Ye Olde Blog has been Ye Olde Quiet As Hell lately. What have I been up to recently, besides redesigning this blasted website yet again?

That, pretty much. Very rough cut at the moment, don’t read too much into it. A few thoughts:

1. In no manner does it connect to Twitter, or will it, ever. I did flagrantly rip off the classic Twitter “What are you doing?” question, however.
2. I’m writing this in WPF, which is a marvelously fun technology. Prior to this I had written Windows apps in QT, FLTK, WinForms, and even good ol’ MFC/COM. I had pretty much resigned myself to unending pain each time I had to write a desktop app. (Maybe that’s what drove me to the web? Hmm)
3. (More like a 2b) WPF is really fast to develop in. I’m pretty shocked. Once I know more about what I’m doing, I could be pretty dangerous.

I’m signing off for now, however. I managed to sneak into the Cities XL beta, and I can’t wait to give it a spin. I grabbed mine via Massively (who juuust now ran out), but you can still grab some via CVG I believe.

-Scott

The recent Iranian election has kept me preoccupied the past few days. I can’t recall being so interested in the outcome of a foreign election, and that was even before the many forms of popular outrage against the results. Many videos and images have come from such protests, but this seems by far the best.

(via Huffington Post)

I know that I’m a hopeful, naive young thing, but I still find this immensely moving. Yes, the size of the movement is impressive, but take a closer look at the face of those involved. Far as I can tell, I see young and old, male and female, all coming together in a moment of unity.

Their situation is still incredibly dangerous and fragile, so I don’t mean to paint this as entirely roses and wine. I can’t fathom the courage required for such a thing from the reform candidates themselves all the way down to the protestors in the streets. But this certainly gives me hope, especially when creeps like Nick Griffin are elected to office in more open, less oppressive countries.

If you too are interested in following the coverage on this, I can’t recommend niacINsight enough.

-Scott

Recently I was caught up in a frenzy of mouseless-computing hysteria. While the dream of going mouse-free has yet to be (Microsoft CRM, could you be any keyboard-unfriendlier?), one of the pure joys of this journey has been stumbling upon Launchy. It’s a delightfully free tool for Linux and Windows that acts as an intelligent, configurable application & document launcher. It’s hot stuff.

I won’t go into the specifics of why it rules here – there’s plenty of other, better writeups of that on the net. I’ll simply offer as proof that within a week after I installed it upon my work computer, the Start Menu was deprecated on every machine I owned.

Instead, I want to talk about where Launchy is particularly clever – the marketing pitch. Launchy is open-source software, so it’s free to use without ever paying a dime. I had installed it, and merrily tottered along launching programs willy-nilly. After a few weeks of near-continuous usage, I hit Win-Space to bring it up, and there was a pause.

My heart skipped a beat. However, after a brief delay, the Launchy Donations page opened in a new IE window with the following, simple text:

Please help this poor grad student to put ramen on the table. I greatly enjoy developing Launchy, and I hope that you enjoy using it. It's free to use, but if you think Launchy is a worthwhile application, I would sure appreciate your support. This webpage will only appear once per installation of Launchy.

Thanks!

Josh Karlin

It took me a moment to register what was happening. If you think about it though, this strikes me as a great and relevant software model in the “everything is free” software age we live in. Disagree? Compare to the problems Launchy would have had with the traditional approaches:

• Registration-ware: This could have required a registration, either up-front or after some period. The downside of this approach is that knowing I’m using a time-limited version, or that I have to register in advance, is a massive barrier to entry. This is doubly-true for an application like Launchy - an “An Open Source Keystroke Launcher” is one of those products that fulfills a need you didn’t know you had, so the barrier to entry has to be as low as possible.
  
• Nag-ware: Launchy could have very easily entered a “Please donate” or “You are using an unregistered copy” reminder to every launchy window. The problem with applying something like that to Launchy is that, as I said, it’s solving a problem I didn’t know I had until it showed me. As a result, I need a little time to get familiar and comfortable with it, like a pair of new underwear. All that time, I’m being reminded to donate via an on-screen message. It goes from something I actively ignore (hey, I don’t even really know what this does, leave me alone kthxbye) to something I don’t even see by the time I actually appreciate the product.
  
• Disable-ware: This probably goes without saying, but when software I know and love shuts itself off, that generates anger – not the desire to spend money. Yet Launchy could have easily taken this path. Since Launchy’s usage (launches programs) becomes such an integral part of one’s computer habits, in a way this would feel like my computer had been taken hostage by Mr. Karlin in exchange for some PayPal donation. Again, I don’t think this model is appropriate for any kind of software, but I think that’s doubly true for something like Launchy, since it acts as a gateway to every other piece of software on my machine.

Now I’m probably not the first one to recognize this and I’m probably over-analyzing this just a bit. It comes down to this, really: the three approaches above almost never, ever work on me. But the gentle & innovative Launchy one-time reminder? Worked like a charm, even as the American economy is feeling a bit wobbly and throwing up over the rails of the SS Global Economy.

Clearly, Mr. Karlin has given his “business model” some thought here – perhaps more software developers professional and open-source alike should as well.

-Scott

It’s a telling time for the newspaper industry when even the grand ole’ New York Times is relying upon a “last man standing” strategy. Sadly, another newspaper had no such luck and so today the Rocky Mountain News called it quits, writing their own obituary. Sad stuff, and I wish those impacted all the best.

However, when you dig through the comments on that page (why do I always read comments?), one particular user “DrQuinnFan2009” took it particularly hard:

I am a huge Dr. Quinn fan and with the news finding out that the Rocky Mountain News is closing up shop makes me very very sad. Dr. Quinn was set in Colorado Springs right after the civil war and I can't remember if the Rocky Mountain news was mentioned during the show being that I've only seen the show all the way through only once but still it hurts and kind of hits me pretty hard. I am planning to move to Colorado in the future and knowing that a newspaper that was around before the civil war set in Colorado like in Dr. Quinn just makes me very very sad. I realize that I'm repeating myself but I just can't believe someone couldn't bail you guys out..Where is Dorothy Jennings when you need her the most ;)

I’ll get around to writing a real post one of these days. Perhaps. Until then, ta ta.
-Scott

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and thought as a child.

When I became a man, I started a blog.

citizenparker.com lives again.

-Scott