I`ve been bitching about ebooks for years.  The current business model for electronic books is akin to what the music business model was about 10 years ago, and the publishing industry is refusing to learn lessons of the past.  Cory Ondrejka, the co-founder of Second Life, pretty much summed up what I`ve been saying for the past 3 years - http://ondrejka.net/stupid/2010/06/27/1244-doomed-to-repeat.html

It is pretty sad that a parking meter needs to have video instructions.  Even if it weren`t in French, I`d have a hard time figuring out how to use it.  It would be cheaper to hire a good UI/UX designer to create an intuitive interface than to produce these monstrosities.

These bike rentals are all over Montreal - you can basically pick up and return a bike anywhere in the city.  What a great idea.  I`m surprised that other cities had not adapted something like that.

I just got back to my hotel after two days at the WHARTON UICONF 2010 conference in Philadelphia (http://web.wharton.upenn.edu/uiconf2010/).  This was by far the best conference I have ever been too.  The speakers were absolutely amazing.  The conference opened with a keynote by Don Norman.  Dr. Norman is basically one of the main reasons why I went into design and development instead of medicine.  In 1997, when I was a biology/premed major at the Old Dominion University, I took an intro to engineering class that had Don Norman`s Design of Everyday Things as one of the textbooks.   It just made so much sense and also changed how I looked at the things around me.  Dr. Norman`s speech covered the topic of living with complexity, which is incidentally the title of his new book that`s coming out in September.

I also finally got to meet Dustin Curtis, whose website and blog I`ve been following for the past year or so. Dustin is an amazing UI and UX designer and, as it turns out, a pretty good public speaker.

Today, while tweaking a web application that my lab has been working on for the past year, I got this weird error in Google Chrome.

That`s the most unhelpful error message I`ve ever seen and it doesn`t even begin to explain where the problem might be.  After going through all the steps suggested by the "Learn More" link (http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95669) I ended up reinstalling Chrome and the error went away.  Just goes to show, no one is perfect, not even Google.  Now I can use that as an excuse to write crappy software.  Awesome!

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn`t you say so?
There`s a support group for that. It`s called
EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
--Drew Carey

I have a good friend who is an amazing artist.  For as long as I have known him he wanted to be a book illustrator.  He certainly has the talent but unfortunately lacks the persistence and thick skin required to deal with criticism.  So, for the past seven years he’s been designing websites for a marketing company.  He is one of the unhappiest people I know.

For a long time, I resented being a software developer and was absolutely convinced that I made a wrong career choice.  Programming jobs can easily become tedious; even when I worked on interesting projects such as developing games, designing interactive websites or prototyping an app for a physics experiment, I always hit a point where looking at thousands lines of code became almost physically painful.

To entertain myself, I learned new programming languages, explored new technologies and occasionally got drunk and complained to anybody who would listen about how much I hated my career choice.

12 years, a dozen of programming languages and about a 100 projects later, I realized that I was looking at this all wrong.  Software engineering is one of those rare jobs that can be as boring or as exciting as you make it.

The best way to find the bright sides or programming is to meet with people who are passionate about their jobs/projects.  In 2008 I was “volunteered” to work on an interactive web application that involved a major Flash/ActionScript component.  Prior to this project, I’ve never used Flash seriously.  

For the first time in a long time I was excited about programming – a chance to play with a new technology is not something that’s very common in most software engineering jobs.  To get started with Flash, I read a few books, slept through a couple workshops and attended the FlashPitt conference (http://flashpitt.com).  

The presenters at FlashPitt truly inspired me – they worked on absolutely amazing projects and they were passionate about their work.  After sitting with my mouth agape through a few presentations I realized that the one thing that all these developers and designers had in common is that they made their jobs fun.  Instead of thinking of their jobs as time spent writing thousands of lines of code, they think of each project as a challenge, as a problem to be solved, as a chance to come up with a creative way to achieve a desired result.

