Mac user experience

From Humanized, a blog post by Atul Varma on what it's like to plug a USB keyboard and USB mouse into a Windows machine and a Mac. Here's Windows:

Each wizard required 3 clicks to get through. I had to go through 8 wizards in all, so that's a grand total of twenty-four clicks required to unplug my keyboard and mouse from one side of my computer and plug them into the other side. I'm not actually installing brand-new hardware here.

Now the Mac:

The first time I had to plug this keyboard and mouse into my Mac, I was floored. In the best-case scenario, I expected it to think for a second or two and then give me a reasonably unintrusive message informing me that I could use my USB mouse and keyboard. That would have been pretty humane.

But it did one better.

The Mac didn't tell me anything, because my mouse and keyboard just worked the moment I plugged them in. When you plug in a power cable or a pair of headphones into a computer, you don't get some kind of confirmation message from your operating system, because it's obviously supposed to just work — why should plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse be any different?

I'm planning to read these paragraphs aloud the next time I'm waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for a classroom Windows computer to detect my USB flash drive and tell me that it's ready to use.

Moleskine datebook icons

I'm on my second page-a-day Moleskine datebook and only recently noticed a change in the 2008 edition: the addition of two small icons on the bottom two lines of each page, useful to anyone tracking the weather.

Like the small hour marks running down the first thirteen lines of each page (from 8 to 20), these icons are handy if you need them, and unobtrusive enough to ignore if you prefer. That's good design.

Related posts
iPhone alternative
A Moleskine customer experience
Moleskine datebook review

Pocket address-book sighting

[Murvyn Vye (Captain Dan Tiger) and Thelma Ritter (Moe).]

"Look, what do you want from me, Tiger? Do I personally raise the price on hamburger and pork and beans and frankfurters? Is it my fault that the cost of living is going up? These are the prices as of this morning."

Moe's referring to the prices for the names of the various criminals in her address-book. As of this morning, the price of a "cannon" (pickpocket) is $50.

Pickup on South Street (1953, directed by Sam Fuller) has four great performances (Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, and Richard Kiley), three great fight scenes (in an apartment, a men's room, and a subway station), two great pickpocketings, and one address-book. The movie is available, beautifully restored, from The Criterion Collection.

More sightings
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
Moleskine sighting (in Extras)
Notebook sighting in Pickpocket
A pocket notebook in The Palm Beach Story
Pocket notebook sighting (in Diary of a Country Priest)
Pocket notebook sightings in Rififi
Red-headed woman with reporter's notebook

The brain on jazz

Researchers have been studying at the brains of jazz musicians:

The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions . . . .

The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.

Read all about it:

This Is Your Brain on Jazz (Johns Hopkins Medicine press release)
Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation (PLoS ONE)

Related reading
"Self-Reliance" and jazz
All jazz posts (via Pinboard)

(Thanks, Elaine!)

Victoria's Secret "too sexy"

Not from The Onion:

Victoria's Secret likes to ask in its marketing, "What is sexy?" Now the lingerie chain is trying to figure out, "What's too sexy?"

The chief executive of the brand known for its provocative televised fashion shows and alluring stores made an admission yesterday. In her mind, the brand has become "too sexy" — or at least the wrong kind of sexy.

"We have so much gotten off our heritage," CEO Sharen Jester Turney said in a conference call with analysts.

Read the rest: Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy (Wall Street Journal)

More "Not from The Onion" posts
Jesús Malverde
Outsider outsider artist
Reality trumps The Onion
Reality trumps satire
Reality trumps satire (again)
University of Wisconsin sues over W

Mildred Bailey, the stars, and us

Trombonology at Relative Esoterica has a wonderful post on the singer Mildred Bailey, born 105 years ago this past Wednesday. This post made me think of James Schuyler's poem "Let's All Hear It for Mildred Bailey!" It begins

The men's can at Café Society Uptown
was need I say it? Upstairs
and as I headed for the stairs I
stumbled slightly
not about to fall
and Mildred Bailey
swept by in a nifty outfit:
off-brown velvet
cut in a simple suit-effect
studded with brass nail heads
(her hair dressed with stark simplicity)
"Take it easy, Sonny," she
advised me and passed on to the supper club
(surely no supper was
served at Café you-know-which?)
A star spoke to me
in person! No one
less than Mildred Bailey!

I love the dowdy diction of this passage: the vulgar can next to the swank Café, the nifty outfit, the dressed hair, and of course, Sonny. You can read the poem here. I've taken the lines above from Schuyler's 1993 Collected Poems, where the punctuation differs slightly.

Schuyler's poem made me think of the various close encounters that my dad had when doing construction work in New York City and environs. He once met Doro Merande, who asked "What are you men building?" And he once said hello to Groucho Marx, who moved his eyebrows in response. I need to get a list. Until then, let's all hear it for Mildred Bailey, Doro Merande, Groucho Marx, and those wonderful people out there in the dark — i.e., us.

A related post
A poem for the day (by James Schuyler)

Related reading
Mildred Bailey (Wikipedia)
Mildred Bailey (MySpace, with four songs)

Leap Year card by Roy Doty

[Found at Boing Boing. Click to enlarge. ]

Related reading
Roy Doty

Un candidato luchando por nuestra nación

Mariachis for Obama. ¡Viva!

¡Viva Obama! (YouTube)
¡Viva Obama! with English subtitles (YouTube)

[Translation: A candidate fighting for our country.]

Levitt bankruptcy

Levitt, the company that built archetypal American suburbs, has filed for bankruptcy:

More than a half-century ago, Levitt helped to pioneer the whole notion of suburbia when it built Levittown, a post-war community of mass-produced housing in New York. Other Levittowns followed — in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico.

In recent years though, Levitt and Sons accumulated debt, and with the downturn in housing sales, its luck finally ran out. When the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, Levitt halted construction on dozens of projects from South Carolina to Florida.

Levitt Bankruptcy Leaves Homeowners in the Cold (NPR)

Related reading
Levittown (Wikipedia)
Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb (Peter Bacon Hales)
Slideshow: Levittown Through the Years (New York Times)

Jason Dockter, who blogs at insert title here, pointed me to this news. Thanks, Jason!

Chicago Style Q&A

Q. How do I spell MIKE in Spanish? I want to put it with a tattoo I'm getting. Thanks.

A. Unfortunately, my Spanish is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure it's "Mico." Let us know how your boyfriend likes it when it's done.

The Q&A section of The Chicago Manual of Style Online makes for good browsing.

[A more helpful answer followed the one above: "Note from our proofreaders, who won’t let us make a monkey out of anyone: If you’re serious, try Miguel."]