 24 hours ago I was in an Apple Store trying out both the iPhones and iPod Touches, and subsequently decided that I wanted an iPod Touch. My reasons were that I wouldn’t need the phone part of it, and wi-fi is ubiquitous on OU’s campus, so I wouldn’t use 3G.

And so I immediately noticed Marco Arment remarking that his upcoming app was well suited to situations without connectivity:

Personally, I can’t wait until I can use my iPod Touch away from a Wi-fi hotspot and feel like I’m doing something.
— Ars Technica on the imminent App Store launch. They’re going to love my app.

And then, just now:

Instapaper has been submitted for review.

Here goes.

Holy crap, Marco is bringing Instapaper offline! It would be perfect! It’s useful as it is, but it lives on the internet. There have been many times where I want to just sit down and read some of that stuff and I wouldn’t have internet connection. It’s been such a problem that I’ve been trying some Mac applications to archive web pages to read later, such as Together, but none work very well, and none are as simple and straightforward as Instapaper.

Before, I was looking forward to the App Store, but I wasn’t exactly ecstatic. The apps looked fun, but very few looked useful. Instapaper would be different. It’s already useful, and bringing it offline to a mobile device just gives it use anywhere. I’d use it on long trips or flights, when waiting around for someone, whenever I had a few minutes free.

When I eventually get an iPod Touch (I’m waiting for the new versions in September), Instapaper will be one of the first apps I look for.

The release of Firefox 3 finally brings the browser Aqua widgets and a Mac-skinned window as default, kinda sorta. While it still doesn’t behave or entirely look like a native Mac application, it isn’t a jarring difference anymore. This release brings a handful of other features as well, making it much more mature than Firefox 2 was. Nonetheless, my browser of choice was and remains Safari.

I could list features that Safari has that Firefox doesn’t, or detail the nuances of Firefox’s incorrect UI. But I won’t, because features don’t matter so much and Firefox has enough UI problems to fill a paperback. And also because the deciding factor for me boils down to a single aspect:

Safari scrolls smoothly with my Macbook trackpad. Trying to scroll on Firefox is stuttering and jarring, whereas Safari is like sliding a piece of paper.

That’s all there is to it. It’s a pretty shallow reason at first glance, a minor UI preference and not a big ticket feature. But Firefox scrolls so differently than most mac applications that it’s just disruptive. iTunes and Office also scroll poorly, which leads me to think it’s an issue on the Carbon side of things, but Finder uses Carbon and it scrolls pretty well. Apparently, it can be done.

And while I only occasionally use iTunes or Office, a web browser receives constant use. Web browsers are subject to a level of scrutiny and use that no other application can compare to (file browsing might be close). So while crappy scrolling is slightly forgivable in Microsoft Word, it is nothing short of aggravating on Firefox.

A quick aside: While Firefox scrolls wildly different from other apps when using a trackpad, I’ve used a mouse and scroll wheel at times and there is no discernible difference. Perhaps if I ever move to a desktop Mac, with emphasis on if, I might switch to Firefox. Maybe.

I will end this with a quote from Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr. He summarizes the current state of web browsers thusly:

For the most important and most used application this decade, you’d think that we’d have many excellent web browsers to choose from. Or at least one. Instead, we have 4 mediocre choices.

Most people probably haven’t heard of click-through, which is the ability to click on the buttons of background windows. Maybe a few have noticed it, and many people have unconsciously been annoyed by it, but discussion of click-through is left to the geeks. Geeks like John Gruber, back in 2003. He wrote a series on click-through, which was becoming increasingly prevalent in Mac OS X. It began while discussing the differences between iTunes (which does not have click-through) and Safari (which does), continuing with a lengthy discussion on why click-through is wrong and finishing with what Apple should do about it.

Not only are all of these still relevant, upsettingly, they are now more relevant. Click-through is rampant. It is enabled in most applications, particularly almost all of Apple’s own applications, and Apple’s own implementation of click-through is wildly inconsistent. In iCal, the bottom bar, the to-do list, the mini calendar, and, of all things, the calendar itself all support click-through. Whereas the title bar and the list of calendars do not. Even Aperture, one of Apple’s newest software, not only supports click-through, but retains mouse-over animations: when Aperture is in the background, mouse over one of the sliders on the ‘Adjustments’ tab.

