Intuitive UIs

A program is only as good as what people can do with it, so having an intuitive user interface is very important. I recently started using Adobe Premier Pro for some video editing (I have never done any video editing before), and it was very hard to get off the ground. I did not find the simple things to be intuitive. You have to drag and drop a lot of things, and the copy paste mechanism was not straight-forward. I had to learn these things from youtube and randomly messing around.

Sure they have a help section, but finding what you want without any knowledge of video terminology is pretty impossible. I wanted to look for something like "paste in another video", and that wasn't going to get me anywhere. I'm still not sure if there is a copy-section function that I was unable to find, I just copied the entire video, and cropped that.

So my point is this, all programs require intuitive user interfaces, because without them, they are useless until you dedicate a lot of time to learning them, at which point you should already be done with whatever you needed the program for.

Balloons

Balloons are interesting in that they don't really serve a purpose. People tend to buy them, blow them up, have them sit for about a day, then pop them. So what you are really doing is buying a bunch of trash that requires work to look good, and have the desired temporary happy-looking effect. But what is even weirder about balloons is that the longer you take to clean them up, the easier it gets. This is completely different from most forms of trash, where if you don't clean it relatively quickly, it can get much worse. But if you just let balloons sit, they lose air, and become much easier to dispose of.

Shopping Bag

In the immortal words of Jack "Penetrator" Lipton, "Shopping Bag, Shopping Bag, live your life in a shopping bag". I found these words to be quite true when I walked into my kitchen pantry today. There were probably hundreds of bags all over the floor. How did it come to this?

The answer is simple, people don't know what the heckfire to do with shopping bags. You get a whole cart of bags every time you go shopping, and you pass by the little bag return box, but never, I mean never, do you think before going shopping to return the bags. So they sit in some place in your house, forever. At my mom's house its between the fridge and the wall, at my dad's apartment it was over the cubbard, and at my apartment it is in the pantry.

So they accumulate, but never really take up enough space to force you to remove them, since they are so easily squished and squashed. You even think, I can use them as small trash bags, or to hold stuff for vacations, but you will never need 300 bags, never.

In my experience, the only time they are ever removed is when you move out of your apartment. And you do not go down the the grocery store to recycle them, you just throw them all away in a big dumpster, and the world hates you, but you don't care, you just want to restart you inevitable bag collection at your new place.

Groups in groups

I don't know if its a blessing or a curse, but I tend to get along with everyone, allowing (or forcing, depending on how you look at it) me to be in any sub-group of my group.

When in a group, either walking around, or just in a social situation that allows free movement without judgement, I often find myself having to find ways to leave one sub-group for another. It's not that I don't like the people I am currently with, its just I think I will have a better time, or a more interesting conversation with a different sub-group. This navigation is tricky business.

While walking around, there are two main places you can be that require tact, the front or the back. If you are in the middle, you can just slip into the front or back group without much notice. But if you are in the front, you must implore some tact to get closer to the back. There are a few options for this. The first is to simply walk slower, this can work if you are not in a conversation with the currently people near you, you are just walking. But if you are in a conversation, you need to get out of it, which I usually do by not talking for a while.

The second tactic is more complex, and it works for any position. You say you need to do something, or you tie your shoe. This allows you to exit the group entirely, which then permits you to re-enter the group at any position when you return. But be careful with this, as your current sub-group might get suspicious, and try to re-recruit you to their sub-group.

The final tactic (which should be used very rarely if at all) is to lose all subtlety, and simply stop, and forcefully enter the desired sub-group with an entry topic of conversation such as "so what are you guys talking about", or try to get that information from your current position, and have a leading question for when you arrive. You may be able to get a chuckle, or sympathy from your original sub-group by saying something like: "well, this is boring", or "I'm gonna go check out what they are up to".

If you are in the back, you need to make a more drastic change to get further up. Speeding up is a lot more noticeable than slowing down, so requires better timing. You need to act when your conversation has died, or you are not really part of it. You also need for no one in your sub-group to be paying attention to you, so they don't say "where are you running off to?" Unfortunately, this is noticed a lot of the time, which can lead to an awkward look from both your new sub-group and old one. But it can be worth it, and should be considered a legitimate option if the situation calls for it.

This type of inter-group positioning is also very important when riding in cars. It is often very hard to get the perfect combination of people in the perfect locations within the care you are in. As I mentioned in a past post, the best conversations are located in the one-on-one back seat positions, so you must try to get the one person you wish to talk with the most in the back seat with you. For me this is very hard because I am tall, and therefore my considerate friends usually allow me the front seat, which I have no apparent reason to decline, as it is supposed to be sought after by the tallest member of the group. But while I am tall, I don't mind the slightly more crampt back seat if it allows me to have a much better conversation during the trip.

