To apps that steal focus

I am jumping on the corpse of Adobe Acrobat Reader Installer.

I was reading a PDF document this evening and of a sudden there comes forth a dialogue (uninvited) proclaiming gifts. It was, of course, a ploy to make me download Adobe’s crap (I do not feel particularly inventive in my invective this evening — “crap” suffices to describe such software for the minute). For which I did not fall.

I dutifully selected “Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0.7.1.6.3.4.4.32.265.5.3.3.5.3.3.whateveritsnotlikeiactuallycareanymorebecauseitstillreadsthesamecrapdoesn’tit.howhardisittomakeadocumentreaderyoudon’tneedtoupdateeverytwoweeks?”
and let it do its thing (being careful, as always, not to select anything unessential). It cruised along, I started doing something else (having dutifully abandoned what I was reading).

It (very sensibly) downloads in silence in the background, and doesn’t try and get my attention even when it finishes: it knows that I will pay it attention in due course. Indeed, I do. It begins installing (or, unpacking the installer).

Of a sudden, it decides it would be an opportune moment to steal focus whilst still on a progress bar dialogue in which the only button is “Cancel”. Okay. Point one: moronic time to steal focus, no user action is required. Point two: stealing focus can mean the user is about to do any manner of things in terms of key presses or mouse clicks. Point three: when the only user interface element cancels the operation that’s pressing this apparently-urgent update to a document reader (yes, it’s a freaking document reader — oh, hurry up everyone, let’s all go and patch Notepad. Dangerous security flaws! Watch out!), chances are users aren’t going to bother going back.

So, instead, I printed out the Adobe logo onto a sheet of 3-ply toilet paper and…. okay, perhaps not so literal. Suffice to say, I am presently in no hurry to install any more of their garbage. Stronger words could be used.

Akismet a few days in

It is like rain after many hours of stifling humidity: it is like falling onto bed and being asleep in moments, pausing only to realise the satisfaction of being still after a long day.

I can check my email again and be excited to see a new message, because chances are it’s from a real person. (Comment notifications are now worth having turned on and generally sensible). At first it was simply too strange to comprehend, but now I am revelling in the brilliant relief it provides. Perhaps, now, using web publishing software will be enjoyable again.

I’ve been thinking a fair bit of late about the psychology of brand control (be that personal or corporate branding), perplexed from a few months back when bands first started putting their myspace URL next to (or in place of) their expensive-developed-by-Sony/BMG/Universal/…-records-Flash-powered-yuppie website. In doing so I nearly went (nearly being quite a few times), “you know, the LiveJournal crew never experience the kind of crap I’m putting up with” and switched. Of course, WordPress.com users exist behind a magical wall, too, but that’s beside the point — If I was going to switch, it would be (at least in part) for social reasons, and there’s no-one cool using WordPress.com. (“Cool” is in the eye of the beholder — for me, Robert Scoble is not cool, or, at very least, not someone to be emulated)
So, anyway, I’m not spending an hour a day moderating comments. That figure is truly obscene given that on an average week I might only get ten to fifteen genuine comments, if that. A lot for very little in return. I nearly switched off the comments altogether a couple of times, but I’m too much of an egocentric prick to deal with that very well. So now things are better.

I’m now free to do more of… something. I’ll probably find out exactly what that is about the same time as everyone else. Besides, all the cool kids use Myspace or Facebook nowadays, anyway, so the audience isn’t a big deal much — only Facebook is smart enough to import my RSS feed as “Notes”, whilst Myspace is still gushing generic ColdFusion error pages. It is the biggest piece of crap hackjob high profile website I’ve ever seen. It’s a good thing their only revenue comes from advertising partners whose ads are hosted on other servers, otherwise I would so be expecting a massively expensive class action lawsuit when they get their crappy website pwned by some script kiddie who’s messing around with a spot of SQL injection for the first time.

Not that I’m even a programmer. But I nearly found one today. Please be praying that I get geeks better than the ones at Myspace for the current thing that’s quietly baking away. I’m hoping to present it to nearly a thousand people over the next two weeks and haul in some unemployed/looking-for-more-exciting-work programmers in that process.

Random observation — It’s funny how I talk about that project on here with a completely different voice to the one I use on the other blog. I haven’t got any issues with complete strangers reading what I write here, so long as it’s taken in context (i.e. I’ve ranted about spam before, I’ve ranted about cool/uncool SocNets before, I’ve ranted about how horrible I find Myspace from a usability/technical perspective before, so my holding them up as Thebes to my Athens is entirely acceptable). The problem with writing for a blog read once off by complete strangers is that every article has to stand alone. It actually ceases to fit within the “blog” genre, because chronology is pretty much left for dead. Which is kind of a shame, but whatever.

In summary: Akismet saves sanity. Losing control is sometimes a good thing. Myspace is horrible. Josh/CYIADA nearly might possibly maybe have a programmer so please pray for “us”. Myspace is horrible. Corporate/project blogging necessarily takes a different form (mode, style, whatever) to individual blogging. Myspace is horrible.

Stupid yellow thing

Think youth group car rally games only more intense. And Rach + Josh = teh winners (for tonight). This could get out of hand…

Summer School 2007

Some bits of wisdom, mostly from Nathan Sandon, who was speaking at the Senior High (11-12) programme at Summer School ’07 this last week (I was leading, but that doesn’t mean I can’t comment!):

Christian life is:

• Dropping beers to your mates
• Sleeping further from the door
• Squawking less
• Flying more
• Going to the ends of the earth in concentric circles
• Trusting a trustworthy God
• Picking up a Bible and trusting & learning from that firstmost & before what mere men have to say in churches, youth groups, bible studies, etc.
• Recognising that if Christians need grace & a relationship with God through Christ for life, why would anyone else not need to hear that?
• Using everything for Him. What are we holding back?

</embed>

Akismetting

Okay, hopefully commenting is going to work right about now. I just upgraded to the latest WordPress (2.0.6 at time of writing, with 2.1 due out in a week’s time) which is long, long overdue — I was running a 1.5 series release with known security holes for more than six months after they were announced — but whatever. It seems to be working now, and I’m using WordPress 2.0 in more places these days, so it seems only sensible to give it a whirl and see.

If you’re experiencing difficulties try and drop me an e-mail, or something :-)