Greenies Blog

Over the past few months I tried to get used to Ubuntu. I had some nice experiences, but far more bad ones. To be honest, some of these problems resulted in exotic hardware I use or my desire to use the latest versions of software. Some of the things that did not work right could have been avoided, whould I have been satisfied with Ubuntus’ standard appearance and functionality.

Mind you, I am not talking about the geeky tweaking of Ubuntus’ underlying parts (of which I only scratched the surface upto now). I am talking about Ubuntu in general.

I have been an Apple user for some years now and coming to Ubuntu was a shock to me. Wherever I looked, Ubuntu lacked the usability that OS X provided. It started right with the system-preferences, the first thing a kind-of computer-savy user might want to look at. Not only are Ubuntus’ preferences spread over dozens and dozens of different applications, but they are also spread in two different menus (Preferences and Administration). That [b]might[/b] have been acceptable, would there be any logic behind it. But there isn’t. I can understand that “Disk Utility is in “Administration”, but why “Appearance”, “Users & Groups” or “Printing”? Why “IBus” in Preferences? Is it [b]really[/b] something I have to set preferences for? And what the heck does it do?

Which leads me to the next point: The lack of (proper) information.

People have been stating for years that Linux is “ready for the desktop” (which probably means “for the regular user”). I’m sorry, but given the amount (or the lack of) proper information, I have to strongly disagree. I won’t tell you how many hours, days and weeks I have spent to find information about certain aspects of Ubuntu. Which involved heavy usage of google and IRC.

True, using google isn’t exactly rocket science, but actually finding what you’re looking for is (at least for regular users). I am sure as hell that most regular users would be completely lost with most of the issues that may occur with Ubuntu, just because they don’t know the term they should be looking for. Some may say that users could also ues IRC. And it’s true that once you know where to look, you can find a more or less friendly bunch of helpful people. But: “regular user” (meaning not computer-savy) and IRC? Are you kidding me? The best I can imagine is they are able to open a webchat on firefox. But installing an IRC app and finding out how to actually use it? That’s laughable.

Which leads me to the next issue:

One thing I hear all the time is that Open Source is great because there are lots and lots of applications available. Which is true. Again, the issue is not the available information but how to find it.

Does anybody [b]really[/b] believe that “regular users” would look for something called “Synaptic Package Manager” to find new software? And even if, does anybody [b]really[/b] believe that they would know what to do with it? Would they even [b]get[/b] how to find what they’re looking for? Sorry, but I do not believe that. Not at all.
Just recently Ubuntu seemed to realize that, when they included the “Ubuntu Software Center”, but even this application is not nearly as intuitive as it could and should be.

Now, let’s say the user has found out how to install new software and actually found something that sounded interesting enough (given that the description included enough non-geeky slang, so they could make sense out of it). What would they find after they installed it?

Well, the first thing they would find is:

Nothing.

Absolutely [b]nothing[/b] tells them that anything has changed on their system. There is [b]no[/b] difference on the desktop, no visual clue at all and [b]no[/b] information where an app was installed. If they are clever enough, they may find the application in one of the sub-menus of the “Applications”-menu. Which often seems to be pretty unintuitive decision as well.
Let’s take OpenOffice as an example. I can understand the reason behind putting “Openoffice.org drawing” into the Graphics-section. But: There is also an “Office”-subsection as well. [b]Without[/b] an entry for “Openoffice.org draw”. How about putting an app into a submenu that actually fits (and not only [b]one[/b] but into [b]all[/b] that fit? Or even better: Let the users decide where applications should be put (during the installation-process)? All of that would be better than forcing the users to edit these menus by hand. Which, imho, is just [b]another[/b] example of pretty bad usability. Adding an application to the menus is a pain in the ass, imho. In the worst case it involves re-opening Synaptic, looking for the application and checking which files got installed where.

Why should users be forced to hunt for an application they just installed? This, imho, is a major flaw of all the installation-mechanisms on Ubuntu. The users should be told where exactly an application has been put to and how they can access it. It should be a mandatory part of [b]each[/b] installation.

But on to [b]another[/b] point:

Let’s say, users have finally found the app they just installed, what are they presented with next?

