Update: Toaster

Update! We replaced with the same model, this time in purple. They were out of red.

Frankly, the toaster market is insane with technological innovations. There are models that slowly lower your toast into the chamber, any number of digital displays, warming buttons, angled slots (which if they don’t actually launch onto the plate… well that’s just a missed opportunity!) and any number of additional innovations to the act of browning bread that trying to satirize the product is ultimately futile.

Most expensive model we “considered?”  $140.  And when I say considered I mean Deb continued to talk to the salesperson while I faked an aneurism.

Final cost of the same model.  $29.

There, story is complete.  You can sleep at night again without worrying.

QuickTechThought: Our Red Toaster

Our pretty red toaster died this week.

Sunbeam Oster. It wasn’t even three years old.  I know, I know, they don’t make things like they used to.  But it’s just a toaster, it’s supposed to be pretty fundamentally simple.   Remember the toaster in Red Dwarf?  The joke was they had put all the crazy AI and voice tech in the toaster such that it drove the user crazy suggesting that “now was a great time for a piece of toast.”  Well, this one just has a bunch of buttons for various preset bread types, and a dial for darkness.  Nothing terribly cutting edge.  (Wait a minute… bread type settings?)

Reading up on this brand I see comments about failures and people opening it up to find “scorch marks on the circuit board” and how they really didn’t think they had the components to fix the board themselves. Which lends to three questions:

1. There are people who consider trying to fix the circuit board in a $40 toaster?

2. How did we get along for decades with toasters before we had integrated circuits?

3. And why doesn’t this thing connect to our WiFi so it could have downloaded an update that might have prevented the scorching, or at least a security patch?

Feeling a little weird about disposing of the toaster too.  I guess it goes on the pile of outdated or broken tech junk waiting for a tech recycling day at the local middle school.  Given it has circuits it’s likely there are components that shouldn’t go into landfill.  And it’s still so shiny and pretty, it feels wrong to dispose of it just yet.  Maybe we can rip the guts out and make it into a planter.  Isn’t that the solution for so many of these problems?

The Ultimate PowerPoint Survivor…

Here’s a trivia question for you.  PowerPoint has been around forever. Bob Gaskins, the father of PPT puts the start date for the team as 1984.  Lots of great folks have come and gone, and a few have even come back.  But who is the one person who has been on the team, without leaving and returning, the longest?

That would be Judea Eden.

Judea Eden Back Then - Photo by Bob Gaskins

Judea Eden was the 17th person to join the ranks of The Wizards of Menlo Park, the core group of folks from the earliest days of PowerPoint – those who pretty much set the pace for the application.

If you’re curious, I joined that team in 1993, and am 77th on the list.  To put a point on this, there are only two people still at Microsoft who predated me, and Judea was the winner for having been there the longest, still on the core PowerPoint team.

We think about the brains and wills behind the development of the PowerPoint application. But if you were looking for the heart of the team, I’d say Judea is a great candidate for that recognition.  You see, Judea kept the PowerPoint team flush in supplies, equipment, and more that a little late-night food during crunch time.  She organized all our off-site and team building activities, coordinated resources for moves between sites and buildings.

And she added more than a little humanity to the group.  She’s a sweetheart, through and through.  She cares about everyone on the team, even those who might not really deserve that care.  Because, dear reader, she’s just sweetly guileless and truly wants to make people happy.

Onward to a bright future...

When I joined the team, we worked in an office on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, CA.  I’d really resisted the idea of going to work for Microsoft, even on the PowerPoint product, an application I really liked.  But it was Microsoft, the company that had always beaten the companies I’d worked for before.  I really felt like I’d stepped into enemy territory, and I doubted that I’d make any friends or actually be there very long.

At noon on my first day this girl appeared in the doorway to my office, I’ll always recall she had a shiny black plastic lunchbox-styled purse, and said “Hi, I’m Judea, wannna go grab some lunch?”  Because that’s what Judea does, she makes you feel welcome.

My first friend at Microsoft, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Judea is an amazing amalgam of interests and talents.  A few years back she started a serious study of nutrition and health. In fact that’s part of the next phase of her life, working for a company in the health and wellness.

But there’s a crazy-fun side to Judea too.  She’s the lead singer for The Judea Eden Band, and if you’re lucky enough to be able to catch one of their shows in San Francisco or around the Bay Area, I highly encourage you to do so.  You can thank me later.

So, after a quarter century (and the years don’t show at all kiddo!) Judea is moving on and up to a position in another company, leaving Microsoft diminished for her leaving.  Her last day is Friday the 13th, 2012.  I hope that’s not a bad omen for those she leaves behind.

I can only say thanks for being my friend.  The PowerPoint world would have been a much lesser place but for you.

How Facebook Will (May Have Already) F#@k You Up

Really, I’m not doing much here.  Just trying to draw your attention to someone else’s work on how Facebook’s recent bout of ill-conceived changes continue to mess with your privacy, your communications, and your ability to actually use the system without getting screwed-up.

