Looking so seriously bored…
In fira
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Author Archives: specialk
Alicia Botti, my son’s view on Opera singers
One of the recurring characters in Thomas the Tank Engine is an opera singer called Alicia Botti. In a charming episode titled James in the Dark, James goes around sodor without a light collecting the wrong passengers because he is too proud … Nicholas finds this episode to be particularly charming and has been re-enacting that episode all day…
So here is his Alicia Botti …
A 17th century English Naval Officer …
And here he is singing a little bit like Alicia Botti…
Steak! with grill mates
I recently purchased some new fangled gadgets to cook my steaks better on my grass grill. One of the claims was that the heat would reach 700+ degrees and I would get my steak looking and tasting better than ever.
Honestly I never saw a steak look this good.
And yes, I was barefoot.
Chana Bhatura Greek Style
There is this Greek dish called Revithia (left image), that in many ways reminds me of the Indian dish Chana Batura (right image). So my wife made me some the other day, and I put a slice of bread on the same plate, and she said: See Greek Style Chana Bhatura…
My time in Ghandi Nagar (Sunnyvale) is paying dividends in my understanding of Indian foods…
zomg – ux fail at smugmug
I have been a loyal smugmug user since 2004. I am such an old user of smugmug that when they did their big reveal they reached out to me twice to see if I would come to their HQ for the big reveal.
I was touched. And very excited. For years they have been the best place to store and view pictures. And I have happily spent 50$ a year for the privilege of having them store my pictures…
The process to get to the new UX … which looks a lot like the windows 8 UX… was
- Preview the new look and feel
- Update your page to the new look and feel.
So here’s the dialog that asks if you want to upgrade
Looking at this UI, there appears to be a progress bar, and two buttons.
Because I am an engineer who doesn’t RTFM, I click on the button ‘UNVEIL IT’ expecting the progress bar to start advancing…
And I get this red box. Which is surprising. I think… huh, something must be wrong at smugmug. Or this is going to take a while. So I let my computer sit overnight waiting for this progress bar to advance.
Fortunately my brilliant wife does RTFM, something about doing research I think, and points out that I must type the word unveil in the text box.
Ah!
I do that and get the new UX.
So yes, I am a fool for not reading the instructions. But a great UI has to not rely on the user to read the instructions. Or when the user fails to read them provide the right kind of information so they can take corrective action.
I wonder how many people are spamming customer support.
Thomas and Nicholas
Thomas came to Roaring Camp … Nicholas and another several hundred toddlers were not far behind…
When we arrived in the afternoon, Nicholas’s eye’s bugged out completely when he saw Thomas. Later on he heard another train and somehow became convinced it was Gordon and spent the rest of the trip trying to find Gordon, who is his favorite train… Something about the phrase “Oh the indignity”…
I’ve shared a small video of clips…
You can get more if you are so inclined at smugmug…
Let’s go fly a kite up to the highest height
Nicholas and family went to fly a kite… And the experience was awesome… Earlier on I got another video of him flying a kite but Android decided that I needed some whacked out resolution that I could not figure out how I set or how to unset…
Thomas the train
Really happy… Now wait until we see the train later in the day
Where we go for our after swim snack
Best donuts I have ever had.
My son’s dojo mojo fort
My son was watching me re-organize my fort in dojo mojo
So he quickly ran into the living room to build his own…
And here is hiding during an attack…
