Delete this

I can only guess that the reason Google did not make a delete button (you had to go to the dropdown menu) was that they didn't really want you to delete anything. Now... why wouldn't they want you to delete anything? I have no freaking clue and I have no intention of digging through their literature in an effort to understand such an inane idea. There are just emails that are not worth saving. Maybe they figured so long as it was archived and out of the way then it wouldn't matter if it was there or not. That's kind of how I (used to) treat all of the accumulated items I have at home. File it and forget about it. The only advantage Gmail has is that the search is very good, whereas with my files, it is not. Still... clutter is clutter. The lack of a delete button was a big complaint by nearly every Gmail user I imagine and for such a simple thing to fix I'm astounded at their lack of response to it. But now it's there thankfully.

In slightly related news, I've finally started getting spam on my Gmail account. It took more than half a year for the spam to start and for that I'm both thankful and impressed. Well there was some spam there already but that was my fault due to some web purchases and signups but those were sensible, controlable, identifiable, and filterable. Now the typical maddening garbage is starting to trickle in. There's no escape.

Meta meta

I feel like I'm getting bogged down with layers and layers of meta programming. I have programs that do things. Then I have scripts that run the programs that do things. Then I have scripts that run the scripts that run the programs that do things with different options. Then there are scripts to manage the myriad options and parameters. And just as that gets complicated I have to work with yet another wrapping of the scripts to manage the plethora of things to make sure the stuff has what it needs and runs correctly because by this layer it gets really confusing for all involved. But this new layer is every bit as confusing as every other layer.

I guess that's the history of programming.

So programs started out with machine code, 1's and 0's. Then came assembly which replaced the 1's and 0's with mnemonics for the instructions. Then came the mid and higher level languages which replaced the mnemonics with nicer and cleaner and more readable and one needn't know all of the individual steps to do some task. Then came the even higher level scripting languages to manage and glue together all of the various programs written in the higher level languages. And with it came systems of keeping tracks of arguments and parameters. Command line options and GUI's were made. And still more. Another layer after another to abstract and abstract until noone knows what goes on underneath. It's a bit of a maintainability nightmare all for the sake of making things more accessible. Ah well, there's a certain pleasure to it that goes with the pain.

Loading please wait...

There are a couple of sites that I find I would probably use more, but dang they're slow. MySpace and Friendster are a couple of places that I have accounts. Once in a while the fit strikes me to do some people browsing, mostly through link following of friend's friends and such. Those fits get cut short frequently because the bloody pages are so polluted with cruft and busy with ads and markers and such that it gives me a headache. I think the data lookup is slow to begin with but when you top it off with all the flash and wierdness it grinds to a crawl. I applaud their popularity and am impressed with the whole social networking concept but I wish they had more elegant page designs, including layout and content, not just loading efficiency. Another offender in my book was Ain't It Cool News but at least they got rid of that infernal font-size system, where more popular stories were displayed in increasing font sizes. Was an eyesore.

That's something I grew to appreciate the likes of Google which since its inception has generally had minimalist and cleanly layed out pages. The simple and efficient text-only adds are also a breath of fresh air compared to the days when most pages had rows and rows of huge long banner adds and one had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see the content, or worse, a link to the real content. But it seems to me that they also cared about speed. Their web-mail client is remarkable in not only its concept and user interface but sheer usability due to its speed. Until recently Yahoo mail was more of a burden to use for email, something I would only use in emergencies. I guess I've grown much more appreciative of the user viewing experience: elegant and attractive pages that load quickly.

Another page that I frequent but find frustrating is Lifehacker. It does have a simple and clean presentation. But for the life of me when it loads I get an eye-ache. I'm not sure if it's just my Firefox installations or not but it loads slow and with the few ads popping around the screen as things get filled in, and even afterwards. It's the page instability upon loading that is more the issue. They also keep relatively few posts on the same page and furthermore when you click next and previous links, a third of the posts or more are often the same posts as the original page, causing me to have to click next/prev more often and thus experiencing the loading page instability all the more. I hope someone there fixes that eventually, I do like that site a lot.

Wish it away

I love those little clever pop-culture references, when I get them which I like to think I usually do. Some clever game designers put in a feature where misbehaving avatars are "wished into the cornfield" in reference to the Twilight Zone ep.

Zeitgeist

The axiom of the age: If it's not on the internet then it doesn't exist.
The problem of the age: How to search and find what you are looking for when it does exist.