Ninmah Meets World » silly

my security guard is a lava-breathing puppy

ninmah — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:33:10 +0000

cute little lava-breather

I’m a collector. Some are “official,” organized collections (stamps, for instance), but many are de facto collections that occurred when I got one of something and discovered there were more of them, or just started gathering things without really organizing or exploring them in great detail (my coin collection falls into this category). I just like to group similar things together, I think. Naturally, I collect in World of Warcraft, too. One of my collections in WoW is of non-combat pets, which are small, often playful or cute animals that are sometimes modeled after larger, meaner ones. They follow you around but they can’t fight (unlike hunter pets, which can). Of the 126 non-combat pets that I can possibly acquire (there are more, but some are unobtainable for various reasons), I now have 84. You can see them on my Warcraftpets profile for Narila, my pet-collecting main character.

aww, he wants a lava biscuit!

My latest acquisition is the Corehound Pup, a quasi-Cerberus-looking two-headed lava-breathing puppy modeled after the once-fearsome Corehounds that guard the Molten Core. Since MC is level 60 content and everyone who is anyone is now level 80, Corehounds aren’t quite so scary anymore. It’s an animated pet, so it plays with a bone or chases its tail while I’m standing around. I got it yesterday by attaching the Blizzard authenticator to my account, which I was happy to learn came in a handy and free iPhone app. Now, when I log in to World of Warcraft, in addition to my password I enter a randomly-generated code with a 20-second shelf life that I read off my phone. It makes the account harder to hack. Plus I got the Corehound Pup, so it’s a deal all around as far as I’m concerned.

Cute, isn’t he?

Narila, the pup, and my fighting pet, Warborn

lolcats + code = hawt

ninmah — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:50:50 +0000

Two great tastes that taste great together: LOLCODE! Just look at this lovely little thing:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE “HAI WORLD”
KTHXBYE

It just doesn’t get any more poetic than that.

email inflection tags

ninmah — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:45:39 +0000

Ever notice that it’s really easy to misinterpret someone’s intended tone of voice when you are reading an email from them? Your friend writes “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while, everything OK?” and you imagine it to be delivered in a miffed, snippy, guess-you-don’t-like-me-anymore tone when she actually meant to sound interested, concerned and friendly. Wouldn’t it be great to have inflection tags for email? Like this:

Spousal email* before inflection tags:

Hi honey, I’m going to be late today. How about you start dinner and I’ll grab some kind of dessert on the way home?

Dang it, you think, s/he’s weaseling out of making dinner again! But wait. Here’s the same email, after inflection tags are added:

Hi honey, I’m going to be late today. How about you start dinner and I’ll grab some kind of dessert on the way home?

Ohh, you think. S/he’s in a good mood, just running a little late. Okay. Maybe s/he’ll bring home some chocolate!

Just think what a difference it could make.

——————-
*This email is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to any email sent by any person or persons, living or dead (can the dead send email?), is entirely coincidental.
——————-

16 years ago today

ninmah — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:55:56 +0000

april fool by Rachel Smith
posted 1 Apr ’08, 8.31am PDT PST on flickr

16 years ago today…

I was in Libreville, Gabon, wrapping up four months as an intern with the Peace Corps. My job was to set up the computer network (Appletalk) in the main office, help the staff convert from a paper-based forms process to a computer-based one–this involved creating a lot of custom forms in FoxBase–and teach them how to use everything from word processing software to Hypercard.

For April fool’s day, I created a custom Hypercard stack and set it up on every single computer the night before so that when the computers were turned on in the morning, the only thing that would launch would be my stack, with the first card (top image) showing. Of course, if you looked hard enough, it was obvious that Hypercard was running, but most people just read the “error” text. When they clicked OK, they got the next card in the stack (bottom image), and then if they followed along through, there were some jokes and animations. I printed out screen shots of the stack and pasted them into my sketchbook, which is how I am able to share them with the world now.

I suppose it’s not surprising that most people didn’t think it was funny. So, if anyone from PC Libreville sees this, happy April Fool’s Day! I hope you can laugh at it now :-)

If your phone book were a person

ninmah — Fri, 05 May 2006 22:44:56 +0000

The phone rang the other evening. Uncharacteristically, I chose to answer it. A pleasant female voice identified herself as a staffer doing a survey for the phone book and asked for the male head of the household. "Hey," I shouted to my husband, who was standing about 10 feet away, "do you want to take a survey about the phone book?" "No," he yelled back. I turned back to the phone. "I'm sorry, he's unavailable," I said politely. The whole exchange had been completely audible to the caller, who had the humanity to laugh. "Then may I speak to the female head of the household?" she asked gamely.

I'm a big fan of usability testing, and market research is its distant cousin, so I like to help; but I think it was the fact that she laughed that convinced me to stay on the phone. I'm glad I did. For the next 15 minutes I had a very entertaining time answering some of the most bizarre questions I've ever heard. The caller was great — she fully recognized the absurdity of some of them, and she did her job gracefully anyway. For example, the irony of the following sequence was not lost on her:

Caller: How many hours of television have you watched per week for the last 30 days?
Me: Zero [this is true, by the way].
Caller: Have you seen any television commercials for the phone book in the last 30 days?
Me: No.
Caller: I'm going to describe three television commercials for the phone book that recently aired in your area. Please tell me if you have seen any of them. I am not allowed to record your answer until I have finished describing each commercial, but they are not long. [90 second storyboard-type description of the first commercial follows] Have you seen this commercial?
Me: No.

Two more commercial descriptions followed the first one; by the time she finished, I was laughing too hard to speak. She waited patiently until I had recovered and thanked me for not hanging up. "Are you kidding?" I said. "This is the most fun I've had all day!" Apparently she loses a lot of respondents at the point where she has to read the commercials.

My favorite part of the call, though, was the personality assessment of my phone book:

Caller: If your phone book were to come alive and speak to you like a person, would it be authoritative?
Me: Is that really what the question says? I have no idea. I can't picture my phone book as a person.
Caller: So, I'll put "I don't know," okay?
Me: Sure.
Caller: If your phone book were to come alive and speak to you like a person, would it be polite?
Me: How many phone book personality questions do you have there?
Caller: Fifteen.

At this point she waited patiently while I lost it again. She ran through the personality questions with me randomly saying yes, no, or I don't know — the user study from hell, but come on, what kind of a question is that? Still, I was almost sorry when she ran out of questions.

If the marketing exec who approved those questions were to come alive and speak to me like a person, would s/he be funny? Probably not.