The answer in many cases is: An ugly (geeky) mess. So many of the apps I have tried out seem to compete for the price of “most unintuitive application”. Functions are hidden in obscure sub-sub-menus, sometimes with even more obscure names. If they’re there at all. Sometimes preferences can only be changed by editing some freakingly hard to find preferences-file. Some things can’t be changed at all.

Well, I guess this lack of conformity is the price of “openness”. I have talked about this issue in part in an earlier post, and part of the problem is that far, far too many applications seem to put regularly used functions in different menus. Some do not even provide a regular menu at all. And some (like tomboy) [b]do[/b] provide a menu, but (like in tomboys’ case) it’s “hidden” in the “right-click-menu” on its tiny icon in the upper-panel. And even if the functions are put in the same menu, they may have different names. Like, some apps call their “Quit”-function “exit” or “close”. While this is “technically” correct, it is a bad decision when it comes to usability. Using anything else than “Quit” in that special case doesn’t only make it harder for regular users to find the function. It also makes it ambiguous. What does “Close” mean if I have more than one tab open in an application? Close the tab? Close the window?

My plea to developers is: Use “Quit” for gods’ sake! It’s the established term! The same goes for “preferences” in contrast to “options”. And do not bury such things in an obscure sub-menu, but look how most everyone else does it and do it accordingly!

Even Nautilus, the most important application at least for the regular user, suffers from this problem. Have you ever tried to change the columsn that are displayed in its file-listviews? If you have and didn’t find it: It’s in “System/Preferences/File Management”. Wtf!?! File-management? How about putting it in the “Appearance”-prefs, because, after all, this is what it does!

I guess I will stop now, even though there are a few more issues I have, especially when it comes to the “possibilities” of tweaking the look of Ubuntu (another thing that probably only geeks should even consider to do, at least when it comes to creating own themes).

Goodnight.

Hello. First of all, this will be a very pessimistic text, so be warned.

Today, after reading another interesting article in the magazine “National Geographic” I came to another conclusion that took a long time to be developed: I despise western culture, as it is today. And I think that it would deserve to come down for all its’ flaws and failures.

It is western culture that has lead to hypocritical assholes whose only concern is the money they have on their bank account. People who sacrifice human rights without any doubts. Western governments that destroy other countries for nothing else but greed or, even worse, the belief, to be a more advanced country than another and therefore have the god-give right to turn a country upside down, no matter how many lives it takes. Gouvernments which think that the western culture is the only valid way to go and that every other country has to follow their hypocritical way of life.

Sting once sung “History will teach us nothing” and that seems to be the only thing that history actually teaches. Despite knowing it better, we *still* kill other animals in the millions, we *still* kill other countries’ peopls for stupid reasons and we *still* think that our hypocritical way of life is the best there is.

I know, some will disagree with me and will point out the “good” things Western society has created. But, the question is: “When” were things like human rights expressed? Shouldn’t it make us doubt, that these things aren’t inventions of any recent government? Can we really be proud on what “Western Culture” has achieved, when all the good things we seem to rely our society on are things that have been invented centuries before anybody of us had been born? Can we really be proud on the fact, that most of us ridicule those glorious rules each day we live? And that so many of us cheer to our leaders, who, in my eyes, would be regarded as nothing but the lowest criminals in other societies for what they do?

I know, some (if anybody but me reads this blog, heh), will think I am too pessimistic. And maybe I am. All I can say that I am sick to my stomach about the way western culture has developed. And it gets worse everyday, when politicians and companies as well become more and more of tyrants who think that normal people are nothing but slaves without any rights. “Bow down and shut up”, this seems to be the way, our glorified western society develops. We are being told, what we are allowed to read, what we are allowed to say, how we should live our lives like ants and swallow every stupidity our leaders throw at us.

Let’s face it, western society is built on millions of gallons of blood of our and other countries’ people. And it’s not the leaders’ blood that has been spilt. And despite all the scientific advancements we had during the last years, western society has become worse and worse in that regard. In my eyes, so called democracy as it is today is nothing but a bad, blatant joke. And even worse is that most just do not seem to care or even notice it. So many of us are indeed like horses with blinders, not better than religious believers who follow their leader blindly. We ignore virtually every fact around us that shows how western standards have been perverted and turned into its’ opposite.