It’s essentially the same problem.  The code monkeys at Facebook have decided that they know better than you how you want to get your information, or more importantly, they’re deciding what information is important.  They’re trying to prove how smart they are by writing algorithms that watch what you do, analyze words in messages, and essentially hide a shit-ton of stuff you probably would prioritize higher than they do.  Any time you have someone who has doubtable social skills managing your social interaction, you are doomed.

And Facebook is no better at predicting what you want to see than any other company.  Do you recall that old chestnut “My Tivo Thinks I’m Gay“?  Well here we are a decade later and Facebook thinks you don’t want information from someone you just met, haven’t actually met but who really needs to get in touch with you, or haven’t spoken with for a while because they only recently decided to forgive you… the list goes on with the potential ways Facebook will or may have already f#@ked you up.

This time, it’s messages.  Did you know there’s a whole bunch that Facebook pushes off into a separate area without EVER giving you a surface level indication that they’ve arrived?  Yup, we can thank Slate Magazine’s Elizabeth Weingarten for sharing her experiences today in Furious at Facebook Again!

Seriously, when are these guys going to be sued for abusing their customer’s information?  This is an area where we set serious and definitive precedence.

Nest Learning Thermostat

Last Friday I installed a new thermostat in the house, the first one since we moved in.

Now the prior thermostat was programmable, hourly and daily you could configure it to heat and cool as you like.  It made a lot of sense at the time, but so did parachute pants.  Yeah, it’s been a while.  Unfortunately programmable thermostats don’t take into account when you’re gone, you have to remember to override the programming (time-consuming and bothersome) or turn the thing off (and come back to a frozen cat.)  But it was better than the manual option of course.

Now a company called Nest has come out with a Learning Thermostat.  One that tracks your use, and presence, and uses that information to anticipate the best settings for you at any given time.  It’s also a green device, and will help you try to use less energy while staying comfortable.

The new thermostat. The green leaf means we're saving electricity. And that we're cold.

I’m not going to rewrite their web page (which you can view here) but wanted to show you a little walk-through video I made to answer all my geeky friends questions.  Click here to enjoy the video on YouTube.

The 300!

Chris Garcia did an amazing thing.

He invited, then managed contributions from, over 300 people for the 300th issue of his Hugo Award Winning fanzine The Drink Tank.  James Bacon helped, and gets his share of the credits, but Chris is the one I want to focus on for a moment.

Chris won the Hugo award for best Fanzine this year at the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention.  He’s been nominated more than a dozen times, and all his friends hearts swelled as one when we heard the news.  Some of us had the pleasure of being in the audience, and watching our favorite fanzine editor and computer historian dance about the stage like a crazed Quaker.  You kind of had to be there to understand.

This issue is a bit of a download, but I hope you’ll give it a look.  There isn’t a table of contents, per se, but instead a series of numbered bits.  Mine are 72,  73, 132, and the two page picture comic that’s in the middle of the Bios section, about seven pages from the end of the issue. That last bit might go a ways towards explaining that whole crazed Mormon thing.

Anyway, you can download the issue here.

This Just In: Microsoft Fails to Get the Macintosh – or just good installation practices…

Just got notified that there’s a Silverlight update for the Mac. OK, I’ll update, what’s the…

Wow. The instructions are so dense with unnecessary text, and eventually tell you to first uninstall any previous version, which necessitates removing half-a-dozen files from the Macintosh library manually. Confused? Of course you are! You’re not supposed to have to go mucking around in the Macintosh Library unless you’re a developer or you’re trying to recover from a poorly written application that has screwed up your settings at a very base level.

Let's be clear. You should NEVER have to go to the Library for an uninstall.

Of course you can watch a video on how to do this. By the way, the video is a WMV, Windows Movie file – guess it would be too awful for MSFT to provide a system native Quicktime for the Macintosh-specific instructions. This is starting to feel like it was written by someone who wanted the user to break their Macintosh. And the video conflicts with the written instructions on the web page which show many more files to delete than the video does.

Huh.

Did I mention that telling people to go into the Macintosh library and manipulate files is like telling Grandma to wet solder a circuit board – just not supposed to happen.

Really? Really? Are you trying to be a self-parody of a clueless conglomerate with lazy developers?

I’m no longer defending Microsoft when people accuse them of not “getting the Macintosh.” I’ve done so for many years, saying how many people in the Mac business units really do know and enjoy the Mac. But this has made me so embarrassed to have been involved with developing multiple applications, both on the Microsoft Office team and at eBay, that were dependent on this tech*.

Embarrassing.

By the way. I stand by my prior statements that there are hundreds of Microsoft employees who appreciate, understand, and like the Mac. They live and die by the quality of work they do in making applications like PowerPoint really useful for those trying to co-exist with a predominately Windows business world. I have nothing but respect for those individuals.

Not so much for the Silverlight team.

— Notes —
* While developing the Web Companion for PowerPoint at Microsoft, I was the PM for the team that used Silverlight to render the slide show in a window that would scale the slide interactively when the window was resized.  Without Silverlight installed the image would be a static fixed size.  When I joined eBay I took over the Simple Lister project, a stand-alone Silverlight application that experimented with creating user product listings in under a minute.

