Terminally Incoherent

I previously wrote about two of my observations regarding use of email among the young and technologically clueless college students. First observation was that none of my students ever had a straight POP3 or IMAP email account in their life. Every single email account they have ever used had a webmail interface and so in their minds, email is something that you do on a webpage. Email client to them is an oxymoron or some strange archaic piece of software, about as useful to them as a floppy drive.

Their primary mode of communication is IM, texting and naturally Facebook/Myspace. Email is something you when you need to send Christmas wishes to your grandmother, or complain about your grade to your professor.

Second observation was that if allowed, most of my students (as well as my coworkers) will try to avoid ever managing the file system directly. They use their desktop or My Documents folder as a big Temp file, and either delete files from it afterwards, or just ignore them and live with the mess. Very rarely do I see thought out directory trees or any hierarchical sorting in the file system on their machines.

My third observation is a direct outgrowth of the second one, and is related to the first. Since students no longer really use email as primary communication tool they decided to use it for something else - storage. They understand email, but do not understand the file system. So whenever they want to save something for later, they just email it to themselves - and i t becomes instantly available to them from anywhere via an easy to use web interface.

I think this mentality is heavily influenced by student mobility. Since not everyone owns a laptop, some people find themselves working on computers they do not own - for example workstations in a public computer lab, a laptop borrowed from a room mate, their home desktop and etc… How do you easily transfer files between computers in such an environment? You could use a flash drive but these are easy to loose or forget. Online storage is the only reliable way to handle it. And what is the easiest way to implement online storage? Via email of course.

I have to admit that I’m guilty of using my email this way as well. Each day I alternate between my home desktop, my work laptop, and one of the 3 or 4 teacher workstations at school. When I’m in a hurry I will sometimes send something to myself to pick it up from a different machine later because it is often the fastest, and least complicated thing to do. That of course doesn’t mean I approve of this behavior. To me it just doesn’t feel right. Email was not meant to be used this way and the whole procedure is silly. Your file ends up being stored twice - once in the inbox, once in the Sent Mail folder, and it makes a short trip between the webmail server, the outgoing server, the incoming server and back to the webmail. It’s a waste of bandwidth and it bothers me.

Are there alternatives? Yes, but none are as convenient or n00b friendly. Ideally, you would want a web service which is as easy t use as email whose sole function would be providing you with online storage. One such service I have been using recently is Xdrive. It’s not perfect though. Their online interface is horrid - cluttered, counter intuitive, and way to busy with buttons, panels and color. It insists on showing you your files both as a list and as a tree at the same time. It also has an impressive array of buttons, links and controls which are often redundant. It is the quintessential AOL school of design - seeing how these are the folks behind the application.

While I’m on the topic, I wanted to mention that there are two distinct ways to design your UI. There is the interface driven way, and the content driven way. The former puts emphasis on buttons, panels, levers, switches and blinkenlights and then stuffs contents into some small view port hole surrounded by interface elements. The later shows you content, and tries to minimize interface elements handling interaction in context aware way. Google excels at making context driven interfaces both for the web and for the desktop. Everyone else seems to be falling short in the web based area. AOL was always notorious for creating horrid interfaces that looked sleek, but were barely usable.

So it’s surprising that Xdrive Lite client is a content driven application. It sports a much cleaner interface, with much fewer buttons. There is virtually no clutter and the app is extremely easy to use. You copy files to your online storage space by simply dragging and dropping them from your file explorer application. It is actually working fairly well in Linux but not thanks to AOL or Xdrive naturally. It works because Adobe Air now runs on linux and so, accidentally the Xdrive client does too. File manipulation and downloads are done via clear, intuitive context menus.

I must say that I really like this app. So I often use it to shuffle small files between my work computer, my home desktop and my laptop in a hassle free way. It works great, it is light on resources and feels much more appropriate than spamming my own inbox.

Still, this is not a perfect solution for my rather clueless students because they inherently despise client software. Installing something is always a hassle. AIR apps install rather quickly and easily, but you need to have AIR installed first. So it is at least a 2 step procedure. Not to mention that public lab computers often do not have admin privileges that would allow them to install stuff. The web interface on the other hand is just to clunky to be useful. They’d have to learn to use it, and I’m sure that this would be a nuisance.

