Boris Smirnov's Little Blog

iPhone Connection

Now I that I have iPhone, hopefully I can post here more often. Somehow this tends not to stick and ihave long breaks in between posts…

Have not posted anything for a while

Have not posted anything for a while, due to being busy and distracted. Would like to get back once again and revisit this. I had a few interesting projects lately and good things are happening.

After almost 2 years I finally starting to like working with .NET, or rather figuring out how to do things my way easily.

Have been using plurk pretty consistently as well so I have been micro-blogging in a sence, just not in tumblr.

More later…

Website to Kiosk

I am working on a website project right now that due to the lack of time available will also be used as a content in a kiosk. I see a bunch of problems of using a regular website for in kiosk mode without  specifically programming/adding kiosk functionality, but it this case it needs to be done and we have to make best of what we have considering that.

One of the issues with that is that links that link outside of the section of the website as well as external links need to be controlled and/or disabled so the visitors of the kiosk would not wander off from the original page.

It is  pretty easy to identify those links using jquery, which is already on the page. The question is what is the best thing to do here, from the point of usability.  I thought of 3 options.

1.    Remove/hide the text of the link
2.    Leave the text but remove hyperlink
3.    Send the link to another page that would suggest that visitor should visit the webpage online to see the content of those links.  This could be done through thickbox kind of effect or a tooltip kind of effect.

It seems to me that   methods 1 and 2 present usability problems where links inside of paragragraphs when hidden or removed can create confusion for the user. For example if the link said to see something click here  and it is removed then the text stop making sense.  I believe 3 option is the best one for us andrather then going to another page I would use a thickbox or tooltip message telling user to visit website online to see the concontents of the link.

Can you offer any comments suggestions ?

Felon - mini review

Just watched this movie over the weekend. Really enjoyed it. Good story good actors and good acting. Somewhat unusual and surprising role for Val Kilmer.

Recommend it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1117385/

A step towards sostainable energy in every home.

This is exciting.  This article on MIT website is about the new way to use solar power, or rather a way to use it more like the plants. During the day using the power of the sun  and with some basic accessible materials splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen storing them and at night when sun is down reversing the process and combining it back into the water using a fuel cell.

This is quite wonderful news and an idea that could bring energy independence to any home. I am just affraid that somehow the big guys who would loose money on this would prevent the widespread use of the technology or find a way to make it prohibitively expensive.

Sources:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

X Files: I want to believe - Mini Review

Like someone said “I want to believe” it is good.  When asked how good of a movie it was I tend to say:

“It was an ok movie, but it was not a good X-files movie”

I am somewhat of an x-files fan and just watched the whole 9 seasons of the show last summer over a period of a couple of month and enjoyed it immensly. The show never really went bad after being on for so long and the last episodes of last season were quite good.

Since the mythology of the show was so good, one would expect the continuation of that and tying up of the loose ends or something of the sorts. Aliens or Sully’s and Moulder’s superi-ntelligent child, supersoldiers there are many cool things…No you get none of that… Instead, what you get is an extended “moster of the week” type episode which was not even all that great.

It was about  psychic convicted pedophile preist that has some kind of connection with one of his past victims and that victims partner trying to save him by killing people and attaching the head of dead guy on to them, it does not sound like a very good idea. But they pulled it of considering that.

It was okay for a strange detective movie, and it was good to see the M&S dynamic but I am afriad it was not good enough. And some of the themes in the movie were, to say the least, weird. I will not go into detail. I also heard somebody say that the phrase “i want to believe” was said too much through the movie, though I have not noticed.

Anyways, I am somewhat disappointed but it is not unbareble.

Batman Dark Night - Mini Review

Movie was quite good. Well developed charachters, good storylines, good acting. I am still convinced that Christian Bale is a best batman yet.

The movie was quite long and could probably have been split in two. I found it to be almost too long for my likes, but there was no time wasted the whole time it was action packed and kept me entertained.

I did have a couple of complaints the main one being the unrealistic make up of Harvey Dent/Two Face. I think they over did it with this one. I like the older more subtle version. The idea of somebody with face that badly burned walking around does not make sense, and the eye without an eye lid would very quickly dry up and be disabled. It might be a bit silly but it is how I felt.

Other then that movie was quite good and not disappointing. Joker is quite a different fish from the old movie, but I hear it is quite accurate to the comic book. I never read it so I wouldnt know.

Overall the movie is worth seeing.

MTA's systemwide nonacceptance of credit or debit...

Wha… Does this happen ?  Apparently… It took me an hour today to get from port authority to my work which is aroun 85st.  There were some train delays it seems but thats not what slowed me down.

I was trying to buy a metro-card and the lines were unusually long.  After staying online for about 10 minutes and getting to the MTA vending machine, I try to get a card using my credit card…watch “Processing…” for about 2 minutes then says cannot process… I try to run it as debit card, same thing…try again…same

I figure I will try another machine… Leave the line go back to the end of another. Stand in line for 10 minutes… while I am almost at the machine… one of the MTA employees is saying that there is a system wide something-rather so you cannot use neither debit or credit cards, only cache… well, thats a bummer, because all I got it my card…

And, couple of weeks ago I lost my wallet, this is a new card, and I do not remember the pin. Because being INGDirect, they send you a pin on peice of paper. I called my home to see if the peice of paper could be located…nope could not… Then I call ING direct and thankfully they tell me that pin is the same on the new card as the old one… that helps…

I ended up getting a 20$ card… but when I was standing online for the third time there were people trying to use their cards over and over again. I actually told one guy next to me that the machines were not taking the cards. It just crazy that they barely announced it, I am lucky to have heard it my self. The lines move slow because people do not know it is not working and keep trying to use their cards…

Talking about usability…