Scott Bush

It’s no secret. I love the Mac, my iPod, Apple, etc. So it’ll come as no surprise to anyone that I am excited about the upcoming iPhone and am thinking—like most people I know—about getting one. All the press about the iPhone, from blurbs on local TV news reports following its introduction at Macworld to spoofs on MadTV and spammy “free iPhone!” offers in your inbox, is delicious gravy for Apple. But why is that?

I’d argue that it’s design. Excellent design. Apple’s always been at the forefront of user-friendly interface design and industrial design that can doubles as art. It’s precisely this expection of greatness that has people excited. From what we’ve seen, this phone will be to the Smartphone/PDA market what the iPod was to music players and what the iMac was to tech-frightened soccer moms in the late 90s. It’ll just work and be powerful enough to put small form-factor mobile computing into the hands of the “everyman.” Blackberries and Treos may have made inroads with travely-weary executives (and outright geeks), but the iPhone is poised to bring those features to the masses through excellent design and intuitive interface.

PT Barnum said “there’s no such thing as bad press, as long as they spell your name right.” Well, the press (and pop culture in general) isn’t misspelling Apple or the iPhone. The wonderous device won’t even be available for five or six months yet but it already has a larger following than anything Nokia, Motorolla, or Samsung has ever released. (This claim can be verified by a non-scientific test: Ask any non-techy, middle-aged person who’s not been living under a rock the past few weeks what a “BlackJack” or “RAZR” is. Then, ask them what an iPhone is and compare the answers. I’d bet the rent money that more people have heard of Apple’s offering.)

I’m guilty of bias here, because if Dell announced a phone six months prior to its release and a flurry of media attention was devoted to it, I’d be annoyed. But luckily it was Apple, so I can be excited and happy instead.

Anyone worth his or her proverbial web development salt knows cascading style sheets (CSS) are the way to go to style content (and construct layouts, enable views for alternate medias, etc.). CSS employs “selectors” to target specific entitities in X/HTML, which can then be manipulated. (I’m glossing this over, of course; read any of the sites in my blogroll or Google CSS to dive into the ocean of CSS information.) Most people’s CSS use is limited the “big three” basic selectors:

1. Overriding HTML elements - Want to change the font for headings or the color of your page’s background? Add CSS rules for H1, H2, Hn and BODY.
2. Classes - Looking to group particular elements so they can be styled the same? Use a class selector, like .menu (note that period preceeding the class name, it’s important!).
3. IDs - Need to target a unique element, such as a footer or sidebar? IDs provide the means to do so. You’ll use a pound sign to select an ID in your CSS, like this: #footer.

Using these three alone get you pretty far, though CSS provides a number of more specific selectors wielded by the true CSS wizards.
The other day I was styling a simple log-in form for my organization’s wireless network. I’d increased the size of the username and password fields by overriding the INPUT element:

input {
font-size: 1.5em;
color: #006B0C;
margin: .25em .75em 0em 0em;
}

Unfortunately, the above rule also ballooned my form’s submit button, which was ugly. I knew there had to be a way to target a form’s button in CSS… and I found it:
input[type="submit"] { font-size: 1.0em; }
Note the bracket syntax above. It targets an element’s attributes, which was exactly what I needed for my form. I wanted big INPUTs, except when that input is a submit button (type="submit"). The same selector could be used to target links whose rel attribute is external, say.

My wife and I took my eight-year-old niece to the movies for her belated birthday present. It was her pick and she had her heart set on Happily N’ever After, an animated snoozer that tried to be Shrek but failed specatularly. As one IMDB user commented, “N’ever, n’ever see this movie”—I concurr. Honestly, I didn’t see all of it; bordem, darkness, and a late night mercifully rescued me from the trials and tribulations of Rick, Ella, the Prince, and other forgettable characters. How can such a colorful movie be so dreary?
This is the part of the blog entry where I’d talk about the film in greater depth. Seeing as how there was no depth and the story was as weak as a thrice-used teabag, I’ll simply question why well-known celebrities like Sarah Michelle Gellar and George Carlin bothered participating? Carlin must have decided that some quick cash was worth tarnishing his edgy-comic image by uttering the eight lines his character (the wizard) had. Of course, he may have had more lines during the parts I slept through.

Sometime last year I saw Ong-bak: The Thai Warrior and was severely impressed. The buzz was about this “unknown” guy from the Thai countryside, Tony Jaa, who was the real deal martial artist: no wires, fancy camerawork, or special effects necessary. (If you haven’t seen it, check it out soon.) Jaa’s moves are based on muay thai boxing, though (like Jet Li) he can easily switch styles.
This is even more apparent in Jaa’s latest movie, The Protector, which was released on DVD last Tuesday. I checked it out last night and wow. Wow. WOW. Simply put, Tony Jaa is this generation’s Bruce Lee. Jet Li and, to a smaller extent, Jackie Chan, are contenders but Jaa has an edge on them I think. My friends and I kept pausing the movie to exclaim “damn, did you see that?!” after each sequence. This is no JC Van Damme quality crap. Jaa drops knees, elbows, headbutts and devastating punches with nary a cut to be seen. In fact, my favorite sequence was a four-minute long fight scene up a large circular staircase. It was filmed with a steadycam and had to be the longest continuous fight scene in a long time, if not ever. Kudos!

The Protector’s storyline is weak, but who cares? It feels rushed, but who cares? It has sterotypical badguys whose motives are only briefly mentioned, but who cares? It is chockerblock full of intense, bone-shattering (and I do mean bone-shattering) action.

Jaa’s attitude (or at least what comes through on the DVD’s interviews) is remarkabley calm and humble. Keep your eye on Jaa—Ong-bak 2 is scheduled for a 2008 release.

I’ve been conducting a non-scientific usability test since, say, the early 90s. The subject is the humble microwave oven. Once a revolutionary device, their ubiquity today is matched only by their lack of decent design principles. A simple scenario explains what I mean:

New company employee retrieves his frozen entrée from the fridge and approaches the microwave. He stares at its buttons, scanning quickly in the hopes of preventing his new coworkers from thinking he’s a dunce. After an abortive attempt, a nice lady intercedes: “That’s for setting the clock. Just try pressing and holiding the number 3 button; that’ll put it on for 3 minutes.” He smiles gratefully and steps away to avoid irradiating his body… he’d like to have kids one day.

This man—and many others, including myself—aren’t dumb. It’s just that microwaves have become terribly unusable.

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Robert Maynard Hutchins stated: “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” I completely agree with this mentality: learning does not stop once you’ve recieved your diploma. With that said, explore some of the work I did while earning that diploma.

[ more to come... in the meantime, you can view my old portfolio. Just don't hold me accountable for its table-laden structure. It was 2003 and I didn't know better then ]