Keep buying XP

Although my Thinkpad is Vista Capable, I'm so happy to have stayed with XP. In the last month, I've advised a friend and my girlfriend about buying laptops, and I've told them both to stay away from Vista. After reading this blog item I'm no less happy with my XP experience. In coming months I'll upgrade the hardware in my stationary gaming machine and guess what - no way am I going to install Vista on that one either.
Which is sad, really. Not that I lament the apparent loosening of Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop interface, but to think of all the hours I and others have spent learning to handle our current operating system and then think of how many hours we'll have to spend learning Apple OS X or Vista SP 2 if the latter is any good. A lot of that time will be wasted shortly after XP finally goes away by the end of June. I have enough experience with *nixes to know how much time you can save if you have a truly multitasking, modular and tweakable OS at your disposal. GNU Emacs is available to anyone who wants to try that experience within a single program. Now if Microsoft was able to deliver something like that inside an XP-like exterior, that would be neat - much like Apple did with OS X, which is Unix under the hood. No wonder most of my tech-savvy American friends are buying Macbooks.

Counseling for DMFD students

My students at the ITU should still use Technorati to keep track of their course blogs, but unfortunately there is no way you can force Technorati to show your blog right away unless you chose to add your blog to your Technorati favorites. So go ahead, add the dmfd_f2007 tag and.... wait.

The vagaries of submitting your stuff to peer review. 'Nuff said

Fifth-Grade Science Paper Doesn't Stand Up To Peer Review

DECATUR, IL-A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski's fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his 327-word essay "Otters" did not meet the requirements for peer approval.

Counseling for DMOK students

In order to track exam projects, we have agreed to link up via the tag dmok_f2006 on Technorati.

Update: If you want the tag to work within a few minutes, one of you needs to become a Technorati member and assign the blog to your Technorati membership. Otherwise, it may last from hours and up to a couple of days before Technorati recognizes your tag.

A picture I took today of the three great kids I have in my life: My son Oskar, my daughter Frida (upside down), and my girlfriend's daughter Arésu. 

New Journal on Routledge

Look out for an indispensable title from Routledge: Artifact. The journal for designing human interfaces with technology. Edited by Ida Engholm, Judith Gregory, Erik Stolterman, and me. Appearing in 2006... oh, wait: 2007! Look out for it on http://www.informaworld.com/artifact.

E-mail your blog

I am working from home today, so I thought I would try to find an easier way to update my blog than going to blogspot, log in, edit away, post, view the result, and logging off again. As it happens, this is the way to do it: E-mail your own blog.

I guess there are a number of ways you can do this, but this one is incredibly simple: You get a secret e-mail address from your blog
hosting company, which you write your blog entries to. When e-mail to that address appears at your blog hosting company, it gets published immediately. Great savings in time, and - if you are on dial-up as I am - in money. Good news for the busy blogger!