small heroes: the niece, the nephew and the dog

08.06.02 || tuesday ||

TV junkie still jonesin' for a fix
Tonight, I watched television for about two hours and ended up seeing nothing at all. This is not a criticism of the spate of lowbrow fare on the tube these days. Not at all. This is more a judgement on my underdeveloped remote control capabilities.

Tonight, I rabidly switched between the Real World: Vancouver - The Lost Season on MTV and American Idol on Fox. Somehow, in my flipping between channels, I managed to miss all the essential plot twists on MTV, while simultaneously only catching the final seconds of every performance on Idol.

What did I end up seeing? A number of ho-hum moments on MTV, including the cast asleep, the cast eating chili, and the cast looking at each other. On Idol, I only got to see the excrutiating antics of the bozo hosts. How on earth did those two boobs get hired to host a live show? It's often too painful to watch (and yet, I still do).

Yes, yes. I watch these shows. Go ahead and judge me. My response: if you want to stay current and make witty references to pop culture at the proverbial watercooler, you simply cannot afford to miss them.

By the way, that's my final answer.

08.03.02 || saturday ||

Been a way for a long, long while. Shame on me. My apologies to Jeff Hotz (who seems to be the only one checking up on me and montview.com). What can I say? Work has been crazy. Fortunately, life is starting to settle down somewhat. Enough of that, let's talk about something else. In the spirit of blogs everywhere, how about the minutiae of my life?

Beth and I just completed a RunTex class that focused on strength training, cardio work and yoga. All in all, it was a good time and served as a useful "kick start" to my training for the Willie Nelson Farm Aid 10-K. I'm looking forward to running it again this year. Although I am a little worried about the timing of the event. Last year, it was in October and the heat was pretty stifling. This year, it's the third week of August (!) when there seems to be no bounds to the Texas heat. Oh, well, if Willie and Lyle can run it, so can I.

I re-subscribed to the CHI web this week and learned about some interesting projects almost immediately. For instance, Amazon has recently made its API public, encouraging developers to work some magic. There were two noteworthy efforts mentioned on the CHI web: a flash-based Amazon explorer and a stripped-down version of the Amazon home page referred to as Amazon Light.

Arguably, there are problems with both, particularly the flash piece (it's clearly in the early phase of development). At first glance, it seems to leverage the relational mapping found in plumbdesign's visual thesaurus (proximity indicates the strength of the synonmyn). Upon closer inspection, it's completely unclear what the connection lines between certain book images mean.

I think we can all agree that an effective info viz requires only a glance to understand and interpret its information structure (think map of the market). In the case of the Amazon project, I am still trying to figure out the connections. I'll check back in a few weeks for progress.

Finally, Mary from frog told me she likes to read boxesandarrows for the latest from the information architecture trenches. I agree and list it here for your reading pleasure.

Peace out.