That conference really changed my perspective – seeing how excited and how amazingly good these people were at their jobs made me want to be a better geek.  I started coming up with little projects that explored my creativity – building a Jack-in-the-box for my daughter, creating stop-motion animation, developing a navigation UI based solely on hand motions in front of a webcam and helping my wife make a “quiet book” (http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2009/06/finished-quiet-book.html).  

Doing all these things helped me see my job in a different light and actually enjoy debugging code once in a while.  Hanging out with people who genuinely love technology as a means for solving problems has been the greatest help and the greatest inspiration in my quest for being happier with my 9-5 job.  Of course, if it weren’t for beer, no one would ever be happy:)

House, MD really is the best show on TV.  Last night I watched the latest episode on Hulu and it mentioned cognitive pattern recognition software.  I ran a few searches on the subject and it turns out that there is a lot of fascinating research going on in that area.  Technology seen in "House" is far more advanced than anything that currently exists, but after reading a few research papers on the ongoing projects, the real deal does not seem to be too far away.

Alternatively, you soon you`ll be able to record your dreams.  Technology rocks!!!

Between my full-time job, raising my daughter, my photography business and grad school, I realized that I still had way too much free time on my hands.  So I decided to occupy myself with yet another project. 

As a photographer I have often struggled to find a good way to present my images as a story in a meaningful fashion.  It seems like today slideshows are a way to go, but the problem with a slideshow is that it’s too linear and offers limited interactivity.  In 2007, Jonathan Harris did a great job on his experiment with storytelling with a photo essay on Inupiat Eskimos’ whale hunting.  However, while Jonathan’s storytelling UI is great, I still found it a bit limited when it comes to telling stories that branch out, or stories that run in parallel to each other.

For the past few months, I’ve been going through the photographs I took for my Chernobyl documentary - a few of them can be seen on my photography website or on Flickr - and I realized that I really had three stories going at the same time.  Unfortunately, all of my attempts at designing a good and intuitive UI have fallen short of a good storytelling experience.  

That is why I would like to turn to you guys – if you went to a news website and wanted to look through a long photo essay that told multiple intertwined stories, how would you like to see it?  What type of navigation would you find intuitive to use?  What features would you like to see?  Do you have examples of websites that provide at least some of good storytelling functionality?

I would really appreciate if you could email feedback and you suggestions to dbabichenko@gmail.com

In the 1970s Soviet animation studios produced a whole bunch of cartoons that you cannot watch without being stoned.  Seriously, without some serious pot, a normal human being’s only reaction would be a very loud “WTF!”

One of my favorite cartoons of that time was called “Plastiline Crow” (plastiline is a type of soft modeling clay).  This cartoon had a catchy song that was essentially a weird parody of Aasop’s  fable about a fox and a crow.  I play this song for my 10-month-old daughter and she seems to love it. 

So, I decided to give it a shot and translate the song into English. 





Warning:  Have at least a double-shot of vodka before reading…

A few weeks ago I was approached by a potential client who asked me to develop software that analyzes images produced by digital CT scans.  In order to give him an estimate, I needed to figure out how much work would be involved creating all the required functionality, and if it would even be possible to do with a “slow” language such as Flex/ActionScript (the client wanted an interactive web application).

Luckily (or rather unluckily) I had a CT scans done fairly recently, so I contacted the radiology department at UPMC Presbyterian and requested a copy of my scans.  A day later, I stopped by their office and picked up a shiny CD containing some seriously spooky images of my skull.

At first, I was pretty excited.  I figured that I’d just pull all images from the disk, group them into proper views and try to write a quick-and-dirty algorithm that would compare appropriate images and mark difference between them.

As soon as I popped the disk into my MacBook Pro, my enthusiasm quickly began to evaporate.  There were no images on the disk, or at least I could not find any by browsing through the folders.  The viewing software included on the CD was for Microsoft Windows only, and since I did not want to wait to get to my office, I had to install a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac.

