Posted: December 22nd, 2010 | Author: rthomson | Filed under: Random | Tags: career, it, job, organization, progress, rant, work | No Comments »
Career development is a funny thing for me to be writing about. A few years ago, it wasn’t something I really thought about too much. It’s not that I wasn’t aware or cognizant of the benefits of thinking about it and spending time considering my future, it’s that I was younger and a lot more focused on the “now”. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get old overnight and I still value the philosophical concepts of my youth but I now see additional value in also paying attention to the future.
Today, I’m on the brink of making another significant career move and career development is front and centre in my day to day thoughts. Hence, rant.
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Posted: September 17th, 2010 | Author: rthomson | Filed under: Random | Tags: android, apple, ipad, linux, rant, tablet | No Comments »
Let me preface this by saying that I do not own an iPad nor do I own any other “tablet” like device. I’ve played with an iPad and some of the older generation of Windows tablets (Laptops with swivel screens and stylus input running a “Tablet Edition” of Window) but I have no exceptional experience with anything I’m going to rant about. That said, I’m still going to talk about them.
I’m going to try to address various talking points I’ve been reading in articles, comments and blogs but don’t sue me if I miss anything.
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Posted: May 21st, 2010 | Author: rthomson | Filed under: Random | Tags: book, ebook, interface, neural emesis, rant | No Comments »
That’s right, you read it correctly: I’m not impressed with Books24x7.
It’s not their collection (plenty of stuff for various fields of interest) and it’s not their price (I’m using it under a campus subscription so what’s to complain about?). It’s their interface.
Could it be anymore annoying to read a book than the Books24x7 experience? Was this website designed in the 90s?
What frustrates me the most is that you cannot usefully navigate/read a book on Books24x7 without the use of a mouse. Sure, I can use Spacebar, the arrow keys or Page Up/Page Down to navigate on a single page, but because each “page” is just a small chunk of text, you need to constantly be clicking the “Next” link. Tab key link navigation, you say? There are so many links at the top of the page that tabbing through all of them to reach the “Next” link takes longer than grabbing for the mouse.
This is just a terrible book reading experience. Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled by… I dunno? PDF files and Preview.app or Stanza? I want to read some of these books but Books24x7 just makes it so unpleasant that I’d rather just find the hardcopies at the library or pay for a decent ebook version that I can read on whatever device or with whatever software that might actually be designed with some thought regarding the reading experience.
