(no subject)

This morning's readings: a little history of typography, some selections from http://blog.pamandphil.com/ , and some exploration of Zillow in light of the news that there could be more price drops in area home prices.

The blog is a record of a couple's life in India which reminds me how depressing my brother's first stories of life in Beijing were. There is a little wonder and delight at this point, over six months into their stay: the weight of being strangers in a strange land comes through. I wish i could have made the site take me back to the beginning, but the calendar navigation and URL hacks all took me to the current page.

The news story about housing prices -- http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14368647?nclick_check=1 -- led me to go look at house prices for the first time since they were priced with imaginary money. I still have a hard time looking at a house and believing the price, partly because i still remember the awe of six digit homes with IBMers started migrating to the RTP. Then there were the prices of the glorious Victorian mansions in very depressed West Philly.



I dunno -- these prices might be reasonable now, but sorting my heart and energy, i recognize this is not the way to shepherd my resources at this time. The cost of renting in a place that does me a great deal of good still seems a bargain compared to the monthly payment on a place i could imagine affording.

I value my mental health highly.

This may not have been the best way to spend my morning hours, but i am recovering from yesterday's sugar binge. I may not be prepared for the day, but i do have good energy.

Thanks to @Whump and via @skud

So, how do you get to a social networking site you use with moderate frequency, say once a week or more? Apparently, there's a large number of people who go to google and type "facebook login." Apparently, a large enough number of users clicked on a blog post about Facebook's partnership with AOL and a planned interconnection between AIM and Facebook. (I can't decide if i don't want or have just given up caring.)

Upon landing in this blog post, the users hoping to log into facebook are confronted by the UI of the blog. The comments sections supports "logging in to leave a comment" with OpenID (so you could use your LJ handle) or Facebook connect (or Twitter or Movable Type or TypeKey. What, no Google OpenSocial?!).

The Lost Facebook Sheep then manage to log in using the commenting fields and have left comments like

"You reallllly don't want to know what I think. I was doing pretty good until now. I want a nice EASY login like I had before!!!!!" "It's no fun when you break my toys.Very bad move on facebook part." "i was just getting used to useing the old one why do you guys change it we liked it the way it was please put it back. thank u"

In short, in the comment from someone at ReadWriteWeb, "people are doing Google searches for 'facebook login' and coming upon RWW. They see the FB Connect button* and assume that RWW is the 'new Facebook.'"

The FB connect button is to illustrate the post Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login. It's now just a Facebook logo and there's a warning in the article. The warning has not stopped the comments.

But then there are comments like "I just promoted this search result on Google. Doing my part to immanentize the Eschaton." [here]

Captain Obvious concludes, "It's like a digital kiddie-pen that prevents the intertube impaired from falling down the stairwell of social media."

More charitably, "This is a fascinating insight into what a scary and mysterious place the internet is for many people. They find their familiar paths and stick to them. Even if that path involves Googling Facebook. It's also a rare intersection of two entirely different types of Internet users. Wow."

I did do a small experiment and logged out of FB. Facebook's login page is designed for a 1000 pixel wide screen. At 600 pixels wide, the login boxes are not visible.

So folks on older computers, older monitors, large text, may be first trying facebook.com -- even following the "click here" of the warning -- and may still be mystified. See comment 114, "The new interface has some kind of atlas-like graphic with icons that look like little people with dotted lines between them. Tried clicking on those but they don't do anything. Where do I enter my password for authentication, that is a challenge." That's what is on the left 600 pixels of the facebook page, the text entry boxes are to the right of the 600 pixels.

Perhaps the warning text should be updated to say, "Click here and scroll the browser window to the right." (Or is that to the left.)

(no subject)

Today was "Distract myself with social media day," in that i tried Google Buzz in the afternoon, adding a passel of folks for whom i had gmail addresses (but not everyone, and in a somewhat random manner), and then later i had to dissect what was going on with the Facebook login weirdness (see previous post).

I suppose the Facebook analysis should count as work, as authentication and authorization are what i'm specializing in, these days.

I was cold today, as i complained to everyone. After two cups of hot cocoa (and two pots of tea and lots of hot water) i finally warmed up. Or was it because i cranked the heat & closed the blinds? My lungs are still gummy, and "phlegmatic" ought to be an appropriate description for me with all the clearing of my throat and other respiratory passages. I seem to be disproving the medieval medical principle regarding phlegm as of the four bodily humors, "believed to be associated with a calm, stolid, or apathetic temperament." I wasn't calm about a staffing situation. I suppose i *was* "apathetic" all day. Definitely pathetic.

I have to write the Quaker LGBTQ concerns group and am stalling. I need to write my brother back about his couch surfing visit Friday & Saturday. It helps that i think he can understand the filthy kitchen floor and our obliviousness to stuff other than our work. I dunno. (lola_kristine, has he ever told you how filthy our place is?) The laundry -- tons of sheets and towels that accumulated while we were under the weather -- is still undone. That, at least, is something i can throw money at.

I did work on some small Continuing Effort projects. I made a tiny loaf of bread from the premixed batter. I scanned more of the childhood ephemera in a model where i changed what was on the scanner when i was walking by it for some other reason. I scanned into Readerware the four books my mom sent while watching a Sherlock Holmes.

Sigh.

I have just remembered i used to imagine an arch-nemesis who would try to foil my plans by screwing up technology. Christine and i called her 35merelda. Apparently, i've never shared her name in this blog (or on any digital file on my computer). I would tag things with 354 and 354defeat.

I might ought to bring that practice back.