cat page 20 - Dave's Blog

Zeno's Progress Bar - Stolen Thoughts

More of my thoughts have been stolen: In my previous job the customer wanted a progress bar displayed while information was copied off of proprietary hardware, during which the software didn't get any indication of progress until the copy was finished. I joked (mostly) that we could display a progress bar that continuously slows down and never quite reaches the end until we know we're done getting info from the hardware. The amount of progress would be a function of time where as time approaches infinity, progress approaches a value of at most 100 percent.

This is similar to Zeno's Paradox which says you can't cross a room because to do so first you must cross half the room, then you must cross half the remaining distance, then half the remaining again, and so on which means you must take an infinite number of steps. There's also an old joke inspired by Zeno's Paradox. The joke is the prototypical engineering vs sciences joke and is moderately humorous, but I think the fact that Wolfram has an interactive applet demonstrating the joke is funnier than the joke itself.

I recently found Lou Franco's blog post "Using Zeno's Paradox For Progress Bars" which covers the same concept as Zeno's Progress Bar but with real code. Apparently Lou wasn't making a joke and actually used this progress bar in an application. A progress bar that doesn't accurately represent progress seems dishonest. In cases like the Vista Defrag where the software can't make a reasonable guess about how long a process will take the software shouldn't display a progress bar.

Similarly a paper by Chris Harrison "Rethinking the Progress Bar" suggests that if a progress bar speeds up towards the end the user will perceive the operation as taking less time. The paper is interesting, but as in the previous case, I'd rather have progress accurately represented even if it means the user doesn't perceive the operation as being as fast.

Update: I should be clearer about Lou's post. He was actually making a practical and implementable suggestion as to how to handle the case of displaying progress when you have some idea of how long it will take but no indications of progress, whereas my suggestion is impractical and more of a joke concerning displaying progress with no indication of progress nor a general idea of how long it will take.

Search and Archive of Dave's Things

I now have search and an archive available for my site. I previously tried to setup crappy search by cheating using Yahoo Pipes and now instead I have a slightly less crappy search that works over all of the content that I've produced on my blog, uploaded to flickr or youtube, or added to delicious.

You can now read my first LiveJournal blog post or, for probably much more entertainment value, view all the photos and videos of Cadbury by searching for 'bunny'.

The search is only slightly less lame because although it searches over all my content, I still implemented it myself rather than getting a professional package. Also, the feed supports the same search and archive as my homepage so you can subscribe to a feed of Cadbury if you're so inclined and just skip all this other boring stuff. My homepage and feed implement the OpenSearch response elements and I've got an OpenSearch search provider (source) as well.

Gmail integration with Internet Explorer 8

With the new features of IE8 there's several easy ways to integrate Gmail, Google's web mail service, for mail composition, searching, and monitoring that I enjoy using.

Composition

I made a Send via Gmail activity that allows you to select some text, a document, or link and via the activity menu open a new tab to compose a new message with the selection. Go to my activity page and click "Send via Gmail" (source) to install it. I found info on the gmail composition URL in the comments of this gmail howto article and used that in the activity. I talked about activities previously.

Search

I've made a search provider that searches your gmail account. See my search provider page and select 'Gmail' (source) to install the Gmail search provider. Search providers aren't new to IE8 but this fits in with Gmail integration in IE. Again in the comments of another howto I found information on a Gmail search URL.

Monitor

New to IE8 is authenticated feed support and favorites bar monitoring which combined with the Gmail inbox feed means you can see when you get new mail in your favorites bar in IE. To do this, navigate to the feed https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom, click 'Subscribe to this feed', then click on the Add button in the upper left (the star with plus icon) and select 'Monitor on Favorites Bar' to add this as a monitored item in the favorites bar. Next, right click on the new item in your favorites bar, open the properties dialog, and enter your Gmail username and password into the new username and password fields. Now when you get new mail the Gmail feed item will shine and bold and you'll be able to get to new messages in the dropdown. I described monitored feed items previously.

Dinner with Goodwins at Icon Grill

The Goodwin family, except for Michelle who is taking a class trip to Washington DC and New York, was in Seattle this week. Sarah and I met up with them for dinner last night at the Icon Grill. I enjoy the Icon Grill in general and last night was no exception especially having dinner with the Goodwins which was a lot of fun. It was particularly cold and at one point snowed. The Goodwin's are seeing all the classic tourist attractions in Seattle some of which are depicted in the following 1962 Seattle's Worlds Fair postcard. The postcard is featured on Paleo-Future and unsurprisingly the 1962 Worlds Fair favored Seattle's Space Needle and monorail.

ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset Review

I ordered a ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset to use at home. When I come home I plug my phone in to charge in my room, but then I can't hear it ring elsewhere in the hosue. The idea was to take this handset which wirelessly connects to cellphones via bluetooth and place it in another part of the house so that I can tell I'm getting an incoming call. The only issue I have with that setup is that it ringing isn't any louder than conversations held over the phone, that is, the ringing is a little quiet.

The handset pairs with cellphones in the same manner as any other handset over bluetooth. It has an internal rechargeable battery which is charged via a standard USB port built into the base of the handset and it comes with a USB cable. Next to the USB port is the only button on the phone which is pressed to answer a call, hang up a call, or begin voice dial, held down to turn the handset on and off, and held down longer to begin pairing with a cellphone. There's a blue LED in one of the holes in the microphone portion of the phone which blinks to indicate if its on or trying to pair. Transitioning between on, off, and pairing produces a cute sound and a change to the LED.

Overal I'm pleased with its simplicity and use of common parts although I wish there was a way to adjust the volume of the ring.

Feed Folder Deprecated; Use Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 has made my plugin Feed Folder obselete in functionality and implementation -- which is good!

I made Feed Folder for IE7 because I wanted the Live Bookmarking feature from FireFox. The Feed Folder plugin for IE7 would allow you to display your feeds as virtual folders in your Links Bar. When your feed is updated the virtual folder is updated as well with the new feed items. I use del.icio.us to store all my links so I could add virtual folders of my daily links, my friends blogs links, quick reference links, etc. etc.

My plugin relied on shell folders to implement the virtual folders I described above, but IE8 doesn't support shell folders in the Favorites Bar. But I'm OK with Feed Folder not working in IE8 since there's a much better implementation already there. IE8 does better than my plugin on a number of points: First, there isn't the horrible perf. issue that my plugin had on Vista. Second, when a feed is updated the virtual folder flashes to note the change in status. Third, unread items are bolded and the bolding bubbles up from feeds contained in subfolders. And lastly, the middle click button is supported to open items in a new tab.

Accordingly, I don't plan to work on Feed Folder anymore unless someone comes up with a good reason. Instead I mark Feed Folder deprecated and suggest you use Internet Explorer 8 instead.

To use this feature in IE8 simply drag a feed from your feed list in your Favorites Center onto your Favorites Bar. Or, when viewing a feed, click on the 'Add to Favorites' Star Plus icon thing in the upper left, and select 'Monitor on Favorites Bar'. A .url Internet Shortcut file is produced as usual, but if you open up the .url file you'll see there's some additional info about the feed.