You know, sometimes I think that it would be best if a big comect would come down and would destroy this virus that is called humans. There *must* be a better way of living than our glorified western society, but I seriously doubt that the human kind as a whole is able or even willing to change. End of story.

Hi all,

meanwhile I am kind of used to Ubuntu (though currently the PC is sent back due to what is most probably a hardware-failure). And while I still think that Ubuntu is far, far behind Apple when it comes to usability and other areas, I really don’t see a way for me to return to OS X. The reason: Apple itself, or better their behaviour regarding their Big Brother-like censorship in their appstore.

First of all, I love OS X, I really do, and the iPhone looks like possibly one of the most user-friendly gadgets made so far. But despite all of this, I think, the “price” I have to pay for Apples’ products is just too high.

While I never developed anything for the iPhone or iPod-touch, I have been annoyed for Apples’ dictatorship, its’ arrogant, usually illogical and incomprehensible behaviour, when it comes to disallowing apps to show up in their store. But this last thing they did (throwing out lots of apps with possibly sexual content) does it for me.

Not for the first time, Apple set up an highly discussable rule. And not for the first time, it did not even have the guts to follow their own rules!

While Apple wants us to believe that it is following requests of annoyeed women or worried parrents, that’s clearly not the case.

Obviously, in Apples’ eyes, showing boobies is okay, if your company is named “Playboy”, but it’s not, if you are a no-name developer. Huh?!?

Well, Apple, this is what I think about you at the moment:

Sorry Apple, but all you did in my eyes, was to show me what a totally hypocritical company you are. Seriously, currently I think your behaviour is nothing less than disgusting. Contrary to what you seem to think, it is not your job to teach me or anybody else moral standards. And even if it were, I think that you suck at doing so! Or, to say it in a clean language (let’s not forget, there are women and children out there who obviously get the shock of their lifetime when they see naked breasts): Apple, you have failed big time.

There are far more competent persons out there for teaching me moral standards, and I think most of us are able to find our own rolemodels, thank you. You, in the contrary, seem to think that your users are mindless idiots, who can’t make this decision.

But even if we can’t, it’s still not your job to teach us, Apple. And finally, I deeply believe that if I buy hardware, I am the only person in the world to decide what I do with it and what not.

Thanks, Apple, this will make my decision far easier to abandon your products from my shopping-list in the future (and to save a whole lot of money for not having to buy artificially and unnessarily crippled hardware anymore). And as long as you don’t change this behaviour considerably, your oh-so-shiny-products can go to hell.

Hi again,

I have been “playing around” with Ubuntu for maybe half a year now an it may seem a bit bold to state that I could teach the open source community what they’re doing wrong or where they have failed upto now. Anyways, I want to point out one specific point that is *highly* annoying, and this point is “consistency”. I guess I have to explain that a little more:

Coming from OS X, I remember one thing in particular that I liked about working with it. It’s the consistency in using applications. There are a few things you can rely on when using OS X in as much as maybe 99% of all the cases:

1) Shortcuts

On OS X, I can be almost as-sure-as-hell, that the key-combination of “Apple-Q” quits an application, for example. The same goes for other *very* common shortcuts, like “Apple-X” for “cutting”, “Apple-C” for “copying” or “Apple-V for “pasting” stuff. This is not true for open-source apps and it is a *very* bad thing imho.

The second part of “consistency”.

2) The position of certain menu-items.

In fact, I forgot two important menu-entries within OS X-applications. One is “Help” which is always found (if I remember right) on the rightmost-menu of an application and is most always accessed with “Apple-h”. The other one is “Preferences”, which (I think) is always in the leftmost main-menu-point and is most often accessed with “Apple-,”.

The point I wanted to make is: Even if one does not use these Shortcuts, on OS X one can be sure to find the Preferences in the same menu in almost every application. The same goes for the Help-function.

