Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo
Some nights, my two older kids - Gabrielle, 8, and Ethan, 4 - beg me to make up and tell them a story. I used to quite often spontaneously make up and tell a new story, but I haven’t done it for a long time. Tonight I did, and this is the tale that I told.
(Or, at least, this is what I remember of it!)
Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo was the saddest boy in the whole world. No one would ever talk to him.
No one in his family ever said anything to him. No one in his class ever said anything to him. And even no one at his church said anything to him.
The problem was his name. It was just too long.
No one wanted to say: “Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo, can you please pass me the salt?” No one wanted to say “Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo, come play soccer with us.” And no one ever wanted to say “Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo come help me quickly!”
Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo’s name was so long that people forgot it. And sometimes when they remembered the beginning of it and might have thought about starting to say something to Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo, they forgot the ending of it.
Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo was so sad, he cried in his room for a night and day and another night and another day and yet another night and yet another day, and by the end of all this, his room was absolutely swimming in salt water and Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo could float right out of his own bed.
But at the end of 4 nights and days, Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo had an idea.
He needed a new name. And Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo knew how he was going to get it: a naming contest.
Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo decided he would hold a naming contest, and the prize would be a million dollars. The only problem was that Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo didn’t have a million dollars. He didn’t even have a thousand dollars. In fact, he didn’t even have a hundred dollars. The solution, Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo decided, was that the grand prize would be a million and one thank-you’s.
So the very next day, Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo told everyone in his family, and everyone at school, and everyone at church, that he was having a naming contest - for himself. And that the winner would win a million thanks from - - whatever his new name would be.
The contest was successful beyond Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo’s wildest dreams. In all, one thousand and one people sent him their ideas for his new name.
Some of them were very bad or silly - some mean people sent in names like Nosepicker or Smellysocks. Some of them were just very strange, and (if were possible) maybe even worse than the name he already had. Those were names that Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo could barely read or even say: Blagarodnew and Kishagreenoldovian and Weegishlynoving. And some of them were just not right - names like Susan or Sarah.
Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo felt quite sure that if those names were the only options, he’d stay with what he had, thank you very much.
But many people sent in good names, names that Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo thought long and and hard about. Names like Bruce and Geoffrey and John and Levi.
Finally, Inkachoo Pinkachoo Sinkachoo Tinkachoo found one that he liked more than all the others. He thought about it for a day and a night, and then announced to his family and the whole world that his new name would be Alexander.
It was good because it was easy to say, could be shorter if he needed it to be, started with the first letter of the alphabet, and … best of all … everyone knew exactly how to spell it.
Alexander lived happily ever after, had many friends and was never lonely again, and now his name actually fit on all the papers that he had to write it on at school.
There was only one problem. Alexander had to spend the whole next year saying thank you one million (and one) times!
Insert pipe in mouth
Music industry? Movie industry?
Are you listening?
Adapt or die.
SchemaSoft Kills Microsoft Deal After Apple Takeover
Schemasoft, the Vancouver data translation company that Apple just acquired, cancelled a multi-million dollar deal with Microsoft just the day after the acquisition closed.
I spent the evening at Vancouver Enterprise Forum and talked to someone close to the company.
Apparently, although Apple has been Schemasoft’s biggest client for some time now, Microsoft was also a client. Schemasoft, as I reported here used to do a lot of work with clients who needed document translation capabilities. The work Microsoft was asking Schemasoft to do involved document translation for mobile technologies. I don’t have any further details on that. As a side note, all of Schemasoft’s other clients are now being served by another company.
It is interesting to note that as soon as Philip Mansfield, the former CEO of Schemasoft, told Microsoft that he could no longer pursue the deal they had been working on, he was told to immediately destroy all documents that Microsoft had sent Schemasoft during the course of the project.
Some other interesting sidebars:
- All quality assurance activity has been transferred to Apple HQ … primarily to minimize chance of information leaks on new products.
- As soon as the deal closed, Schemasoft employees received all new hardware and software from Apple. According to my source, this included, for each employee, the following:
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- Apple G5 tower computer
- Cinema display (not sure which size)
- PowerBook
Why the PowerBook and tower I have no idea, but yes, I’m envious!
Bob a-Do-Do Birthday
Aidan turned two today.
He had a “Bob the Builder” birthday, which he says as “Bob a Do-Do.” Very cute.
Two years of joy, two years of laughter, two years of love … all times three for all our kids. It’s hard to believe.
Wow - what a blessing. Undeserved, but not unappreciated.
First Cardinal Sin of Project Management
This is the first (and maybe the last) in a series that I am planning to write on that most horrible, boring, awful, and necessary (but black) art: project management.
(Actually, here’s the second sin.)
First Cardinal Sin
Starting before you are ready.
This pathetic platitude is amazingly often ignored by smart people who should know better (yes, that includes me).
