Here's how the script for my life was pitched... "So what's the concept?" "See it's an alegory..." "An alegory?" "Can I finish? It's like an alegory really. It's a story of minor tradgedies. We have this guy, the protagonist and..." "The family has to be racially integrated, we need to get back to what we're good at, in the 80's.." "That's it! There is no family. Get it? No family. Just him." "Well we need a love interest. I'm tired of trying these things and waiting till the second season to bring in the housewive audience and move the time slot" "There's a love interest, but it's not a big part in the show. It's more about the guy than anything else." "So what's the show then? No kids, no talking pets, no woman, where's the drama?" "Imagine this. He pours himself our soft drink, right? Ice, tall glass, he's home after a long day at his dead end job, right? He's tired, he's aggravated, he's been dealing with shit all day and his fuse is real short. And the second he starts to relax, he knocks the glass over. All over everything. He goes to get a paper towel, and the towels fly off the rack and make more of a mess. Comedy ensues." "That's it?" "Well it's a situation comedy. So every few days we do it again, but with coffee, or a different soft drink, whatever." "I see Coke, I see Starbuck's. I smell placement! Even when it flops we'll have millions in endorsement deals, let's do it!"
Errr.... or something like that. [ 5/16/2003 08:24:00 PM ] [ ]
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Screenshots galore
So you want a taste of EvilToaster. Here you go. These are some shots of various works in progress, and don't at all represent what things will look like when it's in a more completed state.
For example, in the mail search view, you certainly won't see a text field for entering searches, since it should work more like "Search Folders" in Copland or "virtual folders" in Evolution, etc. And the mail reading view is very much a work in progress- and probably always will be. The disclosable view you see at bottom to see the entire message thread is still giving me fits - it's a tough problem to solve. There is a long way to go, but the pieces I have right now are allowing me to experiment enough that good things are happening, and I'm going in directions that I probably wouldn't have if I had drawn up a design document instead of evolving the design as I work on it. Did I mention the threading is a pain? It is. [Arlo Rose] was nice enough to send me the colors that his [Eudora Thing] used for quote coloring on MacOS, and I'm going to be using those as defaults since they're so darn nice. Some people think that the individual items in the mail list view you see in the search screenshot is too large- it's really not, since instead of seeing the entire contents of your inbox at a time, you're seeing the live results of a search for only the items you want to see at any given time. Even your "new mail" folder is really a search for "receiveddate:today" (which you can of course filter and customize to show you only unread messages, etc.). And I'm working on making it [scale elegantly]. So while I have toys to play with, you don't, so ha ha :) Nothing is getting released anytime soon, even though one test application was a fully searchable MP3 organizer that uses Lucene. [ 5/14/2003 11:16:38 PM ] [ ]
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Tickbites and razorlines
Sunday we took a drive up into the hills around Fresno to Auberry and the [Squaw Leap] BLM park. Getting there was half the fun, since more than once I went the wrong way and we ended up going up steep mountains with winding roads and sharp dropoffs that make for scary scenery. Once we actually found the right place, we had a nice easy hike a mile or so into the woods along a singletrack path lined with a good variety of small wildflowers like mountain lilac. When we got to the bridge crossing Big Sandy Creek
The scenery was very pleasant and there weren't too many other people out, though we did meet a shy lizard and a very friendly dog. We stopped under a nice, shady tree and for the first time maybe in just about forever had a chance to just relax and talk. Though beforehand she told me "I don't hike", she seemed to enjoy being away from everything for a little while. Going back I took yet another wrong turn and we ended up going down the other side of the same scary mountain. Sunday night I stayed in Fresno at the wonderful Formosa Inn again, and before driving back in to work Monday morning we had breakfast outside of Vons - and I've never had a better bagel in my life. [ 5/13/2003 08:15:38 PM ] [ ]