A couple of hours later, I was finally able to launch Phillips iSite Viewer, the software that came on the CT scan disk.  After another 20 minutes of poking around, I found out that there is no way to batch-export all the images – the software only allows you to do export images one-by-one.

Becoming increasingly frustrated, I ran a few searches on Google and found that I wasn’t the only one with this problem – lack of a MacOS version and an open file format have made Phillips iSite Viewer pretty much useless for quite a number of users/developers.  What’s even worse is that Phillips’ proprietary format prevents industry standard applications such as OsiriX from viewing CT scans from Phillips CDs.

I sent 4 emails to Phillips and did not receive a response. 

I understand why companies develop proprietary systems to protect their intellectual properties.  However, in this day and age, it seems pretty silly to cut out developers from building on top of your company’s product. 

I firmly believe that Apple’s policies on iPhone apps and the fact that users cannot upgrade hard drives and RAM in new unibody MacBook Pros will hurt Apple in the long run.  Similarly, all the current online e-book stores selling DRM’d books will learn their lessons the hard way. 

No matter how great the hardware is, if companies refuse to provide scalable software to go along with their products, they will eventually start losing users to more flexible systems.

Hey guys,  

I need a favor.  I`m doing research for my MIS independent study and I`d really appreciate if everyone could answer the following question:  

If you are looking for a new book to read, how do you research what book to buy/get from the library?  What sites do you use to do your research?  

If you could, please email your answers to dbabichenko@gmail.com

Thank you in advance,

Dmitriy

When I was 12, my best friend Eugene got a guitar for his birthday.  Of course, right away I wanted one too.  Since all of this was happening in the Soviet Union, simply wanting a guitar did not mean that you could actually get it.  The default state of store shelves was “empty” – sometimes you had to wait months or even years to find what you were looking for.

In any case, I finally got a guitar a year later, for my 13th birthday.  I was ecstatic.  I spent days in my room, practicing until my fingers literally bled.

Over the years, this guitar traveled with me all over the former Soviet Union – camping trips, summer jobs as camp counselor and even a few real gigs. 

When I immigrated to the United States, I left this guitar with my mom.  In 1996, I went back to visit my family.  By that time, I had a few much better guitars waiting for me in my Norfolk apartment.  However, since the rest of my family was getting ready to immigrate to the US, I knew that they would not be able to lug my guitar with them.  I could not bear to sell or give away my guitar, so I brought it back with me.  Let me just say that lugging a guitar on a 14-hour flight is not a lot of fun. 

A few years later, the guitar stopped holding tune; it was time to replace the tuning pegs.  Unfortunately, it was impossible to find tuning pegs that would match the holes in the head stock of my Soviet-made guitar.  A local pawn shop (where I bought my other guitars) gave me a number of a guy that they claimed to use for musical instrument repairs.  Not knowing much about guitar repair, I trusted the guy who said that he could modify the head stock by filling the old holes and press-drilling new ones to match standard American-made tuning pegs.

A few days later the “repair guy” called me and gave me a long speech about how my guitar was a cheap Soviet-made toy and that the neck was made from soft wood and that it cracked as soon as he started drilling.  I picked up my guitar from the guy’s shop and was truly shocked by what he did.

He did not fill the old holes.  Instead, he used a hand-held drill or a Dremmel to widen the existing holes to accommodate larger tuning pegs.  The vibration of whatever tool he used for drilling cracked the head lengthwise.
When I came home, I broke off the cracked part of the head and re-glued the whole thing.  I did not attempt to fix the butchered holes and reattached the old broken tuning pegs back.

The guitar was unplayable, but it still carried quite a bit of sentimental value.  That is, until a few years later my sister dropped it and broke off the bottom part of the neck, right where it attaches to the guitar’s body.
For the next 10 or so years, I kept my first guitar in it’s old beat up case.

Over the past few weeks, after reading Cory Doctorow’s Makers (http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Cory-Doctorow/dp/0765312794/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265424527&sr=8-1) I decided that it would be nice to do something with my hands.  When I was a kid, my grandfather had a woodworking shop in his basement and he taught me how to do everything from woodcarving to working a lathe. 