My iOS 5 Update on iPad

Just finished the iOS 5 update on my iPad 2. Man, what a marathon. It basically needs to back up your data, reset the device, update the OS, then restore your data. So plan for a few hours to completion. I have no idea how people without a computer (wasn’t that the promise?) would do this.

There’s some nice stuff here, you can read about that on the Apple site easy enough, but I’m not rushing to update Debbie’s iPad any time soon.  Not until I’ve made sure I’m aware of all the sharp corners here.  To that effect…

Two Hiccups:

• When update was “finished” I noticed I only had sound in apps that specifically were made to play sound (like Garage Band for example.) Very strange. Took about 30 minutes to realize that Apple had reset the option of how the physical switch near the volume control buttons work. I’d set that against the default, so it managed locking screen rotation (the original function, and absolutely necessary for those of us who read in bed.) They set it to control sound muting, and apparently the setting for free rotation is the same as mute. Wow, I imagine this is going to burn a few users.
• Second is that apparently some downloadable content may be corrupted or just not migrated properly. Comics on Graphic.ly all came up as black pages. Had to uninstall the Graphic.ly app, then reinstall and redownload the issues I’d put in my library. Luckily that was only about a dozen, but that could be really painful for someone who bought a lot of comics.

Biggest disappointment: Siri is not on the iPad. There’s really no good reason for this, other than to drive people to iPhone. And we’ll have to see how well that works. Android voice commands work very well, and is integrated in all the right places, but I rarely use them. Siri is not a game changer, it’s just a game.

Useless features:

• Reminders task List – Frankly anyone who isn’t using WunderList will be pleased with the Apple task list app.  However, it’s not near as cool as Wunderlist, is not cross-platform, does not sync to your Windows or Android devices… well, let’s just say I’ve buried this app inside a “Utility” folder to keep it out-of-the-way.  Why Apple made this lame addition an “essential” app, one you can’t delete, is just mind-numbing hubris. Go find Wunderlist and thank me later.
• Grid in Camera.  Don’t get me wrong, the rule of threes is essential for good composition.  However just adding a grid to the camera is so Apple – no documentation or help in figuring out why you would turn it on.  Come on Spartan design sense, surely even you can give a hint now and then.
• Newstand.  Just another Apple money grab.  My non-newstand publications sit on a page around a Newstand app with two demo pubs in them.  It just looks lame and yes!  You can’t delete this Essential app either.

May update as I learn more.

The PowerPoint Team Blog…

Well, everything old is new again.

Today the Microsoft PowerPoint Team Blog did me the honor of pointing out one of my posts from earlier this year, The Blur Trick, with an invitation to write more later.

I had the fun of writing a re-introduction for myself, for the blog I got started and which still contains entries I hope continue to help customers.

Hi, I’m Ric Bretschneider.  You might remember me from…well, the very first entry in the PowerPoint team blog back in 2006 and a lot of tips and tricks articles after that. I left the PowerPoint team and Microsoft about a year ago, but I’m still very involved with helping people become better presenters, and make better presentations.

I’m very pleased that the PowerPoint Blog team invited me back to share an article, written earlier this year on my personal blog, calledThe PowerPoint Blur Trick. You can add texture or blur the background of a picture using the Artistic Effects feature in PowerPoint 2010, leaving the foreground crisp and clear.

If you missed it before, hope you enjoy it today.  And we’ll see what I can come up with later.

-Ric

The value of writing reuse…

Every now and then I start off a blog entry with “I really don’t write often enough…”

But that’s not really true.  I write a ton of stuff, it just doesn’t always end up here.  The articles I write very rarely have to do with things I’ve written elsewhere.  (Irony, on reflection I see that the post just prior to this touts a review I wrote elsewhere.  I’m simply not paying attention. But I’ll write on as if I hadn’t noticed that.)

What I need to do is rechannel efforts, make blog entries about or completely repeating writing I’ve done for other sources – that is when it’s not against some standing prior agreement.  This does seem to be a factor in blogging success – let’s see if I can remember it.

Boring yet?  Let’s move on. 

So with that in mind, I invite you to view a series of articles composed of my pictures from Comic Con 2011.  Some of you may know of my association with the website Fanboy Planet.  I produce a weekly podcast and occasionally have prose pieces that appear there.  And every now and then, there’s a fun set of photos. 

So without further ado, some links for you to peruse. 

Comic-Con 2011: Celebrities, Creators and More!

• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 1
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 2
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 3
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 4

There are likely a few more to come.

If you’re interested, you can follow me or Fanboy Planet on Facebook, or check back here to see when I update.

Now some of you may note that there are far more women in far less clothing in these pictures than there are men. 

There are two reasons for that:

1. There simply are more women in costume at comic con, and they do it so much better.  It’s a sewing thing I expect.

2. I’m a guy.

Enjoy.

Ric Bretschneider
August 12, 2011