Gruber’s articles are still worth reading. His argument boils down to:

  1. Click-through is rarely useful, at most saving the user a single click.
  2. Click-through is more often disruptive, causing an action that the user never intended.
  3. Apple is making a mistake by neither encouraging nor discouraging click-through in the HIG.
  4. Apple needs to make click-through disabled by default via its Cocoa API, and then Apple needs to disable click-through on all of its own apps.

In Real Life

One of the primary arguments for click-through was “I can see a button, I should be able to click it”, as though GUIs behave like real world objects. This really argues that the distinction between background and foreground windows is unnecessary. But, as Gruber argued, the distinction between active and inactive applications is integrated into the Mac UI, and has served it well for decades.

This pro-click-through argument was much easier to make in 2003 for one main reason: brushed metal. And 2003 was pretty much the year of brushed metal: iTunes and QuickTime had already long since had brushed metal, but in January 2003, Safari also released with brushed metal. Later that year (after Gruber had written these pieces), OS X Panther was released, bringing brushed metal to other applications, namely the Finder.

One of brushed metal’s many problems was its windows looked almost identical when active or inactive. The only thing that changed was the close-minimize-zoom buttons, the title bar text color and, maybe, the buttons. At a glance it was pretty much impossible to tell the difference. The ‘normal’ Aqua windows of the time weren’t much better. An active Aqua windows had a light-grey, almost white, title bar, with pinstripes everywhere else. An inactive Aqua windows had a non-gradient pinstripe title bar (with inactive close-minimize-zoom and title text), leaving the pinstripes as they were. The difference was between a ton of pinstripes and a ton of pinstripes.

The point is in 2003, the visual distinction between the active window and inactive windows was not immediately obvious. It was entirely conceivable that what someone thought was the foreground window was, in fact, a background window. Why shouldn’t it support click-through?

Leopard

As of Mac OS X Leopard, though, this no longer holds water. Leopard refreshes the UI, taking OS X closer toward iTunes. In particular, Leopard brings two changes to windows — brushed metal is gone and the Aqua theme’s active and inactive versions are now much more distinct. See for yourself:

An active calculatorAn inactive calculator

Active windows have a dark gradient and a deep shadow, whereas inactive windows have a light gradient and a shallow shadow. The text color doesn’t change, but that’s only to signify that it supports click-through (Go ahead. Just try clicking calculator to the front without clicking on a button.). It is now pretty damn easy to, at a glance, tell which window is the active, foreground window. More importantly, it is just barely less than obvious which windows are inactive.

Which makes support for click-through all the more absurd. Whereas before the train of thought was “I see a button, I should be able to click it”, with Leopard the train of thought is closer to (I hope) “I see a button, but its window is in the background so I’ll need to click it to bring it forward first”. Whereas click-through was slightly obnoxious back when there was little difference between active and inactive windows, now it’s becoming disruptive and confusing. “Huh? Wait, I thought that window was in the background.”

Apple seems to have two separate, conflicting plans for window UI. On the one hand, they are making strides to further distinguish active and inactive windows. On the other hand, they are actively making inactive windows behave like they were active, leaving click-through enabled by default and building the ability to scroll a background window. As Apple makes more and more progress toward each of these objectives, the contradictions are going to become more and more evident.

Apple needs drop one of these goals, and it should be click-through. There is little indication of them actually doing that, though. They’re discouraging the Carbon API (which, by default, does not have click-through) by not bringing 64-bit support to it. And Cocoa (which enables click-through by default) is becoming the de facto API for Apple products, both on the Mac and now the iPhone.

However, Snow Leopard is well into development. And its primary purpose is to clean up OS X on the developer’s side, while not focusing on end-user features. I just hope that UI consistency is on their list. Apple needs to either have the entire UI have click-through or, much preferable, none (with room for exceptions) of the UI have click-through. Snow Leopard is their big chance to declare which of these conflicting objectives they will, in fact, follow from here out.

UPDATE on 10 July 2008: Tightened up a few of the paragraphs, especially in the introduction and conclusion.

Our alphabet has two lowercase forms of the letter a. One form is the single-story a, which consists of a circle with a line or with a serif. Like such:

Handwritten a

(Yes, I could have gotten my non-existent tablet, or non-existent Adobe Illustrator, or hand-written these and scanned them in. But I instead decided to draw it with Acorn. Using the trackpad. So there.)

