Can You Program a VCR? Are You Sure?

Anybody over say, thirty years old, will remember when VCRs ruled the TV recording roost. They were magical machines, allowing you to record your favorite shows at will, and then re-watch them while mostly skipping the commercials. Truly cool. Life changing. Amazing.

But do you remember what your parents (or perhaps your grandparents) reaction was? Do you remember how hard it was to teach them how to use the remotes? How you couldn’t easily explain that there was a separate tuner in the VCR, allowing them to record one channel while watching another? Some of you laughed at their confusion. Some of you no doubt cried in frustration.

In the end we are all tech support for someone, I suppose.

But do you recall the single defining visual of “old people” and their VCR’s?

AT&T Learns Exactly The Wrong Thing About Data Usage

AT&T says that 65% of its users use less 200 megabytes per month; a whopping 98% use less than 2 gigabytes. (NYT) AT&T looked at these numbers and concluded it was time for tiered pricing; time to soak these “data pigs”.

I am a data pig. I average between 1.5 and 2 gigabytes a month over the last 6 months. AT&T hates me, apparently, though they are happy to take my money.

November: That’s When I Leave Apple

Now I have a date: November 2010.

That’s the target date for me to leave my iPhone behind for an Android phone.

That’s the day I get out from under Steve’s thumb.

Middle-Finger-Flaws: Perfect for When You Hate Your Customer

What is a Middle-Finger-Flaw? A Middle-Finger-Flaw (MFF for short) is either a longtime bug or a missing feature, so egregiously possible to implement that every time your customers use your product, they are smacked in the face with the shovel of your dismissiveness.

To use your product is to be just slightly insulted. Every time.

My iPhone Lost Its Home Key

When I got my iPhone 3G, the Home Button was a lovely little place. Pressing it brought me to the cute little springboard, where I could flick back and forth, browsing my collection of sterling applications to run. It was wonderful. The Home Button was a place of possibilities. The largest physical switch on the device, it beckoned you to Try New Things! Do More! It was wonderful.

Sadly, the magic is gone. My Home Button is gone.

Code Rot: When Good Code Goes Bad

Why does code rot? Wikipedia lists a bunch of reasons — some make sense to me, some leave me meh.

From the vantage point of my battered years of experience, I’ve come to classify code into three areas:

Books Read in 2009 – Triumphs

Previously, I discussed multiple series books I read this year, the singletons that passable to awful, or were plain good. Here I’ll go through the books I loved this year, the ones that made me happy I read as much as I do.

These are books I really, really liked and recommend unreservedly. No particular order.

Books Read in 2009 – Good but not Great

These are books I considered well worth the price. Books I liked. Most have a flaw of some sort, but it doesn’t prevent them from succeeding.

Books Read in 2009 – Lousy to Acceptable

OK, these are relative one-offs that were either awful, or “just ok”. “Just ok” means they weren’t worth hardcover prices, but I can respect the effort.

Disasters are books for whom I want my time and money back

Books Read in 2009 – Multi-Book Series

This year I read a bunch of  books in series. Here I’m going to go through the ones where I read multiple books in a series. In no particular order.