All our students naturally have Novell Netdrive accounts but the web interface for that thing was also designed by professional contortionists. I make them use it when they create HTML websites but I often must walk them through the process 4 to 5 times before it starts sinking in. Not that it is hard, or complex - it’s just new, and not very intuitive. Or rather what is intuitive to me (public websites go into PUBLIC_HTML folder) is alien and incomprehensible to them. Logging into webmail and emailing themselves is just more convenient, straightforward and familiar. I could try to break this habit, but then again who am I to say how people should use technology that’s available to them. If they want to use email as storage, then more power to them I guess… No matter how that annoys me.

For like a week or two now, I noticed something strange and yet not entirely unpleasant happening to my inbox. There were no angry emails from students complaining that I didn’t grade their homework submitted 3 weeks late the very second when they submitted it on Sunday evening at 3AM. My spam filter has already learned to automatically and quietly file away the mail from all the MSU specific mailing lists to my SPAM folder so I didn’t really notice any decrease in traffic.

Here is a side note for those of you who haven’t attended my lovely alma matter, and current teaching grounds. When you start as an undergraduate and get your university based email address you get automatically subscribed to 5 million mailing lists with creative titles such as [allstudents], [undergraduatestudents] and etc. The mailings range from weather announcements, information about campus events, bookstore deal, off campus events, local events, events that have nothing to do with the school, job opportunities, random shit and a etc. On average you can get 60+ emails per day. If you are silly enough to come back as a grad student you get signed up for another million mailing lists, some of which double up on functionality with the undergrad ones so you get upwards of 100+ emails per day. If you become a faculty member or an adjunct after that you… Well, you get the picture. Naturally, your mailbox has 15 MB quota so if you go on vacation and don’t download any of your emails for a week your mailbox will fill up, and new emails will get rejected. Best system evar!

Before they took away my school unix account I was using a simple procmail script to sieve all this crap to /dev/null. The script was actually written by my former mentor who was also sick of this crap.

But let’s get back to the matter at hand. Apparently several of my students told me they were trying to reach me via email for days with no success. I went digging in my inbox and my SPAM folder, and my fears were confirmed. There was no recent email there. Everything was few weeks old. What happened?

Worst part is that there was almost no way for me to notice this. There were no error messages, no notifications, no bounced emails. KMail had no problems connecting and authenticating against the POP server and kept telling me that there was simply no messages on the server. Hell, I could even log into the school’s web mail service to see this:

I called OIT today and confused the hell out of them too. Apparently I was still using my student email account and these expire after a year. But while my email expired, my login was inexplicably tied to other services which I was still using - such as the course management service, the online storage, and dozen of other things. So it appears that I appear as a teacher in some school systems, as a student in other, and even as neither in some. In other words, whatever was done to my account(s) last may was done wrong and it set off a time bomb destined to explode in a year. And that’s what happened here. And the timing couldn’t be worse either since this is the very end of the semester - the time when students always have tons of questions about their grades, projects and etc.

I guess few grad students turned adjuncts stick around for longer than a year around here. It seems that my case is fairly unique and unusual. Let’s hope they can figure out how to fix it without totally fucking up my login to all the school services.

I wanted to share with you a final slide from a presentation made by one of my students. I wish I was making this up, but I’m not. You can judge whether this is funny or very sad by yourself:

I assumed a honest typo resulting from the student making the whole presentation 15 minutes before the class, and then winging it. I prefer to think that my students are just lazy and don’t care about the class - this way I can keep my sanity and hope for the future in situations like this one.

It is reassuring that most of the class seemed to catch onto it, and there were subdued chuckles from the back rows. I believe that I even heard someone patiently explaining “cause there was like no computers in 1800’s…” to their confused neighbor.

Someone later suggested to me that you could technically count Charles Babbage as an early hacker. He was active in the 1800’s so the statement above would be at least partially correct… Well, excluding that bit about the internet services. And getting caught…

For the record, I didn’t assign the presentation topics, nor did I restrict them to just technology. Students were free to pick any topic they wanted, and I provided them with a list of potentially technology related topics if they could not come up with a topic on their own.