Virtually all handwriting uses this form, even cursive. It is also used in italic type and the geometric sans serif fonts, such as Futura.

Nearly every other font, however, uses the double-story version of a, which looks like this Gill Sans version:

Gill Sans a

As I continue to learn more about the typographical world, I have become increasingly attracted to this double-story form. It strikes me as more formal and elegant. The double-story version of a has characteristics that are only found in the letter e, but rotated 180°, so there is no chance of confusing the two letters. In contrast, the single-story a has many characteristics in common with several other letters.

At a quick glance, which of these is not like the others?

gadpab

The double-story a is the only one of these to not have a bowl the size of the x-height. In layman’s terms, all of those circular parts are darn similar. It is easier to distinguish the double-story a from other letters than the single-story version of a, improving legibility.

So I set out to change my handwritten a’s to the double-story version.

My first snag is that it seem as though everyone has used the single-story version for handwriting for centuries. I could find no guides or instructions on how to write with the double-story. In fact, I only found (in my admittedly limited and brief search) a single person who uses this more elegant form of a, and that would be Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship comics. That isn’t helpful.

Refusing to be dissuaded, though, I set out to figure it out myself.

It was more difficult than I expected. I needed to find a method for styling the letter that was acceptably consistent, speedy, and distinguishable. Put another way, if I were to write it this way 10 times in a row, would most of them be about the same on the first try? Could I write it at note-taking speed? Would I find myself confusing it with other letters? These were my criteria.

My first experiments tried to form the entire letterform in a single stroke. The rationale was that a single stroke would be speedier and would present less opportunity for error. I quickly encountered trouble, though.

first method

This method showed itself to be wildly inconsistent, difficult and slow, and looked too much like a d. And it was ugly, especially when sloppily written at note-taking speed. I tried a different method.

second method

This one was inconsistent and easily confused with the number 2 or, sometimes, the letter z. It did not help that I frequently wrote it much bigger than it should be.

After a few more similar failures, I quickly gave up on a single-stroke a and moved on to using two strokes.

2 strokes

This worked well. It was surprisingly consistent. It could be written speedily enough, again unexpected. And it was the first one that I could write small enough that it would match the rest of the letters. I adopted this method as my own.

It took less than a week to grow used to drawing a’s with this two-stroke method. I constantly made an effort to use this new double-storied version in all of my notes, often giving more attention to insuring that I used this new-fangled way of writing the letter a than understanding the material. It was interesting to have to “re-learn” how to spell many words, as I would automatically write the single-storied version, especially if the a was later in the word. I persevered.

Now the double-storied a is ingrained into my handwriting. It now takes more thought and effort to write the “old” style of a than this new style. Mission accomplished.

Or so I thought. Yesterday I sat down and wrote the double-storied version perfectly in a single stroke.

Final method for now

This is about as consistent (which is to say, decidedly consistent) as my two-stroke version, much quicker, and as distinguishable. I have already begun to adopt this method, but I still find myself automatically using the two stroke version. I doubt it will take much longer though.

From here, I think I’ll move to some other letterforms, now that I know how little effort it requires. The double-storied version of g is a good one, as is the blackletter form of z. I will wait a few more weeks though.

Gill Sans g and Lucida Blackletter z

By the way, I apologize for the dumb quotes in the title. Apparently Tumblr doesn’t support smart quotes there.

Weirdly enough, I feel as though my writing used to be better, as though it’s getting worse as time goes on. More probably, my threshold for quality continues to grow, allowing me to notice that my writing skills suck.

I blame — what else? — high school english courses.

In high school, I was taught that I needed to have an opinion before writing the paper. The first step, supposedly, was to determine my thesis, to decide what to argue. Then I was to outline so that I knew at least the main points I was going to make. Then I write.

What I’m finding happens in reality is that writing causes me to form an opinion. It is only through revision and editing that I discover what I think about a topic. I almost never end up with the paper I set out to write. It evolves and grows as I write it.

Why do I care? Believe it or not I have higher aspirations for this site than being merely a link blog. The primary goal is actually to improve my writing and discover my interests. And the only way to do that is to write more prolifically and hold myself to a higher standard of quality.

Copyright © 2008-2009 Daniel Shusta