Author Archives: paulschreiber
Getting to Consistency
I just found slides from the SXSW Interactive Panel I moderated back in 2007. Making software predictable and consistent makes it much easier to use. This session will explain UI consistency and point out examples of failures and their consequences. We’ll discuss when it’s appropriate to break consistency, and how to build tools and process …
Jeff Potter’s new web site
Jeff Potter, author of the forthcoming (O’Reilly, June 2010) Cooking for Geeks and creator of out of service now has his own web site. (Yes, This post is mostly for Google.)
They don’t make things like they used to
Last year, I stayed with a friend in north Austin during SXSW. A bike was the best way to make the three-mile journey downtown. I had a few options: Renting I called Bicycle Sport Shop and a couple other stores. The problem is that people rent bicycles as entertainment, not transportation, and they’re priced accordingly. …
America’s best defense against suitcase nukes
Think your airline joining Star Alliance helps you?
Last fall, Continental Airlines joined Star Alliance. Since I have most of my points/miles with Air Canada’s Aeroplan—also a member of Star Alliance—I thought that would be good news. It’s not. There’s no way to combine points from both programs to get an award, and no way to move points from from one Star Alliance …
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When to buy a refurbished Mac
No, I’m not going to tell you when during the year to buy a Mac (“not the week before WWDC”), but I am going to share a neat trick. Tragedy of the commons, here we go. Apple’s online store has refurbished Macs for sale. These are often a very good deal — today’s selections range from …
Photos make it all better
“She would only have sex with me when her ex-boyfriend was taking pictures.” “It wasn’t cheating as long as someone was taking pictures.” From Porchlight‘s La Petite Mort, February 19, 2010.
Adobe doesn’t think LGBT exists
Handling Rails errors: custom error pages, logging, notification
I wanted to improve error handling In my Rails applications. Specifically, I wanted three things: a custom error page that matched the site's design the errors to appear in the error log (production.log) email notification of server errors Note: these steps are for Rails 2.3.2–2.3.8. Other versions may require different instructions. Custom error page Normally, …
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