ShaunInman.com // Commentary // IFR: Revisited and Revised

i may have done something similar to this on advancingbiosurgery.com, but i'll have to give it a more thorough read later.

Exilim Support

finally got the cradle, need to find the right twain and such.

Dean Kamen's latest inventions

Here's what the Segway should have been: iBot Mobility System. Only problem is your average disabled person isn't rich, so this invention will mostly just benefit old people.

With the world's water problems, this Water Purifier that runs off whatever fuel is handy, might be usefully in the future in what are today's 1st world countries, as well as now in today's 3rd world nations.

Cat House

Photos: Exotic Feline Breeding Compound

We went to the Twilight Tour at the Feline Conservation Center in the desert north of LA. It's an 18 and older event. Usually when you go to the zoo the cats are all lulling about in the sun, but as the sun goes down they become active. The keepers give them cardboard boxes sprinkled with allspice, and they go crazy just like kittens do, except that they're much bigger than the boxes. Except for Cezar, the tiger, they gave him a washer/dryer size box to fight with. The event is only 3 times a year, plan to bring more people in June.

Uma Thurman vs. Crazy 88

A most excellent Flash bloodbath. Click the button that says "hrat".

BOB DYLAN'S SEX GEAR AD FOR VICTORIA'S SECRET

my dad just tipped me off to this one. never been a huge dylan fan, but i've always aspired to be a lecherous old man learing at half naked women. my favorite quote from a song is from Jethro Tull's Aqualung, "Sitting on a park bench / eyeing little girls with bad intent"

Qualia: so very much to chew on

So what if it's a flavor-of-the-month buzzword, I'd tell myself, a simplistic notion cribbed from an inflight magazine. It's a good simplistic notion.

Let them eat cake: Accessibility and usability, brought together through the DOM and CSS

My favorite! A self-documenting document. Like Zen Garden.

Slashdot | Documentation Strategies?

a relevant slashdot article. yeah, so my job description's expanded to include business analyst type requirements. oh well. i dig the requirements development.

Advoy Park

Advoy Park (wide .gif image)

Courtesy of google's cache we passed around this South Park character generator at work yesterday. Some of us did our own, others were victims of team effort caricatures. Then they were handed over to Mister Jon and myself for photoshop touchups, and finally this morning Jon put together the team picture. I guess we've lost a few since Advoy launched in France, but not too many considering.

The Disability Rights Commission - Formal Investigation report: web accessibility

gotta print this out using company ink. The HTML version isn't up yet nad the pdf is a pain to read.

LittleGreenFootballs or Late German Fascists? (the LGF quiz)

from the Sensual Liberation Army

HENTAI dictionary: japanese perversions, fetishes, and AV terms

A Blowfish caught in the net worthy link. (via Mister Jon)

Trailering a Canoe Behind a Bicycle

The Solyns have a timeshare that they've traded in for a week in Tahoe mid-May. Assuming I can get off work it's going to be a blast canoeing, hiking, and playing boardgames in a cabin in the woods. The cabin was touted as "on lake Tahoe," but in reality is four miles away. That made me think renting a bike might be a good idea.

At that point I departed short term reality and thought, wouldn't it be cool if you could pull a canoe, just a small solo one, behind a bike? Then when you got to the water you could throw the hitch, cart and bike into the canoe and paddle away.

A Google search reveals that a Dartmouth student had the same idea and figured out how to do it, for his canoe anyway. One day, when I own a house outside of town not too far from a body of water I will have to do the same for my own Tripper (which I don't have yet either).

Abigail's Big Table Of Latin Phrases

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.

Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.

Is my obsession a feature or a bug?

Caught myself the other day exhibiting a behaviour that reminded me distictly of one of my dad's lower functioning clients at the group home he used to manage. I could be slipping off the deep end, or maybe my behaviour filter is just faltering.

Yahoo! Groups > Hemophilia

this is not the proper place to put notes for work but i'm doing it anyway

Exorcist

The Exorcist in 30 seconds with bunnies.

Classic '80s Games

flash versions of the good old games, before they became all complicated when nintendo came out.

ACTION COMICS NO. 1

Superman scanned!

In Plain English

The original title of my Division II at Hampshire was "In Plain English." The thought was that I'd learn a bunch of technical computer stuff, and write about it in layman terms. As it turns out my focus shifted to interface design and away from writing, so I never learned how to write as clearly as I might.

At work we're struggling with the legal language in our app. Whereas most privacy policies are all about hidden ways that the company can screw you, ours actually has positive things like: our company does not even have access the servers containing your personally identifiable medical information. We bend over backwards to lock ourselves out from the database, and even the production servers, but do we tell them that? No. The policy is all about edge-cases, "Under these special circumstances we can do this," and other such disclaimers. The language itself is cumbersome to read, and there's just too much of it.

To convey the message that is hidden in our privacy policy to the end users are working on an enhancement (Whahooo! My unofficial job description has been expanded to include requirements, one of my long term goals and the next natural step in my career path) to increase the "Perception of Privacy/Security" in our application. The focus is on perception because the current reality is, and has been, that our application is highly secure and private, but we haven't done enough to signal to people that this is true. The enhancement will require some writing, some icon design, and some serious thought about our content strategy. Lots of fun.

Here is my mission. Read this article: How to write in plain English and apply the ideas to my own writing, both at work and at home.

Iraq Coalition Casualties

We were just talking at work the other day, when they strung up those charred bodies, about how much that's going on over there that nobody is telling us about. Well here's the data and the news reports that mainstream media aren't running.

oA - FOLLOW THE POPE FOR A BETTER LIFE

orangeAfro: "Should I take this Nazi gold in exchange for not objecting to their racist invasion of several countries? Yes."

sla : nudepower

Not blocked by WebSense, but SO should be, that's why I'm blogging it. Lefty politics + porn blog, could make the daily "Entertainment" section on my links page. I'll have to do some catch-up reading and then follow it for a few days.