—

Yes, one can state that because of the nature of the open-source community, such a standard can’t be forced, but I think that’s untrue. The reasion why on OS X one can rely on these shortcuts is because Apples’ own functions automatically provide these shortcuts without the need for a programmer to specifically state that he wants it to have. If you use Apples own development-tools and use the standard menus that Xcode (Apples’ development tool), the shortcut is just there. This, imho, is what the Linux/Unix/Ubuntu-developers should do as well. A developer should not have to care for shortcuts for menu-entries that are as often used as Quit, Copy, Paste, etc. In fact, Ubuntus’ (or is it Gnomes’?) programming-libraries should provide a basic application-structure that already includes certain menu-items with an always consistent menu-shortcut, in always the same place.

While I do not like Apples’ paranoic tendency to try to control the users’ behaviour on too many steps, I *do* like the consistency of OS X. And *this* is definitely something, the open source-community should adopt, imho. Putting a certain menu-item in the same place in (almost) every application would be good for “newbies” or people who just do not like shortcuts, and using well-known standard shortcuts for commonly used functions would serve “geeks” who want to do things without the mouse. Until then, people in both groups will be annoyed by too many of these inconsistencies.

or

why the gaming industry destroys imagination

Hi all,

I guess after reading this article the one or the other may regard me as awfully old-schoolish, heh.
But I couldn’t care less .
Today, after a short conversation I realized what bothered me with a lot of “modern” computer games. It is that so many of them are destroying the players abilities to imagine. And there are three things I want to point my finger to, to illustrate my belief:

1) Graphics

Maybe “destroy” isn’t the right word. Maybe “hindering” is better. Todays’ games often hinder ones’ imagination to flow and grow. To explain why I think so, I have to go back in time many years…

My first computer was a C-64. It was released around 1982, was equipped with a whopping 1 MHz-CPU and its’ highest resolution was 320×200 pixels, showing 16 colours at the same time at best. If you look at the resolution of modern computers, you can probably imagine (if you *can*, heh), how tiny and blocky all the graphics on this old computer must have been. In fact, at least in the first few years of the C-64′s existence, so many games showed barely more than just a few obscure lines and weirdly coloured graphic-patterns. One had to use the own imagination to fill out the holes the graphics left in the world the game-designers created.

And this, imho, was the main reason for the need of using ones’ own imagination. The fact, that the graphics were so poor (though, on later developed games, graphic designers did brilliant jobs in creating oh-so-beautiful graphics, sometimes one wouldn’t believe that this was the same computer as the one on which a few dozen lines (or pixels) represented game-characters just a few years back). But sorry, I am rambling, so back to the point.

The problem I have with soooo many modern games is that they leave absolutely no room for imagination. *Everything* is shown in high-detailed brilliant graphics or (even worse) shown in lengthy video- sequences that show even *more* details and fill out even more “gaps” in the story. And in becoming more and more sophisticated, the game graphics gradually removed the need to imagine *anything* because *everything was presented on a silver tablet*.

2) Stories

Again, back to my C-64 days. I fondly remember text-adventures from a company named “Infocom”, which quite likely produced a bunch of the best text-adventures *ever*. These games were interactive novels in the true meaning of the word.

3) Riddles

This aforementioned point is highly connected to Riddles. Nowadays, even if there are “adventures”, they have “riddles” that are so often illogical (meaning: one can’t possibly think about the solution by thinking logically, without trying totally ridiculous things or trying all possible “combinations” (which often means: just click endlessly on everything you find until something works). Or, the other bad possibility, the riddles are laughably easy, so one can just run through and the game is over too fast. Now, I certainly know that especially the last point can’t be fulfilled satisfyingly for *everyone*. Tough puzzles could be way too tough for an adventure-newbie, but back in the times of the C-64 there was enough variety for everyone. Nowadays it seems, about the only type of player that is satisfied is the action-oriented type (and don’t tell me that looking for secrets in Doom or similar games is on the same level as solving a riddle in an Infocom text-adventure game. It’s not, it’s not the same level of complexity and it’s not even playing in the same *galaxy*, imho. And you do absolutely not know what you are talking about, sorry).

So what does all of this rambling boil down to? The thing is: I miss games that let my imagination flow, I miss games that provide a sophisticated story that truly represents the electronic equivalent of a books’ novel and I miss riddles that I can solve by thinking logically (or “logically” in the context of a game, meaning that ridiculous actions could be “logically” right because of a certain game-scenario).

That’s it, now tell me what an old fool I am, not appreciating nowadays oh-so-stylish game graphics and fast-paced action, heh.