Since for the next few weeks I have a bit of a break in my photography business, I decided to spend my evenings restoring my fist guitar. 

Hopefully, I won’t destroy it completely.

Today I bought a Seagate 1.5 TB harddrive and was appauled by the amount of packaging that was used on that particular item and on electronics in general.

The harddrive is about 7in by 7in

The packaging is 13in by 15in.  WTF?  There is absolutely no reason to waste so much plastic, cardboard and foam to wrap something that small!

As a web developer I often find myself struggling with the following dilemma – how much power should the end user have over the look and feel of the applications that I develop. 

Most people would shrug this off as a non-issue.  After all, why should I care about a web application after I turned it over to my client?  I did the work, I got paid, I am done!

Two days ago I decided to look through and update my web design/development portfolio.  I looked through a list of applications that I have built over the last 10 years and thought it would be great to see if the websites that I created are still up and running. 

I was shocked to find out how many of the companies that I worked with are no longer in business.  What shocked me even more was how horrible some of the websites that I designed look today.  Before you accuse me of being a bad web designer, let me just say this – the aforementioned web applications looked good when I handed them over.  The mistake that I made was giving my clients too much power over content.

In mid-1990s, when the Internet became the next best thing since sliced bread, everyone decided that they needed a web page.  Anyone with access to Microsoft Front Page and a couple of horrible animated GIFs suddenly became a web designer.  Overnight, the system that was designed for sharing knowledge and information became clogged with spinning icons, blinking fonts and obnoxious colors. (Homer Simpson`s Homepage)

The amazing thing is that most of those monstrosities’ owners do not have bad taste.  I’ve been to homes of some of my friends, co-workers and professors who created green and pink blinking web abominations and did not see plastic sculptures, hula dolls or ugly garden gnomes that would indicate complete lack of aesthetics.  However, when it comes to the web, people tend to have this notion that if you use bright colors and giant blinking fonts you are more likely to get your message across. 

The really sad thing is that people’s tastes did not seem to improve over the past decade and a rather large percentage of website owners are still trying to convert the Web into a Las Vegas casino (read garish, loud and obnoxious).

Case in point – about a year ago, my business partner and I designed a very nice, understated and elegant website for a client.  Unfortunately I cannot include screenshots of the original (or the current) website since I don’t want a lawsuit on my hands.  But take my word for it, the website was top-notch.  The one mistake that we made is that the custom content management system that we developed to go along with the website allowed site’s administrators to change font size, family and color. 

They (the website administrators) took this as an invitation to change things like

Customer Testimonials

to

Customer Testimonials

After the aforementioned geniuses were done with the content, the entire website looked like the paints section of an art supplies store exploded all over my screen.  For a few seconds, I wanted to shut down my web browser for the fear of an epileptic seizure.

Once again, why should I care?

The first and foremost reason for caring is very selfish – with the way the website looks now I cannot use it in my portfolio – no employer or client in his right mind would hire me after looking at what has become of my work.

Secondly, the way this website looks might prevent me from getting freelance referrals.  The company that maimed my web application is well known in Pittsburgh.  Sadly, they think that their website looks good and they brag about it at conferences and trade shows.  When people find out that I was the one who created it, I doubt that they’d want to work with me.

Finally, my business partner and I put two months of work into that web application and it is really upsetting to see what some talentless hack did to our efforts.

Just look at the difference between Facebook and MySpace.

Facebook – clean, professional, easy to read, easy to navigate

MySpace – Garish, unreadable, impossible to see navigation, f***ing ugly!!!

Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, creators of MySpace, probably cringe every time they see something like that.  They have unleashed a monster that has grown and mutated in something that in most cases is truly offensive.

Now, let me ask again – should developers give clients/end users full control over content?

From now on, I think that in most cases my answer would be a big, resounding NO!

And if you think that I am wrong, just click on the links below.

http://belladesoto.us/
http://www.lingscars.com/