Archive for August 7th, 2008

“It corners like it’s on rails.”*

For those of you who don’t pick up my semi-comedic status updates on Facebook (and I can think of potentially four of you, and that’s it), I’ve been taking a look at the new version, which they’ve done up nice, and tried to hide all the useless applications away, and things.

By and large I’m really quite fond of this New Facecoke, it really does seem to be neater and cleaner, and if it’s taken away all my beloved Applications That Tell You What I Want You To Think My Personality Is, it’s also shifted all those bloody Zombies off people’s pages (Is there ever a time when a Zombie-related thing is an application you encourage to go near a computer? I can’t think of any).

It has, however, a downside. And that downside seems to be that it was Designed After The Millenium.

At some point in the very late 90s, and unbeknownst to be, who was using Win 3.1 on a Pentium (before they started numbering the sods) right up until January 2002, there was some Council Of Evil that decreed that, henceforth, any new, mainstream, computer software had to come with ugly rounded corners. I’m running Win XP back home, and, thank God, it has a “Windows Classic” setting, which is precisely the first thing I turn on whenever I re-install Windows (as opposed to an Internet Connection, which is precisely the last thing I turn on whenever I re-install Windows).

The UWA AU terminal I’m using at the moment is running Vista, and it’s bubbly as Sin. Blecccch.

What is *with* this, people?

I do not believe that anyone who knew me could honestly accuse me of “not liking curves.” On the contrary, I am a huge fan of curves. Many of my most attractive friends have curves. Indeed, if you asked me to list several things that I find attractive in women, “curves” would be right in at number four-ish, after “being a nice person,” “big eyes,” and “not objecting to overweight librarians with beards.”

But whilst I am an only occasionally slavering fan of curves in their proper place, I do not carry this fandom to excess. Cars, if they do not overdo it, can look very well with curves, and so can smaller things like rubber balls, and larger things like the Cotswolds, and I have no objection to their remaining just as shapely as they are.

Where I get fed up with curves is when they feature in place of sharp angular corners in operating systems or application windows. I do not see the need to take a perfectly good, sharp, crisp line, and spoil it by filing off the edges.

I can accept that we don’t all want the glory days of DOS back (and, actually, since I’ve only just discovered Tab-complete, I was probably never a very efficient DOS user, since I’d type things like “Copy a:\work\eng\chau1.rtf c:\jta\work\eng\xwrk\chau1.rtf” out in longhand every time, which, in retrospect, may not have been the fastest way to do it, and which is certainly slower than “click, Ctrl+c, alt+tab, Ctrl+v”. But do we really have to have curves?

Has there been some study done that “found 63% of people found curvy edges instead of corners made them less afraid of computers,” or something? Or are you developers just doing this to annoy everyone? I’m curious as to where and why this came to be inflicted on us all. (Well, me, specifically, but everyone else seems to have it, too.)

Bloody WordPress is doing it, an’ all!

*Cite me! I was the only quote JTA could think of that involved corners, and I feel lonely and innapropriate!

I’m getting up again in the morning…

…Which is why it’s a damn shame that I’m really vey drunk right now. *sighs*

I know I’m very drunk because I just walked back from Spar, with a bag of delicious pork scratchings in one hand, and a loaf of indifferent Spar bread in the other (for breakfast) and singing (just about under my breath, I’m not a complete spanner), singing, as I say, Fairport’s Time Will Show The Wiser, which my Zen dug out for me, which I can promise you I’ve not sung along to since, uh… well, the VIth form, I guess.

The problem here is entirely my failure to say “No” to other people (I can say no to myself like a demon, for what that’s worth). In this case, the fault lies with Dan, who not only bought me further beer so as to be able to tell me more about Midori (I asked. Damn you, El Reg!), but then also kept pouring his beer into my glass, so as to speed the Drinking Up once the Ship decided they wanted to go to bed.

(Ship and Castle: Draging JTA out of Sobriety since 2003.)

Work continues to go well, and be fun, as I’ll expand upon in a proper sober post (when I’m not just killing time by drinking water and trying to get the QWERTY keys to stay in their appointed places), although I’ve got Manual Handling training tomorrow,which I did not 18 months back with my previous employers (note how carefully I don’t say it’s the Bod, there; this morning’s training on Data Protection evidently held right up to the start of these parenthesese*), so I anticipate a certain ammount of feeling like I know this already. Probably can’t hurt to do it all again, though. At least, I think that’s the idea.

Anyway, it’s getting StupidLate(TM). Metabolism that Won’t Let Me Be Hungover, don’t fail me now!

Night guys.

Edit: 7th August 2008; 08-02
O, and we got given cake. That was cool.

MMM, tea. ‘s All Good.

* Yeah. Drunk, but not completely mortal.