John Lindal’s Blog

The Magic Lamp

I just finished another story. My wife considers it to be the best one yet

What Color Is the Sky?

Not sure if anybody noticed, but I added another story to the Stories page.

Ceiling Fan

Yesterday, I finally installed our fourth, and hopefully last, ceiling fan. When we bought the house, it already had fans in the front bedrooms. The back living room has a beam ceiling with very little insulation, so it gets really hot in summer. That was first priority, and I replaced that chandelier with a ceiling fan a year ago. Yesterday, I finally replaced the chandelier in the back bedroom. The nice part about replacing an existing chandelier is that the electrical wiring and the outlet box are already correctly installed, so I don’t have to worry about anything falling down! Once the outlet box is securely fastened to the ceiling, it’s amazingly easy to do the rest — everything is designed so it’s as easy as assembling a LEGO model — attach the mounting socket to the outlet box, assemble the motor housing and down rod, snap the down rod into the mounting socket, hook up the wires, attach the light assembly, and then simply adjust the trim to hide the wires, install the shades, etc. All in a morning’s work

User Surly Interface

Scrollbars are just not intuitive enough. Scrolling ought to be based on the papyrus scroll idiom instead. Each end winds/unwinds independently and moves as it does so. So, if you want to see a different part of the document, you first wind up one end, then reposition the entire document, and finally unwind the other end.

This actually unifies the concepts of scrolling, window placement, and window sizing. Positioning is already implicit. Sizing is controlled by how much you unwind.

Election 2008

Apparently, Dick Cheney is running for president in 2008, and he has chosen He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (you know, Lord Voldemort) as his running mate. What struck me as most interesting about this is that Lord Voldemort is not the type who wants to play second fiddle to anybody. The only logical conclusion that I could come to is that Dick Cheney is an even more powerful Dark Wizard than Lord Voldemort. Now that ought to keep you up at night…

Hey, it must be true. I read it on a bumper sticker!