Why? Human nature. We want to feel progress. We want to get going. We want to see some visible results. As Paul Graham says:
In fact, this is a constant problem when you’re painting still lifes. You plonk down a bunch of stuff on a table, and maybe spend five or ten minutes rearranging it to look interesting. But you’re so impatient to get started painting that ten minutes of rearranging feels very long. So you start painting. Three days later, having spent twenty hours staring at it, you’re kicking yourself for having set up such an awkward and boring composition, but by then it’s too late.
(source)
In fact, the first parts of a project should not show any visible progress at all. The first parts of a project should be spent on painful, tedious, and critical steps: project definition, specifications, details, outcomes.
Typically, the first answers that you come to when doing the pre-work for a project are the wrong ones.
- - First, you don’t know enough yet to get the right answers.
- - Second, you’re asking the wrong questions.
- - Third, you’re not really trying to find the answers, you’re trying to put an X in some checkboxes, so you’re just going through the motions.
- - Fourth, you keep thinking about how great it’s going to be to work on the project, and what it’ll be when it’s finished, and those rose-tinted glasses are impairing your vision.
So. Get away from the keyboard.
Start thinking. Sketch it. Put it away. Re-think it. Draw it again. Iterate until you have a breakthrough.
Now you’re getting somewhere.
PR Nation - The Truth is for $ale
Ten years ago I was an English major in university, thinking about a career in journalism. Then I realized that at any given time, there are more people in school to become journalists than there are jobs as journalists.
So much for the journalism thing.
But I might have given it up for entirely different reasons if I had only known more about public relations. Because, of course, half of those who can’t actually get a job as a bona fide journalist suck up to the corporate teat and join the PR party.
There is an absolutely great article about modern PR … and excellent ways of tracking its effects … Paul Graham’s blog … errr … website.
Blah
Sick. As. A. Dog.
[Update - April 25]
No more sushi. Ever. And that’s the last I have to say on that subject.
Fantasy Blogs: not what you think
Never underestimate the power of the internet to surprise you. Or, rather, never underestimate the amazing, odd, weird, and wonderful things people actually invest time and energy and money into.
I just noticed Blogshares, the “Fantasy Blog Share Market.” Apparently, my blog is currently trading at around $3300 US, and trending upwards. Unfortunately, I currently only have 0.000078313 % market share.
Nowhere to go but up!
Usernames: case (in)sensitive
Should usernames be case sensitive or insensitive?
I just got bitten by this question on a site recently. The usernames were case sensitive; users were trying to log in; they kept getting rejected by the system; and support people who tried with the users’ own information were getting in just fine.
I haven’t found a real concensus online. CVS appears to have case sensitive usernames. Vonage, on the other hand, does not. Hotsyncing a Palm seems to rely on case sensitive usernames. Yachting and Boating World is also case sensitive. And, .htaccess directory protection on Unix systems is case sensitive. However, GMail does not employ case sensitive usernames - probably largely because your GMail username is an email address, and email addresses are case insensitive by nature.
So what’s the right way to do it?
There’s no question that case sensitive usernames are more secure than case insensitive. Plus, you’re going to be able to offer more usernames for your clients (goodgirl and goodGirl, plus all the possible variations) which is good for a well-trafficked website. Ever tried getting the username you wanted for a Yahoo! or GMail account?
But there’s also no question in my mind that it’s much more user-UNfriendly. People don’t always remember the exact case they used when they first logged in. Worse, this can be a really tough problem to diagnose. Support staff can be taking the username out of a database, ensuring that they have exactly what the website wants, and everything works fine … and then users try their fUnky cAse uSerName, and it doesn’t. Unless support asks the right questions, the problem is inexplicable.
(And of course you have the higher-level problem that users have called support in the first place - in the perfect world, with a great web app, they should never need to.)
On the other hand, for applications where extremely high security is necessary, implementing case-sensitive usernames (as well as passwords) is probably something you’re willing to endure some usability pain for. Administration interfaces for e-commerce sites, content management areas etc., should probably use case-sensitive usernames.
The biggest problem is when you mix cases, or, more accurately, forget exactly what case you should be checking for. In fact, that’s similar to the problem that I recently had.
The moral of the story for me? Case insensitive, all the way, for all websites from now on … unless I have a really, really, really good reason to do it otherwise. That will save a lot of support headaches.
Who Says Apple Doesn’t Blog?
Wow.
While not quite on the level of a four-leaf clover, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or a dodo bird, I did find something extemely unusual today: an Apple employee blogger.
I found this rare species Macintoshus bloggoria while researching this post about Safari. And this guy actually says right up front that he works for Apple. Amazingly, he hasn’t been fired in something like two years. Steve must be having a bad week.
He’s Dave Hyatt, he blogs here, and introduces himself here.
Other than that, the Apple blogosphere is really, really thin.
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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