Hi all,

this is a quite sad post for me. My old iMac G4 has died and as I didn’t have the money to buy a new Mac (and wanted to give Linux a try anyway) I bought myself a (relatively) cheap PC and put Ubuntu on it.

So far, my experiences are not that bad. The amount of software is surely impressive and all of it for free. But, quality isn’t the same as quantity and (while I have only used this Ubuntu PC for a few days now), I think many of the Apps I have been using on the Mac are far, far better in terms of usability than what I have found on Ubuntu. Not to speak about OS X itself. While I highly disliked some aspects of OS X, the user-experience (imho) is far, far better than the one with Ubuntu, as well.

At the moment I am a bit biased. I want to give Ubuntu a chance and see if I can get used to it. Though I have a slight problem with that approach. On OS X I felt “at home”, things “just worked” 99 percent of the time. Linux/Ubuntu, as much as it may be advertised as that, just isn’t in the same league, imho.

To be honest, I do miss OS X (and all the great software available for it), more than I thought, while using Ubuntu. Maybe enough that I will save my money to get a cheap macMini sometime, I don’t know.

That brings me to the main purpose of this post. No Mac means no widgets, meaning at the moment I am unable to develop (or better: to test) my widgets, so for the time being, there won’t be any new versions. There are apps that are said to be able to run Dashboard-widgets on Ubuntu, but so far I didn’t get any of them to work right.

That’s all, folks.

Hello alle zusammen,

nachdem ich endlich in der Lage war, mich wieder ein bißchen meinen Widgets zu widmen, gibt es eine neue Version vom “Aktienkurse”-widget. Abgesehen von kleineren internen Änderungen gibt es zwei interessante Änderungen:

- Die Liste der Aktien ist jetzt alphabetisch sortiert.

- Das Widget ist tatsächlich wieder funktionsfähig, was nicht mehr der Fall war, seitdem die entsprechende Seite geändert worden war, von der das Widget seine Daten bezieht.

Es gäbe sicher noch viel zu verändern an dem Widget und vielleicht bin ich ja sogar in der Lage, mich dem Ganzen in Zukunft wieder etwas intensiver zu widmen. Also Vorschläge am Besten an mich direkt oder als Kommentar zu dieser Nachricht hinterlassen. Bis dann.

Und hier der Download-Link: Aktienkurse-Widget

This goes to all the kind people who have written to me in the past and were probably annoyed that they did not get any answer. *sigh*

I excuse myself for not answering and not releasing anything. All I can say is that (amongst other things) I am suffering from something that could be called “perfectionism”. While I did not release anything, I was working on my widgets and made some progress, but in the end, what I achieved rather frustrated than motivated me and so I finally gave up for a long time, feeling that I can’t come up to my own standards. I am trying hard to overcome what is merely (or solely?) a problem of my own way of thinking and would love to release something new as soon as I can. And I will start soon to answer some emails, even if it might be far, far too late. Again, sorry to all of you, who have taken your time to send me an email and did not get any answer.

nothing new on the widget-front, though I am seriously working on one, and this is giving me the creeps, mainly because of design-issues… But, speaking of that, I found that there aren’t many wordpress-themes with a darker attitude….which is bad because I am looking for one :-/ What I’d like to have is something lovecraftish, think about something in a creepy, victorian-style, that might look like a black-metal fence in front of a house like the one from psycho…found a few like dark ritual (which comes kind of close to what I’m looking for), decayed or halloween 4.By the way, the one I am using while writing this is called Sorroful Skies and I like it

Beware, this will be a rather long text and it is solely my own opinion I express here

Okay, another headline that might not sound too nice. But I will do my best to explain why I think that nowadays computers suck.

I should say that I’ve used computers for many years. The first one was the infamous C-64, a computer without a mouse, windows or millions of colors but with a 0,9 MHz-CPU and a tape-drive as data-storage. Well, to be honest, I only used the tapedrive on my cousins C-64. I was one of the first in my town who did buy it with the (infamous as well) 1541-floppydrive. And guess what: I had a wonderful time with it (okay, I played on it most of the time, but I was curious also and tried out the built-in basic. And the more I learnt about it, the more interesting it was. And that leads to the first issue:
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