This is going to be a quick rant about usability. Recently I noticed that a lot of Windows XP and Vista users get very frustrated with their machine at boot time. This frustration stems from the fact that while their graphical desktop environment is fully loaded , their machine is not ready to be used yet. Let me walk you through a typical windows boot sequence:

1. The BIOS POST sequence:

2. The Windows Logo:

3. Potential Login screen:

4. Windows Desktop

Naturally, the fact that you see the desktop, almost never means you can use it unless you are running a pristine clean windows install that is. And even then, it still takes few seconds before the explorer becomes fully responsive. Most brand new computers come preloaded with a slew of applications that are loaded on startup. These include antivirus suites, search applications, notification services, vendor specific applications and etc. So it usually takes 10-15 seconds (sometimes even up to a minute or two) for all of them to finish loading. It seems that windows designers decided to render the desktop as soon as it was humanely possible to allow impatient users start moving their mouse around and click icons. Unfortunately this is not a perfect choice. While the user gets the control of the machine early, it will act extremely sluggish, unresponsive and in general annoying for the first few minutes of operation. This is extremely frustrating when you are for example trying to quickly boot up your laptop and show someone/print that important document.

I noticed that my Kubuntu machine does not exhibit such behavior. Instead, when I log in it shows me a KDE splash screen with a nice progress dialog which tells me what is being done as I wait:

KDE is not rushing ahead to show me a mostly unusable desktop as soon as it can render it. Rather, it patiently loads up all the components, and allows applications to start initializing themselves. When my graphical desktop pops up, the machine is ready and I can jump right into action. Part of this of course is the inherent division between the core linux OS and the graphical desktop environment that runs on top of it. By the time KDE starts loading, all the system daemons are already loaded and running, the X server has been initialized and the OS is fully operational. With windows this is not always the case. Some applications - especially made by Symantec and McAfee like to take their sweet time hugging the CPU and initializing for a long time after the desktop appears. What are they doing? Are they take all this time to build their unnecessarily flashy GUI’s all this time?

The reverse is also true. If you go nuts, and use exuberant number of KDE based tray applications and desktop widgets that start with the system you may get it to the point where it starts sluggishly just like your average Windows desktop.

I think that a splash screen which would delay displaying of the desktop and say something like “Loading Applications/Components… Please Wait…” and display a progress bar is a great idea - for any OS. I really don’t mind waiting a little longer during startup. How often do I boot my machine anyway? My laptop gets booted on average once a day. My desktop - once every two months maybe. Sometimes less often than that.

That’s just something that popped into my head while I observed users cursing and hitting their laptops while trying to do something really quickly right after rebooting them. To me, waiting for a progress bar is easier on the nerves. It gives the user an idea how long the process will take, allowing him to take a bathroom break, or maybe grab a cup of coffee and let the computer finish what it’s doing. When you show the user a seemingly functional desktop, but remain unresponsive it is almost like you were taunting him. Clueless users are usually not in habit of observing the HD LED or listening to the grinding noise to judge whether or not the boot process was finished as we do. They always try to use it to early, and get angry, annoyed or just roll their eyes with impatience.

But perhaps I’m wrong about this. Feel free to present counter arguments in the comments.

I grew up on comic books. However, since I was growing up in post communist Poland my first comic book fascinations were stuff like Capitan Kloss, Funky Koval, and Thorgal. Especially the last two titles were bit more serious titles, with stories and themes that were not really aimed at kids. But I loved them anyway, even if I didn’t understand half of what was going on. They were also complete stories that closed in 20 or so books, so I could re-read them every few years and as I was growing up I was able to appreciate them in different ways. For example I read the Chninkel trilogy around 15 times and I didn’t fully appreciate the depth, the irony and the theological allegory until I was in college.

I got introduced to Marvel and DC universes later than most American kids. I grew up on difficult, gritty stories filled with pointless violence, philosophical turmoil, senseless rape, murder and characters forced to make difficult choices and face moral dilemmas that were troubling and thought provoking. When American comic books hit the Polish market I started buying them because as everyone I was fascinated with this brand new world of super heroes. They lived in a whole different universe - in this bizarre fairy tale land where truth and justice always prevailed. Some stories were good, some were campy - but the characters were what drew us in. They were make out of pure awesome - they were powerful, and exotic with their silly wester idealism, and their strange problems. Furthermore they were cultural icons, and symbols recognized everywhere. So I was hooked for better or for worse.

The interesting thing about this new world of super powered beings was that they were all connected. There were crossovers, guest appearances and etc. Marvel universe was a whole ecosystem filled with all these strange characters and stories in one book could affect lives of other characters with their own independent series. So while on the surface, the world of superheroes looked simple, and glossy - it was actually incredibly complex and required full immersion to fully grok it in it’s totality.

