The Book of Ryan

Software Update:

Safari 5.1.7 contains improvements to performance, stability, compatibility, and security, including changes that:

…

• Disable versions of Adobe Flash Player that do not include the latest security updates and provide the option to get the current version from Adobe’s website.

Neat.

A child acts like an adult while the adults act like children.

Yehuda Katz:

Often complex problems seem simple to the naïve observer. … Consider that the implementer of [a refactor using 1/10th the code] may not yet have a deep enough understanding of the problem to shield you the user from the complexity of the problem.

Truly disturbing look into logistics and fulfillment.

Rian van der Merwe:

How often do we look at a website or app and remark to ourselves (and on Twitter) that “these designers must have been blind!” Sometimes we’re just being whiney about minute details (as we should be), but other times we do have a point: “What were they thinking?”

In this article, we’ll discuss “designer myopia”: the all-too-common phenomenon whereby, despite our best intentions, we sometimes design with a nearsightedness that results in websites and applications that please ourselves and impress our peers but don’t meet user and business goals.

This isn’t just a design problem. The desire to build something technologically beautiful but not beneficial for the business plagues programmers too.

Ethan Gilsdorf:

On Monday, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that owns the game, announced that a new edition is under development, the first overhaul of the rules since the contentious fourth edition was released in 2008. And Dungeons & Dragons’ designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise.

It’s not surprising. I’ve always believed that their DDI implementation was a huge missed opportunity as Web-based product, and 4th edition hasn’t aged gracefully.

Also, from the buried lede department is the last line of the article:

Even if players increasingly bring their iPads, loaded with Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, to the gaming table.

Those rulebooks are pirated copies of PDFs on a computer platform unsupported by any of Wizards’ current products.

I had no idea one of my favorite podcasters, Matthew Jordan, was a wowhead. He writes:

It can be grueling, this fun you’re having. Coldmaker is a little late, not like him, but I think his game privileges were limited, something about a math test. He’s in gun country, the kid’s got a backyard full of broken washing machines now reserved for beer bottles and bullets. Ravheart will be on in a few, this is our third practice this week, one boss, and he’s trying to watch Rescue Me before the evening goes all lumpy. Ichoras is here, the raid leader, and we can hear his son crying in the background.

All of his podcasts are the linguisitc version of a high-end dessert tray, and this one is no exception.