These kinds of situations also apply to when you are just hanging out in a house, with a large group. The tactics for movement are much simpler, because there are set things you can do. First is go to the bathroom, which is an auto-reset. If you want to move to the kitchen sub-group, simply go get some food or drink from there, easy peasy. If you want to go from any standing position to any sitting position, just say "I'm gonna go sit down", and you will not be questioned at all.

The one thing you simply cannot do unless you either think your current sub-group will understand (example, going to talk to the girl you like), or you just don't care about the current sub-group at all, is say "I'm gonna go hang out (or talk) with them now". This could make you sound like a dick, and insult the current group, which could also lead to questioning about why you did it, which is a path you never want to go down.

Car ride conversations

I think it is time for an extensive post, regarding seating in cars, with varying amounts and types of people. I will start with my recent experience.

Today I was sitting in the back seat on a car trip with two people, one in the driver's seat and one in the passenger's seat. It occured to me that I was ostrisized from the other two. I could not have a real conversation because they could not look at me. Eye contact is very important to meaningful conversations. This lead to a great amount of time in awkward silence. It was eventually broken, but even then, it was not a natural conversation, it was a car conversation.

You might be wondering, what could that be? Well I'll explain. A car conversation is not a normal conversation in that it is strained 2 main ways. The first is you don't want to disrupt the driver. The second is a great divide between the front and back seats. It is very easy to have conversations with the people next to you, but when in the front seat, you have to either strain to look in the back, or you have to talk to the window, and hope they react as you would like. If you are in the back, you either have to have the fronters strain (which you have no control of), or you talk to the back of a seat. Again, eye contact is key in communication.

So if there are 4 total people, the conversation inevitably gets split, besides the occasional shout out to the others, which tends to lead to the split soon after. But the great combination is 3 people, so that there is no conversation at all. Somehow this breaks the front seat conversations, because of the awkwardness of having the back seater out of the loop. This almost always leads to the greatest idea ever regarding car entertainment, music. Music fills the silence nicely, and entertains the passengers, stopping the need for conversation at all, and allowing anyone who wants to, to just zone out.

Now, its time to start to talk about variations depending on the types of people, and their locations. First is the quite, observer type, who likes to think about what to say before saying it, and at the same time usually does not spur on the conversation, in other words me. This type of person will rely on the other people to start a conversation, but will be grateful if one happens. In the 4 person scenario, they will do fine, as they will probably just talk to the person next to them. the problem is in the 3 person. No matter where they are, the conversation will feel awkward, and the music default is a very likely end.

The second type is the opposite, the super talkative and inquisitive type. They tend to want to know anything about everyone. They are doing this to not only fill the silence(which they cannot handle at all), but also to quench their need to know everyone better. They think that the secrets to a person are found in their favorite color, or how many sibling they have. Now I don't think there is no information to be desired in those questions, but there are definitely better ways to get to know people.

Instead of doing another type, I feel I should mention the tired situation. If one person is tired, and 3 others are not, then the 3 others will not respect the restful wishes of the one tired person. They will intentionally disrupt that person, and in that disruption will spur on conversation. There is but one hope for the tired person, and that is the 3 person scenario, with the tired one in the back. Then he can use his ostracization to his advantage, and hope the fronters leave him alone, but he should be prepared for music, as it is almost always present at some point.

While there are many more scenarios to address, I will leave them to further posts, look forward to Car Ride Conversations 2 at some point in the future.

Movie reviews

Whenever I see a movie(and people find this out), even if no one was with me, I am asked by many people what I thought of that movie. Now I am not a very opinionated person about movies. I just enjoy them, and then don't really think about how much I enjoyed it, or if it was corny, or if it has amazing greater meaning. So when I am asked this question, I usually just shrug it off with a "meh".

Now this is tricky, because it does not end there. If you like the movie, they will spout off reasons why it sucks, and why your taste is awful. Similarly, if you do not like the movie, they will implore to you all the great aspects they found, and again try to imply that your taste is horrendous. Even with the "meh" response that I enjoy so much, there is still no end. They will try to convince you one way or the other, and sometimes two groups will form, one on each direction, and they will try to pull me in their direction.

But I resist, I refuse to formulate an educated opinion on the movie, because it doesn't matter. My thoughts on the movie are just thoughts, and they should not count for or against me in the selection of future movies, because my "taste in movies sucks".

Luckily, a few hours after people have been informed I have seen the movie, and I have replied "meh", they tend to forget completely about the movie, and move on with their lives. At least until the next one...

Facebook redundency

So today I was doing some light Facebook stalking. Just browsing some people's pages, and got to a page for someone I am not friends with. In the info page, at the bottom, I noticed something odd. It had under contact info "Facebook", and it listed the address I was already at. So if I clicked it, it would just refresh my page. And this is the only place you can ever find this information, so it is always a link to itself. How completely useless and redundant.