It’s actually quite intriguing to observe how these ecosystems work, and endlessly recycle and re-invent the same characters to adopt them to new stories and make them relevant to the present times. There are some really good stories, and some really crappy ones out there but at some point I got tired of the weekly mill of stories. I think what eventually killed my interest was the and constant flux of writers, and artists - shifts in quality, frequent retcons and changes in theme and direction - and of probably a lack of closure. I currently don’t follow any of the mainstream Marvel or DC series, but I do remember them fondly. But once I groked them, it was time to move on. I like good stories - which have a beginning, and end and artistic or literary vision and concept behind them.

Wrote this very long introduction to give you some context because recently I got my hands on a stack of Sandman comic books. It is the complete collection I believe - the series closes in 75 issues. I have read around 30 issues and so far I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

I have heard about Sandman before (always mentioned with this soft of reverence reserved only for classics of the highest caliber) but I have always thought it was a self contained series that lies outside the DC continuity. Surprisingly, it is not - I guess this just shows how much I was paying attention to this universe. Neil Gaiman firmly anchored his masterpiece it within the DC universe but was by no means contained by it.

The main character is Morpheus - the personification of dreams. Not really a god but one of “endless” who represent primeval forces such as death, dreaming, destiny or desire. They are said to be older than gods, and the only true immortal beings (as gods may die or become forgotten but the endless remain). He rules over people’s dreams, nightmares and is also patron of storytelling. As you could imagine, a character like that is very detached from reality as we know it. He exists on a different plane of existence and visits realms that are closed to mere mortals. And yet, when he manifests himself in our reality he connects with the mainstream DC universe in subtle and yet noticeable way. He meets John Constantine, interacts with members of the Justice League and battles with Dr. Destiny. Gaimain even retcons all the other DC Sandmans to be facets, or aspects of his essence or personality.

The issues are either self contained, or form story arcs which span several volumes. They all form a continuity, but you could theoretically read each “story” individually. And most of them are very good. They are weird, reflective, metaphorical and thought provoking. Let me give you some examples of the ones that really stuck in my memory.

There is a story there about a burned out writer, who captures a greek muse and keeps her in his house under a key. He uses her to crank out one bestseller after another and gain international fame and recognition. He also routinely rapes her justifying it by telling himself that “she is not even human, so it’s ok”. Interesting, twisted but good reading.

Another twisted story features a Cereal Convention - a convention for serial killers. Brutal, psychopathic murderers from all over the country all meet at a small hotel in the middle of nowhere to discuss their passion. They have discussion panels, cocktail hour, they dance, mingle and brag about their exploits. Only that there are some guests staying at the hotel who are not killers but travelers, who had to stop there for a night due to unforeseen circumstances.

In issue 19, Morpheus contracts William Shakespeare to perform his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream he wrote under his inspiration in front of the real Auberon the kind of Fairies and his retinue. This book actually won the World Fantasy Award back in 1990.

Or, for example consider the following: what would happen if Lucifer decided to close down hell, and release all the damned one day? What’s worse he gives you the key to the now vacant hell. Next thing you know, you have a crowd of different deities, and mystical beings at your front door, all trying to buy the key from you. Norse gods want to use hell to escape Ragnarok. Banished daemons want their domain back. Egyptian gods, Fairies and forces of Order and Chaos and angels from Heaven also throw in their bids. And all of them have very attractive and enticing offers. Who would you sell it to?

Gaiman really plays with conventions, themes and jumps back and forward in time. One story is told completely from a perspective of a house cat. Another happens in the middle of African desert where a boy goes through the rights of initiation practiced by his tribe. All of them are connected by the central figure of Morpheus who is not always the protagonist, but always a key character in a given tale.

The artwork quality varies. The covers by Dave McKean are really striking. They are really not something you would expect to see on a comic book cover, but considering the stories they contain they fit quite well. The artwork inside varies as different artists tackled the task of illustrating the series. The style they all try to follow is similar though. They all stay away from photorealism, or typical DC/Marvel super-hero style. The art is gritty, dark and often intentionally sloppy. There is a lot of play with shadows, colors and some creative uses of inter-connected panels. If I had to sum it up in two or three words, I would say “oneiric surrealism” or something among those lines. But it changes depending on the topic. For example, issue 19 mentioned above, is kept in a much warmer, colorful and realistic style than most of the other books.

It will probably take me a while to work my way through the rest of this stack. If you like graphic novels, and you are looking for some solid storytelling, smart and thought provoking and often controversial, and difficult plot lines you should definitely give Sandman a try. Even if you don’t like comic books, you should at least give it a cursory read. I highly recommend it.